I committed this tonight. Can't think of a better verb. Those colors make my eyes hurt, which is kind of the point. Honestly, I have no idea why I did this though it was fun. Bright. So bright...

I don't always have to understand what it is I draw. This is one of those examples. It's that weasel thing and that rabbit thing, and there's colors and... stuff. Yah. That's it.

Did a little sketch today before wasting lots of time playing the new Zelda, which I enjoy quite a bit. Their character design is really good but damn, I'm glad I don't have to draw it for a comic or anything. This is pared down in detail in comparison and it took too long. Still, just a bit of fun.

Case in point, re; last entry, I got this done today after not having a new page for awhile. Still don't like the output from AD with overlays. Otherwise, it's doing what I need it to. When I recently had to go back to AI to work on a client piece, I was getting all my keyboard shortcuts wrong, which shows that I've made the transition. Anyway. Ghiroy needs a little more work in the composition department ahead of time. This page, every element was drawn separately as I like to draw things big. Otherwise, I think it works well enough.

There have been power outages, windstorms and Zelda taking my time recently, so nothing new til yesterday and a follow up to my last bio comic. It's not as bad as all that, I expect, though places with a lot of light, including being at my computer are harder to deal with as the light reflects off my eye making it harder to ignore the bad one. Or something. But I can still get stuff done and that's what counts.

Went through a little kind of panic today and/or recently because of my eyesight. I know this is something dealt with every day by thousands of people. Still freaks me out a bit. As it turns out, I think I can get by for a couple more years with a new pair of glasses though even that bothers me as it means that thinks like close up work probably isn't something I can count on doing for a hell of a lot longer. But we'll see. Might be that, once I get the lens replaced, I can do better than I did for years. Regardless, Biography is meant to be a journal and that's what I was thinking about today and have been for a few weeks.

Page 8. Did this all today without even realizing I was going to. That being said, I think I like the preceding page better, partially as the colors aren't so rich. Might go back and adjust this later as I have with all the other pages, which is fine. Doesn't bother me, really. Mostly made this live online as a stream (thanks for coming, Vince!) which was something I hadn't done in over a year. I'm going to try and do this more often. I have a web cam so I could show the penciling stage, too. Hadn't thought about doing it at all til after I'd started the color work. Not my favorite page, partially from lack of action but I like the cartooning. As long as I keep going on this, I'm happy. It's meant to be something quick, dirty and fun. Well, not dirty...

Another page of this. Still a lot of fun to do. This one was far more pieced together, which is no problem with me. Makes it a little harder in the end, but the results are satisfying.

Updates. It looks like we've seen these before, but there have been changes made. For the first page, which is now page three, i tried to use overlays to change the tone of all the characters, but they didn't output properly which I couldn't fix. Also, with the others pages, there was more of a monochrome look to things to better highlight a single character. So I redid the colors so that this page would better match the following ones. Also, it was the wrong size. I changed a little of the titling at the top. I was going to have a page of crawl that described where they were going and what they were looking for but the hell with that. I'll let that stuff come out in natural dialogue. This is a D+D type comic. It's not supposed to be real deep.

As for the crawl itself, I actually woke up at 4am the night after I made it and thought, "Why did you write 'men' instead of 'humans?' That was rather sexist of you." No excuse that it's the old or 'proper' term. Inclusion is important. So the word was replaced, and the text was all moved a little to better frame it. Now stuff looks better and more cohesive. Moving on.

Ok, I ignored Silas today and did another one of these. It felt right as that was what was still burning in me. There are NO reactions to this elsewhere, except poor Vince who is kind enough to favorite my stuff. That means I am literally making this comic for just me. When I stop and think about that, it's depressing as hell and yet I have so much fun making these pages. So there's that balance I have to deal with, and deal with it I shall. What else can I do? I guess the Silas comic is about that very thing.

"The Crawl" for Ghiroy. I should go back and adjust the color and the little narration on page one and then things should be fine. This is technically page one as it explains what the hell's going on and who these people are. Wish I had a decent font program but the good ones are all too expensive. So I did this (mostly) by hand. It was worth it as will all the lettering be.

It's monday, unofficially Ghiroy day. So here's page three. I need to insert at least one page of text, the 'crawl' if you will that explains what this comic is about, who these people are, etc. I decided that I will be using tropes and even clichès from fantasy comics in this mingled with stuff that's decidedly not at all those things. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here, just paint it different colors. That being said, these are a lot of fun to do. They're kind of graffiti-like in style and while that wasn't on purpose, I'm glad it's that way. Bright, jumbled and colorful is something I definitely wanted. I can easily see how the skater mouse comic led to this and that, too is fine. I wonder what I'll do when things quiet down a little, and I want to do a little quiet stuff or a little character growth. Guess we'll see when I get there. So far, there's no planning this at all, just me sitting down, looking at the previous pages and penciling something out. That being said, there was a LOT of fiddling about for compositional reasons this time around. That, too is fine. These tickle me. That's all.

Did a 'cover' image this morning just for fun. The whole point of this comic is to keep things simple and fun, drawing just to enjoy drawing. I moved the comic to its own tumblr as it really doesn't interest anyone but me. It's kind of sad, but I like making it so much, I'll just have to try and divorce myself from the whole idea of anyone but me (and maybe poor Vince) reading it. A page a week is what I'm aiming at, while working on Silas. That comic will be WORK, this one is meant to be a little break between. I put SO much work into this and Delve Deep, I hate it just sitting there doing nothing. And if I daydream about Ghiroy being its own cartoon show, who can blame me?

Snuck in another page, though I changed the approach to color a lot. Should go back and 'fix' the first page similarly. Might. Otherwise, all I can say is that doing this is fun.

Messed about with this today. Took the layout style of the weasel things I did awhile back and applied it to Ghiroy. One of the reasons for this is that I don't really even need to do thumbnails for this, it's an easy, relatively quick style in which to draw and, for me, it's fun. As a side project, I think I can manage this if I aim to do just one page a week. Took me maybe 45 minutes to pencil and about 3.5 hours to make in Affinity. Did have a strange problem with AD this time around, something which might be something of a dealkiller; when I exported the image, I had some overlays so that I could change the overall tone of each character. When the jpg was viewed, those overlays were very different and really made the image unusable. Removing them gave a decent result but I was really hoping to use this feature. If I can't figure out why it's having trouble, I'll have to go back to AI which is disappointing. So we'll see.

Been away for about a week so haven't drawn a thing. Took a day off before going back to work to exercise the drawing part of me, do laundry and the like. I think what I'm going to do is take one day a week to offer up to Ghiroy and concentrate the rest of my energy on Silas, which is likely the much stronger project. Did some drawings of the guys today, mostly Crow who's pretty much utterly designed and doesn't need any more. Mikilo doesn't really need all that much more, either but I haven't done as many of him. Francesca needs some work but is pretty much there. There's not a HUGE difference in this version of the characters than from some of the others but I think they're more sustainable and more quickly drawn which is important if I want to do this at all. So, this.

One last for the day, the elf, Mikilo. Too cute? Maybe. He gets angry sometimes.

And here's some bad guys.

Who's a sexy beast? Another one of these. Personally, I'd watch a cartoon with this guy in it but I'm biased as hell. Affinity Designer, which doesn't seem to do gradients quite as well as AI.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there's this. I had a long week of work which pretty much drained me each day from wanting to do much of anything in the evenings. Silas will continue. There's lots done on that comic and I will be working on the final songs next week and the week after. Then comes some editing and then I'll start drawing based on the songs and the stuff that needs to be there to augment what's in the lyrics. My enthusiasm is still high. I'm more attuned to this idea than anything since Tamino. That being said, my head went into D+D land in the last couple of days. I put so much work into drawing Ghiroy characters, I can't really let them go. The original idea for the comic, before it got WAY out of hand was to just draw a fun, quick and dirty D+D comic. That's not what happened. And I stalled because, I think, the whole thing got blown out of all proportion. But. But...I recently poked at the designs again and thought of a way I could use them, go back to the original idea and pretty much not have to do any writing at all. So this morning, I worked on some color versions. So here we go. This. And a long explanation.

While working on the songs for the Silas comic, I've done damned little with the images. The other day I managed some time to throw together a couple studies of Smatt and Silas. I've been going through some old books on Yoshitoshi and think his work will be a major influence as his sense of composition is still so fresh. Really, Ukiyo-e was a huge part of Tamino so it makes sense. I want there to be a lot more attention to lighting in this one and I posed for these two, adapting the lighting from the photos. Since I have a decent lighting kit, I'll likely try to pay a lot more attention to this sort of thing. Ink, Affinity Designer.

Another Bio with Mary. I think this helped codify one of the reasons I liked her show so much.

My favorite sitcom ever. I was watching it again before work today, found out in the middle of a workshop at work, came home and watched some more of it. And I'm watching it now. The Mary Tyler Moore Show has always meant something to me. I'm just old enough to remember those saturday nights on CBS where they had this, M*A*S*H, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnette. I don't think there's ever been a lineup like that before or since. When this show ended, I was 12, and I remember watching the last episode. I swear that the kitten logo at the end turned upside down but I have no proof. Very sad. Silly, perhaps, but her passing made me sad.

New page and updated all in one. There's a new guy in this one, kind of a slacker rabbit. No idea how long this will play out but I did manage to write the four songs of the third part of the Silas comic yesterday, so I am making progress.

Just for fun, put the three pages together. I like how busy and nuts it is. There is NO point to this, it's purely art for the sake of fun.

Lazy day. Another one of these. Make as much sense as you want to.

Some quick studies of the weasel's expressions. I make lots of grouchy characters.

Been VERY bad at posting anything here, which is silly as I have been making... something. These sort of grew out of the last images by way of some other artist's stuff. Even when I fear I'm going to steal something instead of being inspired, I never seem to be able to just take. I'm bad at it. And this is a good thing. These make no sense and there's a lot of freedom in that. I had some random watcher on tumblr actually 'translate' one of these into a hilarious string of illogic and commentary. He honestly put more thought into it than I did. I can totally see doing a comic of nonsense like this, where it's all layout, drawing and color just for the purpose of enjoying it. But I have stuff to do on Silas and I don't want to neglect him. These should just be little throwaways.

Forgot to post the color version of this. Seemed to please the client, so all is good.

Had a sudden request today for a weasel skateboarder. I don't generally take requests or commissions, partially as I'm so slow but this seemed up my alley. So I did it. Went from no character design to finished in about an hour, which for me is horrifically fast. Still rough, I might finish it with color later.

And now for something completely different. The last episode of my movie vlog, The Movie Wrench had me sitting in front of a green screen with a 'set' made from a formica pattern I found online and a very crudely drawn monitor in the upper right. Since I'm likely to use this 'set' from now on, I thought I'd put some work into it and redo the whole thing in Illustrator (only because the original file was still in there.) This meant finding a new monitor, in this case a 1965 Zenith black and white tv, exactly like the one my parents used to have and on which I watched countless hours. I also wanted to trace the horrible pattern so I could output it at a better DPI than before. As a last bit of 'reality,' I added a cast light effect just to make the area of the screen in which I appear pop a little more. I'm pretty happy with it though as an illustration, it is kind of dull. Still, work is work.

Another one, so fast! Must mean I won't update this til April or so. When finished, I felt a little let down with myself, as if I should have expanded on this and yet there really wasn't a whole lot else to say. As someone that loves old TV shows and has his junior high yearbook still, artistically I don't look back so much. I really do try and keep reaching forward. Sure, I study old art, and new art, and try to add it to my mix. Memories are, for the most part, packed away, literally in boxes. There's some old art on the walls, but I really only want to think about making new art. So talking to this guy, Tom, I could totally see why Coober Skeber was something best left to what it was, regardless of the unpublished art. Sure, I'm curious but that's all it would be. Wouldn't have the same impact now as it did then. And it turns out that it DID have an impact. Marvel and DC both did their own (apparently lame) indie comics versions of their own characters, Marvel had the Hulk story redrawn and inserted in an actual Hulk annual, that short story was a scene in one of the Hulk movies... so it did its thing and we moved on. It remains my one and only story published by someone other than myself. So, nostalgia. But what have I done lately? Honestly, since then, a lot more. But those are blocks to continue to build on, not things to try and elevate in and of themselves. There. I've expounded on the comic and really haven't added all that much more. So perhaps, as a journal, it works.

First post and first Biography for the new year. Trying not to use Illustrator unless I really have to. That being said, AD has one annoying habit that I can't seem to get around: Ai was smart enough to export jpegs based on the size of the illustration, not the art board. Can't seem to get AD to do the same thing. Very annoying. That being said, I was able to get this colored and done while doing other things in the background, which says that I'm getting comfortable with it. This is a good thing. If possible, I want to do Silas completely in AD. As they update, perhaps it will make me wonder why I ever bothered keeping AI around. Certainly not paying those bastards 20 bucks a month. Ridiculous.

Other than that, I do have a lot I SHOULD get done this year. There's no reason not to. I'm nine songs into Silas, have the style down and am more interested in this than anything I've tried to start for years. Should have a website. No excuse for that. And if I'm going to make prints, I really ought to sell them. And live streaming! I do indeed have a 1080 camera that will allow people to see me sketch and ink which might or might not be of interest. Still, it seems a way to keep folks interested. Patreon kind of scares me a little. Every time I see someone start one up it seems to be SO egotistical. I don't really need folks to give me money. I've always worked AND done art, and part of me wonders about people that have the luxury of just having someone pay them to do what they do. In my case, I think I'd better have a distinct product, plan and guide or it won't work. Regardless, one of my other goals is to have more posts in this blog than I did last year. I know almost no one reads it (hi, Vince!) but it matters to me.