Delerium Tremens

My hands are shaking uncontrollably right now. Spent all last night at Gone Wired Cafe, hashing out the upcoming comic book project with Jay (Dinosaurs!), and then all of this morning finishing up my final project for my Design and Communications class. So no sleep last night. Usually I do pretty well with it - a little loopy, but none the worse for wear (the trick is to say to yourself, "Oh, you just went to bed at 1 am, so that's why you're tuckered out this morning...you did get some sleep." Not especially convincing, but to a sleep-deprived mind it's better than nothing). The problem here is that I have to drive from Howell to Lansing - an hour's drive, on a good morning; ergo, the necessity of a bite of the bitter bean, otherwise I'd spend my morning wrapped lovingly around an unyielding object, like a tree or a concrete median barrier, due to a mid-commute snooze. The problem with one cup of coffee is that it necessitates another to get over the subsequent caffeine crash, and then another, and then another...

Ah, le cycles vicious, or however the hell you say it in French.

So much for sophistication. At any rate, my final project was a success, and - more importantly in my mind - installment 1 of Redtooth (that's the unofficial official title for the comic right now) has been verbalized, and is awaiting the concept treatment. Oh Lord was it an epic struggle...you should have seen me, fighting bravely (read: petulantly) over every last detail of the concept. Jay and Kurt even had to call a half-time for a cigarette break. I suppose that would have happened anyway, but we'll conveniently disregard that fact. The fact is, I held on to the bitter end. And at the bitter end, of course, I collapsed in a broken, weeping heap and agreed to all the changes they suggested.

I jest. It was truly a team effort. I think it's going to turn out fantastic. And you know what? I don't have to worry about dialogue. Jay's going to handle it all. I just have to do the pictures. And that's okay in my book, let me tell you...

Rick out.

Comments

The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor to you Jurassic Park aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi

The Horrendous Space Kablooie!

Sorry, Bill Watterson, but I just couldn't resist using this one...all hail Calvin and Hobbes! This comic illustrates a point that confronts us when we attempt to speak about the titanic phenomena occurring in the universe every day. We can speak of a supernova exploding "with the force of x megaton bombs", or a star that "could hold a million of our suns"...but ultimately all this is meaningless. When the standard unit of interstellar measurement, the light year, is about 8.7 x 10¹² miles, human language (and thus, comprehension) just sort of...blanks out. Here's a lovely example: I'm currently watching a JINA-CEE video about novas in parasitic binary star systems . Essentially, a small, dense star (such as a neutron star) will form an orbital relationship with a larger, less-dense giant. The denser of the two will start vacuuming material off its host, adding to its mass; however, because of its size, it compresses the material into its "

The Penguin

Search This Blog