The Penguin

For all you ten million fans of this blog, who wait upon my every life-giving word with bated breath, as if in anticipation of a coming religious experience, these past weeks (or so) must have been a torment to your shriveled souls. Well, be tormented no longer: I am about to post more of my holy, infallible writ. Nothing much has really been going on this week - at least, artistically. For those of you who know, I have been working on a webcomic as well - called Fight or Flight - and the writers have recently contacted me out of this ephemeral ether we call the "interwebs". So, I'm working on that. It's very slow going. You know how it is: the usual complaints about, "Oh, my classes take a lot out of me", and, "Oh, I just want to come home and relax...and eat a quart of ice cream." (Maybe not the ice cream. There is none in the house at the moment). Fig. 1: His Holiness, the Author, reclining upon his favorite sofa. What's really getting to me...

Having just finished the first installment of Redtooth , I'm going to try and get installment 7 of The Empty Quarter started. This will be the final installment of TEQ , and after that I'll just have more Redtooth to work on. For those of my faithful readers who don't know (and I know there are thousands of you readers out there), The Empty Quarter began as a four-page comic book assignment for my sequential art class, ARTS 275: Comic Book Illustration. In it I used a group of characters I had already conceived for a story of my own, titled Longshots. Longshots is an expansive story about a crew of four misfits who prowl the galaxy, looking for odd jobs and generally getting into and out of trouble. There is Captain Andrew Logan, a former star-pilot; Second Mate and Engineer Beth Kasty, originally a mercenary fighting other aliens' wars; Communications Officer and Security Officer Ishmael Kuffing, whose past remains a bit of a mystery; and Botswain's Mate Eric Mu...

Comic Book Reviews #1 Some long-overdue comic reviews At some point, way back in the misty dawn of time [of this blog], I said this was a comics blog. It hasn't really turned out that way, aside from a few sketchbook pictures here and there. I thought it was high time I put in a couple of comic book reviews, just to spice things up. The following is a series of very short reviews of comics I've read. Most of these come from the library where I work - we have a moderate collection. Because I'm lazy, the reviews will probably be quite short, depending on what I want to say about it. Also, if you've never heard of any of these comics or creators, all's the better - I've become a bit of a connoisseur, I've found, of comics nobody's ever heard of (although this review will include some more commonly-known titles and artists). (By the way, starting from this point, I might be using the word "comickers" a lot - it simply means, "comic book artist...

All right, after at least a month of pencils and discussions and friggin' bad weather keeping me out of Lansing, Redtooth is finally in inks! Redtooth (in case you don't know) is a comic project I'm working on with Jay Jacot over at Comics Obscura - Comics Obscura being a group of local artists in the Lansing area who have come together to create an anthology publication of their work, titled - get ready - Comics Obscura. Each issue of the anthology features four or five of our artists, working on issues in rotations, so as to avoid any undue overwork. So far we have three issues out, and the fourth issue is in the works. Unfortunately, the fourth issue has been having some...deadline problems. Suffice to say we at Comics Obscura are a fairly far-flung group, and thus organization is not one of our strong points (I know Jay will back me up on this). We've been working to remedy this situation. As of this moment, we expect the fourth issue to wrap up by mid-February. T...

Here are some laws of the universe. I post them here, gentle reader, so that you don't have to find them out for yourself: 1. He who tries to be loved by everyone will have the friendship of no one. 2. Rearrange a brick wall with your head, and then you will know how to change another man. 3. Tyrants change the world; Saints change themselves. 4. Here is the truest test of a wife: paddle a canoe with her for twenty miles. 5. There is nothing more hateful than a forced laugh. 6. Any man who claims to know himself is a liar; any man who tries to explain himself is a bore. 7. The grasshopper did only what he wanted, and died of cold; the ant stored up for the winter, and died surrounded by seeds. Now find the happier of the two. 8. There is such a thing as being too decisive. 9. The only way to deal with anxieties is to ignore them to death. 10. Live simply, and you'll live free.

Woo-hoo! Just finished the first rough images for our (mine and Jay's) new dinosaur comic book, currently called Redtooth. Working with dinosaurs as subject matter is a walk down memory lane for me; I used to be absolutely obsessed with the beasts, before adolescence came along and said "grow up". Well, now I'm back at it, and it's nice to know the skills haven't gone away. I'm reluctant to show the comic book roughs here; firstly, they're messy (all my roughs are - half the time I'm the only one who can figure them out). Secondly, I'd like Jay to decide whether or not he wants them posted yet; maybe he wants to keep it under wraps. I dunno. I'll ask him. At any rate, this is less of a "show me" blog and more of a "let's talk about it till our brains explode" blog. And that's exactly what we'll do. We'll talk about dinosaurs. Firstly, let me clear up something that's been a perpetual headache for a lo...

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 subs...