Back in the saddle

It has been a long, long time since I've spent much time working at getting the continuation of this story put together - but over the past few days I've spent a little more time going over my old notes and configuring how I want to approach the next installment.

The good news is this: I'm working on the new script that will pick up in Gobekli Tepe where a subterranean temple was demolished with Dr.s Casey Miller and Howard Bolam trapped inside.

What I loved about the last installment of Tomb of the Undead was that the script really worked on a lot of levels for me - I was really happy with how it came together and the character development throughout. The artwork developed nicely over the years, as well. Can you imagine it took four years to put it all together? Wow.

I'm not sure how long it will take to write this script, but it's the first step to finally getting back in and telling the rest of the story I wanted to tell.

I'm excited to talk about the project, but as usual, don't want to spoil anything before the time comes for you to see it. In any case, as I make developments, I'll probably post them up here, quietly, where they'll never be seen.

But they'll make for an interesting history of the project.

Today I made real strides in determining the "subject" of the story, which isn't necessarily zombie dinosaurs, as the title of this blog suggests, but rather, the story of a man who learns to love and open his heart. :) .... to zombie dinosaurs.

Boogers, Sorcery, Bidets and Shitty Diapers

My Jack-o-lanterns are from "The Shining" this year

If there were ever a series of gags worthy of my Definitely Classy banner, this was it.

Snot rockets (the horrible locker-room scene good men suffer through while someone on the ball diamond has to clear his nose, .... .uggh.  The joke wasn't hilarious, but it was something I had to get off my chest, I suppose.

Caveman Inventor is a personal favourite, and that was before it became one of my most successfully received strips. It went over so well I have wanted to revisit the characters and their world and see what I can do to explore their world a little more in depth. Cavemen have been a source of comic ideas for a long time, but ... perhaps there's something there I could devine from it that hasn't been seen before.

It's certainly appealing and I'd be very pleased to do more on it. I think there's a great source of humour to be found in juxtaposing high-end concepts and primitive neandrathals at once. I'll have to wait and see what comes out of it.

Vivace Bidet Pruzzo was another joke I was eager to get out of my notes - - however, it wasn't received as well as I feel it deserved. Shortly after I came up with this idea, there were commercials about ass wetnaps which were advertized on network television, although the only thing I can link to is something promoted on the Howard Stern show, called One Wipe Charlies.

MY idea is way more funny and I especially felt designing it like a Toilet Duck bottle was even better - - nobody agreed :(

"I Stink At Financing" is taken to another level in Business Man @ Home, too - - I guess this was just an extsrapolation of that concept, put into "At-Home Dad" terms. Nothing too hilarious, I agree.

Anyhow, thanks for reading, and if you ever have any questions about the strips, just drop me a line.

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Don't Bother Painting That Beautiful Fresh Snowfall

In our cozy little town, once in a while, the local-artist community has a bit of a neighbourhood tour, where they'll put their art in their garages and have interested shoppers/art supporters visit (and of course they cross their fingers hoping somebody, ANYBODY, will buy something).

There are some terrific artists around here and there is plenty of inspiration to be found in town; beautiful wildlife, incredible sunrises, fluffy and colourful bushes, flowers, waterways and quaint streets/shops that are an artists' dream to capture on canvas.

So, when one of the neighbours down the street had a sign at the end of his driveway indicating he was on the tour, my wife and I strolled over and snooped through his garage to check his work out. There were some great paintings for sure, but my favourites are the winterscapes. They're serene and subtle, there's something peaceful about the undisturbed snow during a sunrise. Plus, depending on the medium, the texture of paint on canvas lends itself so nicely to the shape and texture of snow on an evergreen's branches.

I asked the painter/neighbour why he didn't do more winterscapes, because they were so beautiful - - and he responded quickly, as if he'd done one too many winterscapes already, by saying "Nobody buys them."

And there it was, the corruption of commercialism in the face of artistry. To think you'd be stymied from artistically expressing yourself because not enough people would agree with you to make it worth while? Now THAT'S an artist, am I right!?

That's obviously the inspiration behind Studio Lesson:
(I also liked the painting the painter is working on - - giving hate the middle finger :)

Safety Citation
I see my kid climbing all over everything, and of course health and safety are important facets of any good business. This is one of my favourtie Business Man comics so far!

Stilt Merchants
As for SIRI on Beard-o's SmartPhone, I like that there's a poor, minimalist v. consumerism debate going on between the two - - however subtle/nonexistent. I guess what I'm saying is I'd LIKE there to be more of a philosophical struggle between SIRI and Beard-o (as would be inspired by Bill Watterson's work with Calvin & Hobbes). We'll see what the future holds in store. Most importantly about this comic, is how much these characters despise each other, yet still stand across the street and face off every single day.

Opa!
I'd been sitting on this joke for ages, obviously the Greek debt crisis is OLD news, but the joke finally made the list of comics to write. So here it is!

In 1904 Parents Washed Out Your Mouth With What!?

I've always wondered why Dr. Seuss had to take such liberties with the "English" language to get his rhymes -- and it bothered me. He was just being silly, but I thought it was a little unfair that he could make words up to make his stories flow.

Now that I've read many of his stories over again with our little one I realize that what appeared so inane not long ago, is a terrific teaching aid for anyone who's learning to read. The similarities and differences between words really illustrates the phonics and graphics of a word -- which will be really handy when our first born starts to read on his own (and before that with our help, of course).

BUT all of that said, there's GOT to be some reason Seuss turned to this beyond the pure pedagogic intentions. My best guess is that children from 1904 were raised by parents who washed his mouth out with something a whole lot worse than soap. If Seuss had to enter into some Jewish version of Pig Latin to express himself, it must have been awful. Something that could only be conceived by the mind of a German beer-maker who lost his brewery due to prohibition.

When your father immigrates to New England to live out his dream to be a successful German brewer to only have the Yankees enter into prohibition, I'll BET you learn some interesting words around the house, too.

Without further ado, here are some other thoughts on some of the latest comics we've had up on Spring Chickens.

Way Down There
The stilts were an idea I came up with to introduce a new character to King St. - - someone who was a bother to me LONG before I met Mr. Minestrone or Beardo. He just lived over on Parkhill so I never really made the connection between him and King St.

I thought, what could be the wackiest setup I could think of, which I could have interrupted by this new character? Beardo on stilts seemed like a good fit. However, I liked the idea so much, that I thought of a couple ways it could pay off - - so you can expect some more stilts in the future on King St.

Gogh for It
A friend on Facebook made a status update "I could cut my ear off" and my immediate response was "Gogh for it!" but .... I didn't write it. He seemed in genuine anguish and I didn't feel like leaving graphic evidence that I'm a big jerk. I mean, I AM a big jerk, but leaving proof for everyone to see isn't my style.

But believe me, when I read your Facebook status, my immediate and default response is pure "Jerk."

(And yes, I did fashion the anguished guy off of Ernie from Sesame Street ... )

Employee Ownership
My biggest concern about employee ownership is the divestment of ownership after you no longer want to have it - - I mean, who buys this stuff from you?

And what happens when you own part of a business, like a German start-up brewery, and then the States institute prohibition again - - how do you get your money out of it THEN? You lose your job and all your investments, too -- yikes.

I'm not against Employee Ownership, I just wonder how you'd ever leave or retire. Or what to do with all that unsold home-brew left over. Would you use it to wash your kid's mouth out when he swears around the house, obviously leading to a whole new insane world of Zizzer Zazzer Zuzzs, Gecks and Wumps?

I Plagiarized a Joke From My Cat

I plagiarized a joke from my cat - - just another insight into the makings of some of these stupid jokes. I'll tell you more about the cat's joke in a sec.

First, here are a few more behind-the-scenes glimpses into the making of the King St. Capers and other terrible comic series.

Once again, this sneak-peek reveals my hopes to be efficient is drawing four comics on a single page, which keeps the images small, the resources small (fewer sheets of paper to sort) and the images small when I go to add colour in the final steps.

Plus, it saves on scanning multiple images, too. It's one sheet of paper, slipped into the scanner, and presto. Sort of.

Great Idea, Quarterly Review, Cat Sniffs, and Failed Bumper Sticker.

So, here you see the hilarious Caper that I've not released yet. There's no caption on the image, so you'll just have to wonder what on earth might be being said in that panel. Also, an illegible note for ANOTHER Caper idea is just sitting there on the page, but you can't read it!

So TWO Capers are potentially being spoiled early, but I trust they'll still be a bit of a surprise when they're finally released. Stay tuned.

Also on the page are three other comics which have all been posted now. I'm most excited to introduce "Business Man @ Home," which is a new series that's serving as catharsis in my continued observation of how a one-year-old is lacking any professionalism whatsoever.

I took a little time to do some product development, and drafted up a fun banner to include on each strip, and I hope people will enjoy it. I think there's plenty of material to continue the series for a while, plus they're quick and easy to execute, which is imperative!

Next is Most Interesting Thing in the Room, starring my cat Indy. She's been the artistic template I've used to create this cat. She also basically wrote this joke. Indy has discovered that my armpits quickly become a crack-heroine version of catnip to her, and she wants to rub, snuggle, scratch and claw at them whenever she can. It tickles.

Lastly, was just a dumb bumper-sticker idea I figured would be terrible. That's how my sense of humour/mind works, it flawlessly takes information and then finds the worst possible scenario that would create the most intolerant and awful outcomes ever, because for some reason I think that's funny.

It's never a constructive thought. It's never a positive thought. It's without fail, always the worst thing possible  - - and then I laugh to myself, and people ask me: What? And then I've got to change the subject instead of reveal my awful thoughts.

I figure one of the nastiest practical jokes you could play on someone would be to take a really offensive or dangerous bumper sticker and put it on someone else's car. Who knows how long they'd be driving around getting dirty looks and being identified with whatever dumb thing you've written on their car?

Hilarious, right? That and emptying a hot deep fryer on the hood of someone's car. I imagine that'd be pretty crazy, too.

I hate drawing cars, so I just stuck the sticker onto an existing image of a car. Man I hate drawing cars.

Production Notes | Spring Chickens and King St. Capers

What I'm sure nobody's wondering is: what do the comics look like before you're done with them? Well, to answer the question nobody's asking, HERE's what they look like.

Here's we've got the Silent Pirate fan art, kitty sniff, Call Me Gail and the neighbourhood cat's middle finger.

Here we've got Ignacio, from Silent Pirate; Call Me Gail which was my twist on an expression that's a bit of a pet peeve of mine; the Neighbour's Cat; and Fishy Smell.

All of these come from the time before I learned how to add colour to the strips. You can see that I try and speed things up by drawing a bunch on one sheet of paper, then scanning them all at once, and doing the finishing touches digitally. 

Indoor v. Outdoor cats, microadvertizing, laptop kitty and Fretting over brownouts.

In this image I squished two multi-panel cartoons into one quarter of a page - - this can significantly reduce the detail, and make the images small to work with when adding colour afterwards. A lesson learned. Plus, when deleting the whitespace before adding colour, the smaller the details and images, the more difficult.

Here we've got The Difference Between Indoor and Outdoor Cats; Microadvertizing; Cybercrimes; and Fretting Over Brownouts.

I've had the rough draft of Indoor v. Outdoors cats drawn for literally three years before I got to it. I didn't like how it looked, so had to completely redraw it -- and of course it's for the better. Adding colour has made a significant difference, I think.

The Dahmer gag was another joke that'd been in the back of my mind for years and years - - now that I'm drawing up a bunch of the comics, it was time to finally get it done.

When I'm finished with a page, I'll order them to be published with the what I feel is the strongest cartoon to go first. From the above selections, it went Brownouts, Cybercrimes, Indoor v. Outdoor and then Microadvertizing. How would you have ordered them?

Great work and Cuddling Experience

Here's a quick example of two images where I was still making the shift from heavily shaded images to clean outlines to simplify the colouring process later on down the line. It looks like I've left some notes on the page for me while in the digital editing process, too.

In Great Work, I was really pleased with how the shading in the boss's suit turned out. It gave me hope that this could have some positive returns going forward.

My wife is still haunted by Cuddling Experience, which is unfair, because it was more of a joke than a critique, but also an observation ;)

The Hot Tub Drops on King St.

For the Hot Tub story arc for the King St. Capers, I tried something entirely different than what I'd been doing with other strips. Instead of drawing an entire gag in one cell, I chose to draw strip elements that I could incorporate into a series of gags. In this case, the image of two people observing the hot tub can be used in any instance when these people are observing the hot tub.

In Someone Leave Their Hot Tub, panels one, two and three were used; in Hot Tub in the Middle of the Street, I used panel four and another panel from a second page (there were four used in this story arc); and I reused panel four again in What Could Be Worse Than That?

I have to say, adding colour to the Capers has brought a LOT more life to them, and I'm even more happy with how they're turning out these days. The digital editing is making a lot more interesting stuff possible, as well.

Just one further example is, I've only had to draw the barber pole outside Mr. Minestrone's shop once, and then reused it every time - which is much faster than drawing and colouring a new barber pole every time. Same thing with the pile of butts and the pile of empty liquor bottles.