Interesting... no, wait: the other thing - tedious

This is gonna be one visually inconsistent book, but I can only power onward at this stage with the knowledge that artists only see the worst in their work and the second they only see the good it's probably time to call it a day. But hey - at least Monday's over.

Love is sharing the same fridge for seventeen years without resorting to fists

This is not a godly hour, yet posting I am regardless.

Watching:
Mrs Brown's Boys - which tested my love of all things crude to destruction, being as it is some sort of throwback to the kind of sitcom that Ricky Gervaise made a career satirizing in the latter portion of Extras, though at least it's heartening that Irish television is now well into the 20th century. Brendan Carrol stars as the titular Mrs Brown, a mouthpiece for pretty much any crude platitude you might hear if hanging around old people long enough, though with the virtue of at least filtering out comments about gays and non-whites. The format borrows a lot from Sean Hughes' Channel 4 effort Sean's Show but doesn't make much of the fourth-wall breaking apart from cheap digs that anyone watching the worst episode of the Cleveland Show ever will be familiar with. It is not good, but I don't think it's really aiming to be high art anyway.
Fool's Gold - which is one of these 'romcoms' I've heard about which stars Matthew McConaghy. He gets his shirt off in this so you know at least it's not entirely irredeemable, but it's a big chunk of "nearly but not quite". Perfectly entertaining time-killer if you've got nowt else on, it's a standard treasure hunt escapade in a tropical locale with Donald Sutherland showing up for no better reason than he got lost on the way to doing a cameo for his lad in 24 and stayed because it meant Alexis Dziena playing his daughter yet always hanging around wearing very little or rubbing up against him in a way that someone other than me might have found a bit odd because they were likely sober at the time. Me? I was half wrote off and thought Donald was doing well for himself until I twigged "Daddy" was not a pet name the character had for him. Ray Winstone is also in this with what I think is a comedy Nawlins drawl. No idea why - perhaps he's got to that stage of his career where he makes his coin playing a parody of himself - in which case job done.

Why is it I can crush diamonds between my fingertips yet I am powerless - POWERLESS TO MAKE YOU LOVE ME

There is something slightly ungodly about posting at a godly hour like 7pm - possibly because so much of what I've done so far will be getting The Red Pen shortly and any screen-grabs will be outdated. God I draw uniform, bland faces when I don't pay attention.

Watching: Static Shock, a relatively recent cartoon series based on the Dwayne McDuffie-created superhero Static. The 'toon is an accessible affair featuring an affable and earnest lead who's a million miles from the character appearing in DC's aimless and hateful Teen Titans comic books, and what stands out is the fist-bumping and "gotcha, dawg"s from characters and cynical old me laughs at their Poochie D style attempts at relevance to a young audience rather than giving props to not sugar-coating the drawbacks of urban youth culture or its occasionally bizarre trappings.
Outcasts - a muddled, laughable affair for all the wrong reasons.

This clown posse really IS insane!

Posting at Godly hours is oddly rewarding, but reveals my progress as slowwwwwwww...

Fine by me - more fish for Kunte

I was saddened to hear today of the passing of Dwayne McDuffie, a writer who I'd thought of mostly as a provider of solid comics about which I had no real complaints (and the Deathlok series I thought pretty fucking sweet at the time but didn't realise he was the writer until today), but with each message of condolence read on depressed forums and blogs I notice he has actually been responsible for a lot of material I thought pretty damn awesome.
Back when I had a job, I drank a lot and I had no time for internets - that shit was just reading to me, like some sort of Star trek version of Teletext - and so I relied on Sky telly for my tv shows, though to be honest my brother and dad got more out of it than I did apart from when I was hungover on the weekend and would lay in bed drinking pints of energy drink/Five Alive topped off with a couple of packets of resolve while I watched Static Shock, Justice League/Unlimited, Batman Beyond (inexplicably re-monikered by the marketing fuckwits as Batman of the Future) - basically Dwayne was a driving force for these shows and without him making them better than they would have been, I'd have had to get out of bed. Probably, I would have gone straight to the hair of the dog and become even more reliant on drink than I am at the moment, but more important than one more drunken Irish idiot working on kidney failure, I would have missed a shitload of great telly.

Godspeed, D.

I will beat you and there will be nothing madcap or wacky about it

In England EVERYTHING means vagina

Line tool and CTRL+T get quite the workout when I have to do perspective, and much as I gripe about Photoshop, I'd probably have stuck to the bricking or glazing without it and still be busy half-heartedly building car showrooms like that one just outside Tunbridge Wells that I had a hand in and would be quite surprised if it hasn't keeled over and deathed a few people in the years since. But Photoshop - it is damn handy for the technically inept like myself.

Yes, there's a lot of empty space, isn't there? I find it helps to roughly accommodate where the lettering might go during the layout stages, to save headaches down the line. Still, that's the double-page spread finished before the weekend kicks in. Photoshop may be good, but Photoshop and Vista? Not so much. Double page spreads are big files and prone to crash the PC, so I usually split them into chunks and do them piecemeal, which is not great for maintaining already-shaky visual continuity between panels so I've penciled in some editing time at the end of each chapter.

The weekend begins...

you know where the floor is and if you don't you know where the door is

Battle makes a man! The gates of confrontation have opened!

Doodledoodledoodle...
Slowly getting there on various projects. Not much to say beyond that...
Haven't really thought this whole 'daily posting' thing through, have I? Eh.

Watching: 90210, Good Wife, Harry's law, Fairly Legal, The Listener, Bob's Burgers, Human Target, Smallville, The Cape, Outcasts, Bedlam, Justified, Andromeda.

The Listener I thought canceled a couple of years ago, but here it is, back on screens - a Toronto-based drama about a paramedic with the ability to read minds, it's not great but it fills a hole.
As for Fairly Legal I am done with you, legalese twentysomething life drama. May no man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever, such is thy corniness and trite worldview.
Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda is a bit dated in its CGI spaceship doings, but at least has the odd bit of ambition in amongst the otherwise formulaic plots. I have a soft spot for Tyr "no, he really is a rotten scumbag with no redeeming virtues" Anasazi and the unashamedly old-fashioned character Rev, a cannibal rapist who's turned over a new leaf. It reminds me a lot of what I thought Farscape was probably like before I actually started watching it, but there's a nice bit of curve-balling in setting up Hercules: the Legendary Journeys actor Kevin Sorbo as an infallible Captain Kirk-alike only to reveal flaws as time goes on so that there's actually a story to tell about the character every now and then, and even - garsp! - some long-game storytelling if you pay attention to background details in the early episodes. I'm actually quite surprised I like it, as it's chocka with cliche and corndog moments. I'm probably just getting older and less discerning.

In England we call them "Italian fannies"

Unproductive day is slightly more productive than its predecessor.

Hell is not punishment enough FOR THE LIKES OF YOU!

Unproductive day is unproductive. Figgin' mid-terms...

I hope you rot in jail and the rats eat your eyes

Today I am on Vista time!

No porn today. Back to interpersonal drama and wandering facial likenesses and I can see why pro comic artists avoid changing stuff like hairstyles on characters even though that's what normal people do from day to day. It's bloody murder making characters look the same.


Captain America movie looking pretty sweet - just the right mix of retro and conventional stylings for my taste. Hopefully they'll keep the theme from the trailer.

an often fruitless quest for intermittent patches of happiness interspersed with toil, ennui, Justin Bieber and wasps

Once again eager blogwatchers thinking I'll be posting the porn I'm supposed to be drawing at the minute are disappointed by random sketches of brain-farts rendered only to keep things nice and clean so Blogger feels no need to ban my arse.

Although if you actually know who Sailor Moon is, there's probably a narrow but Rule 34-affirming strand of fanfiction that blends her and Spidey for some pseudo-bukkake action involving the latter's web shooters, and if I had half an ounce of sense I would discard the small but persistent measure of decency and restraint I possess and draw it and charge for prints. Seriously, go to Deviantart and search for random fetish terms, chances are someone's commissioned something along those lines from that site's users. Always an option if this graphic novel lark comes to nowt, I guess...

After Africa, being dead was the easiest way to stay alive

No pr0n for blogwatchers today, just random sketches run up while watching the horrendously smug Fairly legal.

Oh Manga Studio - I'm sure you're great, but intuitive? Not so much.
Pretty sure I'm supposed to be learning how to use that anyway... Hm.

and bring me the diaper I wear to bed after I've been eating Indian food

If I organized my time better, I'd likely have more room for masturbation and Mass Effect 2, as I'm quite interested in finding out which is ultimately the more hollow experience. As it is, I'm still struggling to put the time aside here and there.
Especially bad bit of organisation today - very little done and I'm right on top of the ass-tapping scene, or as Lee's script describes it: "Panel 6: Balls deep now, Alan's face is contorted like he's just drunk a shot of vinegar."
I should try not to put pr0n on the blog, though, so I'll power through drawing the sex scene in one sitting and hope my wrist goes the distance.

Why do you hate Mondays, Garfield? You don't even work

Back again from my posting hiatus - the weekends being when I chase the boredom necessary for coming up with ideas I'll never get around to implementing - to post more of the same bland visual clutter that makes no sense out of context.



Still, I do seem to be picking up a bit of steam rather than slamming into another block, so can't complain.

Ah don't know no langidges

Day two on a page but I still hold out hope for meeting that page a day rate as it's a double-page spread and a bit of a bugger to move about in Photoshop once files go over the 15mb mark.
I'm working on my inking at the moment so things are slowing down a little as I try to balance between scribbling the hell out of a page and leaving lots of open space for the colourist to add textures and really go to work should they so be inclined, but I'm coming down heavily in favor of the 'scribble the hell' side of things so far as it feels like I have more control of the page than I did when I was trying to play it safe.

Weekend tomorrow, so lots of tv and film to catch up on while I lay out some pages.
Do try and have a good one - if you did I'd consider it a personal favor.

TTFN!

Dance go rush to the speaker that booms I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom

I only just noticed this comic I'm drawing at a torturously slow pace does not have enough bears.
In that respect, it is slightly autobiographical.

In the good news/bad news category, Mike Judge's new project is announced (good news) now that King of the Hill is definately not coming back (bad news).

if what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu Tang could be dangerous

Christ, but some darn pages just will not go in. Birthing them from my man-uterus of the mind is a terrible thing to have to go through when The Block is in place, and if you have ever endeavored with any creative project you have at some point encountered The Block (AKA "The Wall") and don't need telling that it is a son of a bitch to work through. Got good reason, I suppose, but it's still frustrating to be hitting it again.

I need me some of that hippin' and hoppin' from the Time Capsule.

A dead man's the only man you can trust - rule number one

Man, one frigging thing after another this last week.

Still, I'm finally back in the groove - at half twelve on a weeknight and I'm off to me bed shortly. Hey, I get there in the end...