Whatever it is you're trying to do I appreciate it, but this is one of those rare problems with no magic solution

The Black Rhino, Paul Walker, and now Nelson Mandela - it has been a sucky month on the famous deaths front and no mistake.  Mandela especially is significant because he was operating on a level of fame and significance that seems hard to achieve nowadays when you can be a worldwide phenomenon just by being a dog hugging a kitten or a notably terrible cabaret act thanks to the ubiquitous nature of video capture and hosting technology, but Back In The Day, Mandela was a name synonymous with the struggle against the remnants of the kind of nonsense we've grown out of.
Still, hard to be sad when you see how old he lived to be and how many of his own children he outlasted.  He'll be mourned by some, quietly cursed by others and used as a soundbite by the rest while the PR game is played out "of course our party supported apartheid and keeping him in prison, but really, I am saddened by his death as my signing this condolence book in front of assembled photographers will surely prove much more than a public apology for being a bunch of grubbing, soul-less reptiles ever could."

Digital napkin time again.  Looking a little threadbare this time out - though not as threadbare as last month's Manga Studio 5-sponsored exercise in frustration and fruitlessness - and not helped by my deciding I'll be using some of it for a pitch so I've redacted the relevant pages.  If I've judged my target market correctly - and I think my opinions expressed here on the blog have proven I'm in synch with popular opinion on all matters - everyone loves Battlefield Earth, so Battlefield Earth fanfiction will surely bring me riches.

If it helps, I'm not sure if I'm being serious, either, but I do hope you and yours have a very good weekend.

I want a disabled kid to be able to feel the same thrill I do when I wail on frogs

Okay, clearly I am stretching the definition of the word "daily" in allowing the gap I have between my last post and this one, but illness will put a crimp in most plans.  Thank the Lord Harry for the invention of tablet computers so I could continue my favorite pastime of posting offensive comments under a silly made-up name from the phlegmy luxury of my sickbed, though even now I have a lingering cough that makes me wheeze like Muttley off Stop The Pigeon and Whacky Races if I ever laugh at something, so I'm watching repeats of My Hero, My Family and Goodnight Sweetheart.  Pity me.

By now I usually post the digital napkin I have been doodling on over the last month, but I made the ill-considered decision to upgrade to Manga Studio 5 when I upgraded to a new PC, and just enough changed between versions to disrupt my quote-unquote workflow that I gave up on the napkin after the half-hearted efforts below and have now gone back to using MS4 this month.  I am sure art software boffins will decry me for the Luddite caveman I am for not embracing all the fancy new things like layer blending, directly opening pages of scanned artwork rather than having to import them as seperate layers in pre-existing pages, and reducing the amount of file clutter used in a story project, but I just couldn't get the pen and brush set right, jpegs were coming out as huge 100mb files, and I missed having the .page files to preview work.  Eff that noise - if something needs a manual and multiple lessons, Google trawls and visits to Youtube for instructional videos on how to do the most basic of things even for people already using the last version of the software, maybe it isn't that great after all.  Still, I'm sure plenty of others think it's awesome and it's just me back here in the past not able to keep up or something.

Now excuse me while I go upstairs and make love with my shirt on

Been four weeks since I last blogged, so I'm down to pasting last month's sketchbook again and hoping it looks like I do actually draw things now and then and don't just spend thirty days arguing about balloon placements with editors I am increasingly convinced are more drunk than I am.  The sketchbook is, as usual, brain farts, character sketches, and what looks to me like an ongoing - and losing - battle to portray human anatomy - I'm thinking I should maybe just give up on that one and start making OEL manga.

When I was his age I was sloshing through the jungle dodging enemy fire with nothing but a necklace of ears to talk to

The blog has lain fallow for a while now, so I thought I'd bung up my "sketchbook" for August - or at least the latter half of August - as I have of late tried to get away from filling physical notebooks with doodles as I believe it makes me lazy not having to refine or follow through on anything I jot down and then throw in a pile and forget about, and I rarely use Manga Studio even though I recalled it being great for sketching (and not freezing up with files over 7mb like Photoshop does), so I've killed a couple of birds with the one stone here and created what I think can best be described as less a sketchbook and more of a digital napkin covered in doodles.
Don't mind the big red blobs on some pages, that's just me redacting things I shall be using in some form elsewhere, and for the most part this was me keeping my hands busy while I watched tv, so I hope you shall forgive me my lack of ability with MS' colouring, lettering, or inking tools, I'm more a Photoshop man (at least for now).