Archive for ‘Blog’


Color Test #1

I wanted to give a quick try at coloring an existing panel to see how well it would turn out. Using some stuff I’ve learned from doing these recent strips, I was able to give this some basic color in only a few minutes with minimal cleanup. Not sure if I’ll color the actual strips, but its nice to see that it can turn out well.

DailyColorTest


Rockin’ Out

I wanted to make a comic today, but didn’t have anything really in mind, so I decided to just whip something up. I didn’t realize until I was finishing the inking stage that I drew me holding the guitar on the wrong hand, unlike this sketch where I was holding it correctly. If I was going to do a comic today, it was going to be with me playing Rock Band in some form or fashion, so I figured it couldn’t go to waste.

RockBandle


Cha’Mark

Mark wanted an avatar picture like Ben got last month. Here is my response.

MarkDaily-cha


iPod’n

So I saw the WordPress app go up for iPod and iPhone users and decided to give it a spin.

… …

I don’t think I have any reason to blog from on the go, since the sites focus is comics, but hey, at least I can do it, right?


Just when I want to work on something …

It seems that something always gets in the way. In this case, its my PC.

Let me paint you a picture. I use my PC for making and managing the comics or any other heavy lifting, and the Macbook is for communication. I keep the two seperate for the sake of productivity, and its worked pretty well.

So over the course of the last week, I’ve noticed some issues with Vista on my PC. Namely, the biggest issue, is whenever I right-click on an application, be it shortcut or direct file, explorer crashes. Odd. So for the most part, I ignored it, since I didn’t NEED to right-click at the time, but the problem was still there. Over time, I needed to do a bit of troubleshooting on programs, and to do so, I NEEDED to right-click on the application to put it into compatibility modes or change the shortcut line, but no dice. Explorer crashes.

Recently, I’ve been intruged by this whole live blogging thing, (as you can tell by the link up at the top), and decided to stream my desktop live while sketching some stuff. I didn’t have a comic in mind, so I figured I’d fool around with a sketch, and that anyone who wanted to watch me fool around could do so. Problem is, the program recommended to me doesn’t work properly in Vista, and requires compatibility mode, which then requires me to RIGHT-CLICK.

Fed up with the errors, I backed up the little things and formatted away. Now, upon reformatting and attempting to install updates, Vista has gone into an endless setlist loop trying to install updates, and never seems to go anywhere. So now, here I am, reinstalling Vista again for the third time in 24 hours. Why is it I always have the troubles with these things?


Status of the Site

The site has been in need of a good kick start for a while, so lets run down some new stuff.

  • Ability to browse through an author or era of comics. All my old comics are split up by era, and Dice’s and Mark’s are split up to just follow through theirs.
  • With that came an update to the archive. You can browse a lot easier by month, day, year. You can access the Archive here, and you can find all of the sorting of comics there as well.
  • Twitter will automatically notify you if there’s a new comic.
  • The site won’t break due to the old comics and their irregular sizes. They’ll be automatically sized down to fit in the format.
  • And (hopefully I can keep this going) regular Monday updates. I’ve got enough of a backlog of material I can use to go for a while without struggling to come up with something, so I’ll try my best to stay on schedule. But we remember the last time I tried to stick to a schedule.

That said, I would love ANY feedback on how to improve the site or what doesn’t work for example (please, I never get feedback!) and we can make this a better place! Just leave a comment on this piece. That said, hopefully I’ll see you Monday.


Reinventing Myself

I should be sleeping, but I had the urge to finish this. Working on a new design for myself since I’m the most basic character (out of like … four in total) to draw, so I want to change things up a bit, plus do a little bit of color testing.

v4mike2

I think it came out pretty well, and it can only get better … Right?


I Love Breaking My Website

I always seem to get this great idea of “Hey, I want the website to have this or that. Lets try it!” and I always end up with “How did this happen” and “Why didn’t I pay attention during class back at the NSCC“.

Apologizes ahead of time if there is something broken. Everything should be fine for tomorrows comic.


Year in Review – The Bad

So, you’ve decided what the best comics of the year were, now lets talk about the bad!

Personally, if I had to choose, I would pick PPLFROMIRL 3.0 again if I could, but that wasn’t last year (can you imagine it was actually 7 years ago this week that I started that, and 6 years when I started weekly last year?). Here, you can pick the 3 worst comics of the year, and this poll will be a reminder of what not to do in the future.

Now, I can think of well more than 3 myself, but I’m going to limit it at 3 regardless. I don’t think my self esteem could handle the harsh truth that probably 80% of the comics were crap last year.

Like the last poll, once it’s over, I’ll post the results. Happy voting!

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Year In Review – The Good

Has it been a year already? Boy does the time fly!

Since last year, a total of 56 comics were done. Personally, I didn’t even think I would make it to 52, let alone exceed it. Though some stand out in my mind as personal favorites, what are yours? I want to know!

Now don’t look at this like I’m try to justify my thoughts on my favorites, but so I can find which comics stand out and I can use what worked in those comics in the future. I can’t improve if I don’t know what works and what doesn’t. This is less of a self-congratulatory pat on the back for myself and more of an evaluation from you to me.

With that in mind, pick 3 comics from the last year that stand out in one way or another, and I’ll compile a list of the best comics from last year. Don’t want to pick 3 because you can’t find a total of 3 that were that great, then don’t!

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