I’ve only posted this Harley Quinn picture in a few places, but the response has been surprisingly positive. I’d like to thank everyone who had a kind word to say about this one. The funny thing is that I drew this just to have something new on the site for the week. You can see and learn a bit more on the Illmosis gallery page. I was trying to give her a slightly Looney Tunes vibe with the pose as if Bugs Bunny was up to bat against the Gashouse Gorillas but with a shade of sex appeal. I just noticed that she’s also channeling a bit of Ed Grimley in the legs there. I’ll give you a few seconds to be disturbed by thinking of Harley Quinn, Bugs Bunny and Ed Grimley at the same time. Time’s up.Check out how I ran out of room and had to draw the mallet on a separate piece of paper:
Really, I was (and still may) lightbox all that onto bigger and better paper or bristol board, but I scanned and reassembled it anyway. You can barely see the second, silly face I’ll probably use as a variant version of the pic.
Work on Nutroll:The Illness continues! These people will be on monitors in the background. They were drawn with the hasteness since you’ll barely be able to see them anyways.
The woman in the upper right corner will be a reporter in another book.
I bought two more Cobra Troopers this weekend which brings my grand total up to 10. They had two more and I had more than enough money to buy them but I decided not to be a hoarder and left them for someone else to get. 10 is probably enough for any set-up or diorama I want to do anyway.
Random, butt-kicking real life developments have slowed my posting to a slow crawl. Instead of my usual “BAW! Things are crazay right now!” routine, I’ll keep it simple: things ARE crazy. How crazy?
Yes. It’s like that and please believe it. As always, I apologize for not making my usual rounds to bring you my gifts of random, unwanted ramblings. Let me bore you with some details:
For the record, HKFlix.com is on my list of sure-shot online movie places to order from. I bought the PanMedia version of “Kid with the Golden Arm” a few weeks ago and I just got today’s purchase of John Woo’s “The Killer” (for my sister) and a 4-disc Brentwood Sci-Fi collection that has one of my favorite bad attempts to cash in on Star Wars: War of the Robots. I’ll yak about those movies at a later date. I’ve always heard good things about the store and they did not disappoint. They’re having a huge sale on martial arts flicks including region-free discs. You’ll find a crapload of Shaw Brothers titles so don’t sleep on this sale.
Nutroll:the Illness will be put on hold (again) right after the Teaser gets posted. Besides still wanting to find that really killer layout for page 1 that’s been lost since the move in February, I just got a request for some commission artwork. It’s some pretty fun stuff and I’ll point you to the website as soon as they get it up. Just because I’m not doing pages doesn’t mean that the Nutroll story won’t be fleshed out. There will be some additional content that may be too “meta” for some people, but I probably wouldn’t like those people either. Those of you who like the fun and the crazy may get a kick out of the later stuff.
Another reason for putting the rest of the story on pause is that I’ve finally decided that I’m going to put together a small comic. Yes, a real comic made of paper and ink and staples. Depending on how much money I have by the time the work is done, it will either be a small ashcan comic or a real B&W comic with a color cover. Expect to hear more about this in a few weeks.
You want to know what one of my favorite new comic books is?
All of those work hours and steak knives may have kept me from debuting the new Illness pages today, but that didn’t stop me from finishing the early version of Illmosis’ new comic page script with Nutroll:
See that creepy looking picture that’s the cover for Nutroll: The Illness? That’s temporary artwork quickly colored from what will eventually be the real cover. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to draw it all not to mention that it’s potentially spoiler-based. Once you see the end of Chapter one and see the cover, you’ll get what I mean. The funny thing is that I almost didn’t even have that temp version done because it kept coming up as “invalid file” when I tried to open it up in PaintShopPro this morning. I almost deleted the file out of psychotic rage. Minutes later, everything else running on my computer stopped working and I had to restart. Once I restarted and the ScanDisk check ran, the file reopened and everything else was okay. Luckily, that was the only stupid April Fool’s Joke I got hit with today.
To hell with long explanations. Here’s the 1040EZ why no one on the internet has heard much from me lately:
Work: Started working a third cleaning account two weeks ago but I’ll be back down to two next week unless more sudden news pops up.
Hands: Right hand still has a clickly middle finger and is at 90% and the left hovers between 50% and 80%. Good enough to draw without pain. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.
Ear vs. Steak Knife: The steak knife is gone for now but I still have some throat pain and a buzzy headache. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.
Legs & Spine: Not really getting better since having to move during the crappiest week this winter. All these aches may worse thanks to the Ear vs. Steak Knife virus/allergies/whatever-the-butt-it-is. I spent part of last weekend walking with a cane but was still faster than most people walking through Wal-Mart. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.
Illmosis site comic design: Most this week’s free time went into writing a comic script/template/page design for the site that works like my galleries do. You can see a poot-butt preview version of it by clicking that link. For now, it only needs to be just good enough for the upcoming Nutroll:the Illness including redrawn panels. Guess what? Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two and aching hands that hurt when typing.
Sorry for not being around on the internet too much lately. I’ll try to post some good news, fun stuff and reviews once I get the chance.
I’m currently having fun with some of the following symptoms:
a pain like Sonny Chiba punched me in the throat hard enough to make my neck explode in slow motion.
my head being inflated by the guy from Dig Dug but not enough to explode because he had to turn around and pump up a Pooka that was sneaking up on him.
the feeling that someone tripping off Angel Dust is feverishly rattling a steak knife around inside my right ear as if there’s still some peanut butter stuck in the corners and grooves.
that time Monday night when I coughed up Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.
If you know me from anywhere else, I apologize for not posting much and for how my posts are more garbled than usual.
My search on Sunday night didn’t turn up the Nutroll page layouts but I did find the fat brick of multipurpose paper I use for artwork and other stuff. I also found a sketch of a storefront that appears on page 2 so I’m getting closer to having everything that I need to start this. I still haven’t found the small sketchbook and I’m starting to think that the layout sketches are still in that. I took another shot at laying that page out while in “Ear vs. Steak knife” mode this morning and even got around to designing the makeshift mask for an upcoming character redesign. I’ve given up looking for the older layouts because I’m sure I’ll only find them after I draw from the so-so sketches that I just did. I’m just telling you this to lower your expectations for the comic just in case they weren’t low enough already.
So I was gathering the layout sketches for “Nutroll: the Illness” only to find out that I only have about 50% of what I was looking for. Of course, that 50% turns out to be the GOOD version of the beginning pages. I thought I had it set out with the other group of layouts and character designs, but it’s not here. I wanted to start on that this weekend, but it looks like I’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday looking for it. My Pissedoffometer just hit a level usually reserved for disgruntled ninja assassins and surly town drunks. For all those who plan to bring some s*** today, please be aware that I will have none of that and will use sudden violence to demonstrate that fact. For Rilla.
You will know I haven’t found it by Sunday if you think you can hear some random Black dude from Ohio yelling a stream of non-stop curse words at about 3 AM. That’s 3 AM Eastern Standard Time and the running time will range between 10 to 23 minutes with no commerical interruptions.You have been warned.
So now I’m working a few more hours a week at the real-life cleaning job. It’ll be good to be making more money but bad for two reasons. The first reason is easy to explain. More time at work means that I have less time to work on other things. I have NO idea if I kick out as much Nutroll comicness for April as I had originally planned. On top of that, ScrollBoss will be dead beyond dead until May with none of the usual stealth updates. I’m okay with that. The main problem is that every part of my body that I messed up while moving/shoveling/working weeks ago won’t improve as quickly, if at all. My hands are getting better but the left one still sounds like the Juggernaut is tap dancing on a pile of bubble wrap. I’ll have to keep my typing down to a minimum, so don’t expect to see me ramble too much here or anywhere else for a while.
I’ve been so busy lately that I missed the fact that Xombi brought the blog-style posts back to the front page of the-Breaks.com. As always, he had some interesting thoughts and links on deck. My favorite is this eSkeptic article about the flaws of television news.
Happy Birthday to comic shop owner, swamp creature connaisseur and blogger extraordinaire, Mike Sterling!
Check out what was waiting for me in the mailbox today. That’s right, it’s the book Memoirs of a Virtual Caveman by Rob ‘Dire51’ Strangman! It’s also the the first book cover that I’ve ever had a chance to draw, color and even letter. The cover looks a bit scrunched even though I thought I had the recommended cover dimensions right. The worst part is how the crystal-clear printing process drops dime on how I went all lazyhouse on the giant game cart’s cover. The shame! I plan to start reading this one Sunday night and I’m sure that the video game lore within will put a smile on my face. The stories are from that rare breed of gamers who love play mechanics and techniques more than graphics and random techno soundtracks but don’t get annoyingly pretentious about it. There’s even a chapter about Rob’s OPCFG site, a place that talked about old-school gaming before it was cool and inspired me to try and make something more out of ScrollBoss. I’ll ramble some more about this book after I’m done reading it.
So this Friday night I channel-surfed smack dab into AMC’s Fear Friday. I decided to watch the flick because it had the late, great Calvin Lockhart, the original Biggie Smalls from Let’s Do It Again and the cool elder Rasta in Predator 2. This flick turns out to be The Beast Must Die which also has Peter Cushing in it and there’s no way I could stop watching a flick with those two in it. Lockhart’s character invites a bunch of people to his mansion and then tells the group that he knows that one of the guests is… a werewolf! But who? Who? WHO? I didn’t know at first because it’s just that kind of movie. That’s okay. You see, there’s a designated time and place before the film’s climax to think about it. For those who have never seen it before, allow me to introduce you to…
… the werewolf break.
The werewolf break is a special time in one’s life to reflect upon any and all lycanthropic shenanigans happening around you. Excluding the spooky narration, it lasts no more than 30 seconds, no less than 30 seconds and clocks in at around 30 seconds. It may seem cruel, heartless and unfair, but in this man’s world, you only get half a minute to think about werewolves.
BTW: “lycanthropic” is probably not a word. Move along.
I’ve only posted this Harley Quinn picture in a few places, but the response has been surprisingly positive. I’d like to thank everyone who had a kind word to say about this one. The funny thing is that I drew this just to have something new on the site for the week. You can see and learn a bit more on the Illmosis gallery page. I was trying to give her a slightly Looney Tunes vibe with the pose as if Bugs Bunny was up to bat against the Gashouse Gorillas but with a shade of sex appeal. I just noticed that she’s also channeling a bit of Ed Grimley in the legs there. I’ll give you a few seconds to be disturbed by thinking of Harley Quinn, Bugs Bunny and Ed Grimley at the same time. Time’s up.Check out how I ran out of room and had to draw the mallet on a separate piece of paper:
