F**k the gods!

I'm heartbroken. More on this later...

The cause for delay

Allow me to introduce my dream girl. This is Shinju. She's a character in a dating sim I have been playing. Which in turn is the reason why the next page of TBMD is due this Friday and I still don't have it finished yet.

*Smacks himself on the top of the head with a slipper* Bad comic author! Bad!

I already said I wasn't going to do any more filler art for this next month so I'll have to get cracking. Good thing I have tomarrow off from work.

But back to Shinju... I know us artists have a reputation of being eccentric and/or half crazed that we need to keep up, but I don't think I'm even good enough to be called an artist. So why the heck did I have to go and fall in love with a character in a dating sim...? I guess it's better then cutting off my own ear, right? When I die I can still go and hang out with Vincent van Gogh and not feel out of place.

Vincent van Gogh: You say you're an artist? I cut off my own ear! What did you do?

Me: I once fell in love with a video game character...

Vincent van Gogh: *Nods approvingly*

I only have myself to blame. In addition to making comics I'm also a writer who spends all day sitting in front of a computer hacking out page after page of fiction. Especially now that I'm working on my new children’s book... And I've always been as mad as a March Hare... So with no time for real life romance (and being as lonely as I am) I should have known better then to play a game where the whole point is to fall in love with one of it's characters. A half crazed little fellow like me is only more then likely to let his feelings in the game get confused with his feelings in the real world.

I don't even know why I'm sharing this really... It's not like the few readers I have really need to know just how trippy the author really is. Oh well. After time I'm sure this will eventually pass and I'll find some other way to express my insanity. I'm still young and have plenty of time yet to cut off my own ear. Sad thing is though, I'm not sure I really want it to pass...

*Sighs and goes off to build a creepy shrine to Shinju in his basement*

I'm mad as hell!

Why am I mad as hell? I shouldn't be... I took advantage of the tax-free weekend get a new computer. (which I have been in need of since my last one crashed almost three years ago...) So I should be very happy. Finally I can work on my comic and other things on my own computer instead of having to borrow my brother's every time. At least I should have been able to... But no! The thing came with Windows Vista! Mother yiffing Windows Vista! Which, by the way, can't communicate with my scanner/printer! So I still can't work on my comic on my computer! I still have to borrow my brother's. Which means my progress is still slower then it should be and I still won't be updating COATC this week!

makes me mad...

God I really need to work on getting some more pages up in Confessions Of A Teenage Carnivore. Every time I try to work on it something comes up and I can't get any work done. It's starting to bug me. I really wanted to be able to do more then just one page a month on this thing...

Crossover Project!

I am currently working on the NEW script for chapter 7 of The Black Marker Detective. The old chapter 7 would have been Shadow's 2nd trip into the afterlife, but that's being pushed back a chapter now. My long time friend DJ Crimson Fox and I are now putting together a crossover story with his characters.

He has a cast of well developed characters and story line for them, but has never used them for anything. I keep telling him do a comic or if you can't draw and don't have the cash to hire an artist, do some text fiction. But he never does so now I'm helping him get his characters into print.

It will be a bit interesting seeing as his characters are so drastically different from my own. They work at/run a clothing company for women who's attributes are much bigger then what is considered normal. So all of the female characters are very, very large, if you get what I am saying...? The idea was to have some kind a mystery happen there at the company that Shadow would get hired to figure out. The script is coming along nicely, but I'm not sure how it's going to turn out when it comes time to draw the comic. I'll make it work but I'll be outside my comfort zone. I'm not use to drawing girls built as heavily as his characters.

Is short, boobs so big a blind man couldn't miss them will be a new, and challenging experience for me.

Colored Pencils

Anyone who's ever read The Black Marker Detective should know that the whole comic is drawn in black markers with certin details colored in with colored pencils. I'm not going to pretend I didn't get the coloring idea from Frank Miller's Sin City. I did. And I chose to use colored pencils instead of coloring it digitally because I think it adds to the rough, I want to say gritty, look of the comic.

But I've come up with a little problem now thanks to my choice. The colored pencils I used for Chaku's hair and Nolly's eyes, hair, and nose were two heavily used stubs I dug out of a box of crayons and pencils just becaused I likede how the colors looked on paper. The names of the colors were long gone and only the one used for Nolly still had a brand name on it. Pentech. A brand I have never heard of before. Chaku's pencil only has made in China left on it.

Now both pencils are almost gone. Used down to the nub. And I can't seem to find replacements for them. I haven't really looked into every color Crayola offers, but seeing as I'm pretty sure Chaku's pencil wasn't a Crayola I have been trying to stay away from that brand. It's easy to tell because Crayola goes on very smooth, not at all like this one I've been using. It has to be a cheaper brand. And I can't even find Pentech pencils. Do they even still make those things? So I have been looking through RoseArt. I picked up their 64 count box of crayons, and their 72 count box of colored pencils. Yet I can't find a match for either of the pencils I need to replace.

For Chaku I'll probably be able to make due. I found that RoseArt's Emeralg Green is very close to the color I've been using for her hair. But I'm having no luck at all with Nolly. The Pentech pencil I have been using has been sharpened from both sides (who does that?) so while the name of the brand is still there, the name of the color is gone. I would guess it to be something like a Neon Pink, but even in a 72 count box RoseArt has nothing like it. I found that if I mix Cerise and Orchid I get something close, but you can still see the difference and it doesn't quite pop like the other one did. I don't know what I'm going to do. I like the color I already have for Nolly and don't want to change it. The comic will out-last the pencil so if I can't find someone who sells Pentech pencils I'm going to be screwed!

I just looked at the stats for my comic (TBMD) and found out that the page "Baby Bump" is the highest rated page in the whole comic. How or why I do not know. I don't know what's so great about that page. I mean, yeah, it's a big turning point in the story, and I liked how the bottom left hand frame looked. The shadowed image of Agent Billings shooting Bernard was really cool looking I thought. But the page was kind of strange looking and I was never really sure about it. But if people like that page okay then. I guess I don't even know what's good and what's not.