Previous postings:
1/6/09: My job is totally insane. I'm trying to keep up with a weekly comic in hopes that someone will notice and keep reading. We're almost out of the call center comics, people. It'll get better. Okay, so maybe not too much better, but maybe you won't be bored once we're done with the call center comics.
1/12/09: I'm learning to jam hard with these comics on my off days, which right now are Tuesday and Wednesday. A couple bored nights at work have caused some serious mental excursions, which will end up in the comics soon. Not sure if I'll be able to do anything but make these comics from now on. Oh and by the way, Ottercomics still exists, and I guess I should get posting on that flaky server again. I'm going to be doing this very, very slowly. I'll start with the oldest comics and work my way up, 5 a week, while I make new stuff here. More to come.
1/19/09: Plans for the Frankenbob story are reaching an epic scope. Call center comics are almost over. Also, it seems that the Ottercomics website is working again, so I can start posting there again. I'm still wary about the server, so I'm going to upload the archive very slowly, five comics a week.
1/26/09: Ottercomics doesn't seem to mind I'm uploading the archive slowly, so I'll continue to do so in case a virus hits it again. Still trying to keep up with the schedule of five comics a week. I've almost got the coming week done, so I'll have to finish that and work on the one afterwards.
2/3/09: Too many projects, too little time. I'm still focusing on Gardenia, though. Thinking about cheating and doing more fillers so I can have time for other projects. This won't decrease the quality of the comic any. You already knew it was lame.
2/9/09: I might be a little behind for the coming week's comic, since I was slowed up the previous week. Anyways, I'm experimenting on new ways to make filler while doing the painstaking work of making the actual storyline. Good thing nobody's forcing me to keep a deadline.
2/16/09: Still playing catch-up on comics. These five barely got done by Sunday night.
3/9/09: I wasn't able to make the usual five comics the week before last. I had bought a car, and in between the paperwork and getting plates and such, I didn't have much time to work with. You wouldn't believe how much time that eats up. Worse, I then got some kind of virus from the General Manager, so I just felt like sleeping. So I just threw together a quiz comic. Frankenbob and the other characters will come back next week I'm trying to pace myself, so I'm not going to post all those comics at once. Otherwise, I'll have nothing to show for the next week. The quizzes seem popular, so I think I'll keep them going, though a couple weeks I'll have to just do a text version so I can keep up the Frankenbob story. I'm trying the transcript thing because a website says that helps search engines. You're only getting three comics this time so I can keep up with the schedule.
3/16/09: I finally am catching up to speed on this. I think. Probably will throw in more quiz comics this coming week. I sort of got sidetracked because I found a cool tool that allowed me to replace text in multiple files at the same time (and it's only a trial version so I'm trying to milk it). But hey, the pages will load quicker now, and maybe it will finally show up on google.
3/21/09: I've been trying experiments in how to make these comics faster so I can finish the story. So far, there have been delays because I have been doing too much work on them. Hopefully I can develop some ways to cut corners to get the comics produced more quickly so I get five done a week. These quiz comics help a little.
3/29/09: You might think I'm a slob by making all these quiz comics, but I'm trying to do five a week and I only managed to get three done this week. Something had to go in those empty slots.
4/11/09: I don't get much feedback on these comics, so I wonder if it's worth it to fill slots with crap nobody cares about. Not sure if I want to bring the quiz back for another go unless I expand the set and modify stuff. And then, nobody seems to prefer a character. Maybe it's because they all suck? Not sure. Since I caught up a bit, I decided to try to put my Doubledeath game back up on a website. Boy is it complicated. I made the navigation so complicated that I can't even figure out how to make it simpler. Oh well.
4/20/09: These car scenes look terrible. I tried darkening the ceiling, but it didn't quite work. I suppose I could gray it out. Consistency is a problem, as is leaving it alone with all its gaudy ugliness. Not sure what to do, and nobody is going to tell me, unfortunately, so I'll keep on making crap that looks terrible and never get discovered because people will say my comic is another piece of $### web comic when I didn't know any better. I guess that's life.
4/27/09: It's about time I took a comic siesta. A bunch of projects keep nagging at me, and once I get Doubledeath done, I'll have one less thing to concern myself with and can go on to other, less complicated projects. Hopefully this siesta won't take too long!
5/4/09: I'm still recovering from my comic siesta. I almost got the comics done for this week, but I still haven't finished the fifth one. Normally, I don't celebrate Cinco De Mayo, but since I couldn't catch up in time, I made a Cinco De Mayo comic as an excuse. It's awesome that it just happened to be Cinco De Mayo tomorrow, when I just randomly pulled the siesta comic out of a bag of thumbnail sketches.
5/11/09: This week's comic was so elaborate that I ran out of time trying to finish it all, so I had to postpone posting the week before. Maybe I overdid it trying to one-up the original artist or something. Anyways, this week's comics were some random funnies I jotted down while on my break at work. I have a bunch of these thumbnails and I randomly pulled these out, figuring they'd be a good break between the vanishing Frankenbob and the next scene. I hope I don't randomly pull out something this complicated as filler again. Well, I guess it was sorta fun, though. The only trouble I see is that the original artist who made up the characters might get real annoyed, and that they also don't look like the characters he drew.
5/17/09: I just got an e-mail from Cancelman saying that I had a broken link on Gardenia150.html, so I fixed it. Thanks, Cancelman!
Also, someone said that Abbott Babbit had taken a vow of celibacy. This gives me fodder for the next time that story comes up. I've also recently been analyzing my motives for making this comic. At times, it stops being fun because it becomes too much like work. I think I'm driving myself too hard. In the future, I'm going to just do whatever I can and not force myself to do five a week if I can't. My schedule changed (that's a good thing) so I get Saturday and Sunday off. It's likely that since I get to have more fun and hang out with my friends, there might be less comics. Anyways, who cares. I've been trying too hard to get famous.
5/25/09: I was too busy fixing the Doubledeath site to get the comics done this week. I'll have some done next week. To compensate, people can look at the Doubledeath website for the first time: http://www.doubledeath.i8.com/
5/31/09: Now that the http://www.doubledeath.i8.com/ is done (it still has some bugs to work out), I have more time to make comics. Didn't quite get five done in time like I wanted, but it was close, and it's five counting last week's comic. Not happy with how my filters worked on this call center comic, but it's interesting, and I've got to keep moving if I want to get these comics done.
6/8/09: I've decided that I cuss too much when working on these comics, so I've decided to play Christian radio while I work on them. It worked. I didn't get angry at the computer or Photoshop, and I didn't cuss, but I did get really, really mad at liberals. I guess it's a trade-off. I only made four comics this week, but at least I'm pacing myself and sleeping. I also just realized that it's likely that once I get to the crucial moment in the story that requires audience participation in order for it to continue, it probably won't continue. Oh well.
6/15/09: It took me a lot longer than necessary to make this week's comics. That's because my eyelids have become swollen for some reason. I thought it was my allergies, but now I don't know. It's hard to do much of anything when your eyes are puffy. So I ended up turning in early several days this week and not drawing enough. This may become noticable next week when I don't post much.
6/22/09: I really don't think anyone but me cares one bit if I don't post comics every week. For what it's worth, I was in a bad state this week, so I could only manage three. I found out I had somehow contracted Bell's Palsy. My eye kept drooping, and getting really dry, so I couldn't see enough to draw anything half the time. Then I had the worst time trying to draw that scene where they're carrying the box. I had to cover up areas to make it work. It was terrible. I'm really not a good artist. I can't even draw people carrying a box. It didn't help that I didn't have a digital camera the day I wanted to draw people carrying a box. I can't see my own back that well. Also, on Tuesday, I got really depressed and saw no point in drawing more comics, so I played King's Quest and watched TV. Lazy, perhaps. But I had given up hope, so I figured I'd do something that I could get an immediate benefit out of.
6/30/09: I've realized that it's not me being lazy or busy that's slowing me down. These forest scenes are hard to draw. It's very time consuming. I knocked out the Korean Matrix a lot faster, but it's nothing to brag about. Also, I decided to organize my comics according to the quality levels of the various doctors in Doctor Who. I don't think I'll ever get to David Tennant Quality Level. Actually, I think I'll be at John Pertwee Quality Level indefinitely because even though my art isn't crap (like the first Doctor Who episodes with the vasoline smeared gorilla glove), it's not Tom Baker quality yet. Also, I got locked out of ottercomics, so I didn't post for an entire week. Since I don't get that many comments on my comics, I guess it doesn't matter. Except to the moderator who doesn't like inactivity for some reason.
7/8/09: I'm really having trouble keeping up with these. I think part of the problem is that I have no stock backgrounds for the recent ones. The call center ones were simpler. But I still think I somehow got them done faster. I did a double shot this time because the Korean Matrix comics were really simple to do, and really shouldn't have taken the time they did. Of course, I didn't want to completely disconnect from the Castrovolvo story, either, so I had to drop those in as well. My shift schedule changed, so I've been a lot more tired, and have been sleeping more, and there's been a lot more work to do these last few days. Sitting in the DMV waiting for my brother to get his permit renewed, for instance, took a long, long time. So I couldn't get it all done on Monday.
7/12/09: We're finally at Castrovolvo! I don't think anybody cares, but it was an ordeal to get this far. Those nature scenes are hard to draw. It's also hard to draw people lifting a coffin, unless you can get a group of people to pose for you (I didn't). My stubborn insistance on using the last drop in old markers probably also caused a delay. At any rate, it should move much more quickly from here. No, this isn't an advertisement for Volvo, this is a Doctor Who parody. And there's going to be a lot of non-Volvo stuff to come.
7/21/09: After watching episodes of the Mysterious Cities of Gold, I've become addicted, and so I made Castrovolvo kind of like the stuff in that show, basically a pastiche of mesoamerican stuff that doesn't go together. Monday I felt really depressed and didn't feel like drawing. I felt like nobody was going to see this stuff, so really didn't feel the motivation to do anything but play video games. I still got stuff done, though. Again, it seems the real issue is the elaborate artwork taking extra time. Then my mom is beginning to think I am a print shop. After I fixed the pictures of the dog we lost, she handed me grandma's photo album, so I'm messing with that now. But it's interesting stuff to look at. I can't believe nurses used to be allowed to take snapshots of the operating table during a surgery. Anyways, the comic is going slower than my ideas are.
8/2/09: I think I forgot to do one of these last week. Not like it matters. Anyway, doing these monsters provides a unique challenge. It's difficult to make them look scary while also trying to prevent them from looking too dark and unreadable. It was sort of hard to keep the lighting consistent in the panels. I think they turned out all right, though. I don't get any feedback, so I really don't know what is successful or effective. Oh well. At least I maintained a good pace this week. I got the comics done by Monday and thus will have more time to get comics done for the coming week so I don't get stuck on a Tuesday rut. Ironically, I'm finding more success just displaying the artwork from the comics I make here on Deviantart and Furaffinity. I guess that's my equivalent to the producer of Sim City making his game from the tools he created while working on Bungling Bay.
8/6/09: I keep finding mistakes on my website and missing images, and nobody says $### about it. For months. I don't think anyone gives a $### what I'm doing. I think I must be making these comics just for my health, which really doesn't make my health better. I could just as well just hang my comics on a refrigerator and save time and effort. I keep wondering why I should bother. I posted these comics because I had them half done. I really don't know what good making more would be. No one reads them. The only benefit is being able to post new art at Deviantart and Furaffinity. But I could do that without a comic. And then I got a sneaky suspicion that Furnation deleted my Quaceb comic book because my bandwidth was too large or something. I might have accidentally done it myself in my zeal to get rid of the old QAX comics, but I don't know if that's completely right. My files were named differently. I don't think I would have done that on purpose. I wonder how long it was like that. I guess it doesn't matter. I always think someone will visit my website when and only when something is wrong with it, and not before or after. So it's sort of a superstition I guess. They visit when everything looks like garbage, then never come back and never tell anyone about the website. That's what I imagine. Anyways, I don't know why I bother.
8/16/09: Decided to make more just to have something to post to DA and Furaffinity. However, the church was really complicated to draw, so I only got one comic done for the week. Not like anyone cares.
8/24/09: I finally got around to doing a preview submission for a VBS program. It was really difficult since I don't have a real PDF making program and all those illustrator objects are difficult to manage. Didn't quite turn out like I visualized it. Not sure I want to post it until I'm sure someone wants to publish it. I kind of blasted through the abbott babbit cartoons, which surprised me. Of course, I had sleeping problems a couple nights, so I suffered for it. But it's more of an issue of not being able to sleep, rather than having a drive to become famous with this stuff or anything. Anyways, probably one day all my files will be gone, as well as the websites they're hosted on, and when I die someone will find nothing but these pieces of paper filled with randomly assembled images and nobody will understand what the point of all if it is. I guess that's my destiny in life.
9/1/09: I decided to do my comics whenever I felt like it rather than on a deadline. That and doing backgrounds is painstaking work means it took longer to do this week's single comic.
9/7/09: Galwyn was hard to draw, so that's all I did this week. Now that the backgrounds are out of the way, it should be a little bit easier to do the next comics.
9/13/09: Stuff was a little easier to make this week. I'm continuing this comic because it seems to be better than the other stuff I was doing and it gives me something to do when I'm depressed.
9/20/09: I've started work on a blog based internet novel in the vein of those blogs they had for LOST. You can find it at http://phantasmocheesefactory.blogspot.com/2009/09/. I'm also working on a hypertext novel that uses up all the variations on my Earth and All Starships novel. It sort of ate up a lot of time I could do for comics, but I still am working on making more.
9/27/09: I found a program that allows me to make video games, so I've been messing with that, my blog novel, my interactive fiction novel, and I've been procrastinating a bit on this comic. But I'm still doing at least one a week.
10/4/09: I'm done with the blog fiction, until someone posts a reply. Right now they seem more interested in my Bally Fitness crap. Oh well. Gives me more time to make comics and other stuff. I'm still working on the hypertext novel, but other than that I just have roleplaying games and this. And if I focus on them, this should continue.
10/11/09: My mom's birthday and mine are in the first couple weeks of this month. That kept me kind of busy, but too busy to make more stuff! Almost did five this week.
10/18/09: I think the reason nobody comments on my comics is because they're trying to be nice and think my comics suck. I get more responses about my artwork. I sometimes wonder if the pictures are too compressed in the comic format, or maybe I'm trying too hard. Also, this keyboard is bad. The backgrounds were very detailed so maybe it'll be easier next week.
10/25/09: I had to make another background, so it took a long time again. Might be easier this coming week.
11/2/09: A horrible week. I somehow got H1-N1 and only felt well enough to lay down. I managed to get one background done and some drawings of Kabby, and some other stuff, but I think my health suffered for it. We hid in the dark on Halloween so the trick-or-treaters wouldn't get sick. Horrible.
11/8/09: Still recovering from swine flu. I just barely got one comic page done this week. I had to make another background, it seemed. Probably won't be too much better next week, because I have to draw Doggie's mansion.
11/12/09: C'mon, people! I had broken links all over my page, missing pages, and nobody had the common decency to even tell me something was wrong! I guess this only proves that on the internet, there is a lack of good will in human beings. I've been writing this stuff here for weeks and weeks and weeks, and the damn link didn't even work.
11/16/09: Just gave the website and comic pages a major facelift. Honestly, it is easier to go between pages now, but I worry that people with slower internet connections will have to wait too long to have all the image icons loaded. Just when I think I'm good at something, something always happens to me that ruins it and renders all my efforts worthless. At any rate, I got my current comic done, but I didn't post until today because my dad took a surprise trip to the hospital and I stayed up too late waiting for him, so I slept instead of posting the week's comic. I guess it would have helped if I hadn't been working on my "Zorarber" pictures for Furaffinity and Deviantart.
11/20/09: I still haven't made the comics for this week. Why? Because apparently nobody reads these comics because the navigation structure is too difficult to figure out. I spent the majority of my available free time editing html on all the comic pages. I guess nobody uses dial-up and worries about the time it takes a page to load or something, so they want button links on their pages. So that's what I added. 400 of them, one for each page. And the fatigue caused me to put malfunctioning code on at least fifty of them, and I had to go back and fix every one of them. Honestly, I don't think anyone is going to care. In fact, maybe they don't care if I even make new comics. I suppose this does make it easier for myself to navigate the pages, though. You get what you pay for, people, which is nothing.
11/29/09: Well, I managed to finish the comic from last week, and did a couple for this week, too. Hopefully I can figure out some ways to get more of these done on time.
12/7/09: I guess Jim Davis and other people like that didn't have regular jobs, so they could afford to do nothing but draw stuff all day. I can't. That is why I can only make two of these comics a week. I was lucky to get this much done. But I'm glad to have work.
12/14/09: Christmas time is coming up. Stuff happens. I've been trying to impress my Jewish friend with some Hanukkah art, but he still doesn't seem to want to talk to me. Oh well.
I've been doing a pattern of one Gardenia comic, then a Zoararber fashion design and then another Gardenia comic. Then I do real life stuff like eating, chores, and whatever else that comes up, so I don't always make as many as I might possibly do, but that's okay.
12/20/09: Christmas time is coming. I'm disappointed that my job makes me take the wrong day off. I have absolutely nothing going on Christmas day, but Christmas eve, when stuff usually happens, I have to work. And I had to work Saturday to make up for the holiday, which doesn't make sense. Anyways, I think next week's comics will be a little more plentiful because I didn't hang out with my friends and I'll have nothing to do on Christmas day. If I can squeeze in gift art for my mom and a Christmas picture for the comic series around the 24th or 25th, it would be great.
1/20/10: I wish I could have died in 2009 with grandma. So much shit has happened at the end of 2009 that I really wish I had never been born. The ultimate worst thing is spraining my hand. The most recent comic is the best I can do with this sprain. I can type fine, but whenever I bear pressure on that swollen joint I feel extreme pain. The story about Frankenbob is going to have to wait until I can actually use my hand for something other than making crap. Of course, nobody reads these comics anyway, and if they do, they think it's crap and don't think there's any difference. But I notice. And I know I can do better, and the whole situation is giving me a crisis of faith. Yes, I'm not strong enough to be a happy little religious boy when deprived of my only real joy in life. I know, I know, some folks visiting here might tell me that I should find joy in Jesus and all that. But that's a different kind of joy, and it doesn't give me as much entertainment at 1 AM in the morning when I'm bored and awake. I was given some skills in art, and this sprain is forcing them to atrophy, and I'll be just another slob who lays about his house playing video games and not making anything out of his life. Even if this sprain heals in, what, five weeks, my stuff at Furnation is gone and I've got to start over from scratch on a different server. This shit is piled up on me in addition to lots of other bad shit. Why have I just suddenly earned the right to have a bad year?
2/16/10: This has been the year from hell, and it's just getting started. I went without drawing for well over a month. I got real good at drawing with my left hand, but didn't bother inking any of it because it looks horrible. The comic about Bummer dating a Moslem was drawn and inked with my left hand, and computer colored probably with my right. After that, the chiropractor that was treating me said to go easy on my right hand and not put pressure on it. So I didn't for I don't know how many days. I'm still not doing good. The chiropractor thought I was fine and didn't need any more treatment, and my hand looked like it was doing fine, but today it's been swelling up again and starting to hurt. I hate to do this, but I think I might need an x-ray if this keeps up. It's hard to tell if I'm recovering or worsening.
2/21/10: This entire year seems to be a year of trial. Nothing seems to be going right. Work is going okay, I guess, but everything else is messed up. My chiropractor said I'd be fine the way my hand is and to just exercise it. It's still swollen and won't extend. Good news is I can still write and draw without pain.
Yesterday I had a crisis, though. I guess I took too long uploading stuff to Webcomicsnation.com, and I contracted the Internet Security 2010 virus. It looks just like Windows Security, but it demands you go online and give them $50 to buy their software, or it won't go away. I spent all day working on it. I saw that the program was called AV.EXE, so I deleted it from my computer and Regedit. But when I erased it from Regedit, the programs were no longer associated with the icons, so I had to do a safe reboot and reload the operating system. Apparently it changed my FTP into a trial version, which sucks, but my other stuff works, which is better. I sure hope those virus people never find me again. They probably will because nothing is going right for me this year. I'm lucky to have my Furnation site back up and a working computer.
3/1/10: I've been working on a lot of my grandma's old sketches, in hopes of getting good at art like she was. I've been posting them at Mogwai-toejam at Deviantart.com. I've been trying to do one a day so I can get through them quicker and back to making comics. I almost posted the new Cupcake story comics, but didn't get them finished in time. I laid down this Sunday night and didn't realize I'd fallen asleep until the following morning. I'm going to be working on this week's comics all week long so it'll be action packed! I've learned a few things about gallery sites. Namely, it's best to post a whole slew of stuff at once rather than one at a time, even if that's all you have for that week.
3/6/10: I'm ahead of schedule, or behind, depending on your perspective. Taking a tip from people's comments about other comics, I've decided to finish a run of comics before posting it so the story can be contiguous. In between I'll put more gag comics, which will help to keep things at a steady pace. My finger is still screwed up, but I'll keep using it.
3/14/10: I've gotten to some of grandma's sketches that are really complicated. It took me most the week to do two pages of images. It was so time consuming that I really didn't have time for any other art, if anyone really cares what I do anyway. It seems everywhere I go and attempt to get people to look at my website, everyone thinks I'm spamming them for just making a post with a link on it. It's not spam, dammit! You don't know what spam is! I feel like people just don't want me to be heard, and they will do everything within their power to silence me. They've succeeded, but it's not fair. It's not like I'm dropping spam messages to every website in town. I only make one or two posts infrequently, and I just want people to see what I've been spending hours putting together, and everyone's calling me a spammer troll and they erase my posts and everything. And the places that allow you to post your links are full of spammers who drive away anyone who really gives a shit. I feel like that rabbit in Watership down that says stuff that the big rabbits don't like, so they bury him and try to drown him and stuff to keep him quiet.
3/22/10: I think I may have gotten through the difficult stuff in the pile of grandma's sketches, so I should be able to do more comics soon. 14 and 1/2 of those left to go, and the new ones are simpler. I'm doing a test with ottercomics now. First, I'll see what happens if I let it lapse, and then when I get time I'll offer a selection of options instead of posting more comics on there. Unless Furnation craps out again.
3/26/10: I keep making crappy comics in between good ones. Sorry about that. These comics about Cupcake and Frankenbob are very painstaking and you're looking at filler because I'm not done.
Alec at work seems to be interested in these comics, so that encourages me to keep continuing the series. I also got 11 of grandma's sketches left to convert to Illustrator. Hopefully I'll be done with that soon. I do one object a day, or a whole page if it's an easy page, so I've slowly been knocking them out, so I can get down to making more Gardenia comics and other fun stuff.
4/3/10: I caught a flu bug on Wednesday night. It was horrible. I was drawing and suddenly it felt like someone had flicked the SICK switch. I went to bed, and had this horrible fever dream about making stuff in Illustrator, which was terrible because I apparently didn't save any of the work, and it was interspersed with customer service calls that weren't real. Somehow I slogged my way to work, took plenty of sickness precautions, and that night I took Theraflu and went to sleep, waking up Friday morning. So I got another one of grandma's pictures done, and half of a filler comic done. And Saturday night I got the filler done. 6 of grandma's pictures to go, and then it's all touch-ups in photoshop that won't take nearly as long. The Cupcake story is still in the works. I want to get a solid block with a cliff hanger before I post that series again.
4/11/10: YES! I have finally finished tracing grandma's pictures in Illustrator! Now all I have left are sketches of hers that I will only touch up with Photoshop, an action that takes only about five minutes. This will free up some needed time for me to finish comics and some other fun projects.
4/18/10: This has been a little bit easier. I didn't have to do nearly as much work to just touch up and add text to grandma's other sketches. I should be done with everything by the end of this week, I should think. More importantly, I have almost finished with an entire series of Frankenbob comics!
4/25/10: Drawing Kabby's house was labor intensive, which is why I only now got done with them. This has been the most difficult thing I have done in this comic to date. Hopefully I can stretch these pictures out to make a lot more than the two I finished this week. More cool stuff to come!
5/2/10: I've started on the Lyuntaaz Holiday project. I've been doing those pieces of art in between comics. I had to put a break between plot changes, so I made more fillers this week. Next week we're back to the story.
5/9/10: A few things. One, I paid for banner space on Furaffinity. Not sure when I'm supposed to see it, unless I get to have it next month. Also, I possibly made a mistake posting a devotional about Doctor Who to the Doctor Who community. They posted about 100 replies about how they weren't happy with it, because apparently true Christians don't watch Doctor Who. I thought Christians just didn't watch Torchwood, but I guess the rules are TARDIS sized.
I wouldn't mention this at all, except my comic has a Doctor Who theme, and it's sort of made me feel bleah about it. Also, someone pointed out how my Deviantart submissions are unchristian or something, so I addressed it the best I could.
If anyone from that community reads this, I refuse to discuss this page with them on the same thread this whole debacle originated from. That would be creating adding to drama I never wanted in the first place. Anyways, that's what's new.
5/18/10: I'm not sure why it took so long to make this week's comics. Maybe the Lyuntaaz project, combined with some time wasting compulsions I have, and the ongoing flame war at the Doctor Who forum. Anyways, the conflict at the forum has died out, so I can focus on more important things. And get some comics done.
5/24/10: I just scanned in the pictures for this week's comics. It would take another day for me to assemble them all into comics, so I figured I'd just make a filler comic and post it next week. I realized that internet drama actually was sucking time away from me because my mental disorder makes me want to get the last word all the time. I could have finished inking a picture, but I was too busy replying to some jerk. That ate up 20 minutes. If this drama stops, I can make more comics.
5/30/10: I actually finished a slew of comics last week, but I finished on Monday, so I decided to hold it back until this week and work on the next comics. I also realized that I need to work on the other projects in smaller stages to make sure I get the comics done. In real world news, my job has ended, and I'm going into training for another job. The transition may affect my artistic output.
6/6/10: I just got some feedback about my art. Very, very harsh feedback. But on the plus side, now I know that Sharon Osbourne should be drawn with high cheekbones, and I'll try sketching her normally before attempting another picture. This week has been rough. I got a new job and I have to get up super early. I hope I can handle it and a weekly comic.
6/13/10: I tried to do some stuff this week, but it was difficult due to my new schedule. I've been trying to go to bed at 9pm so I can wake up at 4:00, to make sure I'm ready for the 6am shift. What has been happening is I'll sleep too long, and then when I get home, the traffic and stuff makes it about 6:00 when I get to the house. I take my knockout pills at 7, and I only have a couple hours before I need to go to bed.
To be fair, I also have been trying to get rid of paper and duplicate copies of my novel, so a little too much time has been spent editing the files and printing them. But the days of staying up until 4am and getting up at 11pm are over, so my whole routine of doing things is messed up.
6/20/10: Almost done with the scenes set in Kabby's house. I'm getting more used to my schedule now, and I was out of ink for awhile so I couldn't print my novel, so I got a lot done. Still have a long way to go, and I almost think my Lyuntaaz (unrelated) series will end up being done in time for Christmas, due to work on Gardenia comics. That's just fine, really. I guess the problem is I haven't been hanging out with my friends lately. Hopefully this will change soon.
6/28/10: I managed to finish one comic this week due to my friend being busy. I was occupied with editing my novel to prepare it for being sent to someone for a review, and this took time.
7/5/10: It's harder to draw junk than you'd think. I'm only halfway done with a piece for the next comic, and I started it probably Tuesday or Wednesday. Of course, part of the reason is because I got to hang out with my friends this weekend, and my friend was on vacation so I could hop on over after work. But it's cool. Being happy and refreshed will help me to make better comics.
7/11/10: Finally done with the big, complicated piece. It looks like I worked too hard for something that fits in a 600 w box. If I can figure out what size I really need, I could probably get these done faster. At any rate, once I get the characters out of Kabby's house, this comic should be easier to draw, since there won't be so much garbage to put in there.
7/27/2010: I wasn't getting any comments on the comic, so I took a break and made a big Doctor Who parody called "Dog-Ter Woof", which you can see on my Deviantart account. I also discovered a new way to compare document files with Openoffice, so I used up a lot of time comparing files for my Earth and All Starships novel. I figured it was better to make a string of complete thoughts for the comic than to post each one as it is done. I'll have to see how that works. Probably still won't get any responses.
8/8/10: Well, I'm not able to make as many comics as I want. A lot of stuff happens, and sometimes I'm able to do them, and sometimes I'm not. With the current job, I realize that cooking dinner uses up time I would have used drawing when I had the 1:30-10:00 shift at my previous job. Also, the week before my friend was on vacation, which is good for me, but not good for comics. Also, I had to get two wisdom teeth removed, and I still have to get a crown put in, which takes time. I also have a story I'm writing, which I guess I could have put off. Anyways, nobody cares about excuses, they'll just visit another website that updates more frequently. Such is life. But I'm going to continue the comic whenever I can.
8/15/10: You'd think this week I would have made less comics, but I managed to catch up somehow. It took a lot longer to donate blood than I thought, and then I got in trouble with some guy named "Snaker" because I guess I broke his headlight before I went to the blood drive, and I didn't see the damage. But other than that, I wasn't that busy, I guess.
8/31/10: I've realized that at my old job I missed out on family time. And this is why I now cannot make as many comics. I managed to get these done by the deadline because I lost a lot of sleep. I guess I could have done better if I hadn't played Highschool Terra Story Saturday night. Excuses nobody cares about.
9/5/10: My heart has developed an irregular beat. I decided to take it easy this week because of that. Now that I realize it's not helping that much, I guess I can go back to doing comics.
9/12/10: My dad had his birthday this week, so I didn't hang out with my friend. But on the plus side I got a bunch of comics done.
9/19/10: I blame my bipolar disorder for this week's small amount of comics. More next week, hopefully.
9/26/10: More bipolar disorder related disorganization. I think part of this is the fact I reached a milestone by finally getting the characters to a point where they can leave Kabby's house.
10/1/10: My compulsions are giving me quality of life issues. I really want to get this comic series finished, but I get easily distracted. I'm going to make myself focus on doing this instead of my other compulsions.
10/11/10: Not sure what's going on with the Furnation server. I had a birthday last week, so I was busy with that. More excuses that nobody cares about.
10/17/10: I don't think anyone has been reading my comics. I only got one reply for my poll on what kind of shirt Scott should wear next. It was kind of disappointing because I've posted to my yahoo group, livejournal, blogger and ottercomics.us.
10/31/10: I've decided to post comics biweekly in order to have more to post and to test readership. Or maybe just to relax a little bit and stop working myself to the point of burning out since nobody's reading my comics.
11/23/10: I tried to get comics done, but I was too busy fighting Open Office trying to make a comic book to distribute around the office to get people to read my comic. Openoffice took about 5 hours a day for me to work with just to get one file done. Then I stood around in the store waiting for my booklet to be printed up for about 10-20 minutes. And then I'm working on some other projects. So I didn't have much time for anything else.
12/6/10: I've been busy printing Gardenia books for distribution at work and other places. I think things catch on a lot faster offline, despite how things seem to the contrary. My brother and my mom also went to a karate test, so I spent more time sneaking stuff they keep hoarding out to the trash than I did working on comics. That and playing video games. I consider it a comic siesta.
12/12/10: On January 10, Lyuntaaz starts at sundown. Mark your calendars for some great art! ...And then I'll get to working on more Gardenia comics and other fun stuff. This week, however, was full of difficult things, and I couldn't quite get everything done.
12/20/10: I don't like Christmas very much. Easter is more of an essential Christian holiday. However, Oren Otter asked me to do a piece a week before Christmas, so I busted my ass working on it. Unfortunately, there was some drama going on behind the scenes that I was unaware of, so not only did I discover why nobody comments on my comics, but he also took the assignment away from me. It's not the first time people have misread what I've written and gotten upset about it. I once got beat up at school because of a "hilarous article" of mine my english teacher read to her classes. The first line was "kill Brett," but the rest of the thing was stupid and based entirely on MST3K. I didn't mean it seriously, or I'd just try to kill him, but he got scared and beat me up anyway.
1/21/11: When January came around, I suddenly realized I wasn't totally prepared for the Lyuntaaz postings on my websites, so I spent hours putting together illustrator files with the appropriate illustrations and text. It was very challenging to do all the imaginary symbols for the foreign language pieces. I had no time for making comics or anything. To see the completed Lyuntaaz project, go to http://mogwai_toejam.tripod.com/Lyuntaaz.html
1/6/11: The Lyuntaaz festivities are over, for the most part. All that remains is a Twitter version of it. Lyuntaaz was spread over Facebook, Furaffinity, Deviantart, Livejournal and Blogger, as well as a limited distribution on paper at my workplace. I'm halfway through the Twitter and Ottercomics versions. I forgot to do Myspace, so I'll be doing that one next. At any rate, that's easy. The hardest part is already done, so it frees me to do other things, like making more Gardenia comics. I was surprised at the results of the Lyuntaaz series. It really took off at Furaffinity, and I got some new watchers (while losing some old loyal ones, but such is life). Thanks to some feedback I got, I now have an outfit planned for Cupcake and will have some other interesting things coming up in the future.
2/27/11: I got stuck in a pattern of getting my comics done in the middle of the week, so I was technically behind in everything, according to my estimation. Part of this was due to my continual posting of the Lyuntaaz series and my discovery of Deviantart groups, which get more responses than this comic does. Anyways, I put a pause to the posting last week so I could catch up on making these Gardenia comics. Hopefully I can get back into a regular schedule now.
3/7/11: I think I'm doing too much at once. I only got one comic done this week. I guess the problem is that I try to put too much detail in this stuff or something, so I don't get done with the story as fast as I want. I'm working on methods to speed it up some.
3/13/11: I realize I've been doing a few things that eat up time I could be using to do comics. One was the Wava font, which I have finished now. The second was printing comic books, which I believe I've solved by asking more persistently for the files to be dropped off and picked up the next day instead of accepting their request to sit there for 20 minutes while the printing company prints it. Also, I'm done shrinking down my drawing portfolio. I spent a lot of time at Kinkos reducing stuff. All I've got now are some charcoal sketches that I probably have to spray with fixatif before copying. This means more drawing time.
3/27/11: I almost got done with another comic strip before the week ended, but I just missed the target, so I'll save that one for next week. The only thing I have to do is tweak it with Photoshop and it'll be done. I'm thinking about doing a few more cheesy comics to go in between to add dramatic tension to the story and buy me some time to make more comics in the series. I upgraded some stuff on my computer, so that should help me to make more comics, too.
4/3/11: I got the cover for the second Gardenia book finished, and started on assembling the PDF. I also got together art for a new comic, but it's not done yet. I've been working on an Earth and All Starships comic book as a side project, but that actually didn't take that long. A lot of other stuff has been consuming my time lately. Stuff mostly unrelated to artwork. Oh, and I went to a Mindtrick concert Friday night, which is probably why I didn't get this week's comic done on time.
I'm not happy with the changes that have been going on at NCO lately. During a big meeting on Friday, they said that we weren't supposed to have comic books on the floor. This seemed to be a veiled threat against me, like I'm not supposed to distribute my comics at work. This makes me angry because if I can't distribute the stuff there, nobody is going to ever know about my comics. Only a handful of people read these things online. It makes me wonder if it's even worth it to even bother, if I'm just going to languish in obscurity anyway. Nobody ever makes any comments about my comics online, so it doesn't even seem like anybody is reading them. Maybe they're just afraid to tell me that my artwork sucks and they really don't think I should get anywhere. Maybe that's why I've been left alone for so long.
4/11/11: I printed out Gardenia Book 2: Dogman Cometh, featuring all the comics involving Kabby's house and the limousine. I took it to Officemax and it came out super dark and unreadable. My first response was to give up making comics completely, but then I decided a professional would rise to the challenge, which resulted in me spending all of Saturday tweaking the PDF file to correct the shading. It didn't work. Today I printed it out again, and it was only slightly better. I spent most of my home time away from work fixing the file again today, which means I really haven't made any more comics. But can you blame me? If they're so dark that they don't work on the printer at Officemax, then I don't have a sequel book to my original comic book, which means that nobody will care if I continue the series. So fixing this book is the first priority. Once I get that fixed enough to make it readable, I can start on the sequel. But I think it's going to be awhile.
5/2/11: I finally got Book 2: Dogg-Man Cometh to look just the way I want it (or as good as it's going to get), and now I feel confident in continuing the comic. More stuff to come!
5/8/11: I got one comic done this week. I'll try to do more. All this week I was working on a Mother's Day gift: cleaning up her messy house. This house is the inspiration behind the pictures I did of Kabby's house, so it's an epic battle. I managed to get the kitchen clean and get the stuff in the garage moved to the basement, a daunting task in and of itself. For the first time since February, I updated the ottecomics mirror site. Nobody said anything to me about not posting anything to ottercomics for two months, so I guess they don't care that much about me letting it lapse into expired website land. But for the sake of one of my coworkers and that one person that e-mails me only at my e-mail address instead of the forum, I decided to post again.
5/15/11: I didn't have anything pressing to do this week, and I found ways to cut corners and get done with a bunch of comics in record time. What's great about this is that now I can actually get to the fun stuff, and get out of that poorly drawn limousine section. Printing that thing was a nightmare.
5/23/11: The scene where they park the limo and get out and walk was a challenge compositionally. The place they parked at was supposed to be taller, but it wouldn't fit together right if I did it that way. The text is tiny, but it's not really important text, so it's okay. The drawings were a challenge, so it took me half the week. Actually, I had a bunch of other stuff going on, so I didn't get as much done. Hopefully I'll have more fun with this comic once I get to the Castrovolvo section.
6/7/11: I've been thinking a lot about my goals in making this comic. It was mainly for the purpose of some movie producer to pick up and turn into a cartoon or movie, and this did not happen. I drove myself crazy trying to be perfect in hopes of getting someone interested enough to pick it up, or to at least get more readers, but nobody cares, so I decided to relax and just do enough to communicate the story effectively and leave it alone. At least the story will be done.
If I'm going to sit in the abyss of poorly drawn comics that nobody reads, it doesn't really matter if I break my back trying to make something good. I shouldn't have ever held my breath for a movie deal. I'd say more about the abyss, but it would only make less people read my comic. In other words, I'd have 0 readers instead of 1 or 2. And I probably belong in that abyss anyway.
6/13/11: I guess I still alienated the two people that read my comic online. Oh well. I still work on it, but it's like that guy in The Fountain, where that lady keeps telling him to "finish it." Except there's no bald guy flipping up and down in space next to a giant tree.
6/27/11: They're forcing everyone at my job to work at home, which means I might not have a job to work at pretty soon. They'll probably fire me for sound quality or equipment issues or something. All bets are off. The comic can't continue if I don't have an income, so the progress is going to be really slow while I try to get a job to support my comic habit.
7/10/11: The job hunt continues. I don't have much time to work on stuff when I'm sending off resumes. I got some work done, but not a whole lot. I'd prefer to have a job where I can have money available to make comics. If that means losing readers, I can't help that.
8/8/11: These comics have been slow going because I'm trying to avoid burnout. One thing that has dealt me a crippling blow is losing my fans at Sprint. I used to distribute my comics at work, and now I don't have anyone who actually tells me they read my comics. I thought about distributing them at my new job, but the place is so pristine that I doubt it's allowed. It's like I'm doing these comics for myself now. I don't have anybody to encourage me to continue the story. Also, I stare at computers all day at work, so photoshop has become a painful chore. I'm not sure how to make things easier, but I'm working on it.
8/15/11: Yes, this new job has some really tight security, and tight guidelines about solicitation, so I'm not sure I can still distribute comics like I used to. I might have to figure out another place to distribute. I recently discovered that people at furaffinity were interested, but I just haven't had much luck. I think the guys at work forgot about me at this point.
8/22/11: Still trying to finish the comic series. Once I get rid of the Doggy Demon character, it should be a lot easier to complete!
9/4/2011: Got a whole bunch of easy ones finished. A few more steps and I'll have Doggy Demon out of the way and I can have more fun working on this.
9/12/2011: At last! A few more steps and I'll be done with my bad drawings of Sharon Osbourne for good! This will allow me to get a lot of comics done a lot faster, hopefully.
9/19/2011: This week I worked on filler comics. Next week I'll try to have more of the story done.
9/29/2011: I'm actually proud of this run of comics. I got a lot done, and I'm even closer to the end of the Karen Demon character.
10/10/11: I'm depressed by how terrible the artwork is in this comic series, but I don't want to go back and "remaster" it because then I wouldn't ever get the story done. I keep feeling like giving up.
10/24/2011: I accomplish most of my artwork while listening to music and agent reader reading websites to me. Now that my sound driver is kaput, I've been extremely unmotivated. That's why I didn't get done until now. I can only take so long silently drawing pictures with irritating voices and music stuck in my head before I can't take it anymore.
11/06/2011: My friend Joel fixed my computer, so maybe I can get more comics done now. In the meantime, before this, I had purchased a cheap mp3 player and got a little work done despite the sound not working. There was a delay also due to me coming down with a sickness. I hope I didn't get Joel sick!
11/21/2011: I really wasn't motivated to do much on the comic this week. The comic features things from my job, and since I put in my resignation note and have been wrestling with the idea of changing managers or going through with quitting, the whole thing has ruined the rest of my activities. I guess I have until 11/28 to decide, but it's a really tough decision. I don't want to end up with another manager who gives me the same crap the previous one did. I keep suspecting it'll be exactly that, despite what my coworker said. In fact, it's likely I'll end up with another training manager that's just as bad or worse. There's no way I'll get an easygoing boss like he has. He's an ex cop and he joined earlier than I did.
12/5/11: I feel like the most worthless piece of crap in Kansas City. Now that I've quit my job, I get nothing but rejections from the jobs I apply for. I had two great prospects that both rejected me. In some ways, I think it would have been better if I had simply waited for the management to fire me instead of leaving before they could do that. When I feel so crummy, it's hard for me to get motivated to make comics. Why does it matter? It's not making me any money, and I need to start working again.
