Not much of an entry this week. I’m at a big convention with lots of nerdy folks. There’s lots of presentations and free stuff. And no, it’s not San Diego Comic Con. More comic related stuff next week!

I'm getting better with the wacom, faster at least. Today's cartoon comes from an idea I picked up reading August J. Pollak's blog. He's smarter than me and did a better cartoon on the subject. I got to draw a dude barfing though, and that's probably the best side-view of an apartment building I've ever done.

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport is by far what the Smithsonia Air and Space Museum should be like. If you're in D.C., skip that moth-eaten museum at the Mall and treat yourself to a visit to the Udvar-Hazy. It's a massive hangar with hundreds of planes (commercial and military), helicopters, rockets and even a space shuttle. One of my favorite parts of the exhibit is this little corner in the space section devoted to science fiction. It has toys from the '30s through '80s as well as neat, old drawings of futuristic space ships. I couldn't resist taking a few photos and posting them (I think these came from Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon cartoons).

07/21/08

Below are a few sketches for a project I'm working on with Carol. I've got a few other things to finish up before we get started (Trickster, Spadefoot trade and Liquid Revolver), but we'll get rolling right after those are done.

A few NEW creations of mine will be on display around town...

Be sure to check out Art Outlet and Art Whino's FLIK event and DC Arts Center's Wall Mountables show.

So the new website design is up! Let me know what you think, or if you find any bugs! I tested it pretty thoroughly (well, not on IE7, so if there’s problems there, please let me know). I’ve also implemented some extra caching bits above and beyond what WP-Cache2 and APC can do alone, so the site should be lightning fast.

Behold, the cover to the Trickster anthology! Illustrator/cartoonist Peter Kuper (Spy v. Spy, World War III Illustrated, Stop Forgetting to Remember) generously provided the illustration and comic book writer/artist Rafer Roberts (Plastic Farm) rendered the design and logo.

Here's my second digitally-drawn cartoon. I wanted to do something on Budweiser because I've lately grown fond of the beer and finding out that the company is selling to InBev unexpectedly made me feel as loss of pride. Its a shame we're losing competitive edge in the world economy, but I suppose its years of American arrogance and worldly ignorance coming back to bite us in ole' tuckus. Whatever the case, here's my cartoon.

I currently have 3 of my offbeat paintings on display at Gilly's in Rockville.
Stop by for a bottle of fine wine and take a closer look at:
• Second Sight
• Moonlit Players, and
• Coffee Break

Gilly's
2009 Chapman Ave.
Rockville, MD 20852
301-770-5515

07/13/08

Set up a Health blog which is located HERE so I don't fuck up the DC Conspiracy RSS feed.

1. Be a Jedi. Don't blog it. That means in any manner shape or form. Just go ... be. (Highly recommended)

2. Go, take pictures, print them, show your friends if they ask. Store in attic until someone actually cares.

3. Novel idea: take one picture. Even throw it up on your blog or website. and talk about it. Get into the nuts and bolts of why this pic is so awesome. Instead of the boring old webpage of infinite pics and captions with stuff like, "Me and Warren Ellis" "This is me and Warren Ellis; he who has braved the airborne illnesses of people massed together like rats to join us. I even wore my I Hate It Here tee that I bought back in 1997 that I thought that I'd lost but I didn't and found it just in time for the convention. It's always been my dream to take a picture of me and Warren and now that dream has come true. My next dream involves him doing horrible things to me with his cane."

4. Reinvigorate the fine art of writing in the bathroom stall with cleverness. Caveat: don't write, "Who's Watching the Watchers?" That's just retarded.

5. Invite me next time so I don't get jealous and make the first blog post in like 2 months about how little I want to see your SDCC photoblog.

6. If you really do insist on going to the SDCC and then taking seven hundred flickr pages of pics, try to capture the life of the convention, not the douchebags wearing superhero outfits b/c they're already on everyone else's blog already. Trust me. We see the same asswipes dressed as the Joker and the Batman every year on every blog doing a mock fight in the lobby. Nobody needs to see that. I want to see the look on the face of Joe Comicbook Goob as he finally finds Ed Brubaker's original Captain America notebook, and then the utter dismay of how much it costs and then the slow, wistful turn away down the long row of back issue boxes and taunting plastic wraps.

7. Spend your time at SDCC with the single intention of banging a Wonder Woman. It doesn't matter if she looks more like Thunder Woman b/c your only goal is to bang it out with a Wonder Woman. Hopefully, your subsequent photoblog will consist of pics of Wonder Women, then a brief courtship at the bar, and then a morning after pic as she ties you up with her lasso of Truth and compells you never, ever tell.

So ComicPress Manager 0.9.5 is out.  This one’s huge.  It has a ton of bug fixes and major UI improvements, and it now supports changing the date format to something other than date(”Y-m-d”).  It’s getting real close to a stable 1.0 release, I can feel it.

Also, I entered ComicPress Manager in the WordPress Plugins Competition.  The competition looks tough, and it’s probably even tougher for a vertical application like ComicPress Manager — Webcomic management really is one of those things you just have to do a lot of to know what tools and features you need on a regular and not-so-regular basis.  Check out my entry post and make some nice comments over there to let the judges know what youall think of this very vertical software. 

This here is my first go at a cartoon created completely on my computer. I am very happy with the art, because it achieves the sketchy "luckovichian" style I've been striving towards for a while now. It also pisses me off a little that I haven't been able do do this with traditional pen and ink. It means i'm a pussy in the physical world. I wouldn't take risks with pen and ink for fear of the tedious touch-ups and re-dos I'd have to do if I made mistakes. None of that with the wacom tablet--I screw up as much as I want and just erase over whatever's wrong. It's wonderful, but again, an unwanted reminder of my pussyness.

What with that, I'm not sure this cartoon is a good one for the message it sends. I think you have to be too much inside my head to get at the bigger idea I want to portray. Seeing as most viewers aren't telepathic, this cartoon will likely bomb.

Whatever.


Wait...one more thought. Handwriting is a bitch on the wacom.

It was something like 3am. I couldn't sleep and went out for a walk around the office building near my house in Fredericksburg. Noticed some lights were on inside. When I walked past the front door I saw a janitor fella squeezing a mop out and getting to work. It was 3am. Thought it was poetic. Sketched a bit before going to bed, and here's what it was.

05/18/08

05/04/08

07/06/08

06/29/08

06/22/08

06/15/08

06/08/08

06/01/08

05/25/08

05/11/08

04/28/08

I'll be vending again in the shadows of the DC goth nightclub scene at...

EXPOSURE
July 3rd
http://www.exposure-dc.com/

What can I say? My offbeat blacklight-reactive artwork feels at home among goths, mods, and rivet heads.
With the 4th of July holiday the next day, there's no excuse not to come out and partake of the decadence.

/X\(..)/X\

A "sign-off sequence" is the little clip you see at the end of a TV show that tells you the production company and I just finished animating one for Verbal Substance.

You can check it out here...
http://arty4ever.com/animation/VSSignoff.html

I have not posted much lately, but that's ok because no one reads my blog anyway. Ha ha. But I just received a Wacom Intuos3 drawing tablet from the mailman today and got to draw something directly on my computer. No pencil ink eraser, just me and photoshop. Made me figure that not posting art I made and like on the computer is very lazy. No scanning to do. Just save the file for web and upload it. So here it is. A creepy baby sketch for my comic book thats coming, Boy Monster.

-O.

Last year at SPX I took this picture:

The guy on the upper left is Mark McMurray, the first person I ever shared a table with at a comic book convention (SPX 2005). The guy whose head he’s licking is Mark Griffin, who I met the next year at SPX 2006.  I took this picture at SPX 2007. And, about a week before MoCCA 2008, Mark Griffin passed away after a long battle with cancer.  He was working on a comic about it called Karma Shmarma, which is now unfinished.

Mark was a very cool guy.  I only met him a few times at MoCCA and SPX, and now I wish that I had been able to hang out with him more.  He will be missed.

This one was a big one.  Lots of big internal changes that improved performance, safety, and usability.  Among the changes:

• Big Bug Fix: the plugin now only loads the editor widget JavaScript while in the ComicPress Manager plugin. This was a problem for folks like myself who put their wp-admin folder behind HTTP authentication. IF you were running an older version of the plugin, this particular upgrade is very important , as it saves on bandwidth and improves security for your site.
• Now supports moving the WordPress folder to a different location on the server (see http://www.lunchboxfunnies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5889#5889 ). This requires that your comics folders be at in the same directory as the index.php file that you moved out of the wordpress directory.
• Improved config editor with more intuitive choices and more robust file writing (thanks to feedback from Sunday Funnies podcast #10 )
• Prepare ComicPress Manager for internationalization . If any one wants to offer to help translate CPM into another language, let me know.
• Improved comicpress-config.php write permission detection
• Improved config checks
• The ability to disable config checks for improved performance if you know your site is set up correctly
• The ability to upload any file to replace an existing comic
• Big UI improvements

Download the plugin and give it a span.  I’ve started tagging the old releases, so if you have a problem, roll back to 0.8 and post a message on the thread on the Lunchbox Funnies forum .  Also, I’m looking for translators!  If you have time, use the POT file in the plugin archive and send me a translation.

This is it--the final page of the 'Spadefoot' saga! The Web comic will be collected into a trade, hopefully ready for the Small Press Expo in October.

I really love watching directorial info in the special features of a good movie. When the director blocks out the way he shot a scene, why certain events were critical and why others ended up on the edit room floor have taught me a lot about storytelling. How to shave the fat. Getting down to what the story is really about.

Anyway, not that I think I'm a great shake, but I thought that someone might get some information out of my process for working in art. Maybe I'm doing something that someone far more talented than myself will find useful, and go on to create the next great work. It'd be nice to think anyway.

step 1

PENCILS



I did the pencils pretty quickly. This was a single piece for August Adams novel 'National Dark Roast Day'. Very clever book. I really enjoyed reading it, and I was honored that he would want me involved. Anyway, I'd like to say that August approached me with the most composed and professional proposal I'd ever scene. Not only did he tell me exactly what he was looking for (with finished dimensions) but he provided a copy of his novel, and the location in the story where my scene would take place, so I could just read what was necessary. Really impressive. Anyway, after some discussion with August on the pencils I made some changes and moved on to inking.

Step 2

INKS



I was working at 200% ratio. It's not a scale that I'm used to working with, so I kept trying to keep in mind that every line was going to be twice as thin in it's finished proportions. I tried not to add too much detail, so that when the piece was finished it wouldn't look cramped or too dense.

Step 3

Grey tones



It used to be that inking was my favorite step in the creation process, but lately I really think it's been grey washing the piece. I used Dr. PH Martins conentrated watercolor, and chose sepia so that it would be easy to determined what was a hard black line, what was watercolor, and what was pencil marks. Using the Sepia also made the original art really beautiful. I was pretty happy with it at this point, and August seemed to be right on board, so I went ahead and moved on.

Step 4

Colors



I would just like to say that I HATE working in color. I am very uneasy, and unsure of myself in this step. It sucks. I never color anything that I'm really happy about. I mean, I think my colors are 'okay' but I also think that someone else with a stronger sense of color theory could make my work look a lot better. Anyway, I wasn't really sure if I liked the colors, but I wanted to do my best and make it look as sharp as possible. Seriously, looking at this makes me feel like someone with a mutant pimple planted between his eyebrows heading into his senior prom. "Please don't look at it!!"

Step 5

Corrections




Immediately after sending the finished work to August I thought, "nope, there's got to be more green in there." The whole piece looked too washed out, and it would severely compromise what I thought was a pretty solid piece. So, another hour in Photoshop and I had something I was really proud of. Probably from start to finish this was about 12-16 hours of work, and I thought it came out well. I'm super excited that it's been finished and August is happy. Mostly that's because I foresee myself spending the rest of the year working in various projects in black and white after the last two were color.

Anyway, that's how I work. Hope you enjoyed!

Click to Enlarge


This project is still in the planning stages, but I'm really enjoying trying out a new style.

Here it is, the strip before the last Spadefoot strip....

The final page of Spadefoot, sans lettering and colors. Andrew did some wonderful pencils. So much so that I'm a little intimidated to do the colors!

I'm coloring the cover of the Liquid Revolver graphic novel and I'm trying to decide which of the three versions below looks best. Thoughts?

I'm coloring the cover of the Liquid Revolver graphic novel and I'm trying to decide which of the three versions below looks best. Thoughts?

It’s the start of Chapter 3, and there’s some cool things going on lately. First, I’ve been to both MoCCA and Heroes Con to visit and buy lots of comics. Second, I’ve been getting ready to reprint Volume 1, which will involve a big redesign of everything. That means I’ll finally finish with this site. Finally, if you’re running your own ComicPress install (or are thinking about running one), Sunday Funnies podcast #10 talks about setup and maintenance. In fact, a few things in the podcast prompted some changes that will be coming up in ComicPress Manager 0.9 that will make the user interface much, much nicer. Yeah!

I'll be hosting two 45-minute making-comics workshops at the International Children's Festival in Vienna, Va., in September. Here's info from the event's blog:

We are pleased to announce a new tent this year, called the Global Art & Rhythm tent.

In the mornings we will bring you special performing and fine arts presentations and in the afternoon, festival visitors will be able to meet and greet with the 4 international performing groups from China, Ghana, Finland, and Jordan.

Our second confirmed artist for Saturday and Sunday morning is Matt Dembicki
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Create Your Own Comic with graphic artist Matt Dembicki

Matt will host a hands-on workshop on both Saturday and Sunday on creating comic books, from creating characters to developing stories and tips on drawing. Upon the conclusion of the workshop, children share their work with others.

Each workshop runs about 45 minutes and starts at 10:00 a.m. down in the meadow in the Global Art & Rhythm tent. The participation is limited to 25 children per session. Come early!

http://internationalchildrensfestivalinsider.blogspot.com

Here's the likely illustration for the cover of Liquid Revolver, the science-fiction graphic novel that I worked on with several D.C.-area cartoonists, including Chris Piers, Scott White, Mike Short, Mal Jones, Dale Rawlins and Izzy Iszard. The pages are done, but I need to draw about eight transition pages to make the story really come together.

May 9 through June 15, 2008
Artomatic is a free, month-long arts event that draws together visual artists, musicians and performers. It's an amazing event with hundreds of artists and this year is their biggest yet!

You can find me on level 8 in spot A4-NW at the Capitol Plaza 1 Building (level 8 is great)
1200 First Street, NE Washington, DC
(It's a new 12-story glass building at the corner of M Street, and one block west of the Red Line NY Ave./Florida Ave./Gallaudet Univ. Metro Station.)

May 9 through June 15, 2008
Wednesdays 5 pm – 10 pm
Thursdays 5 pm – 10 pm
Fridays 11 am – 2 am
Saturdays 11 am – 2 am
Sundays noon – 10 pm

Danny (A friend and DC artist known as PhantOM) has asked me to participate in a "live painting" event at X! This month's theme is "Old School/New School". Danny will be representing the new-school. I'll be representing the old.
Come party with us!

The idea is to tag-team our efforts and create a painting "live" in a nightclub environment with all the distractions of music, people, and booze. It should be a lot of fun and I encourage everyone to come check it out!

TONIGHT! Saturday, June. 21st
6-10pm
$8 cover*
BeBar
1318 9th Street NW DC 20001
www.xindc.tv

*Receive a reduced cover charge of $5
for incorporating the theme "Old School/New School" into your outfit.

2006...

2007...


It's time for the third annual DC Conspiracy BBQ. Some old favorites return, some go away, and some new recipes enter the mix. But first my supplies...



And for me to drink, of course...



And my sister, who was "helping" me:



The Feta Burgers make their return this year:



Joined by my new bacon-cheeseburgers (turkey bacon, mozzarella, and eggs):



Ready to go on the grill...



My Italian Chicken makes its THIRD trip to the DC BBQ:



And this time it's joined by my new Chipotle Chicken (tomatoes, chipotle peppers, brown sugar, wine, lemon juice, and garlic):



As you may notice, my BBQ ribs are not making an appearance this year. There are just too many people coming and I don't have the time to make enough for everyone. But I hope the new burger and chicken recipes will make up for the loss of the ribs.

See you all tomorrow!

And we’re at the end of Chapter 2!  Chapter 3 will start next week.

So there’s two things going on right now that I want to tell you about.  First, I’ll be down visiting this weekend at Heroes Con.  I’ll have my Angry John! t-shirt on, so if you see me, say hi.

Second, I’m starting to get ComicPress Manager set up so that it can be translated into other languages. If you have experience with translating software, or want to practice, let me know once ComicPress Manager 0.9 comes out.  That will be the version when I start soliciting translators.

After a week or two of squashing some nasty bugs that Lunchbox Funnies forum members found, ComicPress Manager 0.8 is out the door!  The big changes are:

• The ability to upload thumbnails into the RSS or Archive folders
• If you can’t write to comicpress-config.php, you can still change the config — you’ll just be presented with the necessary PHP code to copy and paste into your comicpress-config.php file.
• Warnings have been improved and shuffled around, so that an out-of-the-box ComicPress install will only give a big warning on the lack of property category setup and a missing comic folder.
• Show Debug Info packages up a lot of information on your ComicPress install in a format that will help others debug problems with permissions, folder names, and categories.

Go get the newest version of the plugin and try it out.  I’d also like to thank the first person who donated to the ComicPress Manager project!

I'll be hosting another creating comics summer program this year with the Fairfax County (Va.) Library System. Below the are the dates, times and locations. Hope to see some of you folks there! (Oh, the program is for 'tweens. No adults, please. It'd be...weird.)

Date Time Branch
June 23 7:00 p.m. George Mason Regional
July 7 7:00 p.m. Martha Washington
July 9 7:00 p.m. City of Fairfax Regional
July 14 7:00 p.m. Chantilly Regional
July 15 7:00 p.m. Lorton
July 19 2:30 p.m. Kingstowne
July 21 7:00 p.m. Burke Centre
July 30 7:00 p.m. Centreville Regional

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
(11:54 AM) Kevin Huff: crispy chicken
(11:55 AM) Kevin Huff: bleh not my thing
(11:55 AM) Kevin Huff: hear about javon walker?
(11:55 AM) Kevin Huff: found beaten and unconscious
(12:30 PM) Kevin Huff: yeah, s'ok.
(12:31 PM) Kevin Huff: will get RB next time
(12:49 PM) Kevin Huff: ?
(12:49 PM) Kevin Huff: i don't get it
(12:49 PM) Kevin Huff: hahaha
(12:50 PM) Kevin Huff: is she hot?

Wow, it's been awhile since I updated the blog! No fear, though. I'm working hard on several projects that'll be out by year's end. One of 'em: the Spadefoot trade! Below is the latest installment. Carnage!

Sorry for the initial lack of witty comment, it’s been a very busy week and I haven’t had the time to come up with anything else to go here.  Enjoy the comic that has Johnny greedily ripping the lid off of his coffee can.

This could get interesting.

So, crime is up, way up. It's so bad the police chief had to come back from vacation early to see what's up. boohoo. Oh and due to budget constraints she's had to cut their OT pay and yet is asking them to work more hours.

But anyway, her latest initiative, with full support of the mayor, is straight out of Orwell. Starting next week, with the Trinidad neighborhood, police will set up checkpoints and seal of the neighborhood forcing people to present ID cards, etc etc etc.

What's ridiculous about this is that officers have already FLOODED the hot zones. They're literally hearing the crimes (shootings) as they're happening, they just happen to be like a block away or something.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/astronomers-sug.html

"... those civilizations ... that inhabit star systems that lie close to the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun will be the most motivated to send communications signals toward Earth because those civilizations will surely have detected our annual transit across the face of the sun, telling them that Earth lies in a habitable zone, where liquid water is stable. Through spectroscopic analysis of our atmosphere, they will know that Earth likely bears life."

And a brilliant plan is hatched…

This week my spare time has been spent working on an illustration for my friend August’s book “National Darkroast Day.”  Hopefully I can get it completed sometime next week and post it up here.  Oh, and I also fixed some stupid ComicPress Manager bugs.  0.7.1 is out, but it’s a silent release, just bugfixes for non-Firefox users.

All you writers out there that complain there's no jobs out there for you ... well, you're just flat out wrong. And the writing you do on the job is just as viable as that great american story you're wishing you actually were writing while you are here reading this stupid post by some guy you don't know, or barely know.

But let me tell you: I make good money writing on the job. Not great money -- but good enough money. I just recently transfered into a new job role at my office: Staff Technical Proposal Writer. The writing associated with being a Staff Technical Proposal Writer is a bit of a misnomer. See why:

1. Cut and paste someone else's ideas and make them your own! you don't even have to write anything if you play your cards right. This is awesome. And what's fun is doing that philosophical sum of a causes thing with the text, "Where did they get the technical summary for the ATO proposal? Ok, then where did they get it for the PWN proposal? Okaaaaay, then where did they get it for the NUB proposal? nobody knows?"

Maybe god wrote it.

2. The degree to which your proposal is unintelligible is in direct proportion to how unintelligible the RFP is. Also, the degree of complexity associated with your proposal is directly related to how much the contract is worth.

3. This is a quality sentence in the proposal world:

The synergy of coupling both the ----- and ---------- capabilities allows us to provide the potential for its dual use as a Tactical ------ ------------- coordinating/controlling ----------- assets ‘in the wild’ of the world-wide web and a --------- ----------- for rapidly developing and fielding -------------- elements keeping the cyberwarrior’s   ------ with options in shaping their cyber battlefront.  The relatively small equipment footprint, scalable and remotely accessible enables --------- ---------- options to fit an array of employment concepts until no more will fit and you start to scream and decide want to stab paper clips into your brain and .

4. The best mantra ever: It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be good enough.

OK, I know this doesn't really have anything to do with comics writing or anything yet ... but just wait.

Tomorrow: story-boarding your comic with doodles at weekly staff meeting!!

ComicPress Manager 0.7.0 has been released.  The biggest addition is the Change Dates feature, which allows you to shift the dates of a large number of comics and their associated posts.  This is a very advanced feature, and before using it (or even trying it!) I suggest backing up your site and all your comics files or, better yet, set up a test WordPress site to experiment, and always perform a full backup before running a big move operation.  Additionally, there were a large number of bug fixes, including fixing a common failure with editing the comicpress-config.php file.  Download it here!