dev

Just testing a livejournal app for my phone.

Here's the cover of the insanely short preview I'll have this weekend at SPX.

I hope to see everyone there!

Don't forget: any gifts of standard Chocoalate Nesquik = free books from me. I know you all have one or two of those rolling around in the bottom of your messenger bags/purses to give me. I always get swamped with the crowds at these shows handing me all this free Nesquik, so you better act fast!

I'll be heading to Bethesda, MD this weekend for SPX with my lady friend. I'll be selling the tired old classic of mine "Broken Chain" (now in second printing!!!!!11!!). Now's your chance to snatch up (for $2 off the regular price even!) that SMASH hit that ComicsWorthReading.com describes as "not terrible."

Don't miss out!

PLUS (if I can make it to Kinkos this week) I'll have a few pages to give out as a preview of my next book which I think will be titled "Roleplay."

I'll post some pics from that soon.

I recently picked up a bottle of Speedball Super pigmented black ink to try and mess with some new brushes I bought.

And since I'm too lazy to go out to a real figure drawing class on the weekend, I went to Flickr instead. Tons of photographers on there doing good nudes. Perfect for drawing.

Here are 4 I did last night, straight brush, no pencils (scary, since I make so many mistakes). They came out better than I had hoped. I've got a long way to go, but it definitely got me loving the brush on my sketchbook. The texture on the paper is great.


something weird going on with her left arm...




this girl had her hair down in her face. something I didn't capture at all. :)

IndyComicReview.com posted a review of the preview chapter of Broken Chain I was selling last year at SPX.

I sent them the finished book last month, so hopefully they'll get to review that too.

Check it out.

I found this in a pile of old photos that were in some random box I haven't seen since high school or earlier.

Many many awesome things in this pic.

1. Both I and my brother are wearing those one piece pajamas that even had built in slippers.

2. Every gift under the tree is wrapped identically.

3. You can just barely catch a glimpse of the black kung-fu slippers my dad used to wear.

4. The massive cheese on my face after getting some super awesome G.I. Joe figure.

Anyone out there familiar with QR Codes? They're not too big over here, but in places like japan they're all over the place.

Basically they're these small square barcode looking things that contain info in them. What you do is use your phone's camera to take a pic of the qr code, then it'll show you the web page, or email or any other text that is in that code.

It's slick.

Here are two I made that have links for ordering Broken Chain on lulu.com, the other has a link to my website.





I made two using this QR Code generator. I'm using this app called QuickMark. If you have a symbian or Windows Mobile phone you should install it and try it out.

I'll probably add the website one to the back of my books from now on for my QR people who are in-the-know...

Broken Chain is available to order online over at lulu.com.

It's 7 bucks. 102 pages. Wordless.

It's been referred to as "a thing of breathtaking beauty" and "quite possibly the reason God invented the comic form...".

All the cool kids have copies. You should too.

Back home and awaiting the wonderful feeling of sleep in my own bed...

I had an awesome time this year. Sold 27 of my 50 books and gave the rest out to publishers, retailers and press. It was cool to have a few people come up to me who had picked up the preview at SPX last year, and were now coming to buy the full book.

I was sharing a table with Matt Silady who was selling his book The Homeless Channel. Matt's a great guy. Super nice. He introduced me to a ton of people and even pimped my book out a few times. :) Go buy his book.

I'll post a more detailed breakdown of what I bought and all that jazz tomorrow. For now, one more seperate post and then off to bed...

Heading off to SPX tomorrow morning bright and early. Hopefully I'll be able to sell a few of these books so I don't have to carry them back....

I realized soon after I uploaded the PDF to Lulu for printing and ordered a proof copy, that I had forgotten to properly order the PDF pages, and insert blanks, etc.

Too late. So I have a proof copy of Broken Chain here now that looks fine, except for the fact that it's all in the wrong order. So the title page is on the left of the 2nd page instead of on the right side (page 3).

No biggie. The correct copy will be here next week (those guys are insanely quick! I put this order in on monday, chose a pricey 2-day ups shipping option, and got the book today. 4 days for all that? Awesome) for me to OK before I go and order the full batch for SPX.

Anyhow, the book looks great. I love that it ended up being the size (in thickness) that I initially had planned. That sounds sort of dumb, but early on I remember not wanting it to be something that could be stapled. I love perfect bound books.

Here are some crappy, blurry cell phone pics since I'm too lazy to get my real camera to take photos.


That page on the left is supposed to be on the right. That page on the right is supposed to be on the next page....

Finished drawing the book over the holiday weekend.

I'm working on the cover this week, then all is ready for printing yummies.

I'm down to the last 6 pages of drawing to complete Broken Chain.

woohoo!

Should be all done this weekend. Then it's off to be printed.

Can't wait to be done with it for many reasons. But the biggest one right now is that I'm sick of drawing in this style! The next (shorter) book will be in a completely different style, that's for sure.

New toy tablet! Yay!


(X61 on the left. TC1100 on the right)

My new tablet finally arrived this week!

I bought a Lenovo X61. It's slightly larger than my old one (12" vs. 10") but it weighs about the same. It has a much higher res screen though, so I have so much more space to draw in. I set up both tablets to show the same file at the same zoom level (400%) so you can see the difference in screen resolution.

I'm loving it.

You can view the 3 photos I uploaded to flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronfg/sets/72157601335315306/

I'll upload some more pics as well as a new video most likely sometime tomorrow or this weekend.

It's so much faster than my TC1100. The pen lag I used to get when working in Flash is almost non-existent. I have 3 weeks of work left for Broken Chain, then it's off to the printers. Gonna be fun fun fun working...

seeing how this works from my phone...

I've been offline for a while. Got a new job and moved all within the same 4 weeks or so. It was a bit crazy.

Good news is, although the new apt is wall to wall covered in boxes that need unpacking, my tablet is unpacked already, so progress on Broken Chain has resumed. I've been working on the train ride home like I used to so I'm making good daily progress. The end is in sight.

Girls on Sofas.

Found via Paul Pope's blog. Amazing work. I did a few sketches based on them:

So I've finally come up for air after a month or so of crazy working. Weekends, late nights, all of that nonsense.

I decided to work on a new painting this weekend to get me back into art mode and out of coding mode. While searching for a larger watercolor pad, I found and older one with this freaky unfinished painting of jeff_manley I was doing last year or so based on a photo he had for his profile pic on his blog way back when:



Creepy eh? I forget why I was planning on making him more and more creepy now. Probably something to do with a random Slushfactory thread. I was going to mail it out when I bought something maybe? I forget now.

"To pick a fight."



I just STEPPED UP and entered into the ring in the Art Fight! thread started by rayfrenden. This is my entry: