Cars

I almost drew some 'rolling stock', but I'm not much of a railroad buff.

So, I'm pretty darn 'eco-conscious. I prefer walking or biking to driving, but, like the vegetarian who succumbs to the siren song of bacon, I like classic cars. Pretty much any car before 1975. If they could make a hybrid SUV that looks exactly like a 1970 Bronco, a '77 Scottdsale Stepside, or a Shelby Cobra, I'd sell my soul for a garage like Leno's.

Anyhoo. I was messing around with extreme (or, extremely silly) 3-point perspective and made these very, very small thumbnails:


Then I decided that I needed to work on my Adobe Illustrator skills. Both were done in about an hour each (not including sketching and scanning). They aren't perfect, but not bad for an hour each. One Shelby Cobra-ish car and one Fastback Mustang-y sort of thing. Enjoy!

Signs

So, I'm going to apologize for this week's offering (SEE! The boring composition! CRINGE! At the terrible perspective! SHUDDER! At the terrible humor!). I have three reasons/excuses.

1) I tore open an old sketchbook and began working on something from it that I'd been meaning to expand on for a while. This took up most of my processor time.

2) All I could think of with this (nearly crappy) topic was The Worst Movie Ever of the same name (WITNESS! The fortitude which I display in not ranting about said film!).

3) I was house-sitting for a friend all weekend and spent a marathon session with their copy of the gigantic coffee table book that has every single cartoon ever printed in the New Yorker.

So, 2+3 - the energy spent on 1 = this:



Again. My apologies.

What I'm listening to as I post: "In the Bath" by Lemon Jelly from 'Lemon Jelly KY"

Non-IF: If anybody would like to critique a comic work I did for a contest back in March, I'd super-appreciate it. This way, please.

citrus

Oh, what a crappy topic. I was tempted to use my anti-crappy-topic-protest-device, but the early daguerreotype-ists already did suggestive soft-core with round fruit.

How this illustration relates to 'citrus' has a bit of a story behind it (I'm not feeling particularly adept at writing, so bear with me). Pictured is a scene from my real life. Kodiak Island, Alaska c. 1990. I was a SAR helicopter crewman at the US Coast Guard Air Station and, as most young men will, bought a crappy beater truck to bomb around the island in. This was a 1970 Bronco and I named it 'Fear'; as in 'we rode in fear' and 'I drive in fear'. You see It had many frightening aspects:
> the original owner replaced the large truck steering wheel with much, much smaller one from an MG;
> the rubber bushings that supported the axle within the truss rods were rotten, so the axle would occasionally drift back and forth;
> at high speeds on washboard roads, it would drift sideways as though on ice;
> there were only lap belts until I installed an old set of helicopter seatbelt/shoulder harnesses (sans interia reel);
> a friend putting in a new floor for me punctured the auxilliary gas tank which would leak into the cabin when full.
> the three-speed on the column would suddenly pop out of gear, often at speed

But, what you see here was the truck early in my ownership. The original owner had, for some asinine reason, coated the entire back bed with roofing tar. Roofing tar! Since I lived in the barracks, an old USCG friend of mine was a petty officer on the CGC Storis and lived in town and had a driveway. He let me park in front of his crappy apartment and spend two days scraping out the bed. His roomate suggested gasoline. But, since I didn't feel like being flamable, we bought a few gallons of...
Wait for it:
Citrisolve to clean out the bed. Two days of hand-cracking orange-smelling liquid and backbreaking labor we found we no longer stuck to my truck's floor. For all its fear-inducing antics, we drove that thing all over the island. Hunting, fishing, camping, paintball, plinking, mountian biking. We used t he heck out of it. We didn't die, but we were often scared.

Here we are:



For the record, I payed $700. I sold it to a friend for $200 and didn't feel ripped off.

Oh, the dog? He lived nearby. His name was Bear and he was a huge Newfie, only with the extra drool package installed. He was super friendly, but when he shook his head, it was like a sitcom.

NEW FEATURE:
What I'm listening to as I post: "Style It Takes" by Lou Reed and John Cale from "Songs For Drella"

neighbor

Well, I actually had this fully drawn and ready to be inked by 9pm on Friday. Then the nice weekend, perfect mountain biking weather. Perfect weather for looking stupid by falling over from a standstill because of the new pedals and cleats I'd gotten to replace the ones I'd been running for four years straight. I was like: "No, really! I've been riding SPDs since '95! Really!". Since then, I'd finally gotten the bug up my wazoo to get cracking on a comic a friend and I are working on. I had one more page to ink to get up to date on the script. So, that took up all of my time until tonight.

Anyhoo, here it is. I feel I've been slacking. I haven't created a totally finished work for IF in a long time. By finished, I mean something that I'd have Sweet Enemy frame and stick on my wall. The piece is an homage to what is arguably one of the best animated films ever: My Neighbor Totoro. If you don't recognize the figure on the left, that's ok. It's supposed to be Fred Rogers. If you don't recognize the figure on the right, GO TO THE VIDEO STORE NOW! No, really. Go.

The title is based on the translation of the movie title from the Japanese. It means, roughly, My Neighbor Mr. Rogers.

Do I get bad joke points?

Remember

So. I actually had the initial sketch of this done by 1700 EST on Friday. Then it sat as I wracked my brain in an attempt to make the sketch something good. It simply refused to be expanded beyond the sketch, no matter how hard Sweet Enemy scolded me that it should be. But, I have sort of persevered. This is still sketch, but with the annoyances of my Micron starting do die halfway through and the far too many attempts at the shrugging hands, I'd reached the 'fuggit' stage. So, here it is.



I am quite forgetful, but only with people's names. When I was working at a bookstore a regular walked in. She was someone with whom I'd had many great conversations, but I could not remember her name! I called the boss over behind a card rack and asked her, in a whisper, what the woman's name was. The manager replied she didn't know. As we were laughing and commiserating about how embarrassing it is to not know her name and how it was too late to ask her, a smiling face popped around the corner of the card rack. "My name's Such-and-Such!" she laughed, "I bet you won't forget it now!"

And I haven't. I've since left the store, but she asked a co-worker to pass on the message that she hates me. You see on my last day she stopped by and I recommended that she pick up the first book in the Bartimeaus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. She's angry because now she has to buy all three of them, darnit.