Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy belated holidays!

To all who read this, whether a regular or not, I hope that your holiday season contained some joy, some mirth, a bit of good food and drink and a heaping helping of happiness.

Sweet Enemy and I got too frazzled to get a tree this year (I haven't found a design job and worked the holiday season at my local, independent toy store. Lots of fun!). So, our resident Yeti, Mr. Philbert Appleshrug generously allowed us to decorate him for the Yuletide. Here he is on Xmas morning:



The two gifts below at his feet were both for S.E. I'd had them kicking around my studio for a while (one since August!). The first she opened was Rocco Vargas: The Dark Forest" by Daneil Torres. I am blessed to have a wife who not only likes sequential art and sci-fi, but likes quirky, retro sequential art and sci-fi! If you also like those things, check Torres out. He's pretty awesome (and Spanish).

Her next gift was Terry Pratchett's latest (and possibly last) Tiffany Aching novel "I Shall Wear Midnight". Now, the thing about these gifts, is that they weren't something that only SE would like (I love Pratchett and I was the one who introduced her to Torres) and that made me feel a bit cheap. However, the true gift was that I did not even open them for a moment before she did; they were wrapped at the store immediately upon purchase. She graciously said that was good enough.

Our families were very generous to us and I, for one, always feel like I didn't deserve such generosity. Thanks guys.

One of the things I got was a gift certificate to my local, independent bookstore. Which I used yesterday to buy Jake Parker's newest Missile Mouse adventure. At times it feels aimed at an audience a bit younger than the first, at other times it doesn't. Throughout, however, Parker's art is solid and sweet. He also includes a "Universe of Missile Mouse" section that showcases his cool schematics and process work from the MM universe.

If you haven't read MM, do so. If you want to win copies of both books AND some ORIGINAL ART(!) hit jake's website for details on how to win.

In Obscure Tales news, AndreZero is working on fleshing out a new story I concepted while drinking an Americano at the bookstore while reading MM (inspiring is another adjective to give to Mr. Parker's work). No date set, but I've already started doing production design. I can't say what it's about, but it will push my abilities, that I'm sure of.

Well, I've got a date to go watch Dr. Who (10th doctor and Martha) with Sweet Enemy. Have I mentioned her awesomeness?

Monday, December 6, 2010

It's time!

Firstly, the new AndreZero-penned Obscure Tales episode is up. I give you:

Interrogation 101.

Enjoy!

Secondly, the meager response to the free drawing giveaway means that all posters get one! I'll work on them in order of posting and new-ness. So, in order, it's: 1) Decapod 2) Arjan 3) Rambler 4) Snab. Get your thinking caps on and decide what you want. Hit my portfolio and dig up my email (you're now part of a special crew) and let me know what you want. We'll work out shipping once I'm done drawing.

In other news, we survived the huge wind storm (90 MPH gusts) out here last week just fine. Only two trees down, and that means firewood next year. We did lose power for three days due to a four-meter pine branch hanging on the lines. Sweet Enemy, Bernie the Fat Cat and I made the best of it, though; sitting in our stove-room, heating tortillas on the wood stove by the light of our glass-chimney'd oil lamp. We read comics and ghost stories and basically enjoyed a small technology-free vacation. I took some video of the trees in our woods blowing like wheat; if I can get it off of the camera, I'll post it.

Power was back on Friday thanks to the hard work of the CVPS crews. There were 25,000 out total in our county and some friends were still without power; they had a large maple across the road and hanging on the lines at EACH end of their road.

We do have to call a tree surgeon as a big pine right next to the house has developed a vertical crack in one of its large (8") branches. Creepy.

Pax!

Listening to while posting, Symphony #7 by Antonin Dvorak on VPR Classical