School Supplies are Critical to making Friends

Today is officially my first day of being registered as a college freshman. Again.
At 9:30 AM I am required to be in attendance at Full Sail for orientation. This will be the first time I've actually had to be awake before 10:00 in about 2 months.

Horrid life I lead, I realize.

This whole going back to school thing got me thinking about the first time around, and how exactly I met all the people I hung out with. The majority of my friendships were instigated by living in the dorms with all the same people year in and year out. We'd leave our doors open, invite each other to the C Store as we walked down the hall, borrow movies frequently, and generally just hang out with anybody and everybody, at least once. It was so ... easy.

Full Sail, however, has no dorms, and not much of a campus to speak of. It's basically 4 buildings.
Since I'm now going to be commuting to school, the only chance I'll have to befriend my classmates will be actually during class. Considering a large portion of the students will be straight out of high school, I've got a pretty good idea of how my interactions with these youngin's will go.

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I guess I could just drift through school without actually making any friends ... but I think I'll give it a shot anyway so I have some people around should I need to pull a Dead Man on Campus.

Oscar Reflections

That I desperately want the TV show Entourage to come back. I realize that didn't have a whole lot to do with the Oscars themselves - but as I was watching Will Ferrel and Jack Black be awesome as usual, I wondered if I had missed an appearance from the Entourage crew, since they tend to show up at these award show things.

Anyway - I took a momentary break from drawing comics to try something else I enjoy, drawing celebrities. Here's my attempt at Adrian Grenier from Entourage. Basically I just Google image searched him, saved the picture, and "traced" it in Photoshop with the ol' Wacom.




Not an exact replica, I admit. I thought the hair turned out pretty well though. And I did it in about 5 minutes. Which I, personally, was impressed by. Fast sketchin! I could be a street artist if this whole computer animation thing doesn't pan out.

If you haven't watched Entourage - I highly recommend it. Seasons 1 and 2 are out on DVD, and season 4 starts April 8th. If you're low on funds, there are other methods of getting into the show, which this blog does not condone. Seriously.

The Penance Stare works on hippy thieves too

Anybody see Ghost Rider this weekend? I did. Along with $42.5 million worth of other ticket holders, once again proving that nobody really listens to critics anyway. Apparently they pretty much straight hated it.

WaffleMovies had this to say:

"I kept hoping the Scooby Doo gang would come out, rip the mask off of Cage and reveal Ghost Rider really is crazy old man Ben Affleck! That would explain so much."

Kudos to WaffleMovies for conjuring images of Freddy Prinze Jr. and Ben Affleck together in my head without making me vomit like usual.

In all reality it isn't insanely bad. Nicholas Cage's acting was the best part, surprising as that may be. But even with his mad acting chops, I couldn't get into it. There's just something about the way Ghost Rider does battle on screen just takes away any semblance of serious action.

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I'd avoid laying eyes on Ghost Rider 'till you flip past it on TBS sometime next week.


PS. Mary, if you're reading this - I apologize. I figured that 42.5 million would be enough to let you keep your job and everything. That and, there's like ... two people who read this blog anyway.

Too Little Too Late National Lampoon's

Apparently somebody over at National Lampoon's is reading my blog. Because they're completely ripping off my ideas.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1742377/

But, despite this incontrovertible evidence that they straight ripped me off. I've decided not to press charges. After all, National Lampoon did give us so many wonderful hours of entertainment. I'll let this one slide.

Of course, maybe it was just such an obvious joke about two pieces of pop culture that I really shouldn't blame them. Although I did think of it / implement it first.

I guess this means I'm as funny as National Lampoon.

That might be a bad thing.



Speaking of plagarism - this is an extremely interesting article about the Stand-Up Comedy scene. IAnd if you didn't see it a few days ago, check out the Carlos Mencia / Joe Rogan thing on my Interesting Internets feed.

Look but don't touch...

For those who don't know, my previous employer, National Instruments has an unofficial (I think?) blog called the VI Roadshow. They tend to post links to applications that use NI products, and their latest post is really awesome.

A group of engineering students from the University of Illinois used LabVIEW, a graphical programming language created by NI, to create a wheelchair that could be controlled with your thoughts. The benefit of this is immediately apparent for quadriplegics and the like, but other ramifications of this wonderful innovation make me a little ... hesitant.

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That comic was created completely and totally in Photoshop using my new Wacom. I'm really interested to hear what everybody thinks. Better or worse than Flash?

Gone in a Flash

Some of you may remember that I bought a tablet PC a couple years ago in the hopes that I could crank out the comics faster.

Well, the tablet software and Flash just didn't do the trick. It was sluggish at best - and really non conducive to drawing nice non-wobbly/non-pixelated lines.

I think part of the problem was just the specs on the tablet. Regardless, as most of you know, it didn't result in the explosion of comics I had hoped it would. Then I cracked the screen. Then I never used it much again.

Well, for Valentine's Day emily gave me one of those Wacom's that I had mentioned in a previous post. She's something ain't she?

It's fantastic. Good sensitivity, responsive, works with PCs and Macs, which will become important here in a couple weeks.

In case you don't like clicking on links like the one above, here's a picture:


Here's my first attempt at something reasonably reminiscent of my normal comic stuff:


I'm pretty happy with it. The use of a pressure sensitive pen tends to give the character more depth since I can more easily adjust the thickness of the lines. I'm still getting used to it, and I'm not gauranteeing it'll increase comic output, but all in all it's a good step I think.

Oh - did I mention that I drew that in Photoshop, and not Flash?

Times they be a-changin.

You sure do got a purdy mouth...

Hey faithful blog readers and bored internet browsers alike. Welcome back.

Ok, I realize that you weren't actually gone. I was. For the last week I was visiting my extended family in Arkansas. We stayed at my grandma's place, and since the last time I was there a couple of things have changed. First of all, her old wooden console tv has been replaced by glorious 30 something-ish inch flat screen DLP, and second of all Sprint has extended their cellular coverage to sort of kinda reach her house.

What hasn't changed is her complete lack of internets. No wireless, wired, high speed nor dial-up. No intertubes, no interwebs. Nada.

It was painful.

To think of all the wonderful things I missed over the last week.

Anyway - returning from Arkansas to a world with internet felt absolutely liberating. Like returning from a week long vision quest or something.

Tried something new this time - a little mix of hand drawn and Flash drawn. Crazy.

Plagiarism is Fun

I've recently rediscovered my love of comic books, in no small part due to the TV show Heroes. I've heard some people call that show the new Lost (although I'm still absolutely on the Lost bandwagon), and I've heard other people claim it has already jumped the shark.

Regardless, I watched all the episodes online, then pretty much went straight to the nearest comic book store and picked up some Spidey comics. Then I decided to sketch some of the pictures directly out of there and show everybody how well I can draw... things that other people already drew... better than I did.

Anyway, here's some Cyclops and Spider-Man goodness.

I apologize for the half naked dude in this post. My bad.

That's Colossus in the background of the Spidey image. I always love how Spider-Man's cloth eye holes can change size to express his emotions. I wish they would have figured out how to do that in the movies. Apparently here, Spider-Man is confused. Or he's got some dust in his right eye.

In the hopes of not completely alienating the few readers I have by turning this into a blog about Spider-Man, if anybody has a request for a sketch of something or whatever, throw a comment my way. It'll be good practice.

Aqua Teen Terror Force

I dunno if any of you have heard about this, but recently there's been a little bit of a bomb scare in Boston.

Cartoon Network has been using some guerrilla marketing (of a higher caliber than Sony's, I suppose) for their upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Essentially what they did was put up magnetic signs feature a their Mooninite character flipping passerbys off. According to reports, the signs had some "dangly" wires, were "covered" in duct tape, and lit up at night. Here is the daytime representation:


They put these signs up in 10 major cities, including New York, Seattle, LA, and Chicago to name a few. Well two weeks later, Boston had a minor breakdown. Some people thought these billboards were bombs, so they called the police. They, in turn, shut down some interstates, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars mobilizing their emergency teams, that sort of thing.

I understand how the citizens of Boston must have felt. I know I'd freak out if I ever saw lights in a city at night.

Now the guys in charge of the marketing idea have been arrested, and Turner Broadcasting may be forced to pay out a huge settlement to the city of Boston.

If only Jack Bauer had been on the scene... maybe this could have all been avoided.
I've heard he likes to swear.

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