The Internets has (have?) Spoken

Aaaaand apparently my shirt isn't fit for print. 1.2 average score out of 5 after 24 hours of voting.

Not completely surprising, but there ya have it. I'm going to go ahead and assume that everybody was confused like Mueller and gave it a 1 when they meant to give it a 5.

Let me continue living in my own little fantasy world.

Thanks for voting everybody. I'll let you know if I try out any other t-shirt designs. Maybe I should slap a comic on a shirt and see what happens.

Immodest Alternating Current Connector

Hey there everybody.

Recently I was tasked with designing a shirt for an upcoming JDEdwards Alumni event. JDE is the honors program which I was a part of during college round 1 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The idea behind the program is to give students the knowledge to become managers who understood not only the business requirements of a given task, but also what was going on with the technology side of things as well.

I created a couple of different shirt designs, and the one that wasn't chosen for the Alumni event I decided to submit to Threadless.com. Well the shirt has made it to the voting stage, so this is where I ask you to vote for my stuff, because if you read my comic you obviously care about everything else in my life, right?. Here's the design:

One of the things I see more often than I'd like is the overuse of Powerpoint in business. I really dislike Powerpoint, not because it's a bad product but because it's so easy pick up that people tend to use it in horrible, mind numbing ways.

The idea behind the shirt is that Management + Technology is more than just Powerpoint, which I thought tied in nicely with the goals of the JDEdwards Program. So if you have a moment, click on the thumbnail above (or on the sidebar for that matter) and give it a vote.

The reason it wasn't picked for the JDEdwards Alumni event is because it's a little obscure, and requires some explanation, which I kind of like in a shirt. From the comments on Threadless that people have posted so far, seems like others agree.

Thanks everybody.

Ages 3 - 25

During last weekend, I attended a 2 year old's birthday party. No, I wasn't trying to meet Mariska Hargitay, from Law & Order: SVU, this was the child of one of emily's coworkers. Before the party, we had to get some sort of gift for the little guy. As we wandered through the toy aisle, scanning for something the the kid wouldn't choke on, I began thinking about toys from my own childhood.

My parents pretty much spoiled me rotten, so I typically didn't go wanting for toys (I had one of these, remember?) Probably my only disappointment was never actually owning a Power Wheel. Those things were awesome. I wanted one of the Jeep off-roading kinds so that I could cruise around the construction sites near my house, helping the workers with my sweet front end towing winch.

We ended up getting the birthday boy something along the lines of a Hot Wheels racing set, but the temptation to pick up something for myself was fierce to say the least.

(Click to Enlarge)

Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen...

This last weekend I once again found myself in Austin, TX for the one and only Austin City Limits Festival. Let me start off by saying that it was fantastic. I highly recommend if you can make it. Happens every year. With three days of music to listen to - in all honesty I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get a comic done. Luckily, I had the help of one Ross Mau.

And so without further ado, a guest comic to cover for my laziness. I believe Ross would like to say a few words of introduction.

I was very pleased that I had the opportunity not only to help out my buddy Wheezy, but I also got to experience something unique when two artistic minds collaborate to create something truly original and ground breaking.

(Click to Enlarge)

So I feel like my comic strip debut went well. I'll be answering questions in the comments section if anyone has any questions on some of the artistic liberties I took in recreating a true life story. For example, you may notice I included my dog Coco, but not Mario. If you were an illustrator you would already know that sometimes an illustrator is physically limited by his chosen medium, but one must strive to overcome those limitations. I have achieved that here by putting Coco's bark in black, which happens to be the color Mario is. The more astute readers may also realize that black was one of the predominant colors in the scheme I chose. Well, I'll leave the tips up to Dan, I don't want to start stepping on his toes in his blog.

Before somebody (I'm looking at you Ben) mentions it in the comments, I already asked Ross why he drew a sun in what I assume is our old living room. Apparently he felt that his artistic talents were best utilized when recreating large orbs of burning hydrogen.

Is A-Ha still hiring?

Hey there folks. Just thought I'd give you another quick school update, since I know that's the real reason you come here. Sorry you have to suffer through so many comics to get to the good stuff.

In the event that both the movie industry and my gig with Dire Straights don't pan out, for the last month I've been working on some 2D animation skills during my aptly named "2D Animation" class.

This isn't Flash or anything like that. This is drawing on pieces of paper, lots of pieces of paper, then flipping them back and forth over and over again (like a flipbook), all the while erasing and fixing the horrible mistakes you made the first few times around. Once you've got to a point that you think looks good, you take digital images of all of your drawings, then make it into a video. The purpose of this class was to give us a good solid background in traditional "animation", that we can then carry over to the digital 3D world.

My teacher, Kathy Blackmore, was an animator for Disney for around 8 years, working on projects such as Brother Bear, Lilo and Stitch, and Mulan. Pretty amazing credentials in the 2D world. During the class, we did small projects that demonstrated various principles of animation.

So here's what I've been working on and although they look pretty simple, they took quite a bit of effort. I've looped all of the them because they're so short. Some are meant to be looped, others will have a bit of a jump when they go back to the beginning. Hope you enjoy!

Facebook viewers - click here to see the videos.

Now at least I've got A-Ha as a backup.

Money Well Spent

As anybody who knows me can attest to, I'm rather adept at spending money. Especially when I'm actually collecting a paycheck. I mean come on. I own one of these for goodness sake.

Since starting college round two, however, I've had to take a closer look at my day to day habits and try to decide why I spend money on certain things. I think just analyzing the reasons behind a purchase before actually slapping the money down has helped my wallet quite a bit.

I'm not saying that I'm perfect by any means, but obvious financial pitfalls are starting to become painfully obvious.

(Click to Enlarge)

Say Everything

I often find myself marveling at the amazing technology that's at my finger tips on a daily basis. I'll be sitting there - watching TV while chatting with a buddy halfway across the world, reading Mueller's blog while simultaneously working on a comic. All from one magical little machine.

It's mind boggling. And of course it's only becoming more incredible as time moves on. Back in the day, I remember sitting at my IBM 8086, turning on the ol' 1440 external modem, dialing up and listening to what sounded like a family of cats dying in order to connect to my local BBS. Now it's possible to do about a thousand times more than that on your way to work.

And as awesome as all of this is, there are moments when I yearn for a simpler time without all the advanced tech. I think things would be a little less complicated for your day to day life. At the very least it would be easier to plan grand romantic gestures without the possibility of complete and total disaster.

(Click to Enlarge)