Gamerlad Ep.5

There are only two people I know of that will get the entirety of this comic. This one's for yous... This is also the first time I have drawn the beardy one without glasses. Wow. Talk about milestones right?

First day back to uni was alright. Two group projects. Gotta make a magazine, concentrating on typography and... Crap. I should know this... An infographic type deal, 2 pages plus cover/intro page. Should be fun. Two more papers to find out about. One of them I'm really not looking forward to. "VCD & Business". It sounds foreboding, and despite it having VCD in the title, I doubt there will be very little visual communication and design involved. Its gonna be all those letters and numbers and things boring people use to get their point across. I wouldn't be caught DEAD doing that sort of thing... Probably wouldn't be caught doing much at all really if I was dead to be honest. I was gonna use that time to rest in piece.

Gamerlad Ep.4

Because the obvious thing to do is storm into the store and accost the lowly employee for putting their building there. Well tomorrow is the first day back to uni and I have to get up at 6. So expect increasingly grumpier posts over the next while.

The Vietnam War (NZ Band)

Gamerlad Ep.3

He's resilient and hyperactive. Its a fun combination. I really wanna see how far I can push this character. He seems like a less broody, lanky version of Femur. It's the spiky hair I think.

Gamerlad Ep.2

Because nothings more dramatic than jumping from candy floss coloured buildings.

NOM

Gamerlad Ep.1

Gamerlad is an old blog I keep around just to neglect, I decided I should put the name to good use.
I believe I drew this little brosif way back in the day. Although he looks a bit cooler now in my opinion.

Pikachu with a Mother.

SUCKER!

Cosbys at the Pools

This masterpiece was coloured by the gorgeous Vanilla Fiction. Yeah, now your going to associate her name with contaminated pools.

Shrink Ray

The small print DID warn that what gets shrunk is entirely random. He should have invested in an enlarge ray, that way he could render microscopes obsolete. I saw a lot of these GIRL stickers around town, new and colourful, which is nice. Although her tummy must by that of a python or something.

GIRL

Robots Will Kill / H© (?)

Baseball Pt.2

And never again did he try and help the youth. Trust me, he didn't. What with them and their belief in spaghetti monsters.

Flying Spaghetti Monster

TRUSTME / Cut Collective

Baseball Pt.1

Finally I've managed to get some more graff pics. Ill be drip feeding them over the next couple posts.

Adventure Time

This character isn't iconic yet, but one day it will be up there with the rest of them. This is Finn the human, from the relatively new series Adventure Time on Cartoon Network. I don't want to gush on about its quirks, but Ill tell you it's definitely worth your while checking out. As soon as I saw it I felt like they had brought my blobby person world to life, although it deals with less relationship drama than my blobbys do. I would go as far as to say it's better than Spongebob.
Jake the dog, Finn's best friend and backup when he goes on adventures, is voiced by the dude who does Bender btw, if that means anything to you.

Reckless Island

Cause you know, the best thing to do after a heart to heart conversation is to try and run people down with your floating pinata island. Turns out I have no idea how to draw my little people from more than one angle. I knew this problem would turn up at some point.
I've promoted it before, but one of the coolest things on Youtube these days is the vids done by Original Skateboards. They're something you watch when you want to chill out and feel cool at the same time. Plus the music is fantastic. Check out their latest 5 part series, Texas Sessions.

Do You Ever Lie?

the alternate answer being: "Awww yeah nah yeah nah yeah nah?" (It's an NZ thing.)

I seem to be on a lag with all the news at the moment, but don't worry, I'm sure on this particular piece you are probably hearing it for the first time and don't care. But Beirut, a fantastic band, have released a new single. I think you should hear it, and love it. He first wrote the song when he was 17, I've heard a live version of it before, but a proper studio recording does it the justice it deserves. No screaming people and other noise pollution getting in the way. This is also a good way to announce that they have a new album coming out August 30th called The Rip Tide. Which would be a horrendous name for an icecream (That one's for you Harry.)
Anyway, here's the single "East Harlem".

Identity: Femur pt.1

Osseous, or Femur as he is now called, continues his adventure into the city. I don't know how often I'll draw it. Hopefully fairly regularly, and when this part (More like a epilogue to the first episode) is done I'll put it all together as a nifty little pdf for you to easily flick through.

He Kicked

I was told not to do this one, but it was said during a lot of laughter, so I took it as a "You shouldn't, but you really should."
The internet always likes a little Cyanide & Happiness humour anyway.
I know I'm about a month to late to comment on this piece of current affairs: Alasdair Thompson and his sexist comments about women. He had the gall to say that some women have "sick problems" once a month. Wtf man, how can you be so callous. Soon your gonna be saying that some women feed smaller people with their breasts. Or maybe your gonna start saying women have feminine facial features. Rein it in bro, no one likes a truth spreader. 
Its strange that people are jumping on him about this. It seems to me that he wasn't using it as an excuse to pay women less, rather an explanation as to why. We should probably be thanking him for bringing it to the publics attention really. If there are pay gaps between men and women doing the same job then that's something to be seriously looking into.
There's a bill being put up by the Green Party that will allow women to have access to information about pay rates in their workplace to test if there is gender-based discrimination. I'm assuming this is generalized information about pay rates, since knowing individual pay rates of people could be disastrous. It's a bit like having someones health records. It's fine for the doctor and you, but you don't want everyone else knowing you have a funky STD, incontinence, and an erectile dysfunction. I mean, people probably know about the incontinence already, but explaining how you got the STD when you have problems getting it up would be a real pain in the ass to explain.

The Body Effect

I've been drawing huge headed little dudes almost full time for the past couple months and I've started to miss my crazy disproportionate woman. And as I mentioned earlier, I have Photoshop CS5, and I'm having fun with the new brushes. No more calligraphy brush set for me! No sir. Time to go for something a little more natural.
Also added to the library page of my blog is Becky's comic from uni. It's the first thing in the library to have not been created by me. I recommend you read it! Its more entertaining than mine.

Unused Back Cover

This is an action packed back cover that I didn't end up using on my comic. Speaking of which, It's now online. Go ahead and try and read it. It recieved a stunning review from my teacher, who gave it an A (got an A for my research and processing as well, which was the first half of the paper.)
But don't let me bore you with that, let Elette do that!

"A highly entertaining comic, which is what it's all about. Very original story + well written dialogue is intelligent + engaging. Original style and look - love the splash page - stronger than cover, though it works too. Integration of hand + digital is great - some nice effects. Seamless continuity, clear and easy to follow - possibly pushing the number of frames per page. You know your characters + work views and frame sizes demonstrates control, clear vision, + nicely paced. Simple colour cues scene changes + mood. Found main character too grey on page 1 - more noticeable because more about b+w."

Lots of pluses right? She could have used one of those on my grade instead of wasting them on the critique.

Wacky Movie Logic

2000 down, see you at the finish line of 2500. I decided to revive two of my characters from my Izak*Steve Days. Probably the most ill conceived series in the history of ever. Not bad for something I never properly planned, and it made me super awesome at drawing with the mouse. Come to think of it I did that comic pretty much daily as well. So I guess this isn't the first time I haven't done this "daily doodle" business.
If you thought this comic was lame you should see the original punchline.
In other news, people walk at the speed of death. Which is quite slow for no one familiar with death. Slow disease ridden death...

Tiny Frozen Coke

The other day I was in Albany after getting off the bus. I was waiting for Becky, so I decided to wait in the BK nearby. I was broke, and was unsure on how much money (If any) was in my account. So I made do with the change in my pocket, which was only a dollar something. The only thing I could afford on the menu that I wanted was a frozen coke "small". Well, I've never gotten small before, I'm one of those people that reflexively orders "large" and then throws out the excess of chips I'm left with. So I was rather shocked at how small small really is. The guy had to do a quick tap on the machine to fill the cup to the brim. It was so small I was expecting to row up beside me waiting for their share of communion or something. The straw dominated the tiny cup, they should really make small straws as well since this is meant for a breed of person that obviously has a smaller mouth and hands.
I have Photoshop CS5 now. Which is nice. Although its not as though CS4 is from the dim dark past or anything. Adobe has gotten silly on their release dates, bringing out a new creative suite every year with only minor touch ups and a little facelift to match whatever operating system is out at the time. It's only a matter of time before they're releasing "CS summer edition" "CS June 14th edition".
Another post when the essays word count reaches 2000.

Femur Panels #3

1000 words of the essay done. 1500 to go. I guess this is easy to write about since I can twist it around to be about a subject I actually enjoy. Only one subtle comment in it so far, I'm debating whether on keeping it in there or not. But I think it's innocent enough and easy to miss.
  "Shortly after the Second World War society entered a new period of thought called postmodernism. It became a time of social change. The second wave of Feminism began in the 60s, men went to the moon, Woodstock, the Berlin wall falling and many other events created an exciting period of time."
 Screw this! I'm going to the moon *blasts off*

See you at wordcount: 1500

Femur Panels #2

500 Words down. Sweet. Here's another set of panels from the comic. I'm considering relaying out the entire comic instead of doing a straight upload of the final product. A4 has never really worked as a good format of page size on monitors (I feel). Since I made that particular mistake for three whole years, I'm in no mood to try it again on something I have half lovingly crafted.
See you guys when word count for the essay hits 1000.

Femur Panels #1

I handed in the comic yesterday. It was rather dramatic. I finished correcting some typos in it, rebooted my computer (Because the net didn't seem to be working quite right) and then witnessed my computer have a siezure, promptly followed by death. It was traumatizing. Nothing seemed to work. My monitor insisted that the computer was doing crazy shit. My parents monitor agreed with it, but decided to let me have a sneak peak at my busted system. I managed to copy paste my files in safe mode and get them printed out nice and good. The pc had to be wiped and started fresh. Software failure somewhere in there. Possibly drivers.
At the printing place I came in with Becky, I was flustered and had no idea what to say. I argued with the guy saying I had ten pages. He told me its physically impossible to create a booklet with only ten pages. After thinking about it I realized I had in fact 12, and that's a brilliant number to have. He then asked what I wanted to print it on. "Paper?" I replied. God bless that man for taking care of my useless print job, he picked a nice stock for my comic, and it looks good. Apart from the really really close trim.

Time to start my essay. Ill post some more when I get my word count to 500.

2512 Intake Starting Now

Well I have pretty much finished the comic. Expect excerpts etc over the next couple days. and a bit after that, a new addition to the library. Woo. Go progress and productivity right?

I hand the printed version of the comic in for marking tomorrow. Should be exciting holding a real life version of it.

Nobody Likes Crust

I was walking home with a loaf of bread. I happened to pass some guy that looked homeless (You never know he could be a king dressed as a scabby dirty old man). It got me thinking, thus the creation of this strip. I explained the idea to Becky, who was shocked that I would offer the crust away, rather than wanting to give him a nice soft bit. I was raised with the saying that Beggars can't be choosers. So as far as I'm concerned the choosing is a job best left to me. And besides. We would have just taken it home, eaten the rest of the loaf, and left the two bits of crust for an obligatory amount of time till either mum caves and throws it out, or someone takes one for the team and eats it.
My posting has become sporadic of late, but rather than offer up a lame excuse and a promise of consistency, I will instead leave you with some more homegrown music to keep you entertained in the meantime. Sola Rosa is one of those projects that has something new to stick on your ear with each album. If you want a slightly more dancey version of this album go check out the Remixes.

I'm A Dragon

Turns out I can't draw dragons.
Speaking of which, check out Episode 0.3 of the text adventure! If you run into any problems feel free to figure it out by yourself.

Free sign

I was on the bus one day and I saw a mattress on the side of the road with a white board propped on it. On the whiteboard was written "Free!". I didn't care much about the mattress (Which I realize mirrors that one Death Cab for Cutie song), But I was stoked about the idea of having a free whiteboard.

Awesome Conversation

Another random thought I had. Quite often I am the last person to add something to a conversation. Whether the conversation was nearing its natural death or my words were so potent people had to stop to think about it I'm not sure. Sometimes I'm referred to as the human punctuation mark. Which is funny, because I have no idea how to apply punctuation'

Forgotten Undies

There's always a sure fire laugh loaded into every occasion they call the kids to the front to listen to a story or something at church.

My Hands!

Oooh, I like the colouring in this one. In a world of little amputees, digits are an alien site.

Garfield

This is the last of the planned tributes. Yes, I left the worst till last. Garfield is a boring ass syndicated comic. It makes sure to offend nobody, and entertain nobody as well. Actually I liked it when I was a kid because it was pictures with speech bubbles in boxes lined up. I had no concept on what was good or bad. Adam, my little right hand man nephew went and churned his way through all my old Garfield books and loved them. I heard him and his sisters quote them once or twice, hating on Mondays.
Which makes me think, really little kids like Garfield, but its presented in the newspaper. Does that say something about the readership of papers? Or is this like placing Dora the Explorer in the back of a porno?

Tintin

I wanted to do something a little more dramatic for Tintin, due to the upcoming release of the movie. Which looks friggin fantastic. Spielberg AND Peter Jackson. To be honest I'm more excited about Jackson than I am Spielberg. Hopefully since its animated we won't be seeing any of Jacksons weird "slow motion blurry action where you can't really tell whats going on" thing.
** There was a bit here where I confused George Lucas with Spielberg. See this comic for another example of me not knowing who anyone in the movie business is.**
anyway, I lump Tintin in along with Asterix (& Obelix). They were in the same era for me, and both were released in the same format. Full A4 sheets, which I don't see often in comics.
I wasn't as big a fan though of Tintin, it was to wordy for me as a kid. It's not as though I could read that well then anyway. But some panels would almost be completely text. I guess thats so Herge could cut corners and not need to keep drawing backgrounds all the time. He never once took the Asterix route of backgrounds. Whenever Uderzo got bored of doing backgrounds he just slapped a flat colour in there, pink, red, it doesn't matter, people get the jist. Not old Herge, he did every single panel.