Sunday, March 26, 2006

Almost My Own Webcomic

...ive been trying to set up another website in addition to this blog but it doesn't seem to be working so i guess this will have to do for now. When all the drawings are assembled it should look something like this.





...and the title of this strip would be "The Parental Suggestive Force". I'm thinking of using "Tentatively Titled" as a title for the comic at least until I come up with a better one. Ok thats all for today.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Colette with Text Balloon

...Ok so here you all go. I lost track of how long this took but i think it was about 4 hours again. My little model would never have been able to stand posing for that long so i cheated a little and used a photo as a reference again.



...I had to do some enhancing and cropping then tracing which went ok untill i went to copy and paste into new picture. I deleted the original trace by mistake. When I realized the paste was wrong i couldn't fix it so I had to start over. Eventually though I stuck with it. I even went into extra and tryed a little more successfully to do text bubbles.



...Of course Renee is really worried 'cause she thinks everyone will think she spends all her time on the couch but let me assure y'all that once all these drawings are amalgamated you'll see thats not the case. More to come. G'night fer now.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Renee On The Couch Watching TV

...as the title would suggest this is Renee on the couch watching TV.



...This one took me about 2 hours to complete. I guess that means i'm getting faster at it. I also tryed some shading like you can see on the couch, the blinds, pillow and Renee's hair. Man I gotta figure out speech bubbles. I could just picture whats written there. I already am thinking of the next panel. But thats for another night.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

My Character and Another Background

...yep yep roughly 4 hours of work and this is what you get...



...lets call em "Phil" circa 1993 fresh outta highschool and ready to rock the world. The Background I'll call the driveway viewed from the street. I think perhaps i'm missing sidwalk cracks and perhaps his jacket needs pockets but I'm too tired now so too bad and its off to bed I go. BTW while I drew this I kept bouncing between "Here I Go Again by Whitesnake" and "Bolivard of Broken Dreams by Green Day".

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Hurt

...something happened at work today. As much as I want to spill all the details I can't. The fear of being suied or dismissed keeps it that way. I guess the only way I can express the way I feel is for you to have a listen to Hurt by Johnny Cash. The track appears on the last record he did before he died. To make matters worse on the way back from having dinner tonight I had a flat tire. 7:45pm No tire joints are open that late so I guess I'll be driving on my spare till sometime tommorow. So many thoughts running through my head. Where to start, I don't know. Hopefully tomorow will be better. Hopefully....

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Another Dinner Scetch

...maaaan I just love eating out at resturants. Especially ones where they give the kids crayons and activity placemats. I always end up drawing something. Last night we went to a certain resturant. OK here's a hint. Imagine there is a city in the US that is not only famous for the Bruins hockey team but they also make great Pizza. Got it? So anyway we were seated and I was able to watch the last period of the Toronto Maple Leafs beating the Tampa Bay Lightning. So what would you draw? I drew this.....


...well now thats some powerfull scanner you can see the reflection of the front of the paper with logo of said resturant near his skates. Guess one disadvantage of using crayon as a medium is there is no means to correct small mistakes. If you guess them I don't have any prizes. Anyway more artwork to come.

Friday, March 10, 2006

It starts like this

…well here goes after reading through Jeph's tutorial on how he draws I've decided to jump in and try some of this crazy webcomic stuff. I have plenty of ideas on characters and locations but not much on story or plot lines yet. In a way I've always thought my life was somewhat comical at times so it might be loosly autobiographical in nature. The trick will of course be creating characters that are near to my personal experiences without infringing on anyones likeness. More on that later. For now I'm going to try to concentrate on locations. I think I'll start with my rocking chair. For reference I've photographed it.















...then using Adobe Photoshop Elements a few hours later I came up with this...

















...not bad eh? Well thats it for tonight next up will be the couch.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Omigod Omigod Omigod

...wahoooooozorz I'm like totally psyched. Our income tax return came in and i'm like ka-ching way cool now i can buy that drawing tablet. WOAH hoooold it. Looks like i made a mistake. The one I almost bought would have been a problem. It uses Bluetooth wireless technology (which is cool) but since i don't have no steeenking bluetooth port it might not work to well. Lucky for me the store i went to happened to also carry the higher end models. For $20 more I got this model. Shure its smaller than this but what i lose in surface area I more than gain in functionality. I don't bother with the mouse because I was able to leave my other mouse plugged in. I musta spent 5 or 6 hours playing with it and the bundled software (mainly Photoshop Elements 3) this makes drawing super easy. I also love the functionality of it within windows itself. Well i gotta go but be shure to check back often because I promise some new artwork will be appearing soon.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Brake job

...Oh maaaaan. So like I finally did the front brakes on the car. I had this whole plan in my head that I was going to set up the tripod and document everything in a photo essay. I had read the manual several times to make sure I knew exactly what had to be done. First I had to get the parts. What an adventure that was. The first store had only the pads. For rotors I had to go to the warehouse location across the river. Of course when I got there it was only to find they did not have them after all. Turns out the first store might have sold me the wrong ones because the second store in looking for them discovered the ones they did have plenty of the stock number had the last two numbers reversed. Well I needed some other supplies so I got them there and then went to store number three. At store number three not only did they have the rotors they also had the pads. Why oh why did I not simply go there first??? By that time the girls where super hungry so we went ate and then home to crash. Next day no time to lose I get out the jack and jackstands. Put the car on the stands and took off the first wheel. Looked ok there oh wait gotta take out some brake fluid from resovier. Nope can't do that the MAF sensor and resonance chamber in the way. No problem right? wrong i got the air box cover off but still had to bend and tuck intake hose and resonance chamber under engine cover. Ok so now i gotta remove the guide pins. WTF they are 7mm allen wrenches. In all my many toolboxes I have 6 and 8 but no 7mm. Best i could do was 1/4 inch which did the job but not perfectly. Got the calipers off and pryed off the outward pad. Oh ya gotta compress the caliper to make room for new pads. That c clamp I bought came in handy. Ok so now i set the new pads in the caliper but wait the inner one seems loose. Lucky for me a friend of my wife came by. Her husband is a mechanic and pointed out that on closer inspection i had two outside pads (thanks much Wayne). I probably would have figured that out but thanks to him I was saved the time. The rotor came off relatively easily. Everything went back together easily so on to the other side. Uh oh the top guide pin would not come off. I could get the caliper off if the rotor was off. The rotor wouldn't budge. I had to take a mallet to it to beat it off. With the rotor off I was able to wrestle the pads out of the caliper and then slide off the caliper from the guide pin. I put the new pads in the caliper and the new rotor on the hub. Then i called my friend who was already on the way to stop in at an unidentifed auto parts store to pick up a 7mm allen wrench. Wouldn't you know it but sure enough the allen wrench sets they sell do not include a 7mm. Plan B time for vice grips. They did the trick. I removed that stubborn guide pin put the caliper back in place greased the pin up and put it back on. I got them as tight as I could with only the 1/4 inch wrench. I don't own a torque wrench so tight as i could will have to do.
Turns out this was also true for the wheel bolts. When I finally got everthing back together i went for a spin around the block everything seemed ok so when i got back i cleaned up and Renee and I went to Langley. On the way back we noticed there was a bit of vibration on the passenger side. Shure enough I was able to tighten the wheel bolts even more. Went for a drive 5 blocks away and it seemed that the vibration was gone. Cool all done. Well until next project or picture bye for now...