February stuff

Well, how about that? It's a February miracle! It snowed in Hilton Head! And the snow sticked to the ground! Granted, by the next morning, all evidence of the light dusting of snow that had fallen the night before disappeared. But it was enough to excite us all. I'm not exactly a stranger of snow, having grown up in North Carolina, where it's expected to get some sort of wintery precipitation, albeit as little as an inch. However, snowing here occurs almost as often as a presidential assassination. So you can also understand the paranoia and hype about roads closing and shutting down the bridge so there wouldn't be any road fatalities. Well, unfortunately, I still caught two cars lying in a shallow ditch which goes to prove that us Southerners still don't know how to drive in winter weather.

In art-related news, I've been checking out John Kricfalusi's animation blog (of Ren & Stimpy fame). It was both inspiring and a bit eye-opening to show just how terrible cartoons were in the 70s and 80s and just simply amazing they were back in the 30s-50s (namely Looney Tunes). Of course, I had to watch old episodes of Ren & Stimpy, which still astounds me that that show was able to get away with half of the stuff it did. I was inspired enough to draw some old Street Fighter characters in a more animated style.

Of course, my good friend Kate reminded me after I drew this, that I had violated one of the big "no-nos" of animation: "twinning," which is making any part of the character's pose symmetrical. Note the amateurish mistake made by yours truly on the legs. Ah well. It's a learning process.

Today is Valentine's Day (I'm currently writing this at 1:30 am after finishing cleaning the rat cage), which means for those of us working in the food and beverage industry that we have a long day ahead of us. That also means that my wife and I can't celebrate Valentine's on the 14th, so we went ahead and had a nice dinner at Carrabba's a few days before, and Nikki made a wonderful french toast with cheese and fruit for breakfast the next morning. I made her a card with some familiar figures on the back.
Anyway, not much else to say. We're planning on going to a She + Him concert in Savannah next month, and in April we will be visiting my parents near Durham, NC. There we'll see a tour of Wicked, and who knows what else? I'd like to take a day trip to Asheville, but that may not happen given on how little time we have to spend up there.

Man, I miss money

I didn't mean to make this a monthly blog. If you reach back into the first entries, I meant to do this as a weekly blog. Such is life I suppose. But I intend on bumping up my posting quota. My good friend Katie is setting up a comic jam of sorts, and I'm working on doing some guest work for my friend Joe.

Aside from that, I've been a bit on the ropes financially. Winter's come and that means reduced hours at my day (or I should say evening) job. To make matters worse, Bear Delahunt, the guy who ran the comic store (and a new friend at that), has left in order to set up somewhere else. So in between him setting up a new shop and my winter hours, there's not a whole lot to do but to keep up the job search.

Don't want to leave any visitors artless, so here's some Street Fighter fanart.


Big shoutout to my family, as well as my in-laws, who visited us this month. I hope we didn't bore you to death or appall you with our lack of furniture. Heh.

Think I about finished the website

It took me much longer than I had anticipated to finish the website design (this was essentially my first professional commission), but I can now show the background image. I'll post the rest of the people a bit later (it's getting a bit late here, and I haven't downsized some of the images to low-res jpgs yet).
As for personal going-ons, our spike in business has slipped away with the holidays and now I'm once again seeking employment in addition to my day job. However, there is a consolation that makes the sequential art kid inside me jump for joy: a new comic store called Atomic Comics run by a terrific guy (Bear Delahunt) opened up just behind my neighborhood. I can take a 5-10 minute bike ride to get all the comics I need.

Wait. This may be a bad thing . . .

Preview of coming attractions . . .

Happy holidays everyone!

It's always during the holidays when bad and good fall all at once . . .

It seems like a lot has happened since I last posted. Two holidays have passed, I've gone to Space Camp and visited my in-laws (who I like a lot, thank you very much).

Now time to put up the lights and pack on the pounds for this month! The best Christmas present we got came early: my mother has successfully defeated breast cancer after a year's worth of therapy and surgery! She's amazing as she's stayed so positive throughout it, and I have to give a big shoutout to neighbors, church members, and friends who helped her pull through this ordeal. I know I'm not the only one who's telling her she should write a book about her battle. I think it'd be very inspirational.

We've hit some rough patches here. Our car keeps coming up with new things to fix (our latest problem has been the headlight assembly), and my computer just got hit by some sort of virus, and of course now the business at the restaurant we work at is slowing down.

But we'll make it. My wife and I are very supportive of each other, and I feel like I can get through just about anything as long as she's with me. Don't mean to go all sappy, but maybe that's just the holiday spirit flowing in me. It's when the times are tough, all you can do is look up and go forward.

Made this for a holiday art exchange. For those not in the know, the characters done in the Flinstone look are from Half Life 2. Fred/Gordon is shouting, "BARNEY! MY REBELS!!"

Hmmm . . .

I turned another year since the last post: the big two-three. Okay, so it's not that eventful, and my birthday didn't go so well (our car broke down twice, ultimately costing us near $1300 to repair) but I've been working on designing a coworker's webpage.

Looking for work in general as of now, and trying to keep away from my new birthday present -- an awesome Xbox 360 that my wife and our parents chipped in for!

I'm sorry there isn't much else to say here, but not a whole lot has happened in the past month. Thanks for all those (especially Dad) who visit this blog!

Some disappointments come with new opportunities

Well, it turns out we won't be able to push the book out before SPX. It will still be available to purchase online once the layout is finished. But at least all the artwork is finished. And I'm looking to sell the comic independently, or at the very least, a finished portfolio piece that I can whip up a cover for.

Also, I just survived a harrowing virus that crippled my computer. But thanks to my wife and some awesome computer whizzes, I was able to counteract the virus and now my PC's working better than it has in the past few months.

I don't have much at the moment, but here's a quickie I did for the upcoming Thor movie.