Ouch

Last week, Nikki and I did our taxes at H&R Block. Luckily, our tax returns ended up to be a substantial amount. Enough to cover the car repair payments, with some left over that we could go out and buy a sofa (so we can throw out our broken futon).

Well, yesterday kind of nulled that. I bent down to grab some cleaning supplies from the bathroom sink, and as I stood up (fairly quickly) my head caught the edge of our glass medicine cabinet. I nailed the corner of it on the top right side of my scalp. I thought I had just had a good bump on the head until I discovered my hand holding my head was covered in blood. Thank God Nikki was there because stupid me would have taken a shower, slapped on a bandage, and gone about my day. We called Nikki's father who is a neuroradiologist, and he said I'll need some stitches as the cut was about an inch long and a fairly deep one at that. We get to the hospital and three hours later, I have five shiny staples in my head. I thought they would shave my head, but I guess not (I'm kinda grateful as it would be quite humbling to host at a restaurant with this bald, metallic spot on top of my head).(I'll spare you the pre-stapled cut picture)

My wife was panicked and having a bit of an anxiety attack until she met up with me again in my hospital room. Meanwhile, my biggest worry was money and if the restaurant would hold up with just one hostess on a busy night. Honestly, it could be worse. I briefly shared the room with a man who had barely missed being killed by a slab of marble falling off a truck and into his car. You just never know when something will happen. You can be driving back from a haircut, or in my case, trying to clean the bathroom.

Now here's some sketches for you.

Things might be looking up now :)

I had the fortune of finding my cousin on linkedin, who works for an architecture firm in Portland, OR. I also grabbed some contacts from fellow SCAD alumni, so now I'm slowly getting the hang of networking. I'm really looking into doing something in the storytelling field, such as storyboarding. I think I'd have more fun collaborating with writers and artists in order to come up with an awesome story than producing concept art. At least not now. I feel my strong suit is storytelling with comedy and horror. I still need to work on my art skills.

Also, a local job position is opening up that I really want and can get. Most likely, I'll be taking a pay cut from less hours at the restaurant, but I'd rather work somewhere related to my field of interest.

Speaking of artwork, got a quickie for ya.

Art dump!

I called my dad today, and he asked why I hadn't updated recently. I honestly can't say why. I never have experienced an HR rep at a prospective company snapping at me when I called to check up on the application process. By this point, I had already had the interview and was told I would hear back from them in a week. By the next week, I had not heard anything, so I called to check. I got a quick "We'll call you." And that was it.

Luckily, my hours have picked back up at the restaurant. Unfortunately, my wife's hours have picked up as well, and she's being stretched thin by her two jobs (and our one car). So we're making good money this month, but it's an hour commute roundtrip to the restaurant (and it's not uncommon that we have to make at least two trips per day). I guess it helps that our local comic store has been hit with hard times, and so we're not spending half our paychecks on Fables or Batman issues.

My mother is trying out for a mini-triathlon this fall, and considering when it takes place (aside from my birthday) it will be a huge milestone for her because it will have been about a year since she's recovered from breast cancer. I'm very proud of my sister, as she's smart with finding a good guy to date, and starting on new activities she's passionate about, such as musical theater. She also just turned 17, and I believe she now has her driver's license. Before I went to college and moved in with my wife, she hadn't started highschool yet and I think she had just gotten her braces. How the time flies.

In two weeks, my wife and I are off to see a She + Him concert in Savannah (I think we're mostly seeing it so we can possibly meet Zooey). In late April, I'll be up in NC with my folks to see a traveling tour of Wicked, as well as catching up with old friends. It'll be a great week!

Don't want to leave you without some art, so here ya go!One of the contests for our art jam was to combine two characters from the 80s and/or 90s. Took Princess Peach from Mario Bros. and Lara Croft from Tomb Raider.

Cammy is just too fun to not draw.
Marth and Ike from the Fire Emblem series, but you can find both on the latest of the Smash Bros. series. Uh, and this is Jigglypuff as a carnivore.

Vega from the Street Fighter series. I took a cue from John K's animation school, and drew this in the same way I drew Zangief two posts previous to this one. I believe I will color it soon.

Perspective and proportion study with Mario!

A little Star Wars comic I came up with (and perhaps an explanation as to why Anakin chose the Dark Side).
Couldn't resist a little cheesecake.
Toad from the X-Men a la 1960s era. Or at least how I imagine him (without the goofy costume).

First full digital art

Hello, everyone! Not a whole lot to report. I am picking up a second job nearby since my hours at the restaurant have been cut. Been drawing a lot (and I apologize for not posting most of it) and trying my hand at digital penciling. Not exactly as fun as using a pencil, but I now have clean lines to fill in with color, saving a lot of time. For example, I did an age chart for Zoey and Milly. Didn't think these two were going to appear again, but I have fun drawing them, so here they are. My first completely digital drawings.


Zoey is the more child-like of the two. She's a bit ditzy, but has a good heart. She likes to dance in her room and tell poop jokes. Her favorite movie is Princess Bride. After college, she mellows out, meets a great guy named Dave and becomes a mom while working at a software design firm.

Milly is the more independent-minded of the two. After being kicked out of nearby public schools, her parents sent her to a Catholic boarding school for a few years. Although incredibly bright, she often got into trouble for voicing her opinions and vandalizing Wal-Mart. She is highly creative, and after dropping out of college, she spends her days selling homemade appliances, starting a political blog, and hosting study group sessions for the local college.

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 . . .