Comic 20091116

Spin. Moving along in a disjointed way. It was lazier to just throw all the text in the empty frame so that is exactly what I did. One of the reasons is this little cat named Mania decided to try to kill and eat my tablet pen while I was coloring. The other reason -> lazy.

Weekend Busy Filler

Another busy weekend ahead. Trying to get out some comic stuff. So far it seems fairly hopeless to expect an update by tomorrow. Just realized it is Friday the 13th. I do have this filler. Which is an un-worked alternate to Classroom Introduction. I do have a few things drawn to be scanned and a few things to draw. The next part of the garden arc is blocked out. I just need to draw it and get it up.

I have to take the time to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of visitors the comic has gotten since I started working on it again. With all the hectic things going on I'm thankful I have this little outlet to draw and write poorly and to know a few people out there like looking at the train wreck.

Comic 20091112

Map-tastic. For reasons unknown it looks like this comic updated a day early .. Have fun. I'm really hacking it up to get this storyline finished. Just a few more pages to go then they leave the Garden ! Then, I will be getting poor Marla through the rest of her summer. finally, we can start with some more interesting things.

I will likely be showing some more gag-a-day sort of things while I organize the arcs coming up. I do have some more bits to fill in here and there and I want to make sure everything is lined up before I start throwing stuff against the wall for year two.

Comic 20091111

Pool Wide Shot
Happy Veteran's Day; A holiday that has nothing to do with today's comic. This is a picture I've had sitting on the drive since the inception of the garden/pool arc. I threw in some bad dialog and called it an update.

As a partial update later I may add some frames at the bottom. Something to do with the excitement of finding a fully functioning pool but without any water.

Comic 20091110

New Fence Ha-rah. Pretty crappy update for the wait. My schedule is a little off, but I'm plugging away. I really hope to have some time to work on things in the morning and get a little bit ahead again.

Updates Coming

This was an exhausting weekend. I am not built to be sociable in crowds. I did have a a good time talking to a few people who were into my wife's work. I did get a few things drawn and I hope to have a brisk update schedule this week and hopefully more than a nod to vote and donation incentives.

Update Schedule Nov 6 Weekend

No schedule :p .. My wife and I are spending the weekend setting up at a Christmas craft show in Eldersville, PA: Christmas in the Village. It is our first year there and with the hours of the show, driving time (about 1.5 hours one way for us) there won't be much time for me to scan and process pictures. I plan on working on some things, but I don't think that work will bear fruit until next week sometime.

I've said this several times before. I really hope to be finishing up the Marla/LLXL (or is it XXLX?) and Garden story lines very soon.

Comic 20091104

Lawn Care During the summer I have 4 lawns I cut. The small one around my house, the two lot yard next door, my neighbor's across the street and a larger lot across the street. I do it all with my little push mower. There is a riding mower here but, meh, I'm not so old I need to use it yet. If I do it all at once it takes about 3+ hours (there are many things I have to mow around and under etc.). Whenever, I think about Marla doing work in the comic it is mowing lawns and whenever I doodle her thinking or talking while working it is mowing lawns and now you know why.

This is a real rush piece. If I get updates the next few days they will be very rushed also.

I would also warn my readers. If you weigh 300+ pounds and are unused to semi strenuous work rabid lawn mowing from dusk till dawn will not help you loose weight, it will kill you.

Comic 20091101

Welcome to November

Sarah Awakens, is a quick and dirty (not dirty in the sense of your dirty mind 'dirty') comic for today. I still have many things going on here this weekend, but I took a little time to crank this one out. I want to get this arc finished up.

The next thing to try and finish is Marla's summer arc. She is mostly on her own in her story, but I need it to finish because after Day 370 she is on screen a little more often.

Happy Halloween, No Update

I doubt I will have an update on the 31st. This will mark the end of a 11 day run. I will be cleaning up some links and other things on the website though. I'm working on a few stand alone pictures and promotional items.

I'm trying to do a few pictures entirely with the old shabby wacom. I do my coloring and other tasks with it, but only a small amount of line work. My hand is not steady with it. I should say my hand is less steady with it. I used to use a piece of paper to add a little friction between the nub and the surface. I may try that again.

All of you out there reading. I appreciate it. I know how bad the comic is in spots in both writing and drawing. Both are unpolished, but I'm making an effort to address the problems I can while keeping the pace up.

After all this time I'm not truly comfortable with this as a writing medium. I may be trying to hard to avoid 'Wall of Text' and I'm not clear which font and image sizes might be working best across different browser and screens. The next things for me to address are characterization and mood of narrative.

Comic 20091030

After nearly 3 years Roland is out of the plant! If I don't throw anything more at them They should be out in 5 more pages / strips. It is all part of my Inhideous Plan. In case you were wondering Roland's backpack did make it out of the plant. I can't draw every little thing because of brevity and poor memory.

This is Halloween weekend so I will really be pushing to update. but, there are a few side things I'd like to do like a donation incentive and a new vote incentive. I have an interesting idea for an automated donation bar for Paypal. You know the ones that gauge donations against a goal? Hopefully, what I'm thinking of doing is feasible.

Archive Links

After a bit of fiddling I stuck a version of the archive links links into the daily pages. I'll get looking a little better, it is just a mass of links but should clean up with collapsing menus.

'We took a ride on the Banchoff Klien Mega-bottle Ride.'

Comic 20091027

Rubies of Eventide. I'm posting this a few days ahead of schedule and scheduling to post when the comic comes out. This comic is about a morpg I put a great many hours into. Generally in these sorts of games I'm not very social. I'm a slow typist and generally not a quick wit when trying to pay attention to more than one thing. But during my time there I made friends.

Like Roland says in this comic the various systems in the game were a joy to play with. And that is what kept me around originally while I figured out mining and crafting and what stats and skills helped what. Eventually, the community there took center stage. They are a good group of people.

That game has passed on into a digital heaven and a large group of the staff and dedicated players are preserving that community and building a new game from scratch around a preexisting engine.

This strip is built around a certain client crash tied to the hill giant mob and as such it is a simple page. I blocked it out years ago but this morning I woke up with a touch of insomnia and had a real hankering to log my archer and shoot arrows at things. I felt pretty bad that I couldn't do that and instead I dug out this rouch comic and spent the morning inking scanning and coloring.

The new game Dawn of Iskirra is discussed here.

Comic 20091026

Mouth Full. This sort of thing wasn't in the 'Big Plot' for these two characters. It seemed like something that she would do on impulse so she did it. I have a good many more pages to get the gang out of the Garden/Pool arc but I'm getting closer.

I was going to spend some more time and shade this, or put in the money shot but I'm not fretting over anything like that for now. I set time to work on these so my paying work and family duties don't suffer. I want to keep as brisk an update schedule as possible.

Comic 20091024

Bobby Steel Sings Again!. This is one of the things that tickles me about making this particular comic. Many years ago I ran a short lived Call of Cthulhu rpg. My players had a nice array of characters, one being Bobby Steel, night club singer. You'll eventually see all the things that may have happened to most of them had we been able to continue the game.

Archival Update

I had a small arc on Comic Space That I decided to move into the main cutethulhu site. I took the extra step to rebuild the site so they appear chronologically in the archives. I can't do this very often, as I'm told it is server intensive. Another reason is I usually do not update the archives is there is not room to cram new art into old story lines. This is a failing of the system used requiring file names, dates the comic order to be the same.

As I often say, 'things will be different when I'm in charge.'

The new / old comics are Top Hat 1,
Top Hat 2,
Top Hat 3,
Top Hat 4

Website Update

Updating the front page slightly with a custom vote button. I hope to have a vote incentive picture up also. It will take some more time to get it ready. I'm also in the thought process for a paypal incentive, but that is a little further down the line.

comic 20091023

Beer I drink. I did a little more work on this one. I did the lines with my clunker Wacom over a scan of the sketch. This is one of the few times it has worked out for me. Though, there are a some shaky lines.

I nested this one in the continuity fairly early. It is before her reconciliation with Mabel.

Comic 20091022

True story - I sat with my wife in the Waynesburg, PA DMV for a couple hours. A few thoughts came to me while we were there and I drew them out. Through the miracle of laziness here is a scan and color of the actual sketches I fiddled with while on the scene.
Simple as D, M, V ... 1,2,3

Writing out the title reminds me of a little OCD joke that I annoy people with. Singing 'ABC' by the Jackson 5 and changing it to 'O, C, D its as easy as 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . ... etc'

Which reminds me again of listening to this song in grade school during indoor recess, (yes, back when it was a new release) which a few months ago prompted me to buy it on 45 at a church rummage sale.

Comic 20091020

Boarding House. Hiyas! I may pick up a pencil and sketch out a page. Then ink it then scan it. I could then carefully edit dialog so that it is evocative of the tone and carefully color and shade.

nah.

I'm having a fun time without any expectations of what is going to be uploaded. I lay in bed with a cheap pen and a marble composition book and fiddle around until I fall asleep.

One of the things I set up from the beginning is this is a story told from the point of view of a person who is half crazed, maybe delusional, and trying to get it out in any way he can. A bit self-descriptive to be honest.

Comic 20091018

Emancipation.
Lalala, Here it a little update. Things are moving along. One or two more with Marla then we may not see her for a while. Should be getting back to those kids stuck in the garden behind QT's house. I'm sort of aching to have more time to put some better finished art up for these comics ...

6 Crappy Updates in a Row Ends Now

It is doubtful I will have anything up tomorrow. I'm going to take a little time to put together some nicer pages if the time is there to take. I've a busy weekend coming up. So far I've been having a good time getting some stories moving even if the drawing is poor and the dialog stilted in places. I want to finish the Marla storyline and the Garden one also. The completion of these two and a little more with Grandma Mary are core to getting the next set of stories taking place through the next school year moving along.

comic-20091010

More Disturbing Discoveries - To make more of a mess of things I'm going to post these comments again occasionally. This is another very quick and dirty comic, right out of my composition book and through GIMP.

I'm commenting here mainly to mention the two versions of the same thing. I'm hoping it doesn't disturb the narrative flow, such as it is, too much to have a quick stutter like this. Each picture had elements I wanted (the top pic is a composite of two pictures also) and it was quicker to process both than to rework either of them.

HaHaHa 3 years

I've started updating Cutethulhu again. I could never fully put it aside. At the point I am now I am simply putting up whatever I can get done in a short amount of time as quickly as I can. Much will be unworked sketches straight from my composition books and wherever else I find them.

To read the developing story arcs the http://www.cutethulhu.com/archives.html is essential as the comics are not posted in chronological order. The system doesn't allow tucking in comics between ones already posted without rebuilding the whole thing.

Comic 20060515

Cutethulhu calls up mabel for some dating advice. Pretty simple I put this together in a hurry from a series of sketches that I had from when I was first working out the date story.

Comic 20060202

Arrival. Ugh it has been a long time since I've been able to update my poor comic. I'm getting to the point that I may have to start it over since inserting comics past 30 days is a bother to the system and everything I was working on is over 2 years old.

It took me a bit longer than the art looks to put this together. I have been sketching and working on the plot etc. during the downtime. I plan on getting this done, or at least getting back into a productive routine.

Comic 20060802

In we go!. QT is getting a little testy and Mable is getting a little flakey. This is only half of the page that is to be posted here. I had a dreadful illness with a non-creative recovery time. I've only been able to get back into things the last couple of days. When I get the other half of the page done I'll thumbnail and change the archive page.

Comic 20060527

Grandmother's House One run later to Granny Jenkin's house. I left this oe a little rough. I was going to shade it a bit, but I was really concentrating on how much dialog I could squeeze into the thing without it being prose.

A little bit of forshadowing. We will meet Dr. Pef eventually and that will be when we do a little background on Marla. For a somebody starting as a second tier character she has a pretty interesing arc . I think the next one out of the batch of scans is a big Secret Garden page.

Comic 20060526

Not Free. Moving right along. Now Marla is trapped by LLXL. I'd like to mention again that Marla started out only as a gag-a-day foil for Roland in Biology. but the more I set up or tried to write gags for them the more I though about what I could do with her in the story. She has a more solo comics over the stretch of the summer. Then one plotted with Mary. I may put some of those at Comic Space depending on how much room I have for things.

The next couple of comics I'm planning on are a continuation in Marla's plot and the Secret Garden story. Time will tell.

Comic 20060801

Bad Bellies are Baaaad!. Fianlly another page that has been hanging over me for a while is done. QT is pciking up a little, Mabel is a little flakey and Roland looks like a tasty treat. It took a while to piece this together. There are a couple spans from frame to frame which are weaker than usual. I had to rewrite some bad dialog and what I ended up with in the space I had wasn't much better. I think the next page, at least the prescan stuff, is pretty cool.

As a side note. My linux distribution does not have drivers for my offbrand scanner So I have to reboot to windows to scan stuff, Shitty Windows is shitty.

ComicSpace 20060423

Top Hat Is someplace a little different. With trying to keep the archive calendar in time with the comic calendar I'm always trying to squeeze things in. I've had a account at Comic Space fo a little bit and decided to use the gallery feature there to place little side stories. This episode is one of those and so far I like the idea. I still need to work out a few linking things back and forth to the Comic Space comic, but overall this is how in will be. THe www.cutethulhu site will hold the base structure of the comic while the Comic Space gallery will hold extra stuff. javascript:void(0)

Comic 20060418

Mabel Training DId this in sort of another way, I like the look of the artifact black when I processed the line art. More of a old (40 years) printed comic book style. I didn't care for the filled background .. but I was running out of time, as always.

This comic marks a transition from using WindowsXP to Ubuntu. Honestly, all the software I used is Windows builds of open source that were mostly developed by the Linux community anyways, Verb tense me Things will be going a little more slowly, I can't use my scanner in Linux .. and I have to do some complicated things to get my tablet installled completely. SO I have to jump back and forth from WindowsXP to scan.

Comic 20060525

Free. The introduction of another recurring character. At least for this Marla story line. Another colored pencil with a digital color background. Put to the computer by camera, so the quality wasn't great to start with.

Comic 20060917

Wet Spot. This was one of my ideas for Keenlace .. site to be announced .., but obviously it was a little too .. naughty for that. So I got a free comic out of it.

So here is Shub in her day to habits. The alternate title for this was 'If you meet a strange woman and she has a iron bar bolted to her headboard you are in for a very good time or a very bad time'

Comic 20060524

Long Walk Home. A pretty crappy looking comic today and again i'm not happy with the dialog. I have a good bit more with this story line. Only a couple pages more and I'm freed up with Marla for the coming school year. There are more in this story line, but only a few more that /have/ to be posted so more current comics make some sort of sense.

What Goes on?

Seeing that I haven't posted a comic in chronological order in months I should explain how things work around here. Two factors determine what I work on and when I work on it. The first is the simple fact that I do not have much time to devote to the comic. More accurately, I do not have much time to devote to polishing the final product. I've plenty of script written and tons of thumbnail drafts put together. Mostly because I work them all out in a composition book or a sketch book. These I can take with me wherever I go. Peaceful, alert time at the computer is the main limitation.

Secondly, I am trying to keep the story within the confines of the dating system at comic genesis. Keeping the comic 'dates' the same as the dates /in/ the comic. This had me doing a lot of jumping around trying to a get a fresh comic up. Right now I've 4 story lines rolling around at different times that I'm back posting. While I'm doing that I'm trying to get the stories that are supposed to happening /now/ completed.

Anyway I'm having fun trying to piece things together from different directions. Hopefully it is an interesting read for anybody trying to figure out what is going on.

Comic 20060823

Suicide Watch Iv It is dramatic coloring. sort of. I have one more sort of sketch for this and the Suicide Watch is done. That will leave then 3 subplots to resolve and a few more to start. I do like the read in this. I finally figured out the simple way to get that sort of texture. I will be overusing it a good bit now. If I was doing this over I would show more of the blade coming down. Maybe re-arranging the whole page. It is weak in some areas.

Comic 20060822

Suicide Watch III. Things are looking different for our young couple. With all the different things I fiddle around with making pages I think this particular technique works best. It looks as good as anything and is fairly quick to get done. There is one more Suicide Watch and a epilouge. I'm trying to wrap up some of these half stories before moving on with more things.

Comic 20060523

Last bus ride. Another Marla Comic. I set myself up so I have to finish a great many of these and a few from another story arc before I can post many 'current' pages.

Comic 20060522

Final Grades. Yes, Cutethulhu has rocketed to the top of the Biology class. This comic and several others are ink and colored pencil with digital color added underneath. This particular one did come out very well. It was done in a hardbound sketch book and I couldn't get it on the scanner. So, I took a digital picture instead. This would have worked out fine if I had taken the time in the initial processing to correct a few simple things. It is readable and the art isn't so horrible that there is confusion, er no more confusion than usual.

There are three of four more pages in this particular story line done this way. I will do a better job getting the others posted.

Comic 20060511

Marla Makes a grab. Really, She is shy and retiring with everybody except for Roland. I wonder why that is?

Comic 20060311

Marla Jenkins on a bus. So this is a character make-up .. In her introduction she did something a little out of character for what I developed for her later. But, teenagers do lots of OOC and stupid things. So here she is a little mortified at what went on that day.

Comic 20060227

Marla Jenkins. This comic page is nearly about 10 months behind schedule. There is a perfectly good reason for this slow turn around. I'm hopelessly lazy. Or I spent a lot of time thinking about how included in the comic Marla was going to be. Originally this was going to be it, but things expanded and I wrote a little story for her. I didn't want her to start interacting until I figured out what was going to happen to her so she was set aside.

I've been doodling around a great deal and decided to try and produce directly from my sketch book with ink and colored pencils. Any person can tell the original was taken with a digital camera while being held on my lap. I've got a good many more that will be put together in the same manner, but hopefully I will have somebody else hold the book on /their/ lap so I can look at the view finder while taking the picture.

While Christmas shrunk my free time to nothing this was the sort of comics that I started getting interested in, small heavy panels. I hope I will get better at it.

Comic 20060731

Last Fight. I trimmed the fight down a little bit. There is still lots of action to resolve.I'm still working in a quick and dirty style. The next page will have a little more thought and time spent on it. It is one I've had inked for a while, waiting to get to it. I want to give it due time to make it look like I want. There area a few elements that are going to be experimental to me, so I'm not sure how it will turn out; maybe as crappy , more crappy or less crappy than usual.

Comic 20060729

More Fight. It is looking grim for the four. Mabel's training, Roland's smarts, Sarah's good lovin' and Q2's standing around may not be enough to save them! I drew this and decided I would not edit the line work once I scanned it in, it is the only way I can get something done if I stop fiddling with it.

It goes more poorly as the fight goes on.

Comic 20060314

Bio Wiz is one of the many small pieces that has been floating around in one form or another for a while now. I finally just bullied through and finished it almost 7 months out of the continuity.

Instead of trying to keep pace with the weekly updates, at least through the holidays, I'll be working on these skipped piexes and scripts and character sheets to try and lure more people to do some bits of the whole.

20060921 Website Updates

Well, it has been a hectic bunch of days and it will more than likely be this way until after Christmas. Had two craft shows over the weekend. Then, Monday afternoon our dog passed away. We are looking for another puppy or dog and it is taking up a lot of the little comic time I have. What we are looking for is something particular, a breed or animal that will fill a lot of particular roles. It will take a bit of searching and training to get what we want.

Anyways, The point of this post is I've updated Characters a bit; adding Mabel and Roland to the roster. I drew sketches for both at one of the craft shows I tended a table for over the weekend. I finally had a bit of time to scan and Mabel a bit.

Sleep

failed plans

Another incredibly busy week leaves me with another update that is going to be late. My wife is a crafter and I'm helping with a show over the weekend. I was hoping to find some time to sketch something that hope was misplaced. We got back from our shows and I had to dash off and do some wiring for a couple hours. I'm bone weary right now. It is a struggle to get through this post.

I'll try to do something tomorrow and update. It may only be a character page update or some other site design thing. I doubt I'll get more of a comic done tomorrow than I did today.

One thing I'm working on is a script and layout thumbnails for a small series I hope to get done in the spring. I'm paying a little more attention to the script because I hope to coerce somebody else into drawing it for me. The story is sort of a stand alone, with Roland and a few secondary characters. It will be straight horror stuff.

I do have a real world time table for wanting to get through my story. Even if I can't meet that schedule I will post date to submit things to meet that schedule and try to contract people in some way to help draw things.

Comic 20060914

Angel. I will regret not saving this for the regular sunday update. I had the desire to color this and I made clouds. I think this what is called foreshadowing. and if it is unclear, the angent of God shat on her head.

The generic quote for this was going to be 'Who sez angels don't fly' but wasn't where I got the idea for this for those of you who might recognize it. does that quote date me? I'm not sure.

Comic 20060910

My Bodyguard has a little bit of action. The 'pain is weakness leaving the body' was something that came to me some time ago and I'm glad I remembered it and had a way to use it. To put the phrase in context it is often used by athletes when doing their thing and generally focuses on mentally overcoming fatigue pains and exhaustion. I also relate it with military training.

The art is sucky for this. I haven't really done anything this bad in a while. I was sick most of last week and was trying a different way to construct the image from scanning to final product. The process worked except that I really rushed through it.

This was uploaded late, about 9 hours after the regular sunday update deadline.

General Update

Illness has struck me. It is the head cold. The 'having children in grade school first week of school' sickness that we go through every year. I'm taking a few medications which are confounding my meager brain powers. I'm hoping to have my weekly update done sometime sunday. This will be the first time I've missed a update on the automatic saturday/midnight script. except for the one I missdated .. and the one I forgot to upload. I had an idea for a simple comic that would foot the bill, but I realized it was more involved than I thought at first. So tonight I uploaded Dress code which fits in the archive at the end of August.

I hope I'll get something put together sometime tomorrow; in between medications and a picnic. Working on this sort of drawing in the company of others is socially a little risky so I can't work on anything /at/ the picnic.

Comic 20060829

Dress Code This comic was done fairly quickly. I have a few first week of school things thought out, but not much time to draw them. The comic seems to be falling more and more ont Sarah recently. She is the easiest to draw in some ways, and the easiest on the eyes.

Comic 20060903

Removal is another crass comic. Well this was done sort of on the fly, I had a little less time than usual to do the art, which made deciding what to draw difficult. So I picked out something fairly basic in my small stock of gag-a-day type scripts. Then I drew like the wind.

This is a straight scanned 4b 9mm mechanical pencil with graytones in the GIMP. I wanted to do some white highlights on Mrs. Wu's shirt but I ran out of time. Next time I'll scan it a bit darker. The lighter lines made darker shades look a little off. If i was better with that end of things it wouldn't have mattered as much the gray 'coloring' would have been enough.

Comic 20060821

Suicide Watch II. The next couple of comics were going to be on one big page and they may be that way. Either way it might be a little time until it is all done up. I have all the line work for the following two pages scanned in and smoothed out. but it is coming up to the point I have to start working on the regular update comic for Sunday.

Comic 20060728

1/4 Fight I. This is about a quarter of the entire episode for this update. The actual fight will prolly take two more full pages, then two pages of aftermath then two pages to resolve the Garden .. cause I updated myself into a corner a little. I needed to get something up and this is what I had ready enough to finish. The whole picture was a little too big to work on at once on my machine so I split it into parts. The final layout for the page will be different too.

You see Q2 participating a bit in things, even if it is just a supporting (literally) role. By the end of this little series of things she will be in the thick of events and out of her shell a bit.

edit

Finally finished (sort of) the second half of this page. I almost have all of the next page done too. Again I had to just stop fiddling and post. It is good enough to tell what is happening to everybody.

Comic 20060827

School Tomorrow. The bulk of my children are going to school tomorrow So this very special cutethulhu goes out to all the kids who are getting out of the house. Once I get back to backfilling the summer we will see more of Sarah's home life, such as it is.

Comic 20060820

Suicide Watch. This entry is a sort of preview to todays comic. The things you have time to think about when waiting for tech support.

Used the Staedtler pigment liners on this for inking and drew an entirely seperate background. It is also in black and white. they will all be that way until I can get the line art better. I didn't have much of a chance to fool around with this one. I had some things come up during the week and had to rush through from thumbnail to posting. I was also going to save it a little smaller, but I couldn't read the buttons on the phone jack it the last part, where she keeps dropping the calls cause they bore her.

I really have a depressing and horrific one planed for a midweek update. But, I don't know if I will be able to go through with it or not. Things have been fairly light, but I've been feeling around trying to find a good tone for things and I think it will start getting a little more gritty and serious.

note: Seems I forgot to upload the actual comic last night. It is still Sunday, right ?

Black and White

I'm going to be doing the comic in monochrome for a while. I want to work on the lines and the shading and work with negative space. Which is not, as I thought previously, space with an evil goatee. It is difficult to focus on one part of a style, such as it is, at a time. In the long run coloring over bad lines is much harder than coloring over good lines, so I want to get those good lines consistant then in athe future I can go back and color stuff.

I think if I have time today I'll tweak the site layout to black and white also. Even the dull greens of the layout will put a bad light on colorless or one color episodes.

Suicide Hotline

I have sort of scripted a few panals focusing on Shub and a suicide hotline. This got thrown together while I was thinking that through. I'm not going to consider this as an official strip just because I will reuse some of it in a real official strip.

I do think I've heard this joke before. The concept is definately not original with me but it does mirror closely my recent calls to my DSL service. I cut a large portion of the text out. My call included recordings of how I may be able to solve my own connection problems.

I submitted this to Webcomic Battle. Go me.

Webcomic Battle 06

Couldn't resist adding another comic to Webcomic Battle This one is Deadline is the august 13 update. It is getting trounced heavily.

A little bored and poking around .. I usually like to visit around the comics chance puts my comics against. It turns out mine is "pretty damn awful". The tear of shame hangs from my nose.

Comic 20060813

Deadly Deadline. Dip pen lineart to inkscape for smoothing. Then to the GIMP to color and text and general mayhem.

I was really looking for a stand alone gag, and this is fairly close to one, but it still fits in with the ongoing Garden of Serenity arc. Er, ongoing in that I'm still working on it. As of a week or so 'comic time' it has resolved. In real time I still have half of it to finish and retro-post. You can see here that Cutethulhu and Roland make it out of that arc .. and it seems they are working on a pool. Could swimwear be close behind?

This is all part of my poor attempt to keep 'comic time' and 'real time' as close together as I can. It would help if I remembered to do holiday themed strips. It is artificial and in many ways stupid, but since the image files and comic pages operate on the update date it compells me to keep events bracketed by that. So when my kids go back to school, the Cutethulhu group will go back to school.

Comic 20060727

Uncle Joe is moving kind of slow .. at the junction. So it isn't actually Q2's Uncle Joe, if there really is one. Action begins with poor backgrounds and wild shading. The three headshots are shaded in very much the same way I remember my mother coloring in coloring books when I was small. She'd outline the area with the color then color inside much more lightly. it is heritage coloring.

I had to stab a little bit of a funny in there, cause everything else that goes on for the next 18+ frames is deadly serious action stuff.

Not much more to say other than the next one in this series might take a longer than the last couple to get out. It won't be because I'm spending special time crafting and above average piece of art. It will be because I have to make money by picking things up and carrying them around and maybe a little of stringing dangerous electrical wiring through crawlspaces.

Comic 20060808

Inspiration strikes Three different ways. I had a fair idea for a little gag and was aching to try the new dip pens some more so I drew it up real quick. While doing the lettering I got three different variants and each was equaly mediocre so I used them all to make one extra average strip.

I may tighten this up and color it in the future. I may not. It is getting late so I'll thumbnail this and link up all the way from the main page tomorrow.

Comic 20060726

The shortest distance. I've decided I just need to hammer these out. Honestly working on one for 3 hours vs working on one for 5 hours doesn't produce much noticable inprovement to my eye.

I did use a different techinique for this one. I printed out the line work and colored it with pencils and scanned that in and layered it under the original lines, then put a semi-transparent layer of quick digital coloring between the two. It looks alright and was relatively quick. The only problem was synching up the size and tilt between the two scans. I don't think I ever did get it spot on, but I know more what I need to do to do better next time.

I also bought a set of 'cartooning' dip pens. They are pretty fun so far and really do produce a different set of lines. I'm very keen on getting to use them some more. It might be the thing to get me to start working on character sketches for the characters page

Comic 20060806

Pinatas are full of tasty treats. Drawn by Alex Whitington. This is one of the more interesting comics for me for several reasons. The first, chronologically, is the fact that me and my wife have a running gag about roadkill. There are lots of dead things laying along the roads in my rural county; deer, groundhogs, racoons, rabbits, skunks, opossum, cats, dogs, squirrels . If it is a critter of some kind than it has found its way under a wheel. Then they start to swell with gas and maggots until they pop. The bigger they get the more 'filled with confetti' they become, until they explode smelly fun all around themselves. Then it isn't long until just bone and hair are left. It is just like science. Anyway, one of these running roadkill conversations got turned into the Pinata gag. Art does follow life.

The other very cool(er) thing is that I didn't draw this comic at all. I was sort of planning on doing it sometime as a non-big-plot comic and had it roughed out fairly well when I was contacted by Alex with a sample illustration that got me very excited. So I gave him my beloved dead animal script and he sent me back this great comic.

Comic 20060725

We are going to need a bigger map. This one isn't as finished as I would have liked, I really ran out of time in the midst of a big heat wave. Sweltering in sweat is not good for concentration. I've been reminded for the past week of a Blue Oyster cult song "Hot Rails to Hell"

Riding the underground
Swimming in sweat
A rumble above and below
Hey cop dont you know?
The heats on alright
The hot summer day didnt quit for the night

1277 express to heaven
Speeding along like dynamite
1277 express to heaven
Rumbles the steel like a dogfight
You caught me in its spell
Trying to leave but you know darn well
The heat from below can burn your eyes out

Blackened out eyes
Scratched on the wall
Stoned out looks from the crowd
The king will not know
On the wall it was said
The flash of his cards was sprayed with red

1277 express to heaven
Speeding along like dynamite
1277 express to heaven
Rumbles the steel like a dogfight
You caught me in its spell
Trying to leave but you know darn well
The heat from below can burn your eyes out

I don't pretend to know what the deeper meaning of the song, if any, may be. I just know that it invokes hot. When I'm really broiling it is the first semi-random thing to pop into my head.

This and the following two comics drawn by me will be postdated for the last week in July fitting in before the naughty Jack Hammer comic. Then there will be one more week of something similar postdated for the first week of August. I don't know how much time it will take me to put them all together or if they will fit like I want.

Comic 20060730

Tools of industry in the bedroom. Heh, I was having trouble with the inuendo in the last panel with how to hint coyly about what was going on. My wife suggested a complete lack of subtlety.

This is a break away in the 'action' of the four chit chatting away in the garden forest to action of a different kind.

I've been working a bit with a quill pen and ink. I was having a wee bit of trouble with them until I found out I could sand the tip down a bit by 'writing' with it on sandpaper to smooth it out a bit for my drawing angle. It worked fine until I did it again and I think i altered it too much as I'm having a bit of problem with ink flow now. Now i just need a less bleedy paper stock.

Webcomic Battle 05

Another trek into Webcomic Battle. This time it is with a comic drawn by Alex Whitington who heeded my call for artists to help me along. One of the reasons I was going to battle this one is this comic will have to wait a week or so before it will fit into the update schedule, so it is a sneak preview of sorts.

Comic 20060723

The path marker. For those of you that were young when I was young may remember the children's show Land of the lost If you do then you should know the path markers are the great grandson of the pylons sp? from that show. If you do not know or remember the show you are stupid and small and maybe you should be reading a comic about smurfs, but you mostly likely don't know what those are either.

I'm at this moment slightly hungover from a class reunion. I was slightly drunk last night when uploading the comic so this blog entry and thunbnails are a little late.

The pace is slowly picking up. I have to be careful to make sure the setting is in place before I get to the fast stuff. There are a few good things around the corner.

Webcomic Battle 04

I just so happened to have another comic unrelated to Cutethulhu sitting around waiting to be finished. So i did the final details to everything and submitted it into Webcomic Battle. My entry is Aunt Jenny.

Comic 20060715

Roger, Roger. What's your vector, Victor? The gate was put together using the nifty and free vector graphics program called Inkscape. It was fun to fiddle with, and I can easily resize and reuse the gate in some other things later. I've the next two strips sketched and I might get a midweek update in this arc. I've the whole chapter plotted out to some 20+ pages, I hopefully will be able to thin a few things down cause I don't want to be drawing on this for the next 5 months.

edit: Only now do I realize that July 15 is Saturday and not Sunday. Now I feel strangle obligated to put something up sometime today.

Comic 20060621

Parrots are funny !

I had some thoughts that came out as this page. It is not exactly what I intended. This is more of a stream of thought sort of thing. I think the original idea was much simpler, but this is what came out.

Re-Sorting Notification

I'm going to have to move some of the comics in the archives around to make room for 1 small story arc and slide one missplaced comic to a different date. With one or the other I wouldn't have bothered, but both are placed in the same time frame from the point of view of the archives so I think it will be easier to take care of it now. by 'now' I mean whenever I get time to do it.

I just inked out a 4 page story arc that occurs not to long after the start of the comic. It is extraneous and is very naughty too. Since this is supposed to be an adult/mature camoic and I haven't jumped to far out of the realm of high school drama and into adult horror I figured I better push this one to the top. It will still have to ride behind getting the current updates up.

What is interesting about the medium is that I can work from both directions timewise. I try to keep a coherent thread going through the weekly updates but it is fun to go back and flesh out an add things into the archives, keeping in mind the final goal of the entire story. There are a few sub-plots that I won't do at all unless I find an artist.

Comic 20060709

Excitement in Cutethulhu's Backyard. Well, some exciting talking. Another I spent far too much time on without it showing. I'm getting slightly better at organizing the layers, but I still had a few stops and starts. I had a few non-internet related things going on that kept me from working on this during the week.

The story progresses. Roland and Mable seem to be the only ones with any real world sense. Q2 hasn't done much of anything. But, we will see a little bit of her coming into her own. The group here are the core people we will be following for a while.

Comic 20060215

Shepherds Pie. There is a story behind this comic. I had a entry in Webcomic Battle. I lost my third round to this comic from Toy Division whose creator said something like 'I thought yours was funnier, people just like blondes in aprons' in the CG Forums.

From there I couldn't stop myself. The joke itself is somewhat stale I think, I was trying to think of something better the entire time I was drawing it. My wife came up with the shepherds pie seed. The answer to his internal question is 3/8's .. I think.

Comic 20060702

How to Ask. A little more finished than usual for me recently. There are still a few things that I wanted to work on in this, but the story must move at pace.

I'm starting to find a style. It is not one I'm particularly happy with, but it gets the story across in the amount of time I have available, I am leaving entire subplots out for now. There are two other stories that are supposed to be happening alongside this one. One involving Roland's lab partner Marla and another centering on Cthulhu's work life at the university. Plus a couple three gags. Alas, some stories may go untold.

Webcomic Battle 02

I couldn't resist entering into the Webcomic Battle again. I used a comic from Cutethulhu this time and it is doing much better than getting trounced on its first run. So Public Pool is now battling. You can see how its battle page here.

Comic 20060628

I know what boys like. A wee bit of the anatomy of the town. You can see Roland's house from the library. As a side note, the library is more a reading room auxillary.

I stopped working on this one when I realized it wasn't looking any better to me. Though, I should have fixed Sarah's right arm. I did some shading and then I stopped. I've sundays almost done also, I'll be touching it up when I have some free moments. I'm trying to get them as finished as possible in the time I have while keeping my schedule. The extra things like lettering and framing are coming along much more quickly now, leaving a bit more room on coloring and shading. I really what to get this part of the story done by the end of July. I may have to skip episodes in the whole. The events covered only last a day are so, and I don't want to suck up the whole IRL summer with them.

Webcomic Battle 01

I'm on the battle today june 29! but, it doesn't look like I'm doing to hot. If you get a chance go vote. The Sad, Sad Results

I submitted this comic I put together rather quickly to Webcomic Battle. It was one of several that I could have adapted into Cutethulhu, but there is enough going on there now as it is. There were 3 or 4 related comics under this premise. I might do some more. This was sort of a lark, but I may make a more serious effort in the future. If you see it give it a vote.

Comic 20060625

Adventure ! In a library. So starts the longest story arc to date. One that I'm afraid I will not be able to do much finished art for. This very episode is rough drawn and rough colored. I had to color it a bit because the line work wasn't clear enopugh to tell what was going on, and the only thing that was going on is that Mable, Sarah, and Cutethulhu are talking in a library. That is how bad it is.

On the bright side I did make the update and the story /is/ starting now. I think it will be a fun ride and even if the art is a little thin in places. I'm trying to stay focused on the narative and character development. Though I have the feeling a few of my characters will refuse to develop at all.

New Layout

The front page has a new layout and the whole site a new color scheme. With this update I added a rotating button that thumbnails and links a random comic. I've only a few put into the system, but I'll add a few each comic update when I add the latest comic. I few comics ago I added a thumbnail link to the latest uploaded comic.

The only problem I'm having in Firefox is the iframe for the tagboard and the iframe for the blog are being difficult. The sources were in each others iframe, and right now for me both iframes are showing the tagboard. Right now I can only think it is a javascript problem only because it is the one thing I'm not strong in. It seems to work correctly in Opera and sometimes after a refresh it works fine in firefox.

Comic 20060510

Library Smackdown. Again I spent far too much time with little result. I finally had to become satisfied with it. I think as of publishing this one all the relationships reveled so far are where they are supposed to be or near enough, for the next arc. The three girls are pals, which is most important. I've one more main character to bring into the active fold, which I will do at the beginning of the next set of comics.

Each line was done as a sperate picture. There are some slight differences in quality (if it matters between poor and very poor). It is getting a bit easier to put these together. My line art with the graphics tablet is still shakier than Id like and I didn't even start to shade and highlight this.

This coming update will either be filler, another small back issue like today or a sketch / script type. I had to work an extra day at one of my jobs and it has thrown me off more than I'd like.

Comic published out of sequence.

Weirdlings

I was surfing around last night when I found Weirdlings. The premise is a 'cthulhu next door sit-com' which I really like and they pull off well.

On the down side, since I'm doing a comic with a similar theme I don't feel comfortable reading it. I don't want to inadvertantly lift ideas. I seems to be going strong so I'll zip in every couple of months to get a big dose.

Comic 20060618

Redone old comic. One I had done in the original series of cardboard sketches .

I was planning on doing this for an off day update, but I got stuck with both of the comics I wanted to get done so I redrew, inked, and colored this today (saturday). It was fairly easy to work on figures that aren't supposed to look like particular characters. I'm having more fun seperating things into layers. I had about 8 or 9 in this one.

I plan on delving more into cthulhu's work and home life in the fall, some of it will involve 'the big story'. Some arcs I hope to farm out to artists, but so far I haven't looked too hard.

www.cutethulhu.com

When I first started through the application process at Comic Genesis I went ahead and picked up the domain name cutethulhu.com. If I decided to keep on with the comic I would go ahead and have it resolve to CG and if not I would archive what I had done and build some sort of horror .. something. Just today (at least for me) www.cutethulhu.com is now pointing to my Comic Genesis account. It looks like there will be a few rough weeks ahead in the way of updates but I'm keeping on with it for the forseeable future

Comic 20060602

Not as naughty as it c(sh)ould have been. The Woman in Red and Crowley are the first secondary characters to be in two arcs.

When I was first thinking about The Wickedest Snowman in the World I had the idea of somebody carrying the enchanted snow head around in a cooler. It was a bit much to use one of the main characters so soon for that. I didn't want Crowley confusing the already slight character developement in the main characters .. so I came up with the Woman in Red. My wife suggested she reappear and have something to do with the end of the current arc also. So she is now the 'mystery woman' with the 'unknown agenda'.

Right now I'm working on a postdated issues that I'm going to color and such, then depending on my time I'll have the next arc started next sunday.

Comic 20060601

Two updates in a row. I can say my quick sketches are better or quicker than they were. Once I get this rush of things out I'll definately start finishing a few or at least sit down and put more detail into the sketches.

I found out today I'm going to the doctor on monday to see about my arm, I've something going on with my elbow on my 'flinging arm' MST3K shout out. It does hurt at times when i draw or write. It isn't debilitatin pain, but it isn't getting better on its own and I may have to take a break from things to let it heal... but the comic is the least of my activities so i feel pretty sure about keeping it going .. 'doctor doctor ! it only hurts when I draw bad webcomics'

Comic 20060530

Just Sarah. Another line only comic with script. I have two more episodes for this bit and I think they are both drawn, so I hope to post them by or on sunday. Then I have one more post-dated comic to post during the week then next sunday will start the 'Secret Garden' story.

Comic 20060318

Mary Wu was a NPC character I had in a CoC game many years ago. That particular cycle of game wasn't really finished and she fit in very well with some of the things I was going to do in the comic. So here is Granny Mary.

There are many interesting things about her that only time will reveal.

published out of sequence.

Anybody looking to finish this page up ...

Comic 20060530

True to word another rough sketch comic. I do think I will finish out this arc this way and a couple retro-active fillers also. I'm including the script to practice doing them and to clarify any hand written text. I usually draw and redraw roughs until I have the dialog and action right. Making a real script is different for me. Two more episodes, one during the week and the last most likely on friday then it is on to the next one with the working title 'secret garden'.

Comic 20060529

. No Time. I expect there will be good deal of this in the coming months. Things will be at the bare minumum for a while. There are 2 or 3 more episodes in this arc. I will more than likely set them all in this week as drafts w/ scripts (I already have the thumbnails done.) Anybody wanting to work on this episode or future arcs in general can contact me at milleripublishing -at- yahoo.com.

Right now since my own art is not that good I've decided to keep the story paced and the narritive as clear as possible instead of mucking around for hours on end trying to get things to look a /little/ better. I will still be working to get 'finished' episodes done but this is all I have time for right now.

Moved in the archive.

Tagboard and Behind

I installed a tagboard on Cutethulhu on the Main Page. I wasn't going to do this so as not to compromise the false 4th wall I'm trying to build, but conventional wisdom says otherwise so I'll give it a shot.

I also had very little time to work on the comic this week and might not get much of a chance in the coming week. We are planting tomatoes, wiring houses, stocking shelves and mowing lawns alot this week. So I decided that I will place the roughs and scripts up. It will get the story across and give anyone who is interested in drawing at the comic (see Looking For Artists) kind of a look at with what they would be working.

The next concentrated project will be to get the character pages worked up some more. It would definately be a must for having other artists work on my comic to see what the people in the comic sort of look like.

Comic 20060528

This was one of the first full page strips I plotted out when developing the comic. It was interesting getting here. There are a few more episodes to finish out this arc then it is onwards to a simple little action yarn.

Comic 20060315

Lunch Room Antics. A quickie comic .. was it good for you? Since I'm skipping through things fairly quickly I need to establish relationships in a fast and dirty way. Before Mable and Sarah meet again in story I had to set their previous dealings.

This is another comic that I hope to go back to and expand. I want to build a pivotal story around Mable and Sarah becoming unfriends to back up this generalized comic.

Published out of sequence.

Comic 20060521

Another Cardboard creation. Things are moving along. I think this is the last of the old set of strips I had for this. I will be making more in the future in this rough style. It is very liberating to work with throw away materials.

Comic 20060517

Mid-Week Comic. One of the first set of cardboard drawings I did when fiddling with comic ideas. I decided to use this one and another in this arc because I'm lazy. It does fit into the false fourth wall motif I'm trying to build. I'm a clever fellow, capitalizing on my poor work ethic.

It was intended that Q2 and Sarah be talking on the phone, hence the electric slash in the first frame, but I forgot to draw the handsets.

Comic 20060514

Happy Mother's Day. Another holiday sneaks in without a topical comic. With a mother like Shub there is plenty of material for a good Mother's Day romp, but instead there is this comic that doesn't look too great.

It was my intent from the start not to color anything except the visual thought balloons. It was not my intent to have the line art look so sloppy.

This starts one of the first little arcs I started working on when I was first putting the comic together so it is nice to finally get to it..

Looking for Artists

I decided over the last couple of days that I do not have the time to get comics out as quickly as I would like. I can make the sparse weekly schedule I've set, but it won't get story points done when they need to be done. I have a few things that I would like to get completed by certain dates in the comic.

I'm looking for people to either draw individual comics or do some small story arcs. The artist will work from a blue pencil rough and a script. I'm looking for a style that would be close to what I have up, but this isn't required. Anything that isn't manga or overly cartoony would be fine. I'm concerned most with flow of action and atmosphere. I plan on still making completed comics.

With a little ramp-up time I can keep pace with a 7 day a week writing schedule and I might consider working with a few artists at once.

There will be some very adult situations, and graphic detail. Not much of it has shown to date, but it will be coming. Anybody who is interested can email me at newsarray-at-gmail.com. Link me or send a sample of work, and how much you would be willing to do. I'm interested to work with a variety of artists and explore different styles. I can write and block to suit most sorts of page formats.

Comic 20060301

Professor R'lyeh is introduced to his honors Ancient Society class at university. This happens to be one of the first bits I drew when fooling around with this comic idea. My prefered medium was indelible marker on cardboard.

Published out of sequence.