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.