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.