Art Challenge 11

This week's Art Challenge: Draw your character as their favorite food.
I decided to make it food they'd actually eat while playing their characters so we're breaking the fourth wall a bit...or something.

Art Challenge 7 & 9

Continuing on the Comic Fury Forum challenges:

Challenge 7: Personality Flop
I basically ran with the idea of  switching Mechan and Llayna's Class, Gender, and Race.

Challenge 9: Highland games

Slightly different than the intention of the challenge I went with a single panel of Mechan at the Highland games

CRAWLERS Spiderman Cameo appearance.

Spiderman cameo appearance

Art Challenge 8 & 10

To save time this time I combined two of the Art Challenges. Challenge 8 of making a movie poster of Crawlers and Challenge 10 to make a drawing with a limited Palette.

The last Crawl- SOPA

"If you can't say fuck, You can't say 'Fuck the government!'"

-Lenny Bruce

I wrote about SOPA before but I want to put a more personal touch on it. Though the danger has passed for now we're not out of the woods on this issue because there is no reason to believe it is gone for good.

If SOPA is passed then CRAWLERS will be finished.

Crawlers doesn't violate any copyright laws. But because I am drawing inspiration from my experiences playing games LIKE D&D, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro could have my site shut down. I wouldn't get recourse until after the fact.
Because the host for Crawlers, Comic Fury, allows anyone to upload content of their choosing; Comic Fury could be shut down by SOPA. Original content created with video game sprites and toys are common on sites like Comic Fury. Though they are a legal grey area, if SOPA were passed, Comic Fury could be shut down because of some of the users creating work from the work of others.

If SOPA is passed then my political site could be finished.

In the economics section of my political site I have a parody of the famous Burt Reynolds Playgirl shoot. Clearly this should be protected by Parody law. But what if Hef had a beef with me? He could shut down my site and there wouldn't be anything I could do about it because I can't afford lawyers to navigate through the bureaucracy.

Art Challenge 4-6

I have a bunch of old envelopes from the city of Skokie and some color pencils. Here are the results

CHALLENGE 4&5
LEFT: Draw eastern and western horoscope and element. Both happen to be rams but my elements are fire and metal. I drew the rams to reflect that.
RIGHT: Create character based on random character generator. My words were Bully. Dull. Graceful that may be an Orc.

CHALLENGE 6 (part one)

Draw your characters as seasons

LEFT Garzzle as summer. Garzzle likes wearing as little as possible and it literally burns when he pees. Summer seemed like his season.

RIGHT: Xionus is a horder of sorts. Fall is the season where you are supposed to stockpile supplies.0

 Challenge 6 (part 2)
LEFT: Mechan as Winter. Looks the best with a beard and armor. 
RIGHT: Llayna as Spring. She's worn leaves before so it makes sense. My wife pointed out that it rains a lot in the spring so I drew a storm cloud that follows Llayna around. If read Crawlers you'll realize how fitting it is.

Art Challenge 2&3

Continuing with the Comic Fury Art challenge thread...

Challenge 2: Turn Character into a robot
I already put one character from Crawlers in a Mecha. So without over thinking it I made the faerie into a robot.

Challenge 3: Explorer
Starting with the idea of a space shuttle Explorer I decided to create a ship instead of a person. It looked very different than anything else I've seen until I inked it and the marker bled now it looks kind of like the Jim Lee era Blackbird which is funny since I named the ship the Centennial Rook.

A year in (p)review

I like to experiment with media. That's my thing. So I start a lot of projects (like the video above) and tinker with them, sometimes for years, before I have a finished project. Not the most efficient way to work but that's my process. Even when you don't see a lot of work from me, I'm working on a lot of it. 
Last year I threw out some possibilities for resolutions. Let's take a look to see if I actually did any of them.



Finish Ron Paul's A Foreign Policy of Freedom; Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship
I think I read less of this book than I have in any previous year. My wife got me a subscription to Rolling Stone for $2 and that replaced Paul as my bathroom reader.
2012?
That subscription is running out but I don't see me picking up the pace on reading this book.

Finish drawing Crawlers
Not only did I not get as far ahead on Crawlers as I hoped, there is no end in sight. Well I know how the series is going to end but I am not sure how many pages it's going to take. It's possible to do in five chapters/sessions but not likely with everything I have to say.
2012?
I'll continue to stay on task, updating Crawlers twice a week, but I'm not going to get a head that far while taking on other projects. Crawlers is a hobby. It's designed to be something I do while watching TV with my wife and I don't plan on watching more TV.

Publish MENTAL
I did very little work on MENTAL. I did look into getting it on the Kindle but didn't get that far into it.
2012?
Probably not. My new plan for MENTAL is to start up the other books as Crawlers winds down.

Publish NILvsDCbs 
Not only did my old computer die fall of last year but I had to reformat my computer last January. It took me a month to find most of my files for the campaign site. 
2012?
I do plan on finishing the website whether I ultimately stay in or not (I'm looking at dropping out to run for state legislature) but publishing it will take a lot of devotion of time. The pages for NILvsDCbs are very tall and formatting them for the page will be a lot of obsessing  over design.

Lose weight
I did not get below 200 but I did loose 10 pounds last September and it hasn't come back. So almost halfway there...
2012?
With another baby on the way I don't know how this will work. The biggest factor is if my bike get fixed and I am able to ride it.

TBA (Running for Congress)
I was hoping by now to have my facebook campaign page at 500 followers and to have the webpage finished. I'm two comics away from finishing all the policy comics and I'm at 300 followers.
2012?
I'm looking at running for state legislature which would be a completely different set of benchmarks. By the end of this year I'll know whether or not I won. The hard thing for me is doing everything in my power to make this happen without making that the reason to run. This year has shown me that it is sometimes hard to know if the desire to win is tainting the message.


STANDING RESOLUTION
As I said last year I have a standing resolution to complete two drawings a day. I came close if I didn't make it. In October I started a spreadsheet to track it so I'll know for sure next year. 
2012?
I'm looking into doing some animation projects for HitRecord.org Animation is really hard to measure because it's easy to cheat and count each frame as a seperate drawing but on the other hand, it's hard to say when one frame becomes a separate drawing.


RESOLUTIONS FOR 2012?
I'm an over-reacher. I will never be happy with my accomplishments because I can always see room for improvement in myself. It's why I think I'll make a good public servant. Because I do this without being overly concerned with which goal will make the most money.
2011 was a busy year. I was in a lot of meetings/protests. I have a lot of projects in various stages. I was published in a comic anthology. I put up two Crawlers for every week (and they were posted as close to on time as technology allowed).
2012 I'm going to spend a lot of time doing serious campaigning. Up until now it's been about networking and figuring out where the obstacles are. Now it's about beating them.
On the art side I am going to try and get at least one piece published through HitRecord.org , keep up on Crawlers, and finish one or two other projects.


I'll keep you posted