Since I haven't posted anything but bodypainting designs for the past couple of weeks, I'll just toss out a few odds and ends. 

Odd: Had a dream the other day which was right peculiar. I dreamed that the earth had three moons; one small one close to earth, one medium sized one another step away, and a much larger one a step further out from that. In this dream, I was babysitting these two kids on a rooftop garden, atop a skyscraper. It was late at night, and we were watching a rare cosmological event: All three moons were full, and there was to be a total eclipse of all three of them, which was to say that they would all be perfectly lined up with one another, in a neat row. We watched this lovely event take place, but were distressed to notice there was something else behind the biggest moon... As this moon moved out of the way, we saw that there was a SECOND planet Earth back there! As we watched, huge cracks formed all over it, with magma spilling out of each of them brightly. Then, it exploded, and a white-hot shockwave washed down across the Earth, destroying the tower we were on, and killing us all.

I was a poor babysitter. If I'd been more on the ball, I could have protected them from that exploding planet. 

End: I do hereby resolve not to waste my time debating with adult christians who are markedly below average intelligence. If they have yet to realize that their religion is bullshit by the time they reach adulthood, an hour or two of conversation with me isn't going to signifcantly alter their chances of ever doing so, but it does significantly alter my chances of becoming very frustrated and disgusted. 

Odd: All humans are required to check this shit out. 

End: I'm currently planning out new body painting sets with these four  models, and have updated my OneModelPlace profile, with the earnest intent to keep it updating with new sets in the next couple of months. 

Odd: I'm planning another collaboration with this very classy artist, which fans of my currently-on-hiatus comic, Dave & Vyacheslav, will likely be very happy about. 

End: This awesome documentary (which I bought a year or so ago) has recently been made legal, by its writer/director/producer, Brian Flemming, to make copies of to hand out for free, so long as your intent is to show them to christians so as to explain to them the very shakey theological grounds that their religion is built upon. So, if anyone wants some copies of it on DVD, feel free to ask me. :)

Finally got something up over here which I've been wanting to do for some time now: A litte Q&A with one of my characters. I hope that I'll get enough imput from my reader base that this will become a regular feature.

http://www.topwebcomics.com/votingGateway.aspx?MemberID=2452

As promised, after four long months of mouldering in its grave, D&V returns from the dead!

Read and enjoy! I'm starting with some nice, light stuff. Some Colin Tells it Like it Is strips, and some collaborations I've been working on with some other artists. In a couple of weeks, I'll get the story proper going again, once I'm sure a good chunk of the reader base is back.

And might I strongly encourage anyone who's a fan of my work to vote for the comic over here (and do so daily!), so as to gain access to a new original piece of art that I'm very proud of.

So, I've been gearing up for the return of Dave & Vyacheslav (at long last), and my plan is to have a backlog of about 12 to 15 comics in the can before I put any of it online. That way, if I begin to fall behind schedule, I'll have a buffer, which will allow me to catch up. Less pressure that way. Less stress. More fun. More likely for me to actually keep on schedule regularly.

So! While working on some new character art for the inimitable Chris Langmuir, I did what I often did when I got bored. I started dicking around with colours and such. This result was so spectacularly sinister-looking, though, that I just HAD to share it.

And aside from being sinister, I'm just really proud of the light and shadow on it. I think I've gotten a lot better during my break. Which, I know, one would reasonably hope for, right? But still.

And aside from this, there's some guest comicy stuff I've been working on, collaborating with an artist calling herself Maggie Bones. My scripts. Her line work, my colours. Here's a little sample of that business...

So, yeah. :)

You know, sometimes, when there's a conversation you know you're going to have, how you'll sort of rehearse the conversation in your head ahead of time? Like, your boss tells you to see them in the office tomorrow morning, and you spend the night coming up with different possible paths you'd like the conversation to take? And then, when the time comes, the conversation doesn't go anything like that?

Writing D&V is like that.

Seriously, I went out for a walk early this morning, and scripted out this whole conversation between Dave and Charlotte for the next script. In detail.

Then I get home, sit down, and start typing. About two lines of dialogue into the conversation, it went completely off the planned course. And I laughed. I seriously laughed, and said to myself "I can't believe he just said that!". And about four more times while I was writing the script, I stopped and laughed with surprise at things my characters said.

It's all method acting with me. I can only just barely plan out how the story is going to go, and the actual dialogue of the characters usually feels like it's completely out of my control. These characters... it's like they live in my head, and I just let them out once in a while to play when I sit down to write a script. Sometimes, when I'm writing, I will literally come up with an entire script by accident. Strip #74? I didn't plan any of it. I didn't see it coming. Seriously, I had thought that the conversation which we see in #76 would follow from #73. But before Colin and Henry could get on to any of that, they had all that horrible nonsense to say in Strip #74. And I laughed hysterically as I wrote it, because I was so shocked at the stuff coming out of their mouths.

I can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

Well, well, well.

So, a week ago today, I got a disconnection notice from Telus. This happens every few months, and so this is not a hugely upsetting thing in and of itself. Still, though... I have rent to pay, BJ's wedding is coming up in a week or so (for which I need to pay for the tuxedo rental...), and besides which, there's the ever-approaching body painting projects, with their material costs and the rest.

So, I decided, "You know what? In order to pay for this and still do the things I need to do in order to feel alive, I would have to take out a loan. I have a better idea". That better idea was to ask my fans for some help and support. The result was remarkable.

In four days, I had the $209.56 I needed, and was feeling pretty high on myself. The phone bill is being paid, and - as I promised my fans - I am doing a five-day update marathon on my comic as a reward. This is a bit taxing, but I feel they've earned this deluge of entertainment.

Still, though... as amazingly flattered as I am that so many people are willing to simply give me money in order to keep the site running, it is wierd to me that these people aren't - by and large - also buying any of my posters. I thought I had some really strong content with those things, but there doesn't seem to be anything like the interest I thought there would be... It seems that in some ways, I've mis-judged my audience. I really thought more people would really dig these things. Not so much, I'm afraid... I'm seeing about rectifying that. But still.

Anyways, back to work on the comic I get. Three more strips in three more days, and they aren't going to make themselves. Then I can afford myself a little bit of a breather and get back to the body painting work...

Dave & Vyacheslav #77 is up!

People been forgetting this is a Canadian Comic. There was a time - way back att the beginning - when there was actually a Canadian flag in the logo. Maybe that was a good idea. Well, I'm gonna see about correcting that. Let's see how many people in the international audience even get the punchline to this comic. Or anything in strip #79, when it comes out. Hah!

Dave & Vyacheslav #75 is up!

Featuring the return of not one , but TWO much-beloved characters from the past!

New Dave & Vyacheslav comic is up! Read and enjoy!

And I'm gonna go see Erich today and finalize the designs for the posters today, so hopefully on monday we can start thinking about printing...

So, a couple of days ago, as mentioned, this unter_null fellow pirates my zombie jesus picture. I add a comment to his post, which he would have to appprove in order for it to be made public. It basically said, "Hey, here's where the art comes from. I'm the artist. I take credit". He never approved this comment, and so I felt compelled to add my logo and URL to the image, so that he would have no choice but to give me credit.

So I checked today. The fucker deleted his post.

Seemes he has some strange, driving aversion to people being given credit for their own damned work.

And not even an e-mail of appology.

Bastard.

This is a nuance of LiveJournal which will take some getting used to.

People suck. This is why, about eight times an hour for the last few days, this image of mine has been linked, uncredited, to other people's livejournals.

For the past couple of days, I've been running about like a zombie king of the jews with his head cut off, trying to take credit in each instance.

This morning, though, it reached critical mass. Too much. Too many. And one guy, named unter_null who seems to have about a billion friends watching his posts, has made it impossible to post a comment with regards to his use of my image without his say-so... which he isn't giving.

So, fuck 'em, I say. They want to pirate my image so bad? They want to leech my fucking bandwidth? Fuck 'em! So, I added my fucking logo and URL to the image, turning their piracy into free advertising for me! Hah! 'Cause you know why? Fuck 'em! THAT'S WHY!!!