newer things

they're newer!


i may add to this later..

i forget it, brotha

the time for talking is over!

here are some scans I found just dicking around on my hard drive like a bunch of freeloaders:



don't worry, you're not really supposed to understand it


(way back during his last week on NBC)


it's kind of a rumination on the word, not so much an expression of my pissed-off-ness


posting... soon, there will be more of this kind of thing.
until then.

oh, right

i'm supposed to be posting stuff.

turning the tables around to more recent things: a good friend of mine asked for my help creating a poster to promote an upcoming show at glasslands, "natif natal", which serves primarily as a benefit for victims of the recent quake in haiti, secondly as a kickass show literally spilling over the brim with awesome bands. if you're not doing anything thursday night and also happen to be within the legal limits of the borough of brooklyn, come out and have yourself a good time.

um, yeah

the internet situation has been solved. no longer shall you be tormented by the lingering questions of what the hell happened to your good friend shao, or 'why isn't he posting anything,' 'why isn't he returning my calls,' 'what did he mean when he said "it's not contagious or anything,"' etc. fret no more, internet readers. stop your fretting right this goddamn instant. for the situation, in regards to our internet connectivity, has been dealt with swiftly and with only the most absolute of judgment. I mean, seriously. it's been covered.

here, anyway, begins the backlog of sketches and drawings dating from months back, having only been recently scanned and even more recently posted to the internet. like right now, for instance.

(above in progress, indefinitely, maybe)

more to come, soon as hell

:o

we've been without internet for some time and we've been without a scanner for some time also. logically, this has led to much less posting and through that, this blog sat in silence for a length of time, facing the corner, thinking about what it's done. i hope you've learned a valuable lesson, blog. and we only do it because we love you.

let us celebrate with a posting of my submission to smoke signal #2.
this is an idea that was getting kicked around back in april, when i was not nearly comfortable enough taking a stab at a conversational, character-based comic. well, there's a sort-of-first time for everything, i guess. this is also the first time (in a very long time) i've ever laid something out in a very tight grid like this, which works a lot better for something as text-heavy as this turned out to be. i can't think of much else to say except thank god i was able to draw a cartoon spider convincingly.

zumachrume

our time living here along bustling, scenic myrtle avenue is coming, at last, to its close. no longer shall we wake collectively (no pun) to heavy traffic congestion, a choice selection of random people yelling at some other people on the payphone across the street, school children engaged in age-old pastimes such as "screaming contest" while waiting for the bus, and the 8ish-year-old friend of our neighbor's 8ish-year-old son yelling for him outside his window until he gets a response or coughs heavily and dies.

though if you want to get technical, that last one really only happened on saturday mornings, which should translate at about 1:30pm for some of us.

here are some "recent" drawings.

left: a doodle, last thing i drew for weeks
right: character based on some soccer team i saw playing




left: inside sort of thing about a job i won't have much longer
right: herpy derp

until next time

bottles & james

at long last, though it's been done for quite some time, i was able to get off my relatively fat ass (relative, to say, a poodle's) and take some pictures.

quickly, and poorly, and with little thought. i really just wanted to post this since i haven't been doing much of that lately.

FYI:

this is a birthday gift for our friend and fellow (at least, in theory) collective member alex. it's about 5 months late. sorry about that, alex.






a second printing is in the works, i want to switch up the colors and get the text to show up more... but as for now, i'm satisfied.

in related news, some of us no longer have an internet to speak of. it's kind of like being stranded on a desert island. as i write this i perch my computer on top of the windowsill to maybe sorta kinda get reception from "some place" across the street. the reason i bring this is up is because i have a pretty good vantage point of the intersection and this van just drove by with like 10 mattresses tied to the top

student driver

the plan was to not post anything about this until it was completely finished, but i'm so happy with how it's coming out that i felt a post of sketches was in order. other reasons included not having posted for weeks, being generally bored and a night owl, an uncontrollable addiction to scanning images, etc.

and, as always, items of (slight) interest:
1. the first page is the lone inked page because its been done since february--the intention was to have it ready for comic-con, but then i ran out of both time and $$$
2. yeah, i stole the panel with the key going in the ignition for 'may & her dog', i don't think it really makes a difference but i just wanted to get that out there so you don't hear any crazy rumors or anything







the new plan is to have a bunch of smaller printed versions of these ready for the MoCCA festival in june. there are also a dozen other things i'm hoping to finish during this hellstorm of a busy month, and yet i'm sure i'll still find time to stand on line for 3 hours for my free KFC chicken dinner. (while supplies last)

more posts eventually

afternoon delight

Snapple Real Facts #208: Snapple is delicious.

this is getting cross-posted everywhere. they need to just consolidate all the social networking sites into one heaving nasty glob of status updates and photo albums. anyway, i cranked this out over the past week for my entry to the next Static Fish issue, featuring several alumni, including myself. the fastest thing i've ever done (successfully) from start to finish, and all i had to do was lose a couple nights of sleep! (._.)

and so i present to you, (a link to) May and her Shape-Shifting Dog*




*alternatively titled May and her Ape-Shit Dog



a click on either of those will send you to the comic.

as for you, blog, i will post the lineart scans to you, just because i can

push it along

sketches for upcoming static fish thing that i'm about to get some serious inking time with





developing a whole lot better than i could have planned it, and i'm really excited to finish it.

more posts soon as i continue to tackle this laundry list of projects that i've been nursing for months, like so many creative eggs. fragile, yet delicious, when cooked properly. i believe that accurately describes my work.

( ._.)

i am in love with this photo.
credit: bob gruen

also, acting upon a piece of advice received by a fellow comic illustrator concerning good ways of getting exposure (that is, being as irritating as possible through as many social networking avenues as possible), i have created a twitter. mostly for the comic, but other stuff will surely sneak in. this really changes little to nothing about my feelings on twitter (don't get me started), but i accept that it is, for some people, their kind of thing and some sort of social phenomenon all in itself, i guess.

nevermind, just add me, if you've got it.

the many faces of a soy army

earlier today, while ransacking my hard drive for something to kill time with reference photos, i happened across a few interesting ones i had taken for reference back over the holiday break. except, by 'for reference' i mean 'with the intent of posting them to the blog' and by 'holiday break' i mean 'extended period of time in which i was unemployed that also happened to be around christmas.' careful, there's a lot of subtlety to my writing that you might be missing -- luckily i'm here to point it out for you.

so these pictures that i was just talking about? they're more like process photos. who doesn't love those, right? there's so much more to be learned and appreciated in the creative process of a thing than in the actual completion of that thing -- that's why people get sonograms. from here on, you are more than welcome to imagine these sparse process images as ultrasound composites of your soon-to-be soy army infant. or you can just take it as it is, boring old computer images; it's your loss.


first, i start with a sketch. tell me if i'm going too fast for you.

there is essentially no planning involved prior to making the sketch, unless you count the punchline/concept itself. so i guess it would be more appropriate to say that i start with a loose, incoherent mess of a lame joke (usually something i or someone said in irc-chat) that slowly takes shape as a really vague idea of how the comic will play out on a page. depending on how many panels i've decided to punish my pathetic, masochistic self with laying out and drawing, i'll spend most of the day wandering mentally from work (or something more important i.e. operating heavy machinery, dodging traffic on a bicycle, etc) and getting a feel for the placement. then i come home and jot this mess down. as you will soon see (or have seen if you actually ever read the comic), a lot of the stuff that's in the sketch ends up being in the finished piece, save for a few minor details... not usually how it always goes but this is a rare example of life moving in a favorable direction for me. as an aside, and to be totally serious, it is key to never really get too into detail with the sketch since you're going to be drawing the same damn thing a little bigger in about 5 minutes (sketching times may vary).

after several beers and probably a few hours wasted procrastinating or checking ffffound or bothering the general populace with drunken rambling, somehow this comes out:

normally i like to space my panels out a lot more than this, but time, size, and budget limitations left me with no choice (it was 11x14 bristol and needed to be finished by christmas). i tried to do the best with what i had, and figured that i could get enough contrast with colors that it wouldn't make much of a difference. but for the record, yeah, more room than this. it looks like i tried to pack a metaphorical bus full of geometric shapes. anyway, here, all the characters are placed and the environments are relatively fleshed-out enough so that i know what i'm doing when i get the pen to this son of a bitch. think of it as drawing a road map for yourself; a roadmap to success. another thing to note is that, as further means of subjecting myself to the mortal equivalent of an eternity's worth of punishment in hell, i like to do my own word bubbles. that's not only extra work, it's extra guess work -- you can never really assume how wide or tall your letters are going to be depending on the words (unless you're a fucking taoist master, disciplined in the art of making your letters the same size, always), so you have to take a wild guess and say "i think this bubble should be this big, because it doesn't not obstruct the panel too much yet will be able to accommodate all of my chicken scratches." it is not recommended or necessary to repeat this out loud. drawing lines the approximate length of the text also helps. sometimes. or you could always sit there with a ruler and draw out the guidelines for your text, if you're into that sort of punishment.

after a prolonged, frustrated and quite unspeakable period of time, we are left with this:

and i have little to say about it except that, at this point, it was the morning of christmas eve and, with my hand hurting from drawing so many tiny boxes, i was not looking forward to diving right into coloring. but what is a good comic without knowing that its creator is suffering some sort of constant agonizing pain?

what follows are a few (very few) screencaps of the coloring process and my sweet dock icons:




several things to note here: at this point it was definitely no longer christmas anymore, and my computer was (still is) also having insane cpu problems. i guess two is not several. as for the coloring, i'm not really sure what to say; i tried some new things here like different (and consistent) light sources on some panels, trying to get two colors in where i could... i was reading watchmen at the time. i feel it definitely helped things out a bit as far as dimensionality goes. coloring is probably the part i struggle with the most, mostly because i'm admittedly a perfectionist with my work, even if it means that thing is going to be shrunk dramatically and none of the imperfections will show, ever, to anyone. in terms of process, it's standard coloring in photoshop, separating the black lines onto their own layer and getting that transparency underneath to color without going over any of the lines. you know what i'm talking about.

alas, 2 days past the deadline, we have a finished comic!

it's a lot bigger than the version that got posted to the site (for obvious reasons) just so you can see some more details. was it worth the effort? any practice is good practice, like i always say. like i always say starting right now. again, to be serious, it's the greatest thing i've ever done and will ever do, and i'd do it all again, if given the chance. but since i'm not going to get that chance, i'm going to watch a movie or something instead.

(for those counting, there will be a new comic on friday.)

thanks for reading, you can go now 8)

a piece of a segment of a post

oh, me? yeah, i'm still around. you know, doing stuff.

i started several different things at once and none of them are actually done yet, hence the severe lack of posts from yours truly. that, and... life in general. fear not, there will be much to talk about in the next few days. or i'll forget to post and there won't be anything to talk about. you never really know which way i'm gonna go, the crazy unpredictable bastard that i am. believe me, though -- you'll want to get your water coolers and co-workers good and warmed up for the next post.

here's a sketchbook piece to hold your collective horses over for the time being until next time when we meet again.

a post is born

it's been a long time
shouldn't have left you
without a, uh..
nice picture to look at

here are some character sketches i've done and never uploaded. there's still one left that i haven't scanned in yet, and... yeah, i guess i'll get to that soon enough.




i was planning on using these for some type of comic experiment, but whatever clouded mess of a story i've got in the mental pipeline needs serious work. i'm not really into comics that don't go anywhere, story-wise; i always feel like it could at least use some sort of narrative element. so i'm either going to do that soon or i'll continue to disguise my procrastination as a struggle to establish a good story.

yeah, so anyway, 2 weekends ago was spent locked up in the print studio making a gift for a special someone. also, i managed to get a really good scan of it:



the joker was cut out of ruby lith, and it hurt my hand very much to do so. on a related note, i was out of practice and very few of them came out correct. :\

hey, since i seem to be going in a chronological order here, this small crappy thing was done the other night:




what else did i miss? currently, i'm working on a 5-color print that's pretty much side profiles of the bcc itself. it's got this a hard day's night thing going for it, i guess, but mostly i just need to occupy myself and i consider it good practice.

i've also added a majority of my (good) sketches to my website. i'm also considering doing another run of the penguin; the remaining editions i had sold very quickly at a recent print sale. speaking of that thing that i was just talking about, it was also juried into the 'uncomissioned' category of the society of illustrators 51st annual. :o

more pictures and talking about pictures soon, everyone.. i promise

a challenger appears

shao has been busy. busy the way bees get when they listen to marvin gaye. that's pretty goddamn busy.

here's a little recap of what i've been doing lately:

1. curious pictures asked for the final ink of the design i've been working on. i took a few pictures to document my process, because it's just so terribly interesting, and not only does it carefully and methodically exploit where i make some pretty horrible mistakes, but it's also a subtle peek into my ongoing battle with insomnia. keep reading and i'll explain, friends.


pencils at around 10pm



that shiny spot up at the top is the sun rising at around 8am the next morning. you can't see me, but imagine a recovering alcoholic who's just been run over by a bus driven by stampeding wildebeests. it was worse than that.


after a few last minute changes discussed in a last minute meeting, this is the final product that was submitted for approval (by the midnight society). note that the letters are much more visible than before and there is a severe absence of electricity pulsing from the guitar hero atop 440 lafayette. had i the time, there were still a few small, minute details i would have liked to have perfected, but the world of drawing stuff for money moves so much faster than you could ever imagine.

don't look now, but there it goes. wow.


2. The L Magazine, Brooklyn's favorite free tiny magazine in an orange stand, held a call for entries to their 2nd annual comic issue. i never got a response to the "how many pages can this be" question that i emailed them, so i stuck with doing one full page.

and here is that one full page that i did.

this may or may not be based on a true story. whose to say? you certainly were not there, so you have no room to talk. it will forever remain a mystery, and i hope for your sake that pondering this doesn't eventually plunge your mind into a maelstrom of unhappiness and bad dreams and freudian slips. and forgetting people's phone numbers. and calling your best friend by your other best friend's name -- that's the worst.

on a related note, i really enjoy our roof and the view from our roof. moving on.

3. this is a collection of things currently in progress -- soy army is in full effect; i'm keeping up with a monday morning update schedule (save for this week for reasons which i'll explain shortly) and i'm trying to expand and eventually break free of any conventional ideas i had in mind for this strip. 4 panels are cool, but i like doing stuff like this a lot more:

note: this will not make sense because the actual punchline has yet to be added. additionally, i've got tons of ideas to work with now, so that ensures that i won't slack off on this comic for at least another 2 months. maybe.

the society of illustrators 51 deadline is also quickly approaching (it's friday and not wednesday like i originally thought, which is why that comic remains unfinished), and i'm trying to do a new silkscreen that i might make a small number of, depending on how it comes out. more on that soon, even if it doesn't get finished in time to be submitted. on top of that, i also have yet to completely finish my postcards.. it would be kind of pointless to post images of that if i have no real idea of when it's going to get done.

tomorrow's the day to make your political preference known! get up real close to uncle sam's ear and yell as hard as you can, si, se puede!