4komatose

For those who don’t already know, Scott and I are both students at Portland State University. I mention this only because it might help to understand the next few sentences, wherein I will describe how best-laid plans often go awry.

As you may have already understood (whether by inference or by Scott’s last post), we both just experienced that joyous part of the educational year often referred to as Winter Break. For two young men such as us (this also was mentioned in Scott’s last post), such a “vacation” was a much-needed opportunity to tie up a number of loose ends with our comic’s website, storyline and artwork. I predicted that we would be at least two issues ahead of schedule by the time school started again, which would provide for us a much-needed cushion come finals in March.

Suffice to say that it didn’t happen. However, I am happy to say that the current issue is poised for an on-time release (that is, early Tuesday morning rather than late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning). Further, there are some rather significant issues that have been worked out for the comic, which will be revealed this month. Stay tuned.

In other news, I’m sitting in a computer lab at PSU right now, waiting for a page layout (as in magazine, letterhead, poster, etc. layout) class to begin. It should have some effects on what you see in the comic over the coming weeks, but not nearly as much as my digital illustration class which begins tomorrow. My textbook for that class: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I must admit that I haven’t read any of McCloud’s work thus far, despite being familiar with it for some time. The fact that my illustration class will be specifically dealing with illustrating comics excites me, because it can only help the work that I’m doing here.

None of my instructors know of my dual identity as both mild-mannered student and mediocre comics artist, and I plan to keep it that way for a while. However, the thought occurs that I may be able to do an issue or two of 4Komatose as in-class projects, which should be interesting both for the class and for the comic itself.

We shall see.

Well, it’s a new year. A year of change. A year of greatness. A year of trying to survive more finals. *yuck*

I have many goals this year. #1: Lose 160 lbs. Not only will I be healthier, but all you babes out there who probably aren’t reading this will be able to look at the new me on the beaches of Hawaii this August and go, “Yowza!”
Hey! A guy can dream, can’t he?
…
No?
Oh… um… well… uh…
HEY! What are you trying to do? Kill me? I can dream! They’re a little bizarre sometimes.. especially the one I keep having where the elephant is sitting down at a tea party giving the T-Rex a hard time because he has a run in his hose but had the wrong kind of nail polish to cover it up so just used some epoxy and hasn’t been able to take the pantyhose off for 65 million years and it’s beginning to chafe….
Um… Did I say that out loud???

#2: See this site get finished. I know, I know. You’ve been waiting 6+ years for me to finish this site… well, by golly, this year I’m gonna do it…. hopefully

*yawn*
Well, I know I had more, but all this planning has made me tired. So I’m gonna go and get some sleep.
Hey, what else is a good college for?

Those of you who are coming here from deviantArt, Yahoo!360, etc. have read this already, but for those of you who haven\’t:

I’ve joined up in a little contest over at MangaRevolution.com, competing for the chance to win a $2500 Cintiq. Unlike other art contests I’ve seen, this one is ingeniously built up around the idea of getting participants to both promote and build the site by posting links in forums and personal websites and by donating tutorials to the site’s tutorial pages.

I’ve been wanting to get a Cintiq anyway, and I have a couple of friends who have been asking me questions about my art — particularly about how I put the comic together, how I color hair (it’s actually a really simple Photoshop trick I worked out a couple of years ago), etc. — so I figure I might as well give it a try. There are certainly much better artists out there, but it’s still worth a shot.