FRAY BUSTED, absolute final

FRAY BUSTED, absolute final, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

The absolute final version of my illustration for Fray's upcoming book, "Busted".

Kitty Korvette featured in Austin-American Statesman

The Austin-American Statesman's Austin360 features an article about Kitty Korvette, who served as Dr. Sketchy's model last week at Beerland, and who is one of three finalists on Fox Reality Channel's "Search for the Next Elvira."

You can vote for her by dialing 1-888-SCARY-02, through Sunday at 12:59pm.

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Webcomicsnation/Comicspace merge, make money

This is a pretty big deal:

Today, Josh Roberts (owner of ComicSpace and Onlinecomics.net) and I are excited to announce that we have signed a Letter of Intent to merge our businesses into one corporate entity. We will be working with E-Line Ventures, a New Jersey-based ‘double bottom line’ early-stage investment firm (they look at both the financial and social impact of their investments) to secure the necessary funding and support for us to effectively merge and run the combined business.

It's a great match. Despite its meteoric rise and addition of comics "galleries" ComicSpace has needed a quality way of displaying webcomics.  And WCN would really benefit from a better social networking system for readers as well as creators. 

Josh and Joey are both visionaries in their own way, so I think this will be really interesting to watch.

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BUSTED illustration

BUSTED illustration, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Some last minute changes to the Fray illustration. The girl's done, now to change the fella.

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New band photo, super-dramatic style

Late October, originally uploaded by Mister Oliver.

Took this super-dramatic band photo tonight after we recorded the demo video.

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New short video from World Racketeering Squad, "The World Revolves Around Me"

Reed's Halloween party was this weekend, and we played our longest set to date--13 songs, over an hour, with guitar and keyboard, a drummer and a backing singer.

More about that later.Here's a quick short video we made of a new little song fragment called "The World Revolves Around Me":

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Frenden Halloween, groovy gory T-shirt from Ray Frenden and A Better Tomorrow

Ray Frenden designed this awesome Halloween shirt for A Better Tomorrow. Their blog also have it as desktop wallpapers.

24-Hour Comic on index cards

Princess Rockstar Scientist found a clever way of participating in 24-Hour Comic Day.  She drew her 24 pages on index cards:

I wanted to try making a 24-hour comic... but I'm not 18 any more and I can't abuse my body like I used to. I need sleep.
Since there is no restriction on page size for 24-hour comics, I decided to make a tiny 24-page comic made out of index cards folded in half. I folded 7 index cards and sewed them together into a little booklet using coptic stitch (the first time I've ever done this).

It's a cute and funny little story, too.  Very well done!

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Dr Sketchy's life drawing--Kitty Korvette (part 3)

At the end of the life drawing session, the artists are asked to pick their favorite drawings and from them, the model picks her choice of her favorite.

Miss Korvette picked this drawing as her "model's choice", and I won a cool little black skull candle!  She was very sweet.

Jeff

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Dr Sketchy's life drawing--Kitty Korvette (part 2)

 

Dr Sketchy's life drawing--Kitty Korvette (part 1)

Today I attended Dr. Sketchy's life drawing session here in Austin at Beerland.  The model was the lovely Miss Kitty Korvette. 

She did three sets of poses in three different costumes.  The first was a long Elvira-type black dress and knee-high black boots.

She posed alone, with a coffin-type guitar case, and with two varieties of bass guitars that she plays in Black Molly and Midwest Monster. 

Kitty Korvette was an excellent model and it was nice to do some life drawing again.  It's been years since I've done any focused drawing from life like this.  I'm definitely going back next month!

 

This next drawing came out pretty well, I thought. 

A few ink line drawings done without reference, between sessions:

Jeff

Jamie McKelvie's "Suburban Glamour"

From Kieron Gillen:

I return, daubed flourescent orange peaking through the beard like some kind of nu-rave Vagrant, from London, body worn from a night to celebrate the release of McKelvie’s Suburban Glamour. Then I remember something: I haven’t told you lot that it’s ready to get yet.

Anyway, it looks like this…

A preview can be read here.

Reviewers seem to like it.

And you should buy it from a comic shop, immediately if not sooner and stuff.

Suburban Glamour: For people who realise there’s not enough HOT PINK in comics.

Okay, true, I just jacked his whole post.  But I couldn't not include the pretty cover and the witty intro and the end of the post has the stuff about the preview and the word on the street.

Gillen and McKelvie are hot off the excellent "Phonogram", and now Jamie McKelvie's going solo with Suburban Glamour.  It's sure to be beautiful and very cool.

Also, apparently "flourescent" is the English spelling of "florescent".  I did not realize that.

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Jess Fink's "Chester 5000 XYV" reaches 50 pages!

Jess Fink's super-cute and sexy adult comic Chester 5000 XYV has just posted its 50th page.  If you're of age and not offended by robots doing naughty things with ladies, check it out!

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New World Racketeering Squad soul groove--Hoarse Angel

Every time we write a new song, I'm excited, but this time doubly so. 

Up to now most of the guitar parts for our songs have been fairly simple, strummed or chugged chords, power chords, that sort of thing.  I've never really had the confidence and dexterity to do much more. 

Yesterday I spent all day playing guitar--mostly James Brown-style funk riffs, but at one point I got into a Hendrixy kind of soul groove, and it worked itself into the chords for a new song.

I recorded a short instrumental demo at about 4am, and I did what I usually do when making instrumentals or new songs--I named it something random.  In this case, it was "Hoarse angel".  I didn't even think about it, just wrote down the first thing that came to mind.

Today I worked on the chords more, just practicing and getting comfortable with them.  Reed was picking me up for a movie at 6:00, and about an hour before that a melody and some words came to me.

She's a hoarse angel. 
She's got nothing left to say.
She tried her best to help you. 
But you just sighed and walked away.

In a flash, there it was, the meaning of the phrase and the whole approach to the song.  The melody was tricky for my voice, but I knew we could either transpose it to a key I could sing, or find a good key for Reed's voice.

Reed showed up and I played it to him, and when he started singing it was clear that's how it was meant to be.  He just had a beautiful, soulful approach to it. We haven't done anything like soul so he's never had the opportunity to sing like this on any of our songs.

We talked about it and Reed busted out with a new verse that blew me away:

She's a hoarse angel,
She's got the silence in her eyes.
Though you're the one that's bleedin'
She's the only one that cries.

Great stuff.  After the movie, Reed wrote some more verses and it was clear he really "got" the song, the soulful blues in the idea really communicates with both of us.

We recorded a quick acoustic demo, and here it is for your listening pleasure.  You can hear it in one of two ways:

Download the mp3:

Hoarse angel (demo) (3:47, 3.45 MB)

Or visit our Virb site:

www.virb.com/worldracketeeringsquad/

"Hoarse angel (demo)" is currently the first song on our Virb music player, and the first track on the "Demonstrations" album.

Enjoy!

Jeff

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Chastity Towers "Appearance of Respectability", Sunday preview Oct 14,

Chastity Towers "Appearance of Respectability", Sunday preview Oct 14, 2007, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

This week's sketch preview of this Wednesday's Chastity Towers page (NSFW).

Abigail didn't mean to volunteer to show potential new student Emily around, but she's on the hook now! Mischievous Mina just grins.

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Harris O'Malley paints red strings, weiners

Harris O'Malley is working on a beautiful series of paintings, in pairs with single figures linked together by a red string:

And now it's time for something a little different. As I run through working on getting some projects finished before I disappear for a month, I decided to do a diptych painting that could make for interesting placement for the next show. There's a folk-tale in Japan that destined lovers are connected by a red string, that ties their hearts and souls together.

Click the link to see the first painting (NSFW due to nudity).

World Racketeering Squad videos--Green Muse Cafe Oct 11, 2007

On Thursday, October 11, the World Racketeering Squad played another open mic gig at the Green Muse Cafe here in Austin. We've been doing that regularly for a few weeks now, and it's a great time. Jules and John who run it are super cool, and they play great music when they get up on stage. It's a friendly atmosphere of cool people.

There were two major differences in our show this week. We used keyboard instead of guitar, and we videotaped the performance in iMovie on Reed's laptop!

I've been playing keyboard for a long time but we haven't done many recordings with it. We've decided to add the keyboard to our performance at Reed's Halloween party on October 27, so we wanted to take it out and give it a test run in front of an audience.

Overall, it went great! I'm a little rusty playing on some of these tunes, but felt excellent and the audience seemed to really enjoy it.

During our soundcheck I was doodling around with Carole King's "Natural Woman":

"Natural Woman" soundcheck

Note John waving his arms and singing along! Then our first song was "Esoteric", our ode to They Might Be Giants:

Esoteric

The crowd seemed to dig the false ending. We noticed at the end they waited a beat before clapping--"We're not getting fooled again!" The next song is our extended science fiction opus, "5017". This time we introduced its new opening section, inspired by old-time radio shows and their sponsors.

5017 (David's theme)

That one's a little weirder, especially without drums! Next up was "Professor Popinjay", our cute bouncy 1960s/Donovan-style song about an imaginary friend. Reed's been working on the tin flute for this song, and he played it here for the first time on stage!

Professor Popinjay

And we rounded out the show with "Perfectly Disposable", a sort of dance ballad. Not so dancy here, without drums, but still very fun.

Perfectly Disposable

It was an awesome show and great practice for the Halloween party. Hope you enjoy the videos!

Jeff

"Realistic vs Cartoony"

Heh, this is funny. He quotes massive parts of this entire conversation, but doesn't link to the thread where it happened.

I was "Jeremy". Like the author of this post, I was also frankly amazed to see somebody saying "I didn't think I need to do life drawing because I work cartoony"... but like he says, it was an incredibly polite discussion and I think it's just a case of a naive young artist who's learning new things for the first time.

Jeff

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New Kylie Minogue: "2 Hearts"

I don't mean to keep posting videos, but super sexy Kylie Minogue's new single, "2 Hearts" is out and has a video:

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Joan Jett Replacements cover, "Androgynous"

(h/t PowerPop)

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"Natural Woman", Aretha Franklin at Montreux

I would've liked to find one of her playing piano, but I don't know if she did that much live.

New Chastity Towers

There's a new Chastity Towers page up today. Girls wear uniforms, there is flirting, and a butt is grabbed!

And if you haven't seen it, check out the new fan art by Hushicho!

(Note: As usual, most of these links are adults-only and not safe for work.Caveat lector.)

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Fray "Busted" illustration

Illo final, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Got some excellent critiques from the Stylus gang about this illustration, so I made some changes. Here's the for-real final version.

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Futurama: Bender's Big Score trailer

Woo-hoo. New Futurama!

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Little synchronicities

1. I hadn't heard of, thought of or seen mention of the movie "Teen Wolf" in more than a decade, but the day after I watch "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" on Mystery Science Theater 3000, it's all over cable, several times a day.  I think TBS was the "Teen Wolf" channel all day today.
2. In the afternoon I have an eye exam to get new glasses.  In the evening blind characters are featured on both "Without a Trace" and "The X-Files".  On X-Files they even had an eye exam to prove the character was blind.

Just little synchronicities that make life interesting.

Chastity Towers Sunday preview Oct 7 2007

Chastity Towers Sunday preview Oct 7 2007, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Sketch preview of this week's Chastity Towers (NSFW) page. Just a few more pages until it gets really naughty!

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UK Company sued for copyright infringement for allowing employees to listen to radios

From WFMU's Beware of the Blog:

And now, amazingly, the Kwik-Fit car repair company is being sued by the PRS for £200,000 in damages for unlicensed "public performances" of copyrighted music. Their crime? Allowing mechanics to play their music so loudly over the din of machinery in the garage that both customers and colleagues could hear it. According to the BBC:

"The allegations are of a widespread and consistent picture emerging over many years whereby routine copyright infringement in the workplace was, or inferentially must have been, known to and 'authorized' or 'permitted' by local and central management."

Some face sketches

sketches-4, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Here are some sketches drawn the other day, working on my Andrew Loomis head construction technique. I'm pretty happy with the Mina in the lower left corner.

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Fan art from Hushicho!

forjeff
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman

Got this lovely fan art from Hushicho, creator of fellow Adultwebcomics series Incubus Tales (adults-only, NSFW).

This is Incubus Tales character Chana, slipping out of a school uniform!

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New editorial illustration

This is a new illustration done for a story.  I'll post more about it later. This was drawn entirely in Manga Studio.

Jeff

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360 degree panoramic comic

From Neatorama:

Özi created a comic panel drawn in style of a single continuous camera-shot without cuts to tell a story. Kind of like a 360° panorama, but for comics (indeed, he called it the "panocomic").

Link - Thanks Özi!

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Liveblogging Butterfly

Dean Trippe has been liveblogging Butterfly today, posting new screenshots as he goes through each step of drawing, inking, coloring and lettering his webcomic.

Notorious B.I.G. freestyling at age 17

Biggie freestyling in front of a deli in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

(h/t Rolling Stone and WFMU)

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Ray Frenden's tub of lard on Boing Boing

Ray Frenden's wife Monica runs Vegan blog Rural Vegan, and Boing Boing featured a post showing Ray holding up a 105,000 calorie bucket of lard.

Tasty!

UPDATE: Apparently getting so many hits from Boing Boing inspired a torrent of nasty comments on Rural Vegan, so the post has been removed.

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Real-life Transformer sings and dances

Awesome singing and dancing robot.

(h/t KanYe West)

Toning/whitespace tip: fill in the negative space, then invert

Here's a simple little tip that didn't occur to me until recently.

When I'm drawing a page, I usually have a background behind the characters, so I need to fill in whitespace underneath the characters' ink lines, to block out the background.

Until the other day, I did this by using the Fill tool with the All Layers option and filling in the lines of the characters with white, clicking on each little space created by the lines I'd drawn.

Then it hit me: Fill in the negative space, then invert.

Here's what I start with (click the thumbnail to see the full image):

What I do is this:

1. Turn off all layers except my characters.

 

2. Fill in the negative space with a color (I use black).

3. Select the negative space with the "Select Color Range" option.

4. Invert the selection.  You now have a selection covering all the space where your characters are, and none of the space where they're not.  A perfect silhouette.

5. On a new layer, fill the selection with white.  The background is now obscured and the characters are opaque.

6. Above the white layer, fill in with tones or colors as desired.

And you're done!

In this example, I was using Manga Studio, but the same principles apply in Painter, Photoshop, or any coloring program.

I'll be inking the figures on this page next.  I'll see what kind of tutorial I can come up with for them!

Jeff

New Sugarshock from Joss Whedon

New installment of Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon's Sugarshock!

Previously in Sugarshock: Part 1, Part 2.

(h/t Whedonesque)

New Chastity Towers page

The latest Chastity Towers (NSFW) page is up today, featuring a closeup of Headmistress Doctor Cain, getting sentimental over her pet French teacher, Mademoiselle Millefeuille.  It's also got the first closeup of the girls so far in the story, including sweet little Fleurette and mischievous Mina.

There's still a few more pages until they get naked, but there's plenty of sexy schoolgirl uniforms with anachronistically short skirts to tide you over til then!

As always, Chastity Towers is for adults only.  It features nudity and explicit sex.

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Ray Frenden in FLIST Art Show, Chicago

The excellent illustrator Ray Frenden will be participating in the FLIST Art Show at the Happy Dog Gallery (1524 N Milwaukee) in Chicago, this Friday, October 5.

If you're near Chicago and you like awesome, treat yourself to a trip down there.

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Prince, George Harrison, Eddie Hazel on Rolling Stone's "Top 25 Most Underrated Guitarists"

Rolling Stone has just released a list of the Top 25 Most Underrated Guitarists, and Prince tops the list.

(h/t IG Blog)

Busted Wonder's Charity Larrison wins $250 Creator Grant from Colleen Doran

http://adistantsoil.com/blog/?p=1691

(h/t Busted Wonder writer Kieron Gillen)

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"Spacegirl"--Prince Valiant/Flash Gordon style online comic by Travis Charest

(h/t Chi-Yun on the Stylus forum)

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My comics on Reddit

As was mentioned in the comments, my comics are listed on Reddit as well. It's a simple thing there to sign up for an account (you don't even need an email address) and add points to anything you like by clicking the "up arrow" by its listing.  The more points it gets, the higher its exposure.

Here's my listing on Reddit:

http://entertainment.reddit.com/user/progressions/

Thanks!

Jeff

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Birth of the DAISY Age

Electronic Press Kit from De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising":

(h/t KanYe West)

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Stick Figure Hamlet T-shirts

Here's something I didn't know.  Dan Carroll has Stick Figure Hamlet T-shirts for sale, like this adorable 'ghost' shirt.

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Chastity Towers mentioned in TCJ's Journalista!

http://tcj.com/journalista/?p=449

(h/t to Alister Blake for the heads-up!)

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Can you help boost Chastity Towers and Progressions X?

It's a new month, which means the webcomics charts have reset.  I've got Progressions X signed up at Topwebcomics, The Webcomics List, and Buzzcomix.  These provide a pretty healthy boost to my readership if the comic gets higher in the charts.  It definitely happened last month, so this month I'm making an up-front call for votes in the charts.

To boost Progressions X you can click on the following buttons to vote (note, you don't even have to view Progressions X to click these first two buttons, which makes them safe for clicking at work):

Progressions X at Topwebcomics:

Progressions X at Buzzcomix:

Progressions X at The Webcomics List works a little differently.  The rankings seem to be based on clicking through to Prog-X from the Webcomcslist listing.  If you click this button:

And then click on the link to the comic, it should add a view for this month.

And for Chastity Towers on The Webcomics List it's the same procedure:

Each of these can be done daily, so however much you can do to help would be appreciated! 

And last, both my comics get a nice flow of traffic from The Belfry, a webcomics directory and portal.  On The Belfry, you can sign up for an account and list a webcomic as a Favorite, which helps keep that comic listed in its user favorites, and generally helps channel some traffic our way.  This would be another great way to help boost Progressions X and Chastity Towers!

Belfry listings:

Chastity Towers

Progressions X

Thanks again for anything you can do!

Jeff