Sofia Grey postcard

SOFIA-FLIER-2, originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Postcard promotional image for Sofia Grey, a local singer/songwriter.

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.

Link

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!

Link

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

Link

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

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).

"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

Link

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.

Link

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.

Link

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

Link

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.

Link

Best Figure Drawing Books Ever

Alberto Ruiz has put up a great blog post on the Best Figure Drawing Books Ever, including links to RAR downloads of some excellent Andrew Loomis books.

My dad got me Loomis' "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth" when I was a kid, and we had no idea it was so well-regarded, it just happened to pop off the shelf at Half-Price Books. I've loved it ever since, and learned most of my figure construction, perspective, and anatomy from that book. Great stuff.

Link

Ray Frenden embraces the moleskine!

Ray Frenden's an excellent digital illustrator, having worked almost exclusively in Painter and Manga Studio.  Here he learns to stop worrying and love the moleskine.

Link

Nana 2

Nana 2
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Another angle of a study for a new look for hair and eyes. Ai Yazawa also has a completely different look for her eyes than most manga artists--instead of the elaborate shines, highlights and gradients, she basically just scribbles the eyeball.

I'm going to give that a shot in some tests and see if I like it enough to adapt it for my own use.

Nana 1

Nana 1
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Testing out a new look for hair and eyes inspired by Nana's Ai Yazawa. I've never been happy with the way I render hair, especially blonde hair, so I'm looking for a new look that's not TOO high-maintenance.

A lot of manga artists lavish an incredible amount of work on hair, rendering seemingly every strand, curl and braid. I don't think that'd suit me but I love the way Ai Yazawa draws hair, with long simple lines showing the flow of the hair from root to tip.

Yazawa uses a single-width line for the majority of her cartooning while I use a brush-style so it should make an interesting combination.

Marguerite Sauvage

Marguerite Sauvage is a French illustrator with a gorgeous fashion-y style.

She also counts Rumiko Takahashi as one of her main influences! She says it was Takahashi's "Lum" which inspired her to start drawing and which influenced her style of coloring in the shoulders and knees of her characters!

I'm not sure how old Ms Sauvage is but when I lived in France in 1990, children's television was PACKED with Rumiko Takahashi, along with lots of other anime such as Dragonball and Fist of the North Star. That's where I discovered Takahashi's "Maison Ikkoku" aka "Juliette Je t'aime" and "Lum/Urusei Yatsura" aka "Lamu". It was a little before Ranma so they hadn't started showing that by the time I moved back in 1991.

One thing I remember was that there was some controversy over the violent nature of anime like Fist of the North Star, but that it was so devastatingly popular they had to keep showing it or they would've faced mobs of angry kids storming the studios!

(hat tip to the always excellent illustration blog Drawn!)

Working in Manga Studio

Jeff

Sad Mina in color

Sad Mina in color
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

A new version of the "sad Mina" sketch with the official Chastity Towers uniform and a splash of color.

When I was twelve...

I drew a comic called "Game Quak".

Based on an imaginary "hacker" handle I had created for myself, "Game Quak" was a Donald Duck-looking guy who had wings instead of arms. But he was clever enough to create special super-sleeves for himself that could form his feathers into hands. When he needed to escape, he'd press a button and his gloves would fly off, his sleeves would roll up and he'd take off into the air.

I spent Junior High School drawing three- and four-page stories for this character on notebook paper. He was some kind of fever dream amalgam of all my interests at the time. I was reading superhero comics and playing video games on our Apple IIe. I'd get pirated copies of games that had been "cracked" by mysterious figures known as "computer hackers". These guys had crazy names for themselves, they lived and operated in a shadowy underground and they were noble figures, bringing prohibitively expensive games to the common people. The "Game Quak" of the comics was the story of a young boy and his pet duck "Quakkie" (again, I was 12 years old). One day they were playing in the field when a nuclear bomb went off and they were bathed in radiation.

Rather than burning them both alive and turning their world into a living hell, the boy and his duck fused together and became the anthropomorphic hacker superhero. He lived on Mount (wait for it) Kump Yooterg Ayme, with his friends RAM Master and ROM Mistress. I believe he had some arch-enemies but I regret to say I've forgotten anything about them.

UPDATE: Found this draft in my blog archives, but I don't think I ever posted it.

Chinese gangster

Chinese gangster
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

a smug-looking Chinese gangster. Drawn in my sketchbook and colored in Photoshop. I've been experimenting a bit more lately with airbrushing and coloring in Photoshop and Painter. It's fun!

Fleurette in uniform

Fleurette in uniform
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Fleurette in the Chastity Towers uniform. Shortened the skirt a bit (and indeed, Fleurette is regularly reprimanded in class for the shortness of the skirt!) but otherwise it's pretty much straight from the reference.

I wasn't sure whether the original costume in the illustration includes stockings or socks, but for now I'm going with dark socks and black shoes. That might change--either stockings and black shoes or white socks and saddle shoes. We'll see.

Uniform reference

Uniform reference
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Found a terrific school dress from 1908 to use as the basis for the Chastity Towers uniform. The New York Public Library has an amazing reference set of old magazines with fashion illustrations.

I'm not sure if this outfit was actually a uniform, or just a dress designed for wearing to school, but it has a good "uniform" look, it's double-breasted with big buttons, has a pleated skirt and just looks great.

I didn't really want to use a contemporary-style Western school uniform, nor a sailor-suit style, because neither of those would look quite right in the period setting, but this is just right!

Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Sketched from the Democratic primary debate on MSNBC.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Sketched from the Democratic primary debate on MSNBC.

Chris Dodd

Chris Dodd
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Sketched from the Democratic primary debate tonight on MSNBC.

David Brent in color

David Brent in color
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Ricky Gervais as David Brent in "The Office".

David: "'Dutch girls must be punished for having big boobs' Now, you do not punish someone, Dutch or otherwise for having big boobs."

Gareth: "If anything, they should be rewarded."

Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike

Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

from Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" segment of "Grindhouse".

Some muscley guy

Some muscley guy
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Haven't drawn much lately. If I don't draw every day I get real rusty real fast and I feel like I've totally forgotten how to do it.

One of the bad habits I have is to draw nothing but faces, just easily defined, really simple faces that don't stretch or push me at all. I feel like it's kind of a rut I get into, but drawing full figures can get extremely frustrating because they just look wrong if the proportions aren't right. Anyway I need to do more drawing!

Drew this to try out the new Painter X. They didn't change much that impacts on me since I mostly do cartooning in it. They did add a couple of really clumsy bugs though, making it tougher to zoom in and zoom out sometimes.

6:31pm

One of the most important aspects of a webcomic site would be how to represent a comic to the reader, sight unseen.

Inspired by this post, I developed a simple “Preview Grid” that took a few pages from the comic, cropped and reduced them and displayed them on the front page. That didn’t seem very clear, the large comics image was reduced too much to give an idea of what the comic looks like.

Now I’m considering a grid or a row of sample images, cropped but not reduced—which would be more abstract but give a better example of the drawing style in the comic.

Another option is to have the creator upload a sample image, but one thing I find frustrating in webcomics is to click on a beautifully-drawn, carefully-rendered, colored and airbrushed logo image or ad button, to find a crudely drawn B&W comic. I’d like to represent the actual pages of the comic to the reader.

WCN now has comments

Webcomics Nation now has comments. That's a good idea. :)

Jeff

1:50pm

There's not a lot to visually show for it, but I got a number of significant bugs worked out yesterday. Created a new temporary logo and added a splash of color to the page design.

The most significant thing (actually very simple) was that I added the first version of the "Start where you left off" feature. This would let you pick up any webcomic on the site, read it for a bit, and then come back later (days, weeks, months) and pick up where you left off. Everyone I've talked to has been enthusiastic about this idea and I know I'd love to have it on comics I read.

Right now it's extremely rudimentary--it just shows the first new page since your last signin date. In the future I'll be updating it so it actually tracks which pages you've read and which you haven't.

I've been futzing around with the comics display page for a long time now, I need to get a rough draft of the home page done, I'm tired of looking at the current homepage.

Jeff

3:23pm

Still looking for work.

In other news, I've updated the comics application I'm working on to include a link and RSS feed for all comments from a particular comic. That's just a minor addition, but I'm glad I got it worked out.

The single most important page on the site, the individual comics page display, is probably 80% complete. The navigation between pages, to other comics and to related tags is basically done. The next step is the navigation options by list of pages and (eventually) a calendar view. The navigation by list of pages is going to be fairly simple, at least until I work out how to add chapter headings. The calendar view will have to wait a bit as well.

The second most important set of pages is the process of adding or editing a new page, with adding/editing a new comic being a close third.

The way I see it, the one thing every visitor to the site will want to do is to view comics pages. That's what the site is for, after all.

For the smaller subset of comics creators, the most common behavior will be adding a new installment to their comic. The next most important behavior (if not literally the next most common) will be adding a comic itself.

Once those behaviors are robust and at least 90% good to go, the other features like friends lists and so on can be introduced.

Jeff

5:12pm

As of this afternoon, the new user and new comics processes are working properly. The new user process had a couple of bugs in it yesterday, but it seems to be functioning now.

The new comics process is a new addition. I've created a multi-step process when you add a new comic.

It works like this:

basic | add pages | edit pages | logo | describe | publish | congratulations

Basic Information

You enter your basic information about the comic here. The comic's name, who it's created by, and its web alias. The name and web alias must be unique, and the web alias must be a single word with no spaces or punctuation in it. (I haven't added that validation yet, I need to do that still).

Add pages

Once you've set up the basic info, you're prompted with five file input boxes, where you can upload the first five pages of your comic. Right now it's the first five pages only, but I'm thinking I may let you keep adding indefinitely at this point, so you can go ahead and add your whole comic here if you want.

Edit pages

You're then shown the thumbnails for the pages you uploaded, along with fields for the page Name, Description and Publish date (all optional). If you don't set the publish date, it's set to the current date.

Logo

Then you upload a logo image for the comic, and confirm that it's correct. If you want to change it, you can upload a new one, the process advances when you're satisfied.

Describe

Here you give the copyright information and add some tags to describe your comic. The tags function isn't wired up yet, but it will also include some text explaining that this is how you can define the genre or genres of your comic so people can find it more easily.

Publish

Then you tell it how often your comic is updated ("weekly", "daily", "whenever I feel like it") and give the publication date for the whole comic. Click on Publish and you're done.

Congratulations

The last page gives you the option to edit the comic's info, add a page, or go back to the home page.

I'm thinking I may move the "add pages" section to be the last step, or second to last step, but I'm not sure. "Publish" should be the very last step, but that may consist of simply viewing a summary of your comic's information, (name, alias, byline, description, copyright, logo, update schedule, publication date, and number of pages) and clicking "Publish".

I haven't done any visual styling on these pages so they're still very simple. They won't change too much, but there's a bit more visual design work to do on them.

I also need to create the Edit Comics process, which will compile most of that information onto just a few pages accessible from a single Manage Your Comic screen.

Jeff

12:45am

Today I've sketched out pages 1 through 17 of "The Appearance of Respectability", which will be the first Chastity Towers story, introducing all the characters.

These sketches have been a little rougher than usual, but mainly I wanted to get down the storytelling and panel layouts. Often when I sketch, it is basically the first stage of pencilling, with fairly solid figure drawing. In these sketches that is mostly the case, but there is definitely some cleanup to be done on the anatomy.

By the way, drawing girls kissing each other is harder than drawing them doing almost anything else to each other! Who knew?

Realizing that I've been making webcomics for quite a while but haven't really been following any, I've decided to check out a variety of them and see what I can find. I've started reading about a dozen various stories from Webcomics Nation and a number of other assorted strips and stories. I'll write more about which ones appeal to me later.

Jeff

12:09am

Spent a little time with some promotional sites tonight. Signed up both Progressions X and Drug Abuse Is Fun! on Onlinecomics.net, which has a pretty good audience and posts notices whenever they're updated.

Also posted blogs about them on Comixpedia.com. Hopefully that will help as well, especially if I keep posting news when a new storyline begins and so on.

Jeff

9:51am

Now that the confessional's off my chest, here's what I got done since yesterday!

Scanned and uploaded issues 2 through 6 of Drug Abuse Is Fun! to Webcomics Nation. They'll be appearing, one page per day, starting tomorrow, Monday, January 15. Also uploaded issues 6, 7 and 8 of Progressions X to Adultwebcomics.com. They'll be appearing in new installments every Monday as usual.

And I made a spiffy cover page for Prog X #8. It's the only issue of Prog X that never appeared as a minicomic, so I was free to make a new style cover for it. Here it is (again, NOT SAFE FOR WORK)

Progressions X #8 cover (NSFW).

I also noticed I had a few raunchy pinups and gag images drawn so I decided to set those up on Adultwebcomics too, they'll be appearing on Sundays for the next few weeks. The first one is here (NSFW). Now that I look at it, I'm hoping it doesn't interfere with the flow of the story pages that are being published each week. I'll see how it goes.

And in other news, I've plotted out the very first Chastity Towers story, "The Appearance of Respectability". It's an introduction to the school and the cast and it shows you right up front what the story's all about. I'll be working on laying that one out while I'm building more sets in SketchUp.

That's about all so far today. Now I'm just hoping my carpet will dry out after the heavy rains we've had this weekend--it's getting ripe in here and there doesn't seem like much I can do about it til the carpet people come back tomorrow!

Jeff

Drug Abuse Is Fun-damental!

Got a few cool things done since last night.

Last night I uploaded issues 2 through 6 of Drug Abuse Is Fun! to Webcomics Nation. Starting tomorrow morning it will be appearing on WCN every weekday, beginning with issue 2 and continuing until all 17 issues have been posted.

Drug Abuse Is Fun! was the very first minicomic I ever did, beginning in late 1994. I had lived in Paris from 1989 to 1991, where I met Stephen Greenwood-Hyde (then just Stephen Hyde) and we created Progressions. I'd been back in Austin a few years and had just moved out on my own, to my first apartment, a bland little studio on North Lamar. I wanted to draw comics, but Stephen lived in England and we didn't figure we could collaborate overseas. I think at the time we were still holding out some kind of hope that he's find a way to move over here and we could be in the same town. Or maybe I was, I dunno.

Autobiographical comics were all the rage in 1993 and '94, with Joe Matt, Seth, Chester Brown getting big, as well as R. Crumb and Harvey Pekar and Eddie Campbell creating masterpieces in the genre. I didn't have any other ideas so I decided to write about my life, and Drug Abuse Is Fun! was born.

It started off innocuous and fairly banal. I had met Jason Smith, a talented local guitar player, in a singing class at Austin Community College. We got along great and started going out to clubs. Jason was a lot more outgoing than I was, very confident and sure of himself. I had started drawing comics about our "adventures", hanging out with friends and going out, when we decided to take a trip to Big Bend State Park, just Jason and me. And that was going to be it for my friendship with Jason.

It's pretty confusing to me even now, why I behaved the way I did. I drew the Big Bend events into four issues of Drug Abuse, issues 3 to 6. Scanning those issues in last night put me into kind of a funk, not only because I miss Jason as a friend (though it's been thirteen years since our last contact), but because I still see myself making a lot of the same mistakes I detailed in these stories. I don't know if I didn't learn from them, or what. I hope I did, but to what extent I'm not sure.

Part of the main contention of all these earlier stories is that I find myself connecting with only one or two people at a time, and beyond that I find it tough to make friends. I'd love to be gregarious and have scores of connections, people to spend time with and hang out, get caught up on their lives, and so on. At any given time I have a few great friends for which I am extremely grateful. But it feels like I'm missing something, not the least of which is that it'd be nice to meet a girl and go on a date once in a while.

So overall it's a sobering experience to read through these old comics and see what ways I've changed and what ways I haven't. It's also a great experience to finally get to post these old comics on the web, since they haven't been seen by pretty much anybody in more than a decade. With 17 issues of Drug Abuse to publish, starting tomorrow, I will have a page of comics on the web every day for at least a year. Not to mention Chastity Towers and any other comics projects that take off on the meantime. That's a pretty cool feeling!

It's been a while since I was able to devote myself to comics wholeheartedly and I have been missing it desperately.

Jeff

Progressions X updates

Today I also finally created the promotional images used on Adultwebcomics.com for the Progressions X comic. They're explicit so I'll only link to them here, but I did make a new logo that I can show off. It's simple but I wanted something bold that's not complicated.

Prog-X 500x200 banner image
Prog-X 200x76 promo chit
(images not safe for work)

Jeff

Behold Chastity Towers!

school 4
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Created some sets today in SketchUp: the front of the school building, the basement shower with window, and an Edwardian school desk after some reference I found on the web.

Click the attached pic for more shots of the sets.

Jeff

10:50pm

Finished the sketches for the last 12 pages of "Everhard's Harmless Hobby", so the story is now all laid out! The next step is to design some of the sets for the series using SketchUp.

I'm also contemplating doing a introduction-to-Chastity-Towers story, possibly the start of the school year with the characters meeting each other. I'll be brainstorming on that and seeing if anything comes up. Also going to be laying out "A Sting In The Tail", another short (8-page) Chastity Towers story, this week.

I also uploaded the next couple of stories to Progressions X today, which updates every Monday. The current story, running through January, is based on "Love Is Psychedelic!" with a tragic and ironic twist on the original story's tragic and ironic twist. The next story, running in February, is inspired by "Once A Gangster!". Following that in March is "Skyline!", Progressions X style. And last is the latest finished comics story I've drawn, based on "Enter the Four-Eyed Dragon".

Once those Progressions X stories finish, the plan is hopefully to have a few Chastity Towers stories already drawn so it can begin running. Meanwhile I'll be working on other comics and see where that goes.

But first up is to build some sets!

Jeff

2:40am

Hung out with Reed this evening, had a great time. Played some Street Fighter and some Bomberman, which is awesome!

Finally got around to watching the first episode of the Sci-Fi show "Eureka", which was... earnest but dull. The dialogue was ALL right "on the nose", with no subtlety or subtext at all. The plot wasn't great, but the show had an enthusiastic and light-hearted tone which could have grown on me if the scripting was better.

Another gripe was that five minutes after the show ended, neither of us could remember the names of any of the characters. There was an Alison, a Warren, a Walter, and some others, but the names were of such a banal and generic quality they just vanished into the background as soon as they were mentioned.

This is in contrast to quality writers like Joss Whedon, who gives virtually every character in his shows a striking and memorable name. Buffy, Willow, Xander, Cordelia--these are names you remember even after seeing the show once or twice. Even if they don't have an odd or unusual name, Whedon gives the character a nickname which stands out on its own, as in Xander, Oz, Gunn, Wash. Or he plays with the gender to make a memorable contrast, as with Fred or Jayne.

Another disappointment is that the main character of "Eureka" was named "Jack". Someday, every male character on every TV show will be called "Jack". With the preponderance of Jacks on TV, especially in the most popular shows out there, it is ridiculous to create any more. Off the top of my head I can think of prominent Jacks in 24, Lost, Law & Order, Without a Trace... and there are many more I'm sure.

The name has a good sound to it, phonically the word "Jack" has a strong ring, but writers have got to be more creative when giving their people names!

Before bed I drew another couple of pages of "Everhard", but I'm getting sleepy and I'm off work tomorrow so I want to be rested to draw a bunch tomorrow! Made a few sketches at work but nothing too remarkable. Got a slightly younger and less witch-like design for Chastity Towers Headmistress Dr. Cain, that's about it.

Off to bed!

Jeff

2007-01-10-norton

2007-01-10-norton
Originally uploaded by Jeff Coleman.

Sketched out pages 11-20 of "Everhard's Harmless Hobby". It's coming along nicely! Not much to say about it, I would post sketches except it's going on Adult Webcomics and hence it's rather explicit!

I was pretty beat tonight, chatted with dr00 and shared Youtubes til about 10pm and then I didn't have much energy left at all. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I did my standard powerup routine to get energized and soon I was firing on all cylinders, cranking out 10 pages of sketches in about an hour.

Drew some fun drawings today at work, which I'm pretty proud of.

Included is one of Norton Everhard, the groundskeeper of Chastity Towers Preparatory School for Girls. I'm a little concerned that my drawings of grungy old Norton are coming out better than the designs for the girls who are the main characters!

Anyway, going to watch some Law & Order and perhaps read some Savage Dragon before bed.

Jeff

10:32pm

Roughed out pages 6-14 of "Everhard's Harmless Hobby", one of the first Chastity Towers stories tonight. Got a little sloppy toward the end but it's getting late and I just wanted to throw the ideas down on the page while I was doing it. I'll need to get some more reference to get some of the angles I want in the last couple of pages.

I've also plotted out "A Sting in the Tail", which has always been planned as the first Chastity Towers story. It's only 8 quick pages so I probably will draw that one first. Also came up with a new story, "An Afternoon with Abigail", which will likewise be fairly short. I might do it after "Sting' and before "Hobby".

I didn't do any of my comics routine tonight, except listening to Fantastic Plastic Machine. After work I chatted with dr00 who turned me on to a bunch of cool Japanese pop videos. For example:

RoboKiss, by Morning Musume spinoff W:



I also dug out some old favorites of mine, including this bluesy gem from Chinese singer Coco Lee:



Coco Lee was my inspiration for Pam Sage from Progressions, and this album, "Di Da Di" had the best videos, coolest costumes and best-looking hair.

Jeff

12:18am

Worked on "Poison" with Reed tonight.

"Poison" is a dark horror of a story that Reed and I developed a few years ago with an eye toward making it either a comic or a movie, depending on what felt right. Now that I'm gearing up for new comics projects, we're plotting it out so I can draw it.

It's pretty vicious material, emotionally harsh and pretty brutal to work on. It combines the optimism of heroes with powers with the darkness of Taxi Driver. Might be just the thing to help work out some issues, who knows!

Tomorrow I'm going to draw the storyboards for more Chastity Towers--I want to get it ready to start drawing within the next couple of weeks.

Jeff