Mark Fultz

As part of payment for some recent artwork, I agreed to create a sketch of the artist. This one was new for me as I branched out into the paintbrush for drawing...ohhhh.

I liked the look of it, I did a short animation of it based on this head turn sketch I had completed.

Here is an attempt at a similar turn of Mark Fultz.

The Wide Mouth Frog

New strips are on the way...soon.

In the meantime, I finished a quick animation, which was really practice on syncing dialogue. The whole compilation took about six hours, spread out over a couple of days though.

Feel free to take a gander. Comments are always welcomed.

Lady and the mouse

(Comic strip 222) I never thought it would be so hard to draw a mouse. I kept trying to pull far away from Jerry from the infamous cat and mouse duo, but I still felt like I was hovering on that edge.

I like the whole thought of a mouse civilization parodying our world with the same legends. Couldn't they just eat the olive away from the sword. Who knows? Maybe it's too much liquor. Could definitely bring new meaning to the whole lady in the lake scenario.

On the flip side, I finished three projects this week. Two commisioned pieces and a web update for a motivational speaker...who lives in a van down by ther river! Ha, if only. Because one is not ready to release yet, here's a glimpse of the other.

Making it work

Tonight's strip was a labor of love...well, it was labor anyway. Tina had a fortune cookie that said, "Digital components are made of analog components." I thought it clearly had to be written by some nerd running a fortune cookie shop, which gave me a strip idea. My brain-trust thought it wasn't that funny, but came up with another fortune cookie idea where all of the fortunes were written in binary code.

HAAHAHAHAHAHAH! We laughed and laughed, so I drew the strip and when it came time to add the dialogue I thought, "That's not funny." In retrospect we all agreed that it wasn't funny and couldn't figure out why we laughed to begin with, which led to our hour discussion of possible punchlines, none really being the zinger we originally thought we had.

Other considerations were 1. "I disagree, Fortune-o-matic, I think it's less filling." 2. "No, Fortune-o-matic, I think it takes more than 12 licks." 3. "Why are all of these fortunes ads for lost cats?" And it went on and on like that.

We even thought of posting it without the dialogue and making a contest out of it. The true sign of desperation. Either way, I kind of like that idea, so look for something like that in the near future.

Bad News?

And so now would seem right with the world, but I have a big 'ol greasy monkey wrench to throw in the works. For the next few weeks, I'll be updating just once a week (I know, you're thinking that it's not hardly updated at all as it is), but this will allow me to invest more time into the upcoming animation feature that you may have heard mention of in the forum or in previous splog posts.

I promise, the animation will be worth your (and my) while. Joe said that he's finished...almost...part of the theme music to accompany it. As soon as he does, I'll post part of it here to keep you in the loop of where it's going. I'll also post clips of rough animation scenes here as well.

Spring Break

It's been fun teasing with Joe's hair, but the real story to the fro begins next week. Just a little teaser.

Spring break is underway, so my participation in the forum has been less than usual, and my work production for the animations and other things has been as well. I've been spending my time doing what I do best...or enjoy the most anyway, playing with my daughter.

Nevertheless, I'm still sticking to my own deadlines. I should finish proofreading the novel before the week ends. Also, I plan to put together some...or one, at least run cycle for the android animation as well. The catalyst for that is that I received in the mail yesterday, The Animator's Survival Kit. I now know exactly what I didn't know about animation. With tutorials, I sometimes skim more than I read. This....I can't stop reading it. It's a must.

I'm saving the rest of this space to post the run cycle. You'll see it soon.

EDIT: Here's a quick rough of the run cycle that I mentioned.


http://www.hd-image.com/tutes/templar_run_black.swf

Templar

Another successful convention has been checked off the list.


If you've been keeping tabs on the forum, you've heard...read...the talk. The Jeopardy Challenge was a big hit. We've been invited to ChattaCon to host another game. Since it's such a well-attended convention, we'll probably be there...but that's in January so who knows what may happen between now and then.


I'm getting set to lay out the lines of motion for the Templar animation that I mentioned earlier. I've completed a few rough sketches with color of some of the characters. Colossus seems to be giving me the most trouble. Since he's a Russian robot, I'm toying with hard angles for his shape, but everytime I picture him, he's curved and round. Maybe my brain knows better than I do.


The sketch below is a mockup for Mr. Templar.