Didn’t get much of anything done today, not feeling all that well. It snowed all day, and I can expect more by the end of the week. The annoying bit was how by 4pm the clouds were all gone. Fuck you, clouds, don’t pretend you didn’t spend 8 hours dumping shit on my head.¹

But all is not lost! Now I know what bugs Allison Carmichael! Thank god, I was worried there fore a minute. That, folks, is the former admin of the anime and anthro galleries on deviantArt. And people wonder why we have a bad reputation on dA. (That’s a joke. Ten minutes of browsing the anime gallery by favorites will tell you why we have a bad rep. Sai just kind of helps things along, like social lubricant.)²

¹ For those playing the home game, I work in a lumberyard. I get to drive a forklift!
² Actually, the whole thing is a joke. Apart from a handful of vocal “real artists,”^{3, 4} the persecution of anime artists on deviantArt exists only in the minds of what I hope is only a vocal minority.
³ These are mostly the same people who claim that comics aren’t art. Heads so thick Atlas couldn’t pick that shit up.^5
4 That’s right, i put a footnote in the footnotes. Cutting edge.
⁵ I admit it, I just wanted to do an Atlas joke.
⁶ Man, I’m really going nuts with these things tonight…
^π Pie!

Didn’t feel like comic-ing just yet, so I colored up some old lineart I’ve been meaning to play with. This is theoretically canon with Brimzero, but it depends on a few things that aren’t readily apparent in the picture, and none of which I’m discussing because it’s fairly spoiler-heavy anyhow.

I still have to shade the clothes and hair, and touch up some of the glowy stuff, but it’s looking pretty good so far.

From my email today:

Dear Discount Anime DVD Customer,

Ai Yori Aoshi 15 (Graphic Novel) has finally arrived!

I swear they’re fucking with me. I just got around to reading vol. 14 yesterday. (There’s a reason that I’ve bought 14 books. If you’re into romantic comedy, check it out.)

Hopefully this isn’t too dark. It looks fine on my monitor, but your mileage may vary. (At least, it did before I stuck it on a white background. I oughta get a darker skin on this site… (Scratch that. A few minutes with this “borrowed from Blogger” theme and it’s looking halfway presentable. I’ll have to do some further tweaking when I’ve got time for it, later…)

This has been sitting on my hard drive for months. Since Scary Girl’s birthday, if memory serves. Ah well, it’s done now, that’s a good thing. The original title was something like “The New Adventures of Scary Girl: Professional Castrationary,” but castrationary is her day job, not her superhero job. (I’m still considering making a short comic out of this.)

Time for the next round of backpatting and asskissing from the online comics community. Didn’t we just do this a year ago?

I’d like to say that I have an opinion more complex than “yeah, what he said,” but honestly I don’t. Well, that’s not entirely true, I just don’t have anything of merit to add. Sure, it bothers me to no end that, if I decide to vote I would have to submit myself for approval, offering up some proof that I am, in fact, one of the holy, a creator, and not these unwashed commoners who merely read comics. Not only because you don’t have to be a cartoonist to understand comics, but because I don’t like the idea of these people looking over me and my body of work to see if I’m worthy to vote. If I’d wanted to be judged, I’d have emailed a link to Eric Burns a long time ago so I could at least be judged by someone I know to be competent, as opposed to an unknown quantity who runs a popularity contest.

Like I said, nothing of merit.

Also, I think Something Positive and Questionable Content are nominated for Outstanding Dramatic Comic every damn year. Go figure.

Technically a couple days late, but in reality it’s over two months late. I really like how this panel came out. Click for the whole thing.

One whole panel. Look how fast I go.

I think I’m gonna add another panel to this next page, comprising all the dialogue¹ from the page after next. Because given the choice, I’d rather trim it and do it in one panel than drag it out and have to draw a whole page of talking heads. Fewer panels suits my lazy ass very well.

I probably would’ve gotten that last panel done tonight if I hadn’t read through the entire Brat-halla archives. (Worth it.)

¹ Damn it, I knew I spelled “dialogue” right the first time yesterday! Dictionary.com one, Firefox spellcheck zero.

“It’s supposed to be in your butt.”

Thank you Misfile, I love my mother a lot more knowing she never gave me that particular bit of sage advice.

Got some more work done on SEP. Need to draw one more panel, ink the lot of ‘em, and send that shit into Photoshop. About damn time, I know.

Incidentally, I slapped together a preview with some of the dialog, it’s pretty close to how the final version should be, unless I rewrite it. Again. (If you people only knew how amny times I rewrite my scripts while drawing them…)

Not a whole lote more work to go, so this page should actually be up on Friday. And only two months late!

Decided to add a new panel to the next page of SEP, before the first panel. This panel doesn’t add anything that wouldn’t have been fairly clear otherwise, and it’s not especially gratuitous as fanservice, so I don’t know why the hell I put it in there, other than I wanted to draw Jenn waking up.

On the other hand, Jenn was originally going to be fully clothed in this next page, so I’ll either be drawing her in a bathrobe, or drawing her putting clothes on. (A tough job, but if I must, I must.)

Man, anyone ever notice that most of my stuff don’t make a whole lot of sense visually until it’s been colored? (Or toned, as the case may be.)