Search and Research #150

Whew! It's nice to finally get this up! My co-writer Jason and I wrote this whole story arc out back in April, but this final part of the story fell during the busiest time of my entire year...beginning of the fall semester at the college at which I work. That lasted about a month an a half, at which point I had penciled about half of this "super-sized" strip. I finally got myself together and finished penciling and inking this strip. Then I started getting other artwork commissions which demanded my free time, which left me sort of scrambling to do what coloring I could during my lunch break at work. There is so much work that goes into coloring that bits and pieces just doesn't really allow you to make much progress on the overall piece. Anyway...I'm finally done with this one, and it's my great pleasure to show it to you, not only because I think that it's one of the better jobs I've ever done drawing and coloring, but because it's the epic conclusion of the "Evil Copier Saga!!" The image above is sort of bigger than usual for the strip because I want you to have to opportunity to see the coloring details. Below, I'm posting a smaller resolution image in case the one above is really too big to comfortably view on your phone or whatever. Enjoy!

Smaller version:

Introducing...Randall

Randall was introduced back in strip #12 to essentially set up a gag wherein we reveal that SCOM has legs and can walk around. I gave him my father's middle name, and my propensity toward messiness. At the time I was drawing this, I'm pretty sure I had the messiest office in our library. I'm doing better, but things do tend to pile up on and around my desk. I hadn't really planned on him sticking around, but it turned out that having a sort of messy, grumpy male librarian can be useful for stories. I'm not entirely sure what prompted me to give him a "mustachio" type mustache, or the weird-looking goatee, but they seemed to go together in my mind. I've move away from curling his goatee the way I drew it in strip #12, but have not removed it entirely.

Search and Research #149

Here we go! This is the penultimate chapter in the "Evil Copier Saga" and it feels good to post it, having written it around 3 months ago or more. I'm still in the midst of other art projects and general business, and the next strip, aside from being #150, is also a color strip, and a big one at that, with lots of stuff happening, which is all to say that I'm not sure when it will be finished. But, hopefully it will be worth any wait that you, my dear readers, will have to endure. I'll try to post progress teasers here on the blog, as well as other interesting sketches, in the meantime to keep things interesting. Thanks for stopping by!

Search and Research #147

This is a day of celebration! No, not just because there is a new strip, despite some humidity related delays. On this day, my friend, and co-writer, Jason Watts has welcomed his son Tobin Joshua into the world at 8:03 this morning. Tobin is Jason's third child, and first son. Let's all congratulate Jason, and celebrate with him! Also, please enjoy this continuation of "The Evil Copier Saga".

Search and Research #144

Hello! Welcome back! So, here in Nashville, Tennessee we've had some flooding recently along with a lot of other damage, including damage to the power lines behind the house, keeping me out of power for several days last week. It also affected our internet access. That, and a recently hectic schedule have sort of prevented me from posting this strip until now. Things are slowly getting back to normal now though.

Alright! It feels good to get this up. Where in the world is this story going? Keep coming back to find out!

Search and Research #140

I have very nice handwriting these days, but as recently as my time in highschool it wasn't as nice. My handwriting was something that I had developed for my own use, and it wasn't really intended for others to have to read. I used to work at a pizza place run by a Turkish man who was very big on clear handwriting. It seemed like every couple days he and I would have a little meeting about my handwriting and he would show me the parts of my handwriting that were hard to read, and then threaten to make me fold boxes all day the next day if it wasn't corrected. I have also worked with people who could use a handwriting intervention but I have never been inclined to give one. Enjoy!