Introducing...Ayvee

In an effort to keep this blog from becoming a dry, abandoned husk of a blog while I work on finishing strip #150, I'm going to start posting images of some of the characters who inhabit the Harlansdale College Library. I drew these images of them and colored them with grayscale markers a while ago. I had something else in mind for them, but decided that now is the best time to put them up. First is Ayvee, who first showed up in Strip #96 but has only appeared in a couple of strips since then. We envisioned here a spunky, 20-something librarian who is in charge of Electronic Resources (get it? Ayvee...A/V!) I'm not sure why we haven't used her more...maybe because she's still kind of new. Anyway, here she is having fun. Enjoy!

Teaser #2...

Greeting dear readers of Search and Research. My heartfelt thanks to you for sticking with this strip through the ups and downs of my weird, yearly schedule. Hopefully the rewards are worth the long, dry spells. Here is another teaser image from the upcoming strip #150. Enjoy!

Search and...um...hmmm...

Wow! Three months. I feel like I should blow some virtual dust off of this thing or something. Three months is really too long to not post something, but I've been busy and this big color strip has been pretty complicated to draw and ink and stuff. I've been kind of snatching an hour or two here and there trying to work on it, but it's really slow going that way.

However, I have finished inking this strip! Finally! I still need to color this, and the paper I drew it on won't stand up to physical coloring so I'm going to color it digitally, like the last one. That will take a bit more time, so I'm not sure when it's going to be ready. In the meantime, here is a teaser from strip! Enjoy!

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!

Updates...

Ugh...I really did not want to drag this story out, especially considering the enormity of the ending, but I have gotten very busy, and haven't seemed to find the time and creative energy to do the next strip. I have been doing some artwork though for a series of tutorials on Literature Reviews, and thought I would post some of that artwork.A few years ago I helped to create a tutorial about the differences between scholarly and popular periodicals. You can view it here.
I decided to reuse these characters for the new tutorial, and I've been enjoying updating them in little ways and trying to make the drawings look nicer.
So, this is part of what I've been working on, and although it's not a new comic, I hope perhaps it will tide us over until I'm able to finish up this epic story arc we're currently in.
Thanks very much for stopping by!
Enjoy!

- Eli

Search and Research #148

Ever gotten about halfway done drawing a comic strip and realized that you wrote too much stuff to fit into a normal sized strip, and you didn't want to have to redraw it all on a bigger paper? Me too! As a result, I really had to choose my angles and shots carefully to show the stuff that was important, which took me a lot of time...I had to sort of leave it for a while and come back with (hopefully) fresh eyes every now and then. I decided to sort of darken in the background when showing Marc and the copier so that the other elements of the panels would stand out. I hope this strip makes sense visually...I really felt more cramped than usual. I draw these (with the exception of the big color ones) on normal 8.5x11" paper, and sometimes that's just doesn't feel like enough room. Ok, well, enough of me rambling. Enjoy!

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 #146

So I made myself a deal. In order to get this story going again, I cannot play Starcraft today until I got done with this strip. This will be the weekly policy until the end of this story. Thank you.

I really enjoyed giving SCOM his guns back, and drawing a companion shot to Strip #92 where SCOM discovers his guns have been removed. I hope you enjoy it as well!

Search and Research #145

Well, I really did not intend to take two and a half weeks to get this strip done, but I suppose that's life. Regular viewers will be aware that summers are usually much busier for me than the school year, and we're now in that summer phase. I'm going to pretend that being distracted to an extreme degree by the upcoming release of Starcraft 2 by Blizzard, and a resulting increase in desire to play Starcraft is just part of that summer busyness. :0) I LOVE STARCRAFT!!! Ok, I feel better now. Anyone else out there like Starcraft?

It's obvious now to me now that I was much more concerned about drawing the figures here than making nice word bubbles. I do think my figure work has been getting better; proportions are more consistent, I'm making myself draw hands more, I'm trying to work on expressions. But...I can't neglect the speech bubbles side of things either. I'll have to keep that in mind. Enjoy!

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 #143

We now bring you the next chapter in the blockbuster "Evil Copier" saga. I suppose it's pretty short for a chapter, but I don't want to rewrite the beginning, so we'll just have to go with that. I'm particularly pleased with the shot of SCOM running here. I always have a sort of difficult time drawing him at angles (despite the fact that he's essentially a box) but I really pushed myself to make this work. Enjoy!

Search and Research #142

As the saying goes, "Beware the copier which has leverage!" Enjoy!

Search and Research #141 *Update*

I just couldn't stand it...that copy machine was driving me crazy!!! I just HAD to fix the coloring on that thing, so I've updated the coloring on the machine to the way I wish I had colored it. I left the previous version up for the purposes of comparison. After all, this strip is still an outlet for my ongoing artistic development, and is the record of that development. Thank you all for reading, leaving comments, and (if you enjoy it) telling your friends.

eli

Search and Research #141

It's always nice to get another one of these done and up after an extended absence. I'm going to admit up front that having finished it, I do not like the way I colored this copier. I hope nobody will be upset when that coloring changes in future strips. Enjoy!

Warm up sketch...

As you may have noticed, it's been a while since I've done any strips. Part of this is because I sort of ran out of ideas for a while, and I wanted to take a break from the little "one off" kinds of strips and try to tell a story. Since I'm a better artist than I am a writer, I need help from Jason to try to make these longer story arcs fit together, but as he wrote in the previous post, he's been super busy. The other part is that I was doing a lot of other art projects, mostly for work related stuff.

Anyway, this post is to let you know that we've written scripts for the next 10 strips, and I've started working on the first one. I hope to have it up on Sunday night or Monday. Because it has been a while since I've drawn the characters, I'm presenting for your viewing pleasure a warm up sketch I did of Elsie to remember how to draw her.



See you in a few!

Is it' a new strip!?! Oh. Never mind. False alarm.

La dee daaaa da dee... Oh! Hey there. I didn't see you there... What's that you say? New strip? Well, Eli and I are staying pretty busy right now. He's got at least one commissioned project going on right now that's consuming his free time. I also am pretty busy. We've been chatting a bit about trying to get another multi-strip story arc going, possibly culminating at or before the next color one (#150). So as soon as we can "sit down" and get to writing, we'll get some more strips coming your way! Thanks for poppin' in.
-Jason

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!

Search and Research #139

Another one that is inspired by my real life. Something happened to the water pressure on my street, and I couldn't shower before work, and the only hat I had was a stocking cap kind of hat. I wore that thing all day, feeling super self-conscious and hoping my boss didn't see me. When I took it off at the end of the day, my hair looked like Marc's. I had fun drawing that hair. Enjoy!

Search and Research #138

I have found pens in our laptop bags upon their return to the desk. I have found keys. Once I found $11. I think it must be the pockets...people are trained to put things in pockets, no matter which pockets they are. Usually the pockets around us belong to us, and when we check out a laptop and a bag to a person, it feels like that bag is now theirs, which includes the pockets by default. I dunno, just thinking out loud here. Anyone else found weird stuff in laptop bags when they're returned?

Search and Research #137

We actually did get a request from a guy who accidentally "mailed" a letter in our book drop. Anybody else get weird stuff in the book drop accidentally? Also, I'm pretty proud of these word balloons...they're less misshapen then usual. Enjoy!

Search and Research #136

This strip was completely written by my buddy Jason. That is a rare occurrence because he is a computer programmer and doesn't spend much time in libraries. He'd like to spend more, but the library in his town had the roof collapse over the summer, rendering the town library-less. True story. Due to the fact that I work in a library, I usually come up with scripts about library situations and then shoot them over to Jason who adds a zing to the dialogue that I don't naturally possess.

That's when the movie Avatar came on the scene (heh heh...scene...bad joke. And...cut!) and blew both of us away with the awesomeness of the 3-D and the general sophistication of the computer animation. If you have not seen Avatar yet, please make plans to do so with all haste. Avatar succeeded in inspiring Jason in a way that library's never have, and the result was quite enjoyable. Thanks for reading!!

Search and Research #135

Ok! Here it is! Thanks again to everyone for waiting patiently while I worked this one out. I really stretched myself in coloring this, and I'll go ahead and admit that I'm very pleased with the result. I've done some photoshop coloring of individual pictures, but never tried to tie multiple panels together with similar colors and other stuff. I don't think I could have achieved these results with my markers, so I'm glad I went with the computer coloring route. I do like the process of coloring by hand though, so I will probably revert back to hand coloring with the next color strip unless I just really come up with something that would be better on the computer.

A couple things that may be of interest to the nerds/film buffs out there. I shamelessly stole the design of the "machine" from The Princess Bride, particularly the little headgear thing, but we'll call it a 'homage'. I also colored the "Facebook Angel" in the facebook colors on purpose, although she is very blue looking because I wanted to add some shading to her body, so there isn't much white on her. The "M" on Monotonoy's shirt is there on purpose, and his costume is colored in gray tones on purpose as well to accentuate his character. I presumed that Monotony would have stolen Super Marc's cape, so it doesn't make an appearance here.

As I mentioned before, I'm already done with the next strip, so be on the look-out for it next week. Because the image above is really, really large, I'm including a smaller resolution image for anyone viewing this on a phone or something. Enjoy!

More teasers...

Ok, so maybe the updates weren't as frequent as I had previously envisioned. Sorry about that. Every time that I thought about posting something I got nervous, as if any of the inked images would give too much away about the strip or something. It seems sort of silly now. So, just to prove that I am actually making progress on this strip, I'm posting a panel that I've finished coloring. I've removed the text, but clearly this is one of the characters that appeared in my previous post, now appearing in his inked, and colored final form.

This strip is really too large to color with markers, as I have done in the past, so I'm venturing into the arena of computer coloring. I think that so far it's looking okay. I'm not sure when I'll have it ready to post. Ironically, I've got a couple more strips that are already inked and ready to go after I get done with this one. It seems that inking the regular strip is far less intimidating to me than a super large one. I say that because this color strip sat on my desk, penciled and un-inked, for about a month while holiday visitors and the busyness of my library work kept me from finding the initiative to ink it.

Thanks to those of you who have been following along. Regular viewers are probably aware that my library work gets so busy at the beginning of each semester that I'm not able to find the mental energy to draw this strip once I get home, and thus there is a lag in January and August. I'm going to do my best to not let this lag extend too far into February.

- Eli

Teasers...

Just to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this strip, and to whet you appetites a little bit, I'm posting a couple of teaser images related to the next color strip that I'm working on. Those of you who have been following for a while know that often these color strips take a bit more time than usual, and the fact that I've had art projects related to the Christmas holidays and got my hand bitten by a squirrel (yes, you're reading that right!) haven't helped at all. However, the question remains, what possible relationship could there be between this image: and this image?And, what could either of them have to do with a library? Keep mulling on that and I'll try to post more teasers as this color strip progresses!

eli

Wai Fai sketches...

Well, I'm really really late in posting this, but here's my sketch of Wai Fai in her Trinity costume. I really like how this turned out, and yes, that's a tape gun in her hand. The Matrix had tons of guns in it, and so I initially thought it would be funny for her to have a tape gun, but I'm glad that didn't make it into the final strip. Below is that same sketch colorized with Photoshop.More sketches to come this week...keep your eyes peeled!

- eli

Search and Research #134

Well, between preparations for the Thanksgiving holidays and then throwing my back out while raking the yard the day after Thanksgiving, I haven't had much time to draw the past couple weeks. It happens. At least, it happens to me. :0)

Today's strip is based on an actual interaction one of my co-workers had with a student. In real life, the student had spread all is stuff out on my friend's desk while she had stepped out. He was apparently pretty angry to be asked to move.

The more I try to put in background elements I seem to have to either make them very detailed and risk cluttering up the design and putting in hours carrying the details on through all the panels, or I put in general shapes to sort of seem like background elements and I never know what to do with them. The cross hatching on the background elements this time around was an experiment, and I have to say that it's not exactly what I had in mind, but I didn't know what else to do with it. Oh well. Enjoy!

*Edit - I decided that the cross-hatched background elements in panels 1 and 4 were too confusing and so I just edited them out, and re-uploaded the image. For those of you who are interesting in seeing the old version, here it is:

Search and Research #133

Welcome back! I'm afraid that to fully appreciate this comic you will need to have seen Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, or The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If you've seen none of these, please go see T2 immediately. Thank you. Also, there is no www.smartlibrarymachines.scom, so please don't spend time looking. Enjoy!

Ayvee sketches...

Here is my black and white sketch of Ayvee as Lisa Simpson as well as my colorized version. She was a lot of fun to draw in this costume. I think I made the mistake of trying to make her legs a little too muscular looking, or put a little too much detail in her knees or something, but overall I like how this design came out. The red dress with the triangle fringe, the pearls, and the spiky yellow hair were the details that I hoped would make this costume work. Doesn't she look like she's having fun? More sketches later this week. Enjoy!

Opal sketches

Here is the sketch I did of Opal as an MiB agent. The first sketch is the version I did with gray markers. The second image is colored with Photoshop by selecting certain areas and then playing with the hue. This was in response to a request by frequent commenter Angie, who suggested she'd like to see Opal decked out as a secret agent a few months ago. Angie, these are for you. I had to do detailed research on the design of the "flashy thing". And yes, she is carrying the noisy cricket in her other hand. More character sketches to follow. Enjoy!

Comps and Costume sketches...

My wife is in the last semester of her MLS and this means that she is taking her comps this Friday!!! Which means that we are going to Knoxville, TN for this weekend, and I'm not planning to have a new strip ready for this next week. I do however plan to post some interesting things on the blog that I have already drawn.

As many of you are aware we recently did a comic strip which featured the staff of the library dressed in their Halloween costumes. If you haven't seen it go check it out. Based on a post from an anonymous reader, I've confirmed the costume identities of 6 of the 8 characters, but there are still two characters for you to figure out!!! Who are they and who are they dressed as? Comment if you know or at least want to guess!

In the meantime, I'm going to start posting some of the sketches I did in preparation for this strip. I did these to figure out the costume and look for each character after Jason and I decided who each staff member would dress up as. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I think these design sketches look better than the renderings in the actual strip. Probably because I could draw these ones at a larger size. Oh well. First we have Elsie as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. This was pretty fun for me. I'm posting my inked lines and then my color version. I colored her with my gray markers and then changed some of the hues in Photoshop. As always, you can click on these pictures to see them at a higher resolution. Enjoy!

Search and Research #132

Hey! We've got an oversized color strip this week thanks to my good friend and co-writer Jason Watts. We'd written a Halloween strip and Jason pushed me really hard to have it in color. I was hesitant to break the "every 15th strip" tradition that we have rigidly upheld for so long, but once I realized that there were some costumes that sort of depended on a visual cue, I caved and colored the whole thing. This is a super large strip, coming in at 8"x12.5", but for the sake of easier online viewing I've sized it down to about 9"x5.5". Still super large for this strip, although not as large as Optimus SCOM fighting the T-Rex, or Supermarc. So...who are all of our characters dressed up as? They represent a mixture of Jason and my interests, so some will be more difficult than others to figure out. Post 'em up! Let's see who can get them all correctly first. Enjoy!

Search and Research #131

Today you are all getting a treat! At this point in my cartooning career I'm using three different warm gray markers for all the gray areas. When these warm grays are scanned in as grayscale, they show up as more of a cool gray. I'm usually happier with how they look in grayscale so I post them thus. However, today I was really proud of how my warm gray markers look and felt like the grayscale took something away from the look of the strip (particularly the woman)so I'm posting a color scan of my gray markers!!! Please try to contain your jubilation long enough to enjoy the humor of the strip itself. Thank you.

This idea came to me as I was walking out to the desk and thought, "I usually tell a person who has been waiting for a while that I'm sorry for the wait, but what if I were to say 'I'm sorry about your wait'...that could really be taken the wrong way!" At which point I immediately wrote out a strip about it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #130

This, like many of the recent strips, is based on an actual interaction with a gentleman who took my "I'm not really a stats guy" to mean, "Please explain statistics to me for the next 15 minutes." I really enjoyed writing and drawing this strip. I hope you all enjoy it as well!

preparation sketch...

This is a sketch done in preparation for the next strip. What role could he possibly play? Tune in on Monday to find out!

eli

Search and Research #129

So, this is based on a recent interaction wherein a patron had a pencil in his mouth and was trying to talk to me at the desk. For some reason he refused to remove the pencil even though I had to ask him to repeat himself several times. When he gave me his card, it turned out that he was a faculty member which was doubly awful because I couldn't be snarky in talking to him. I wanted to say something like, "If you're hungry, there's a small cafe downstairs." But...I couldn't. I really wished that I could have been a grumpinator though. I mean, if anyone deserved to have a bad rest of the day, it's the guy who won't do you the courtesy of removing a pencil from his mouth before speaking, right? Is that wrong?

Hmmmm....

Well, well, well...what could this be? This is a sketch I did in preparation for the next strip, but who is this guy? How will he play into the plot? Is it important that he has a pencil in his mouth? Let the speculation begin! And...tune in next week to find out the answers to all these questions!

3 Years Down, ??? To Go

Well, Eli and I let it slip by us quietly, but Friday was Search and Research's 3 year anniversary. I have thoroughly enjoyed helping to create this strip. I probably enjoy reading these strips as much or more than any of our readers. I always get a kick out of seeing the characters interact, and I really appreciate Eli's ability to visually represent those interactions in a way that cracks me up everytime!

Thank you to all of our fans and readers!! We have appreciated your comments and sticking with us when we have long gaps between postings. If it was just for us, we probably would have stopped creating this strip a while ago, but for you guys we keep 'em coming!

Here's to more years of fun and laughter to come!

-Jason

Search and Research #128

Ahh...the mystery is solved. This still doesn't help my real life situation in which there are never any pens at the desk, but it was fun. Hopefully this pen obsession is out of my system now. Enjoy!

Search and Research #127

Apparently I'm still working through some "lack of pens" issues in the workplace, so here's another scenario that kinda gets on my nerves. These questions have come up when I only had 1 pen left, and I've had to decide whether or not to lend the pen. I have to admit that I usually don't lend out the pen, under the "My need at the desk is greater than your need at the computer" Act of 2002, but there are times that I wish I could demand unreasonable collateral. But that's why I have this strip!!! Enjoy!

Search and Research #126

As many of you are aware, I like to address current issues in libraries in this strip; often times they are issues that are so current that they don't show up in library literature. Today is no exception...Where are all our pens going??!! Our library has bought literally thousands of pens in the time that I've been here, and we still have to go searching all over the place when we need to write out a call number for somebody! And it's not like we're buying really nice pens either...these are the cheapest writing implement we can find, so I can't imagine that there would be the "new pen" factor at work here among those taking them. Forget about Google books, the lack of pens is the thing that's going to take us down, in my opinion.

Ok, enough of that. I discovered that my faithful gray marker is almost out of ink, so I had to do some computer colors for the service desk today. I hope I'm not letting anyone down by doing that...if it's any consolation, I had to spend a lot of time talking myself into that course of action. I really want to do this strip by hand all the time. Also, Marc refers to a previous incident involving an ink-bomb. That can be seen in strip #33. Enjoy!

Search and Research #125

Well, well, well...look at this. A new strip! Whoa! As many of you faithful readers are aware, my life becomes extremely busy around the start of a new semester, and August and part of September are usually too busy for me to find time to draw strips, and this year was no exception. My July was also unusually busy, so yes...it has been a while. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you all back to Search and Research!

I had mentioned in previous posts that my younger brother Christopher would be doing a guest strip for me, but it turned out that drawing a strip was a bit daunting for him, so I'm still trying to talk him into finishing it, but I'm not sure when that might happen.

Does anybody else get a lot of books coming in with these little sticky tabs in them? I seem to find them on a fairly regular basis, and I'm always surprised that someone would consider that an acceptable condition in which to return a book to a library. I just don't understand that...

Thanks very much to all of you for sticking with this strip! Enjoy!

eli