Search and Research #121

Delivered, as promised. I love it when these strips write themselves, and this is pretty much a verbatim transcript of an interchange I had with a girl at the desk. I've sometimes seen people at a restaurant say "Surprise me!" to a waiter when they can't decide what they want to eat, but it somehow loses its charm at the service desk. Enjoy!

Quick update....

I just want to send out a quick update here...I was hoping to get a strip up this past Sunday, but between the Easter holiday and a surprise visit from the in-laws tonight I just wasn't able to finish it. Strip #121 is penciled and partially inked so I'll have it up on Tuesday night. Mark your calendars!!!

- Eli

Search and Research #120

...And we're back. Thanks to you all who hung in there, patiently waiting for me to get my head around this concept. As a "thank you" I've created an oversized color strip. This takes up the majority of a 8"x19" piece of matte board that my sister-in-law graciously gave to me. I tried coloring this with markers only, and for the most part it worked. There were some things here and there that I sort of wished I could take back, but the main image that this strip started from, Super Marc punching out a virus, turned out pretty well I think. Enjoy!

A quick update...

As some of you who faithfully follow this strip may be aware, the next strip will be #120, which will be a color strip. These color strips take me longer than usual to do, and this particular one coincides with a trip that my wife and I are preparing for, so it is unlikely that I'll have the strip finished in the next couple of weeks, due to the preparations and then the actual trip. I will do my best to have it up by the end of March.

- Eli

Update 3-10-09 by Jason

Despite our frequent collaboration, Eli and I rarely have the opportunity to get together and hang out (I haven't been able to convince my wife that the 24hr round trip drive from TX to TN would work for a weekend trip). It's been about 3 1/2 years since we went up to Nashville, but now Eli and his wife are coming to East Texas. And (in my best Texan accent) we're lookin' forward to seein' ya'll!

-Jason

Search and Research #119

I recently had to change my password and once again, as always seems to happen, I have a great idea for a password and think "Man I wish someone could appreciate this password other than me." Is it just me?

Search and Research #118

Sorry this is up a little late. I had a bunch of art to do last week and this just didn't make the list. I have to admit that as a person who grew up learning the whole "check-in/check-out" terminology for dealing with library books, I was really thrown when I started working at a library and everything was suddenly "charge/discharge." Personally...I still like "check-in/check-out" better. Enjoy!

Search and Research #117

A little wrap-up to our story arc. Enjoy!

Search and Research #116

I have to admit that I think this is one of my better constructed strips so far. I really liked the way this looked in pencils and I just hoped that I wouldn't mess it up when I inked it. I'm not the greatest inker but even so, I think it turned out pretty good. I liked the sword moving out of the second panel, and into the panel where it finds its final resting place. I had a lot of stuff to try and convey in this strip, and I think it turned out pretty well.

We have one more strip to sort of wrap up the current story arc, and then we will be returning to the world of normal library stuff. Enjoy!

Search and Research #115

Ok, this is the one. I have to admit that even though this story line is a little weird, and doesn't really have much to do with normal library business, I got really excited about drawing Future SCOM. Specifically the shot of him leaving his little flying ship dock and flying free. There is a lot more features that he has when he is docked (which makes it a necessary thing to draw) but who wants to be bogged down with all those accoutrements all the time?

In the interest of full disclosure, I did indeed base Future SCOM's flying base on an upside down Starship Enterprise. I spent a lot of time when I was younger drawing the Enterprise in various space battles. I even acquired many Star Trek model kits when I was younger specifically to check the accuracy of my drawings of different ships from different angles. I'm pleased that I was able to put all those hours of my earlier life to good use for the purpose of everyone's entertainment. Enjoy!

Search and Research #114

Sorry for the delay on this...I had a virus on my computer that was taking up all of my nonworking time the past couple of days. It was a sneaky little bugger called MS Antivirus 2009, and it was a pain to get rid of. It made itself look like an intrusion alert from Windows, but when I clicked on it, it allowed the virus to implant itself on my system. I finally got rid of it tonight, and feel comfortable uploading an image again.

So here's Wai Fai again, minus the weird hair that she had. I liked how her old hair looked, but it was a pain to draw, so I tried to simplify it. I'm still not super-comfortable drawing it, but I'm getting it. Also, I left Jason's tie white in deference to our scientific fan contingent. :0)

Enjoy!

Search and Research #113

I have to say that this guy was fun to design and draw. I went in a lot of different directions before settling on this one. It's sort of fun to have SCOM in the future, but I still don't know how the future should look. Every time I think about it I just draw a blank (literally!). And...on that bad joke, I leave you to enjoy this strip.

Search and Research #112

...and we're back on track. This was an interesting strip to draw, particularly trying to convey SCOM's new surroundings. I thought that the small black robot from Star Wars might properly set the futuristic tone I was looking for! :0)

As a somewhat humorous aside, the character of Jason is fairly closely based upon me, although I do not have a Mr. Spock haircut. I even wore a labcoat around in highschool. And dang it! I just realized that I forgot to color his tie...grrr. I hate missing details like that. Oh well. Enjoy!

Search and Research #111

Welcome to the new year!! This joke struck me as funny over the holidays and since it was time sensitive I'm interrupting the current story line for it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #110

Hey everybody! (hey Dr. Eli!!) It's the holidays, at least here in America, and I'm going to let this strip carry us through to the new year! If you are taking time off, may you enjoy it. If you have to work some of the days in the next couple of weeks (as I do) may you get lots of stuff done. May you all find 2009 to be a peaceful, prosperous, and productive new year!! See you next year!!

- Eli

Search and Research #109

We here, now, present the next installment in the prestigious and very critically acclaimed "Search and Research Saga", the online comic strip which the New York Times called the, "What? Get out of my office and don't come back unless you're bringing me a cheeseburger!" **

**The previous comment was written under the influence of Monty Pyton, and must therefore be excused of any facetiousness or silliness. Enjoy!

Search and Research #108

Ok, on with the strip! I've started experimenting with some gray toned markers in rendering the strip (see #104 to see the first experiment)to kind of help add some better shading than I can add simply with lines. I am still trying to decide if I like using them better than trying traditional pen and ink shading techniques...and this strip is, for me, all about artistic experimentation and growth. As always, your thoughts on the strips are always appreciated, and your thoughts about the addition of grays to the strips are particularly of interest to me. Enjoy!

Search and Research #107

Hey! Two weeks in a row! Let's see if we can keep this up. Tell your friends! Invite your neighbors!

On a separate note, if you weren't aware, there is a new Star Trek movie in the works. As a guy who was pretty disappointed by the previous two, I was kind of skeptical about this but after seeing the new trailer, I'm pretty excited. You should definitely go check it out. Enjoy!

Search and Research #106

Phew! I think this has been my busiest fall ever! From illnesses to weddings, to helping my wife stay sane while getting a MLS, to doing whatever I can to make a little extra money in this crazy economy I've felt swamped. I can honestly say that all of that created a situation where I didn't have any ideas for new strips and didn't have time to collaborate with my buddy and co-writer Jason (who is also insanely busy). Things look like they're sort of calming down though and Jason and I have been able to chat a little about ideas for new strips so hopefully we'll be able to try to find some regularity in posting. Thanks for reading!

Search and Research #105

Yes. Yes, it feels good to gt this idea out of my head and on paper...and now online. I have tried in the past to make the color strips the sort of things that are worthy of rendering in color. I really liked the idea my friend Bryan had of blending works from the history of art into the library setting, such as Strip #30. I'm a big fan of the surrealist painter Dali (and most of the rest of the surrealists actually) and so for this one, I settled on his The Persistence of Memory as a subject. It is not an exact copy as the Magritte was, but more like a homage to the painting. This strip is my tribute to the mind numbing and ongoing task that many student workers perform called Inventory.

In my student worker days, inventory was a regular task we were asked to perform for almost the entire school year. I think that anything we didn't finish during that time would be finished over the summer. The data would be analyzed and put to use, and the process would begin again the following August. I hated doing inventory. I hated it even more when the clipboard I had been using was replaced with a 5 pound portable barcode scanner that was not only unwieldy but emitted a loud beep for every barcode it scanned. Even now, sitting in my library office, comfortably away from the possibility of having to perform the task, I do not think of those times fondly.

This is for all of us student workers who were at one time or another called upon to sacrifice sanity in the stacks with a clipboard and a pencil (or a portable barcode scanner.) Enjoy!

Search and Research #104

Yeah, it's been a while. And, as the strip indicates, I've been super busy. Things have calmed down though, so hopefully the weekly strips will be back on schedule soon. Enjoy!

- Eli