From the Mouth of My Canon

     Canon is the enemy.

     If you aren't familiar with the word, that might be because you're a functional adult.  For the rest of us, it's the idea of an official lore in some narrative structure, usually from children's media that adults can't get enough of.  For example, after the first Star Wars was in theatres, but before Empire, there was a book written that took place in between.  It had Luke and Leia hook up, because the idea of them being siblings hadn't been thought of yet.   This book is now non-canonical, meaning it isn't officially part of the story.

     For almost any narrative, some level of canon is essential.  Without some kind of bedrock for the structure to rest on, it falls apart.  The problem is, it's tempting to get too bogged down and completely hem yourself in. 

     An example of this is Adventure Time.  One of my favourite cartoons of the last 15 years, or at least it was for the first few seasons.  The entire premise was a boy had a magic dog, they were bros,  and they went on adventures.  The world around them was whatever it needed to be for the purposes of that story, and was set up in such a way that the creators were only limited by their imagination.   Skip ahead three or four years, and the original creative team wants to move on to other projects.  The show is still doing well, so the network wants to keep it going.  New writers are brought in once the originals are gone, and these new writers have a different understanding of the material; that of fans, rather than creators.  See also The Simpsons, from Armen Tanzarian onward.

     You don't necessarily have to understand something to enjoy it.  Adventure Time is pleasant to look at, the dog farts, and silly things happen.  The intended audience of children might not ever notice anything has changed.  A manchild like me will, though.  Ideas that served their purpose as vague explanations of why the world they were in was so strange were put under a microscope, picked apart and labelled until all the mystery was gone.

     Star Wars is another example.  A series trapped by it's own backstory, unable to tread new ground for fear of alienating fans with something different and losing the hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

     I guess what I'm saying is less Tolkien, more Moebius.  Anyway here's more scrawlings.

      This will likely be a motherfucker to paint.

      Zig-zagging from top left to bottom right: The Saddest Janitor, man holding drugs, the handsomest man, the second handsomest man, a bad angle, and marionette pantomime.

That little duck face in the upper right corner is my greatest failure.

     Still have back issues of Heavy Metal on my mind, as evidenced by Upsetting Hooters.

     The bottom right is me presenting you with this update.

Comic characters should smoke more

     Here's where I lie about what's happening in these pages

     In pulp sci-fi/fantasy stories, you HAVE to have someone smoking while they drink.  I'm pretty sure Moebius wrote a book about it or something. 
    

     The guy that runs the karaoke night doesn't appreciate you badmouthing Creed.

Bragging to the bartender about having a big money deal in the works, except the bartender isn't a hot lady, but a dumpy man.  

      Finally, this is me walking away after making this update.

Brrt

It's not as bad as it looks

     It's that time again. Still hammering out the kinks in drawing anything that isn't an unpleasant face at a 3/4 view, but I think I'm getting ideas across.

     

I tried messing around with how panels work, there's a lot to it.  I'd like to avoid uniform, static panels, but it's pretty easy to jumble it all up.  Here's a stupid way to depict a pistol firing.

     I'm still drawing landforms too shiny.  Light and shading hard, etc.  After I decided bandits would probably live in a badlands region, I thought I should at least know a little bit about them.  Did you know Hell's Half Acre is an actual place?

     I'm still not very good at building design, but this is all early sketching anyway and can be changed pretty easy.

     The story I'm working out here is about three idiots in over their heads. Write what you know.

     The incompetent men plot their heist.

     This one is a little older, throwing ideas at the wall for a later part of the story. 

Not a lot to say this time because this is all early draft stuff that will likely be left behind, but for now it's support structure.  Further updates as events warrant.

Dalliance in blue and gray

      Here's another huge dump
     

      I entered a phase where everything is Muppets, even if it's a self-portrait.

      A different take on the Choober, something I mentioned last update. Hook blob has had enough and is leaving.

      If you aspire to anything in life, let it be becoming the little bro on the casio. 

      Monster design verdict: Still lopsided.  This is a Warrens Anger, I figure they're about the size of a cat and live in areas prone to rat plagues.

      I have this issue where I can't make creatures threatening; they always come out a little endearing.  Here's another example:

      So I've been working more on trying to organize something longer.  Still in the blocking out phase and everything is placeholder, since I have no idea how to even approach something like this.  I suppose iterative is the best way to approach it, even though that will take an assload of time.  Here's some first draft nastiness.

      I'm trying to avoid too many words in each panel, because huge text dumps reflexively make me look away.  I think this is one of those situations like that first flash animation I did, where you can see the progression of figuring out basic things. 

      That doesn't really qualify as a joke but don't you worry, I'm sure I'll figure something out, like maybe a butt, or someone slipping on a banana peel and landing on a butt.
     

      God this is going to be filled with so much witty back-and-forth.  Heart pounding stair climbing ACTION. 

      This is Hugh, raider boss of Wolverine Gang.  He is a 100% original character and is in no way The Humungus from Road Warrior, nor is he Hugh Jackman's Wolverine.

     The punchline of every joke I ever write is "someone is stupid" so prepare for a lot of that once I start nailing down dialogue. 

So, anyway

Rude gestures

 I had this idea for a longer form project.  When I tried thumbnailing it out, I realized that type of composition is not something I actually know much about.  So, while I'm trying to learn more about that, here are some miscellaneous whatevers; some related to the story idea, some not.
     

      I tried to make something that looked dangerous, but I botched that and made it kind of adorable.  It looks like it wants to play you songs on a Casio or chase a laser pointer.

      So the bigger guy here was also supposed to be intimidating, all coming at you with crab claw pincers, but the sketch sort of looks like he's got lunch under control.  Linework would probably make a huge difference on that guy. 
     The choober is my favourite. I don't want to say too much about it, but I definitely have plans for it. 

      These are just throwaway gesture line things.  Gesture is one of the utter fundamental basics, which I still forget about and struggle with sometimes. 

     Still some difficulties on anatomy and perspective.   Other than the arm and gun being weird I kind of like this page. 

     Some stiffness in my action poses yet, so I made the face because I wanted someone to look at it approvingly.  Anyway, here's the first draft of a thumbnail of the thing I'm trying to figure out.  There are more pages of thumbnails but it's all chaos and scribbles right now.

     Also, I've been continuing to try learning about digital painting.  There are more than a few failed attempts at that sitting on my hard drive, but I do feel like there has been improvement.  Now and then I notice there's a tool I wasn't aware of and I'm all like

Ok

Undertale 2: Skeleton puns out, Mummy puns in

     Well it's that time again.   I know it's been a while, but it's not as if I haven't been doing anything.  I'm just getting pickier about it, I suppose.  Something I would have put up a year or two ago isn't necessarily going to cut it anymore, now I feel like I have to bring the thunder.  Or the chunder.  Here, chunder.

      Trying to slap together figures that don't like weird and stiff is difficult as hell.  This one isn't that interesting but Mr. Crouchy there ain't bad. 

     Here I was trying to convey a message with body language.  This woman is describing a very famous internet image, and if you don't immediately recognize what she's referencing, I'm a little jealous of you.

 Interesting faces are also a dilemma.  What the hell even is this guy, he's kind of a DEVO viking, with a little bit of Hulk Hogan or something.

    I want to do more with this one, burnout idiot teenagers are sort of my favourite thing.  Just smelly dumbasses causing trouble because there's nothing else to do, bumming smokes and peeling out in shitty cars.

     I didn't know what this was to start, but it turned into a caricature of Beavis and Kathleen Wynne. 

    

      I had coloured this one at first, but I'm still struggling with making everything not look like I vomited skittles all over it. 

     "When she sees you're packing a meaty mighty worm"

     A return to a classic theme of mine, "Angry Woman"

      I'm still a bit terrible with the perspective rulers in Manga Studio, but I figured out a much easier way to improvise them with the burst tool.  In my head this is some kind of Mad Max highway chase, but the car on the left just so happens to look like like a wiener.

 
     Here I tried to capture the frustration that comes from when you really, really want to smash a city, but it turns out you're too large to fit through the front gate.

     Anyway, I've also been watching a lot of Bob Ross recently.  There's not much I can say about him that hasn't been said a thousand times over already, so let's just assume I said all the standard things.  The methods he uses are of course meant for canvas and paint, but there are things about his technique that can translate to digital media.  Here are two examples I'm sure he would be ashamed to receive credit for.

    
     "Undertale 2: Escape to Piss Mountain"
     Yeah, eat that one Bob.  This is because of you.

     This one is called "Meat Curtains".  Yeah, yeah, I know.  There are more but these are the two that I thought were the best, so let that sit on your mind for a minute.

     I did another comic strip, haven't really finished it yet though.  I want to paint it in, but that takes forever and I wanted to push out an update.  

     Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

Raising A'arih Zoh'Nagh

     Whoops, I left the kettle on the oven.  By that I mean I was doing things, and didn't put any of it on here for about 2 months.  Continuing with that analogy, now everything is a burnt, shitty husk on my stovetop.  The smoke alarm is going off, the neighbors are wondering about the smell, and the cat is freaking out at all the commotion.  If you're wondering what I was working on that could possibly take TWO WHOLE MONTHS, well, brace for the tepid.

     Pretty dumb and straightforward first.  I get hung up on ideas and have to run them into the ground before I can move on, and here's the friendly fat finale of my fish people obsession.  I tried to paint him and make it look better but the first round of colour choices was pretty abysmal, so he got benched in favour of something that's less of a botch.

      This didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, but what ever does?  This is a re-imagining of Morphus from the Shitty Wizards strips I've been doing.  Now he's a sentient slime that hi-jacked a skeleton he found and uses as a structure.  This finally makes him what he should be, since his full name was always Aaron "Morphus" Blobman (heh get it amorphous blob man heh).  The facial features didn't come out very well in the painting, but I'm starting to get a handle on what's going wrong.

     You might have to blow this one up to be able to read it.  This was an awful lot of work for a really, really stupid joke, and I realize that.  I guess the joke itself took a backseat to working on everything else.  Still a lot of problems to work on, but you can probably imagine that I'm tooting my own horn silently over here.

     I'll try not to let the next one take so long.