bird brained

Got the scanner working again on the old G3. I might ask Cox about possibility of using that thing as a Tube Punk web server.

There are little critters that pop up in my sketchbook that I call "Bird Brains" until I can think of a more creative name. Here's a somewhat oxymoronic one to celebrate my non-flight yesterday.

Will get back to scanning Tube Punk soon. Will try to catch a NASA film at the Imax and the "Weird Wonders" (creatures of the Vendian Explosion) before the end of the week. The Farmer's Cadillac is in the body shop getting some rust bubbles fixed and repainting.

grounded....

My air trip to Norman, OK for training didn't pan out so I'm still here in Omaha doing the regular working week.

sunday! sunday! sunday!

Had a nice meeting with Mike Worley last night and this morning. Even hooked up networking between OS 9 and OS X between meetings to show him how it's done.

Here's an early glimpse of Tube Punk, obviously in progress because there's still more gaps than anything else here.

Heading up to Soldier after the hard drives back up. Heading down for Norman for more training tomorrow.

hexachrome haze

Finally found my missing 60° ellipse template and got the old G3 working again, Reinstalling and updating OS 10.2 as we speek. To celebrate, here's a semi-random scan of some old school Apple stickers that I tried to sell on eBay. Will try to see Mike Worley later this afternoon at Krypton Comics. I hope that luck holds and that this goes well.

totally tubular

Still under the weather with cold. Finished inking this last night and got it scanned and pasted together before dinner. Since it's an evolving project, there's a lot of placeholder stuff here. Got the old G3 so fubared that it doesn't even try to boot up.

the Bast yet!

Finished coloring Flexia for WHC this morning despite being under a virus. The first color job on my Wacom!

Still not totally happy with the inks. Maybe will try to cycle back to aping that European fine line thing.

Pat Moriarity sent me a mash-uped mp3 of "Space Girl" by the Earth Boys. Funny stuff. "She looked at me with those big blue eyes.... All fourteen of them!"

Had a couple of dreams last night that there was some commotion in the streets protesting the way the distributers treat indie comics. As if that would ever happen in the waking world.... I was just keeping to myself clicking through endless windows of scans of my comic art.

Also a had dream that a certain '80s self-appointed and self-serving monarch of small press wanted to be my friend again. Or more likely it was a front to manipulate me for his own gain, belied by his dripping smug arrogance and condescension.

My sister and family had many neighbors rally around them and clean up the mess and give the two horses a proper burial.

barn burning

My sister and her family had her barn burn down on her acreage today. Two of her horses died.

I'm rerunning a tribute from when when my corpulent calico died.

something a little fischy

Running up to Soldier in a short while.

Here's a scan of a sixth or seventh grade era, unfinished attempt to whip up something good for a Fischer-Technik design contest. It was inspired by the same ATV that inspired the monster truck in Damnation Alley, but rendered years before that movie.

swan songs and retro-science fiction

I realized that I have four swan songish projects going on right now. IfCaptain Saucer and InterStellar OverDrive don't sell, the plug will be belatedly pulled on those. The remains of Fun Rockets is being sold off on eBay and the Holverson Designs plans are being denoted to Ye Olde Rocket Shoppe. Tube Punk is a career retrospective for a career that never quite took off.

I also realized that once you strip away the fantasy elements from "Amazons & Studebakers/Orwellian Graffiti" you have a pretty straight 1981 view of what middle to late '80s consumer electronics would look like. Except that they didn't turn out like that in the real world. Egad, I've been around long enough that even my straight SF has dated into retro SF!

OTOH, the retro streak pokes through with the circa 1950 round screen TV lost in the middle of it all.

The inked b&w version of Bossy is finished and posted at my deviant art site. Looking at drawing a new Fang pin-up for Work Horse Comics. Here's an update on Polly Phemus and Tube Punk since I'm at a loss at what to post for a picture today.

beautiful chimera

Here's mixing and matching mash-up of incongruous items when it's years later and wiser and more deliberate. I call it my "beautiful chimera". You have the futuristic and the nostalgic. Electronic schematics conscripted into letters. Detroit's (and South Bend's) crystalline chevron paired with an atomic trefoil punningly placed where the "8" or "S" or corporate badge would be. The beauty and the beastly. Overripe femininity with muscle-bound masculinity. The skiffy brass bikini and jewelry wrapped in an Earthly business suit. And yesterday's Studebaker and spaceship seem to have had a spiritual hybrid bastard love-child, with the futuristic and alieness of a flying saucer mixed with earthbound retro-50s automotive styling.

Rescanning some of the turn of the '80s stuff because I didn't like the color correction and I'm also shuffling around the structure for Tube Punk. The Studebaker cartoon folder turned up empty. May see if the local club has a good archive of their old issues.

It's warming up here, if not exactly thawing out.

the studebakers of the gods

More unintentional incongruity from 1981, complete with tape stains from when it hung on my wall. I just thought that these things looked cool together. This and yesterday's posting are about as least clunky and sucky as my art gets in '81. And this one benefited from the Studebaker being traced from a picture in a book, although altered to be another model. I will probably redraw this as an Elsa (the nekomimi-ish lioness) pin-up for Tube Punk.

Scanned in more oddness up to the folder of Studebaker comics. I'm almost afraid to look in the thing in case I see how many of these didn't survive. I'm surprised that my drawings of "dream pick-ups" from high school days haven't been unearthed yet. Also haven't found the four page strip of the Amazon also named Elsa or an early Berk & Bast spoof on the Daliks.

Got those last three panels penciled in on those four Captain Saucer pages, although one panel may get reworked for being a little clunky and bland. Those four pages are now in the process of being inked.

The temperature is still at a frigid 3°.

orwellain graffiti

Here's a thoroughly forgotten until recently rediscovered goof-ball drawing of mine from 1981. It's an attempted "finished" piece that could sure use tons more refined technique and polish plus some actual instrument rendering. Plus you have all these Heavy Metal, Prog, D&D, New Wave, and (then) near future S.F. inspired ideas incongruously thrown in together. I was a little bit too alone and isolated and insular and clueless up in Soldier to catch on that many these things were considered to be antithetical to each other. And desperately wanting to be somewhere else than stuck in stagnant and stifling Soldier and missing out and this stuff.

Although it could have been cool if some knowing smart-@ss would have done some genre bending (and breaking!) mash-up of Heavy Metal, Prog, D&D, New Wave, or near future S.F. I especially like the New Wave and Prog combo.

IIRC, this was the "Orwellian Graffiti" segment of a pipe-dream movie called Amazons & Studebakers that didn't have a reflection of a shadow of a ghost's chance of ever being made.

Had a restless night last night. Dreamed the I held my Dad's hand moments before he died. Which reflects his real world hospital room vigil from '92. Here's to all the future summer times that you and me never got to be burning in.

In real world it's 3° outside. Brrrr! Winter has to get itself in while it's still winter.

Maybe on some future date in the warm rose colored past, I'll go up to Castana, Iowa, share a six pack or doob with Professor Nelson A. Jessip, and watch the UFOs, "the veritable Studebakers of the gods!", take-off and land. ;)

"Venus and Mars are alright tonight!"

polly phemus

Getting pelted with some serious late season snow. Will leave for work early. Still scanning in oddball juvenilia. That old stuff is so inspired and idealistic and rough and naive all at the same time. Not knowing the conventions and not having a clue can really leave somebody open to inventiveness. I thought that I had found the "Nelson A. Jessup and the Studebakers of the Gods" script, a parody of Sun International UFO films scribed in 1980, but I was wrong. May have a folder of the comics that I drew for the local Studebaker newsletter. Down to a mental block on the last half page of Captain Saucer wondering how to compose three oddly set-up panels. Here's an in-progress look at the Tube Punk cover. Oddly, I got Polly Phemus' face correct right off the bat but her legs are giving me trouble.

the food of love

Got a valentine from Apple yesterday in the form of the OS 10.4.5 upgrade.

Took a deep breath and I am scanning in the first handful of too many handfuls from my last miscellaneous box. Getting into my deepest and darkest archives here. Turn of the '80s and assorted high school stuff here.

Now back to those final pages for the Captain Saucer revival. And wondering what a chibi cherub Wingding would look like.

"junior, what have i told you about indiscriminately mixing acids and bases?"

Found this while still scanning in odds and ends for Tube Punk. It was for somebody on Guru who wanted some lab safety cartoons in a Far Side or Don Martin style. So I cranked this out. I wonder if I would have gotten the job if I gave it more polish or if that would have been a waste of time anyway.

Did a quickie initial penciling of "Bossy" for Tube Punk. Will get cranking on Captain Saucer pencils and make a big push to get that done after some coffee and posting this blog.

Tracking through iTunes, burning through all the songs that have a play count of zero.

DGH

she winked at me!

Finished another Captain Saucer page. Got either four or six more to go depending on which version of the story I use. I'm trying to draw the Tube Punk cover based on this old Captain Saucer panel from 1984. This character predates Taronga Leela by about 20 years. Scanning through a handful of miscellany including the old Rip-Off Press/Magnecom InterStellar OverDrive ashcan.

Great moments in stereotypes: Porsche says that their average buyer is 45 years old. I had to snicker. So how many of these people left their wives to have an affair with some sweet young thing?

Pat Moriarity shows some tongue in check succinctness at it's most economical by leaving one word replies to my last few entries. Although sometimes he gets up to even a turgid two words and even a purplish three.

feelin' kinda chitty....

Here's the second tribute to the old pick-up drawn the same night as the one in yesterday's post. I kind of rushed this one because it was getting late, I was getting tired, and the sentiment was a little silly.

But maybe there's a country song somewhere in there....

Scanned in a the last of the second to last box of miscellaneous art for Tube Punk. Cropped and corrected the remaining InterStellar OverDrive F*U*N Book drawings today. The art hasn't aged well, and the second story has narrative issues and is generally too confrontationally angry.

May start on the last miscellaneous box tomorrow or jog to scanning in Captain Saucer #10 from 1984.

let 'em have it with all four barrels!

Here's a tribute that I drew to the old pick-up the night that the new owner drove away with it. I was a little more attached to it than I had thought.

While driving it down to Florida, the buyer blew the transmission out somewhere in Tennessee. That was a Borg-Warner T-5 five speed. I wonder if he had his foot a goodly way into the secondaries then.

Did a four store errand run this morning. Scanned some odds and ends for Tube Punk afterward.

Got pelted with about a half inch or so of snow. Usually, I detest snow, but after such a warm and brown winter, the belated white stuff was some amusing novelty value.

go big red

Last night I had a dream that Dad, Grandpa Skow, and I were cruising in my '58 pick-up to a Chevrolet and GMC parts depot to get parts for it. The question with no answer was popped, "Why do they make both Chevy and GMC trucks if they're both nearly the same thing?"

In either in my early days of working at the USPS or the stretch between HP and the USPS, I had a dream that I was working on the old pick-up behind my house in Soldier and Dad and Grandpa drove up in the old gray LTD to check up on me and give me the okay.

I miss Dad and Grandpa. Selling the old pick-up was about like selling a beloved club calf.

Cropped and corrected some scanned Galactic Gazongas pages for Tube Punk. Those were almost cringe worthy. Not only was the thing a bit ill-conceived, but that reflected that I was going through a rough period in my life and I was trying to pick up the pieces and they often didn't quite fit.

Got dusted with snow last night.

the third kind is the charmed....

Here's the Close Encounters of the Third Kind spoof from the Centuri Rocket Times.

Spielberg says that this movie is a simile for an artist chasing his vision and he's probably right, but couldn't this also be played as a simile for middle age crazy? Leave your unappreciative, messed-up wife and family, find a sweet young thing that understands you, and then go on that grand adventure.

I played couple of cynical tangents on CE3K as a first person point of view descent into madness. First our lineman for the county sees some funky lights in the sky which trips off the middle aged crazy and he goes more and more bonkers until he thinks that the nice people carrying him off to the funny farm are the grey aliens taking him to their home-world. The other darker version starts the same but ends with the aliens carrying him off actually being a near death experience brought on by ignoring the nerve gas warnings.

Didn't get a lot of drawing done on my days off but did do a lot of running and errands and did install that car stereo.

Got the Centuri scanning wrapped up and I am back scanning stuff for Tube Punk.

Did get a revised panel mostly redrawn before work. Which isn't great, but it's a lot more than I have gotten done on a lot of migrainey mornings.

further fannish fumetti from phoenix....

Here's the second of the two Centuri Rocket Times pages spoofing Star Wars. A little too fannish to be exactly National Lampoon or MAD fumetti here. Maybe more like Cracked or Crazy..... I'm still giggling a little because they did a "they're not suppose to do that" pop-shot at Estes in yesterday's posting.

I found a CE3K spoof in a later issue that I hope to post tomorrow. I'm just down to scanning the '78 Centuri issues and this project is done.

Did get around to starting those pages yesterday. I was messing around in Freehand whipping up a mock-Nixie font for Tube Punk. Then went to a rocket club meeting and then up to Soldier.

Did a all sorts of errand running this morning. Hope to install the new in-dash stereo in the Farmer's Cadillac II and dink around with the Studebaker Hawk this afternoon before heading down to the "Big O".

The warm and optimistic Spring-like weather of a couple days ago has sure turned belatedly Wintery and chilly.

"i know a great disco in mos isley..."

Still scanning through the old Centuri stuff and found these fannish deturnments of Star Wars from the 1977 Fall-Winter issue of Rocket Times. Here's the first of two.

My favorite panel, which I think is the funniest, is the one about Leia and her hair-do.

Kind of funny how half-tones were often dark and muddled back when it was a black magic art, before you could dial them in with Photoshop.

Story has it that Centuri originally licensed Star Wars before the movie's release, but through either circumstance or politics with parent corporation Damon, the rights were shuffled ever to sister company Estes.

So you have the original Star Wars with fan spoofing and model rocketry. How much more vintage '70s geeky can you get?

Correcting and altering some Captain Saucer pages before dinner as a warm up to staring four to seven more after dinner.

BTW, here's the URL of the annoying midi that I'm leaching. Whole site here. What says 1977 to almost the point of self-parody than Meco doing a flamboyant Disco medley of Star Wars music?

flying wingding

Soldered together a wiring harness to to install an AM/FM/CD/CD-R/MP3/WMA player in the Farmer's Cadillac. This is to replace the player that was stolen early last summer.

Corrected, improved, or altered a couple of Captain Saucer pages.

Did all of the above before dinner. Now if I can just find my misplaced circle and 60° ellipse templates.

Since I like to have one color picture in the current blogs, here's a file that I tripped across yesterday. It's my late calico Wingding with flying wings. The character was named in sort of a tribute to this cat that died of FIP.

brain blur

Finally got the last two of those four Captain Saucer pages done and scanned and all finished up before work and I am feeling a bit of brain fade. Maybe Gaussian blur.

Seven more pages to go. I have a four page sequence and a three page sequence. The three pager starts today. The four pager starts on my next day off.

Made a settings error on scanning those Centuri pages yesterday. Am sorting that out and fixing it today.

"sure things"

Both potential buyers for the house in Soldier pulled out. It would be nice if one of these "sure things" would actually work out! Like Fun Rockets, the Lost go-around of InterStellar OverDrive. Grrr!

Management to get about three hours of cartooning in before work, while shuffling in some more Centuri scanning. SOmewhat of a personal record.

Here's a cartoon in the 1976 Fall Winter Centuri Rocket Times by somebody named Ray Williamson that's a ringer for Sam Henderson. Sometimes I have rose colored nostalgia for my '80s Small Press days event though I know they're a mixed bag. Sort of like how my high school days wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for high school.

half-way back to the future

Passed a sort of a half-way point by having scanned in number 11 of 21 old Centuri tabloids. They flogged their Space 1999 rockets on the covers a few too many time in a row. Could have used some variation.

Put the finishing touches on one of those Captain Saucer pages before work. Many spotting the blacks, a little whiting out, and beefing up the inks. Reminds of after the InterStellar OverDrive F*U*N Book came out, I went back and beefed up the ink on some of those pages. Redrew quite a few others.

PVP Online did an affectionate, if darkish, tribute to Back to the Future today.

Random illo today. Sometimes I feel like a freak being right-brained and have the index and ring fingers to prove it.

fatty & bratty go south

Toted Jasper (the tubby tabby) and Neko (the black cat) back down from the farm to my apartment in Omaha.

Still flailing away on those four Captain Saucer pages but least got it down to adding the finishing touches. The scanning will start tomorrow.

Scanning away on those Centuri catalogs from '76 and thinking "OMFG, has it really been thirty years?

weird al & johnny rotten

Here's an example of my blind spot thing. When I drew this back in late '86, the women (drawn off the top of my head) and the poster (photo reference) looked equally "realistic" to me. It's like the art as gotten worse with age and wear, even thought it hasn't. Or one of those dreams where things change.

Also makes me wonder how well or badly that I'm accurately judging my own recent and current art.

I just wish that this old stuff wasn't so "unschooled" among a lot of other things. Just looking over my goofy art from the '80s seeing that a lack of mentoring was a real hamstring. I see a couple of bad trends both internal and external. I had a bad tendencies to be insular and self-referential (plus the above weird blind spot). These were made worse by the external forces of educators and comics people not being there or being unfriendly. Kurt and Pat and even "Lardboy" had artistic friends and family to trade tips and techniques with and even network. Lardboy had pro and fan friends helping out. I had none of that isolated in Soldier.

Also slowly getting Tube Punk back on track which is why I'm sort of rediscovering my '80s art. Like to communicate with Shon Howell again since he inspired these omnibus reprints.

Still scanning away on Andy Andres' Centuri tabloid collection. Got enough stuff to fill one whole DVD of uncorrected tiffs for him. As I start getting into the 1976 issues, my initial thought is: "OMFG! Has it really been thirty years!?!"

Will start an afternoon long sprint to get the new Captain Saucer pages finished. And then go up to Soldier after supper, and will keep sprinting up there if necessary.

Had my eBay hacked again. I think it was because I was pharmed with a shim page.

The previous sentence wouldn't even make sense a few years ago.

Which was close to my thoughts about Weird Al's "All About the Pentiums" when it came out.