That bug that’s going around
By Ben | October 7, 2008
Yeah, got a head cold. Figures, after spending so much time moving crap around and finally getting my computer on a desk again. I’m rather accepting of it, actually. Now that my work space is sorted out being sick isn’t as bad as it could be. I’d hate to still have that mess in here. (My studio space is cluttered to hell but since I expect to be drawing digitally for awhile anyway I don’t see a problem with taking my sweet time organizing it.)
Towniescomics.com and GrimAndSaddam.com will both be relaunching soon. I’ve picked a deadline to have them live again though I’m not announcing when yet because I’d really like to have them ready before that. If I can get a big enough buffer and the site stuff done I may do it early. But having the hard deadline at least gives me a specific date to shoot for. The Resurrection storyline will wrap up shortly after the relaunch. G&S will start season two. I’m excited.
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Is it the seasons changing? Is that it?
By Ben | September 18, 2008
Lately things have been ill-fitting. I’ve had trouble getting up on time, getting work done, feeling comfortable while trying to work, today I tried updating Wordpress on my blogs (something that shouldn’t take longer than a page refresh) and I kept getting errors. It’s a wonky period as I try to get things done. I’ve been trying to animate this one project in Flash and it’s not looking as nice with each attempt. Just like when I first tried drawing a strip in Flash. It looked fine but every one after that gave me trouble. I’m fairly sure I’ll get over my problems the more I work. It’s just frustrating having setbacks or a day when everything seems off. Makes me long for the days when I’m shooting straight and totally on my game. Of course, whenever I’m having one of those days, something comes up and I can’t finish. Anyway, I should get back to work
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Towniescomics.com and GrimAndSaddam.com archives go down
By Ben | September 3, 2008
I’m sick of having those busted archive pages up. I’ll be replacing them with Wordpress blog pages until I decide to toss the archives back up. I’m itching to do some webcomic work again and I’m familiar enough with WP to feel comfortable switching the domains over from ATP Autosite.
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Feelin’ Fine
By Ben | August 20, 2008
It’s one of those days where your body gets the perfect amount of sleep and you’re just up, man. Anywho, today I’m going to spend the morning at least trying some charcoal pieces. I’d like to try my hand at drawing some models, seeing what I can churn out. I sometimes focus on story a little much when I should just try to have fun producing a nice image.
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Here’s something I did
By Ben | August 17, 2008
I’ll probably post this on the main page, too, but I took some old audio promos I recorded to advertise on podcasts and made them into animatics in iMovie.
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I keep wanting to write blog posts later and then realize when I go to bed I forgot to make one…
By Ben | August 12, 2008
Today was semi-productive. I managed to get a decent amount of stuff written but my drawing didn’t make it beyond scribbles. On the plus side, I’d planned to spend today thumb-nailing, anyway, so it wasn’t much of a big loss since I got some concepts out of it. I think I’ll use this other LRB idea I’ve been saving, too. I’ve probably got like 3-4 LRB ideas floating around in my brain waiting for me to lay them out and eventually draw them, I just don’t have time right now. Deadline for these pieces now is the 30th and I’d like to have them done before that. I realize as I work on these that I miss drawing Toddy from the first LRB. I totally wanted to do a series on him or something but never found the time. He’s very easy to draw and fun. He’s like one of my other characters but without the backstory baggage.
I’m just gonna treat these blog posts like extended tweets. Twitter’s fun in that it lets you yelp out bits of a conversation without actually having to follow up on them. Though sometimes that 140 character limit sucks. The nice thing about a blog instead of front page is everything doesn’t have to be so formal and intimidating to write. I could get used to this.
Tomorrow’s movie and pizza day. (Mmm… cheap, $5 pizza and probably some crappy B-movies. Unless of course we can get some recent to new releases. I’m not sure what the mid-week “Please PLEASE for the love of GOD rent something from us!” deals are but we’re looking forward to it. I’m gonna see how early I can get up and how on top of my game I can get. It’d be nice to deserve that little break when it comes
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Studies… you know, they show…
By Ben | August 11, 2008
I’ve heard various creative professionals mention a study somewhere that by the time you’re 25 you have all your good ideas and you just spend the rest of your life trying to refine those ideas. I personally think that’s kinda dumb. I mean, have you ever looked back at any of your ideas from when you were a kid? Most of them are fanfic-ish and full of Mary Sue characters. You could be really into Star Trek and develop your version of Star Trek. It’s a total rip-off, of course, but you have fun doing it. I think that’s what’s missing from entertainment today. It’s all about the work and the polish and so on, people forget to have fun. Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes used to say people forget to play and that he would prescribe daydreaming to anybody forgot how to play.
I don’t really have a problem daydreaming. My problem’s always in the getting organized and showing what’s in my imagination to other people. And if you don’t develop it clearly, it’s confusing to other people. Ever try describing a dream to somebody? Oh that’s painful on both ends. The guy listening never wants to hear and the guy telling it leaves all sorts of stuff out. “Oh yeah, for some reason, I’ve got Queen Elizabeth’s head. Just go with it…” This is why most awesome professionals are in their 30s and up telling stories about when they were in their teens or 20s. They just want to get better at telling those stories. If they had armies of people developing those ideas I’m sure they could probably churn a few more good ones out. But not like a whole bunch. Just a few good ones, probably a whole bunch of crap between ‘em.
Today I’m limiting myself to sketchbook doodles. I tried sketching bigger and all I wanted to do was flesh out a page from that LRB I’ve been writing. I might use a page or two from it in that submission I’m working on but I can’t spend all my time with it. I need to dream up some new images, get the ball rolling. Maybe I’ll just work on thumbnails and not even allow myself to detail anything. Then tomorrow I can work out some of those poses. Hmm… I dunno, I get bored reworking stuff too much. I’ll have to see.
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Back from the road
By Ben | August 9, 2008
I went on a 2 week road trip to San Diego Comic Con, Disneyland, Universal Studios, and the Grand Canyon. I caught a cold in LA and have been resting at home since I got back. I’ve got some projects to work on lined up, really looking forward to nailing them solid. Since my Lockergnome Blog is going to become my dumping ground for cool links and whatnot I’m going to dedicate this blog to more of a casual daily read. That’s right, daily. I’d like to post more regularly on my Deviant Art Page, too, but that will be dependent on my art output which I’m sure will flux as I work.
So the next project I’m working on is submissions to my Alma Mater’s Alumni Art Exhibit. I’ve got a couple ideas but I’m spending tomorrow just drawing and working things out. I can enter 3 pieces so I’ll probably develop somewhere around 5-7, pick the best ones of the bunch. It’d be nice to sell a few. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Hoping I crank out some nice concepts tomorrow and spend about a week or so fleshing them out.
After that I’d like to try working on a short film to submit to a contest. I’m not as familiar with the subject as I think I should be but I’ll dive into some research first. Basically we take the artist’s concept and run with it for 3 minutes. I’ll mention more as I actually start work on it. For now I’m just excited about assigning myself a short to work on.
It feels very good to be back home. I spent days in a car with 2 other dudes and missed the things you take for granted. A stable internet connection was near impossible to have on the road, save the hotel we made our extended stay at. (At least for the price range the length of our trip relegated us to) A simple refrigerator is a blessing. We had no problem landing hotels with mini fridges on the way in but on the way home none were to be found - even though they boasted indoor pools and such. Breakfast is also something you don’t appreciate much until it’s gone. “Continental Breakfast” ensures little more than a slab of toast. It’s too much to expect the milk be cold and sometimes the orange juice is more like orange drank. And remember: no matter how awesome the lobby is, the rooms are never that nice for under $100 a night. Even if you’re paying more than $100, yeah, they’re usually not that awesome.
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Site customization
By Ben | June 23, 2008
I’m tinkering around with different software lately because I want to relaunch the NRP home page as something of a community site. I’d like to tie the forums, wiki, and other stuff up tighter so it’ll be easier to get people involved. I’m also aiming to create a specific look and feel. This is why I’ve returned to the older theme for the blog. Chris Pirillo’s WicketPixie was very nice but I wouldn’t use a number of the features in it to make it useful. Currently I’m debating whether I should integrate Vanilla in with Wordpress or see how stable phpBB3 is or if I should just go with Drupal or some other CMS. I’ve got an idea of what I want to do but I’m going to be playing around with configurations until I’m happy with the results.
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Trying Firefox 3 as my main browser
By Ben | June 18, 2008
I switched to Safari back when I was on my Windows machine because Firefox was getting bogged down and eating CPU. Now that FF3 is out, I’m going to give it the same chance I gave Safari and see how I like it as my main browser again. On the one hand, it’ll be nice to have add-ons back. On the other, I figure a good number are broken with the new version and there’s not much specifically for the new release yet. Regardless, I can always switch back if it gets annoying. Also, some pages just look a billion times better in FF. Myspace, for example. I can tell it’s probably the same underlying theme but dang does it look better. I kinda wish Firefox’s tab bar and menu bars were sleaked down more like Safari’s but that’s a minor issue.
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