Don't forget, next week there's going to be a Webcomic Telethon to raise funds for Katrina survivors. I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do for it, but I'm leaning towards donating some original art for auction. I don't know if anyone would buy it, but we'll see.

I'm really terrible about the posts this week. I forgot to post once the new strip went up, as I was dealing with the new arrival of my tablet.

Yes, after 4 months of waiting, my Wacom screen is here. I've already started using it on the new strip, which you'll see next monday. Be sure to let me know if you see a differance. Seriously, it's amazing being able to work this way, and it's already made a huge differance in the way I draw. It'll likely continue to do that as I figure out new ways to use it.

I tried using Alias Sketchbook Pro yesterday, and while I absolutely adore it, I don't know if I'm going to be able to use it for the strips. I already know I can't use it to do the entire strip, as there doesn't seem to be a "fill" feature for coloring large and unwieldy areas of color. But I'd really like to be able to use it for the penciling stages. What I need to figure out is how to convert multiple layers into Photoshop. Whether that means flattening each layer and saving it as an individual file, or if there's a copy and paste solution, I don't yet know. I've only just begun with it, but the pencil tool is so far beyond Photoshop's version as to make me cry.

All I can say, is it's one of the best interfaces I've ever used, and if I can find a way to use it for the strips, I'll absolutely buy the full program. The other big reason I can't se myself using it for more than the pencils though, is that all the tools seem to have fuzzy edges. None of them are pixel perfect. So if I used it for inking, the color fills would get faint white or grey lines between the color and the ink. While there are ways of covering this up, none of them lend well to speed. And I change colors around far too much in a given piece to by dealing with anti-aliasing. That's why I work so large, so I can avoid as many gradients as possible.

Did any of that make sense? Probably not. I do ramble.

"Techno-rambling" The gibberish of a new generation!

See you on Monday...

Sorry about the lack of new comic today. I failed to finish the new strip before the start of our Labor Day weekend, and so it sits in limbo.

I'll be finishing it up sometime tonight, and it should be up before Wednesday morning.

And the new Wacom didn't get delivered last week, but Fedex shows it as "on the truck for delivery" now, so we should be in good shape.

Oh, and go check out the Webcomics Telethon!

Good news! My new Wacom screen arrives tomorrow! Huzzah!!!

Unfortunately, the universe has a way of balancing thngs like that out...

The people producing the pandas, while quite helpful in all things, have just informed me that they do not take credit cards for production orders. They take them for prototypes, but not the finished products. I have "some" cash available, but I would need to sell at least 200 pandas via preorders to be able to cover the starting costs. Even with splitting it so 50% is due in a week or so, and the rest not till november, it'd be tight.

So barring a miracle, I don't think this is gonna happen.

I'm gonna try to figure something out in the next few days.

A friend of mine has been begging me for some time to do a sketch of Al and the mini-Al's, so I threw this together to kill two birds with one sheet of paper.

My apologies for the lack of a proper comic this week, this weekend was really exhausting. Rocky Horror turned out to be a movie I fell in love with instantly, which makes me happy. I'd always gotten the impression that the movies popularity was largely based on it being one of those "so bad it's good" movies. The reality is that while it was obviously a relatively low-budget film, low quality is a title I'd never apply.

The Brothers Grimm is not as bad as the reviewers would have you believe. It's by no means Terry Gilliams masterpiece, that remains "Brazil", and likely ever shall. But it's certainly watchable. The one real flaw in the movie is that it often feels unpolished. Like they had a really good idea for something, and you know they understood it themselves, but they don't always completely sell the idea. A lot of things needed one to understand the original stories, and in some cases I knew I was looking at something based on a fairy tale, but it was one I hadn't read. I'd really be interested in re-reading the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales. I did so as a kid and I remember them being a bit "different" than Di$ney's versions. I suspect that at least some of the things in this film would make a bit more sense if one was familiar with the source material.

That being said, the Gingerbread man was a bit of a bloody large stretch. They had a good idea for something, and it was looking pretty damn cool, but when it was revealed to be "The Gingerbread Man" it just really took you out of the picture. Just plain wrong.

New comic will be up next Monday.

Added a new piece of fanart, enjoy!