Work moving a'pace

So, I've been working a cubicle job, but at the job, I'm able to draw, so I've been doing a lot of studies, mostly for backgrounds and emotions. I've also been fiddling with the focus of the strip, and have now re-engineered it so that my main character is a lot more crooked and corrupt (in a funny way, of course). The focus is now illustrating his corruption in every strip, as opposed to just throwing out jokes. I may start cannibalizing again, but so far I've had a lot of good ideas independent of my older work. I have about 500 strips fully done at this point. Of course, some are repeats, and many never made it to the computer.

This new iteration will first become a booklet, but I think, upon completion of 200-250 of these new ones I'm going to publish an actual book. I will start showing them in a few weeks or so, when I have enough to put one a day on without a break for a couple of weeks.

The Artist bites the bullet

Well, after 3 years of constant door to door cartoon sales, I have finally decided to get a more conventional job. The good news is that I will soon have some more free time to draw again. The bad news is that for the next few weeks I will be hustling to deal with my bills. I have been going out a little, but my new desk job is cutting into my time outside or drawing.

Free Dinner

Howdy. So, I've been selling, but not doing any drawing for about 2 wks. As folks that follow this blog know, I have "blank periods," where I come up with material.

On the bright side, if you live in Boulder, I just found out through a company I have a subscription to that tells me about free stuff, that Panda Express is having a FREE (as in, no obligation to purchase anything else) entree offer on Friday, June 24th, 2011, at 9PM, at any of their locations not in an airport. The entree will be the one voted most for on their website.

If you live in Boulder, maybe I will see you at the one across the street from my place, on 28th st. I already called and they ARE participating.

Lull in Cartoons

I've been scrambling to pay not only my own bills, but some "young adults" who lived where I do and left without paying all their bills. So, sorry about that.

We are all winners

Truth, independent of Reason

Getting oriented

Bad puns, and a bad joke.

Long time working

Today I had an 'incident.' I was at this door, sort of tired, and this nice looking dude, with an "artist" wife, does not even call her to the door, he says instead (after telling me his wife is "also" an artist) that he's not interested because he and his wife have been working on their dinner a "long time." I just had to laugh. As I walked away, the guy yelled after me: "you don't have to be patronizing." I was almost going to say: "look up that word in the dictionary," but I thought better of it. From my biased perspective, him telling me he "appreciated" my work (though he hadn't looked at it) and not at least letting his wife know I was at the door was about as patronizing as it gets, and also denied his wife the ability to personally blow me off or enjoy my existence. My thoughts: the dude is a shmoe, and he'll eventually break his wife's heart with his lousy decisions. ;-)

Amazing Lightning

Today, walking near 3rd st. in Longmont, I saw the most amazing lightning. several super lightning bolts. Pretty spectacular.

Unusual Rain keeps me from working

In colorado, it usually only rains for an hour or so, and it's light. The last day or so has been a heavy rain, and my stuff will be destroyed. I have to wait it out. I don't have the right materials for a rainstorm today.

Generally Specialized

Priorities

Often, folks come to the door and say, "no thx, we're eating." I wonder how many will someday say to themselves "gosh, I should have not eaten for two minutes to see what the artist in my neighborhood was doing." As if I'm some sort of corporate floozy, and their dinner is soooo important. Well, sure, it's their dinner, but how many times, in their lives, will an artist approach them at their door. Maybe never again. Dinner, on the other hand, will be there every night.

Longmont is full of nice folks

What a nice little town. Most everyone is friendly, all living in unique little houses.

Life is a movie

Perception is reality

Neighborhoods are strangely similar sometimes

I've discovered that different neighborhoods have different auras. sometimes these auras are based on the side of the street, but usually they tend also to encompass courts and circles as well. For example, say a street has several inset courts that have 8-10 houses each. In one court, everyone will be dour, unhappy, mean-spirited and dismissive, while just one court over, everyone is smiling, joyous, giving and embracing! I have literally gone through one court, gotten totally dissed, and insulted, while at the next court, every doorway gave me five to 10 dollars and I walked away from those houses with 60 bucks after 15 minutes of walking and talking.

Today I was in a trophy wife neighborhood: literally every house was inhabited by a 20-30 something couple with three cars, they all looked like they had stepped out of GQ and Vogue magazine, and yet...they were all embittered. It was funny. They probably didn't even know it! The gals all had dour looks and almost all of them used the specific phrase "I'm not interested." If you read my blog, you know I hear many "repeat" phrases depending on the neighborhood, and I'm actually happiest with this response, so, all day long, I was sort of happy hearing "I'm not interested." At least these folks are up front when they don't want stuff! However, SOoo many people were "uninterested" in this neighborhood that I could not help suspecting that that was a phrase that was used a little TOO often in those houses. ;-) Most neighborhoods are mixes of "super beautiful" people and everybody else, but it's sort of funny dealing with gaggles of them, unhappy in their lives and marriages, frittering away their hours in plastic houses and pretending to be happy, all the while missing out on life's real gems, too busy to meet strangers, too important to have time to serve Elijah some wine. Meanwhile, their less attractive and poorer townsfolk are by percentage (from my perspective) MUCH happier, as are their neighborhoods, and people come to the door with a SMILE for strangers, not fear, dismissiveness or derision. Honestly, it is rare in MOST neighborhoods for parents with kids to not at least LOOK at my work, that of a roving cartoonist! In this neighborhood, THEY COULDN'T BE BOTHERED. LOL. And they think they are living! They are the walking dead!

What fools we mortals be...

He is always watching

A Striking Transition

2000 hits!

My webpage hit the magic 2000 hits today! I've been getting about 30-40 hits a day for a while. Feel free to share my website with others and increase my hits!

The Security State

Best blow off in a while

"This isn't going to work out for us."

Sales are Up

You can't take it with you

Cartoon rush

Well, I'm in the midst of a drawing a slew of new cartoons. Some of them are cannibalized older stuff, but with new twists and a lot better drawings. Others are completely new ideas. I'm trying to mix some of my older jokes which were drawn very coarsely, into this new conversational framework.

First, there's a trial period

Taking folks at their words

Teasing the Debate

Which tea (or Kool Aid) should we drink?

There's a party comin'!

The newer style

look at the bigger pictures backwards

In my slide show, the pictures that are two boxes per page are placed in reverse order, mainly because you have to add the photos in reverse to make them come out in order on the blog.

Vulture Culture and changes to the format

So, I've embarked on a new series of cartoons, based on the characters you are already familiar with but with a more surrealistic tone. I may be rehashing some of my older jokes in the newer cartoons, as I have begun to experiment heavily with backgrounds and motifs. The older cartoons here are basically vaudeville jokes that I rework into my characters and their situations, but what I'm really striving for is a more integrated experience, more like Peanuts or Pogo. The idea is to work the jokes into normal, ongoing conversations that are part of story arcs, like the newest one I have, a Tea Party with a bunch of allusions to our present situation, but that can also be read years from now and enjoyed for it's own sake, much like Alice in Wonderland itself was like that. I want to have different outings, with the animals not so much delivering punch lines as much as saying punch lines within the context of larger conversations. This is a truly trying part of this art, but I think I have a handle on it, and I have a lot of blue inked cartoons already produced with the new ideas. I'm a little behind financially, so I have not gone out and bought any inking pens in week or so, and my main pens have run out of ink. So, after I pay the cable bill, the medical bills and the food bills, sometime next week I'll buy some more pens.A good set of pens that do what I need runs around 15-18 dollars. I use Faber-Castell pens and a Staedtler non-photo blue to do the original layout.

Also, I have been reworking my vultures, and I'm shortening them. They are too tall right now, and it makes it hard to have them realistically perching on things like branches.

When I said "i'm offering it to folks," I didn't realize what i'd created

Some guy laughed about how he was now a "folk," and I was like, yeah: he's a "folk," in a different way then folks that don't give me anything. In a way, he is also a part of the cultural "volk," if you get into that sort of thing.

Weird Money Day

The only way to describe yesterday was "weird money."

First, I made more then I have ever made on turf, ever, selling cartoons. My previous record was 115, and I made 117. Then, somehow, on my bike ride home, I lost around 30 bucks out of my pocket: a check for 20 and a ten. Totally Bogus! Then, finally, in a further twist, Someone gave me 20 via Pay Pal, showed me the transaction (it was 20), but, when I looked in my pay pal, it was only 15! I literally saw the 20.00 confirmation on the person's computer. I called Pay Pal to report it, since it's very odd.

All in all, even with my monetary disaster, I did very well last night, thx for supporting me.

Good and Bad on the trail

So, I had a great night, but somehow, on the bike ride home, I lost a 20 dollar check and a ten dollar bill. To the nice lady that wrote me the check...thx, but now I can't cash it since it's lost. Feel free to re-donate at my donate button :-)

New Tech

I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to computer gadgets. But, I just discovered the slide show widget, and I now have all my pictures showing continually on the upper right. Just click on it to watch more slowly.

Weird staff at the condos I was working at stole my bike!

So, while I was working for a few hours, the staff of the condos I was at took my bike (which I had locked up to the steel handicap post, at the OTHER edge of the sidewalk away from cars where there are three spots!), and left no note. I was standing there, thinking "did I lock it to something else?" Knowing that was impossible. I casually asked the lady about to leave, while she was locking up an office, "have you seen my bike?" figuring her answer would be "no." But, lo and behold, she says, "oh yeah, they took it and put it in a garage." HUH???? These bozos stole my bike, left no note, and if I hadn't seen this woman, I'm not sure I would have or could have done anything about it! Sure, I might have reported it to the police, and they would have done exactly nothing. It was only by the Grace of God that I was informed by this office worker of what had happened. I would have assumed some kid took it! Talk about messing with others' livelihood for no discernible purpose. My bike wasn't there THREE HOURS. At least leave a note for goodness sake!

Most of my newer cartoons in a slide show

https://picasaweb.google.com/Maxus111/JudgeMax?authkey=Gv1sRgCL_ZjL_M7_r0kQE# click on slide show in the upper left.

A possible new slant on my cartooning.

I've discussed the idea before of the percolation of characters in my head, and also the need, I feel , to improve my overall cartooning skills in general. The Japanese have a word: Kaizen, which refers to a weekly meeting they have to find one thing to improve in their place of business. Recently I've been musing over the idea of changing the "nature" of my cartoons. Right now, the characters all talk in a standard way, and make either standard twists on vaudeville jokes or bad puns. Yet, I am desirous of creating surreal fantasy landscapes, to talk about current events in a way that is oblique but entertaining, and to have many more sequences devoted to movement and emotionally jarring/wrenching content. This is not to say I want to create any sort of unacceptableness...I am referring to wrenching in the sense of Peanuts. I am still flabbergastted by the depth of character Schulz gave his cartoon folk.

A few bucks from the pay pal

Adding Pay Pal was probably a pretty good idea. I've gotten a few purchases and donations from it. Now, if I can just figure out how to get my story/cartoons to a wider audience, I'll really be set.

Sick, but not dead.

I've been severly under the weather the last few days, but I managed to draw a few cartoons.

Works in progress

These are some sketches I do off to the side. For every cartoon I have sketches before hand. Here, I'm working on the "reflective pool" look.

a Fair exchange

What is the price of justice?

Odd Blow off

The guy looks at me after my rap and says: "Oh..you picked the wrong family...my wife has absolutley no use for cartoons."

Smoke and Mirrors

I can't get a straight answer