busybee comics

The day job has me really busy, and I have family visiting from out of town starting Saturday and for most of the week, so chances are I won’t have much time to work on comics.

I am both still very busy with work, and having my usual spat of wrist problems, so don’t expect regular updates to resume just yet.

Sorry for the extended absence. Work has gotten less crazy, but unfortunately the last few weeks of panic and self-inflicted crunch have left my wrists a complete mess, and it hurts to draw. I’m going crazy not being able to draw, but at least I have been able to record some more of the vocals for my next album. But t really want to get back to comics (and finish Meat, which isn’t that far from the end right now) but I don’t know when it’ll be.

In the meantime, because of how my comic site is set up, I can only really post a newspost on days when there’s an image, so on the plus side I have a reason to post some of my backlogged sketches and other such images in the meantime. Today’s sketch is something I did around a month ago.

As always, I welcome guest art. If anyone wants to have fun drawing any of my characters doing something goofy (or whatever), I’m not all that picky.

Wrists: still sucking (although better after getting them worked on by a CMT) Job: still taking most of my creative energy Music: still taking most of what’s left (I’m trying to get another album recorded and out by June!) Comics: still mostly on the back burner

Happy Valentine’s day, everyone!

Work’s less insane, my album’s long done, and my wrists are a bit less hurty, so I think I’m ready to start doing comics again. Hopefully I can get back on some sort of schedule.

Meat is almost done, and hopefully I’ll be able to stick to my update schedule again, although work is still kinda crazy (and other work-related-but-not-actually-work stuff is also kinda crazy but hopefully not for long). Hopefully finishing Meat will give me the energy/impetus I need to finish writing one of the two Unity stories I’ve had on the back burner, or maybe I’ll even do more Pernicious or… or something. I dunno.

Oh anyway my album is still available, and is now on CD too if you want it that way (and now you can also get it through CDBaby, Amazon, iTunes, and so on).

fluffy (the character, who represents fluffy the would-be artist) will be showing up in some background cameo or another on Ant Guy sometime soon. Adam (the cartoonist, who draws Ant Guy the character) has already posted some rather cute concept sketches which are, as always, very fun to see.

Incidentally, if you (the reader of this news post, who may or may not have characters of their own) have any characters that you would like to see me attempt to draw, and perhaps even include in a future comic (not that I have any specific plans for any crowd scenes or whatever), feel free to post a comment to that effect. (And of course I’ll never turn down pictures of my characters!)

Jeeze, it’s taken me nearly six months to do a 31-strip short story (which isn’t even actually done yet)? That’s an average of 5 comics per month. Where did the time go?

That’s it for Meat. I’m going to take another break because I’m busy getting ready for a gig and there’s some day-job stuff happening and I still haven’t written another comic series. Maybe I’ll have some one-off ideas though (maybe making comics out of some of the dumb jokes I’ve been posting on Twitter) and stuff like that.

Meanwhile, what would you like to see more of?

Yep, it’s my birthday again.Just got back from this year’s Song Fight Live in NYC, and I am very tired.I have a guest post up over at Flimsy the Kitten! Go look!

I don’t have any clever reasons for the lack of updates right now. I’m just feeling lazy and uninspired. Sorry. I’ve been posting a bunch of stuff over in the art section, though (photography and a backlog of drawings, mostly). Someday I should merge the main-site RSS feed with the comic RSS feed, or something.

I’ve just been feeling burnt out for the last few months. I feel terrible about it but every time I try to draw a comic I just can’t.

I’m grateful for everyone who still checks my comic site regularly but really you’re a lot better off using an RSS reader.

Who knew forcing myself to do a journal comic could be a good source for positive daily inspiration? You just have to know where to look.

In case you’re interested in watching how I work, I’m streaming the comic right now (8:15 PM PDT), on my ustream channel. It will probably go until 10:15 or so.

Well, that was fun! I recorded the whole thing so you can watch it later, although I don’t know how long I’ll keep the recordings around. Next time I’ll try to give more notice.

This project seems to be helping in a lot of respects. Although if my life gets too thematically-repetitive I’ll just have to start doing fiction comics to fill in the gaps.

I guess it’s atypical to post a “good things” comic for the same day that said thing happened, but yesterday’s good thing was overshadowed by something that put me in a spot that I couldn’t draw comics from. Maybe having a backlog of retrospective good things is okay for this purpose.

This weekend is going to be kind of busy and I’m going to be hosting friends from out of town, so I might not do comics (unless my guests insist that I do, which I’m sure they will since they’ll be anxious to see how I draw them).

Updates may continue to be a bit sporadic for the next few days, because I’m on a business trip in Japan. But you probably figured that out already.

I survived.

Considering I’ve been doing these comics since 2003 it’s kind of amazing that I haven’t done anything like this before. Anyway, if you want a Legalize Unicorns T-shirt, now you can get one.

(Also, if you know of a cheaper option that still produces good prints and supports PNGs with alpha channels, feel free to let me know!)

I’m back both from my business trip and from Thanksgiving travel, so hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my regular output again for a while, or at least until I do some sort of last-minute trip for the winter break or something. Who knows.

As part of getting the book together, I’d like to have a gallery of other peoples' drawings as an appendix, as is common for webcomics-turned-print. If you want to make some drawings for the book, now’s your chance!

Also, for those who have made fanart in the past, please let me know if it’s okay to put it into the book (because while they gave implicit permission to post it on the site, that doesn’t necessarily extend to printed matter). I’ll be contacting everyone whose email addresses I still have but thanks to the entropic nature of email addresses that might not cover all the bases.

For fanart submissions I can’t promise that you’ll get anything more than acknowledgement in the book and a PDF copy when it’s complete, but if you sign up as one of the limited $5 backers I can guarantee it’ll be worth your while.

A big part of why I started doing daily journal and/or Good Things comics was to help me stay focused on the positive things in life and help mitigate some stress and depression I was going through. It worked quite a lot for a while, but unfortunately the toll of doing a daily comic has ended up becoming a source of stress of its own. Right now I’m in a big crunch at work and juggling several other personal projects (music, the Unity book, and so on) and I think it’s best for my health (and wrists) if I not update quite so frequently. I mean, I’ve done 78 comics since starting this in the middle of September — that’s nearly 12% of my busybee comics archive by content, in only 3% of the time that I’ve been doing them!

It’s funny how when I did 10 comics in 2 weeks I thought that was completely insane and not something I’d ever be crazy enough to try again.

I still intend to post comics about especially good things that happen, and also there’s a few more Unity stories that have come to mind (which aren’t as dismal or dire as the ones I’d backburnered before starting on Good Things) but I have to slow down my updates if only to keep the good things coming.

But I do hope to keep doing at least one or two a week.

As always, subscribing via RSS or LiveJournal is the best way to keep up.

The kickstarter drive for Unity: Book I was successful, and I am pretty close to getting the book layout done. There’s no way I’ll be able to have the books printed in time for Further Confusion, but hopefully I will have them ready soon after.

On that note, I will probably be at Further Confusion (selling CDs in the Furry Market Place, sharing a table with Patrick).

Anyway, for the book, I basically just have 5 chapter title pages and a few miscellaneous boilerplate pages left to do, as well as the cover art (which I’m planning on keeping fairly simple). Also, gathering guest/fan art for the book. So if you want it in there, please get it done in the near future!