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The other night, killing time on the Promenade before seeing Wanted (which by the way was absolutely HORRIBLE; avoid seeing it), Kristin and I went to Urban Outfitters. I was looking at the small Munnys and thinking about using one for a little sculpture art-project, when Kristin said “Get the big one. I almost got you one of those for Christmas, but didn’t.” So we grabbed it, and I’m plotting cutting into it a bit and gluing on some new bits to make it something new. I need to run by Dick Blick for some sculpting supplies that I don’t have on hand here in Santa Monica.

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I went with Kristin yesterday to serve as her photographer for covering the premiere of The Simpson’s Ride at Universal Studios. She wrote a post for TV Squad here that tells you all about it and has several of my photos credited to me. The bad news: they didn’t let us ride the ride. Evidently, the press wasn’t supposed to eat the food either, but they didn’t tell us that until after Kristin and I had already been through the line and were coming back for seconds.

Here’s some choice others from the event that I uploaded to a Flickr set: Simpson’s Ride Premiere May 17, 2008 - a set on Flickr

ps—Why doesn’t Flickr let you embed slideshows of Flickr sets?

UPDATE: Thanks to Sean pointing to Flickrslidr in the comments, here’s a slideshow of the set:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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I started this one out by drawing the small, teeny little guy who is sticking out of the side of the big guy’s head. What’s going on here? Tell me in the comments.

Also, I’ve decided to try to make a webcomic out of some of these doodles. Here’s the first panel of the first experimental sketch of what I may be doing. What should I have them say?

In other comic news, you need to read these 200 strips drawn in under 12 hours and subscribe to this blog.

Also, if you like to draw and doodle, you should check out iScribble where you can interactively draw and chat with other people online. Pretty cool. I’m cksthree on there. Also, the other day, I set up a deviantART account, but I haven’t done anything with it as of yet.

Also, rather than worry about getting a Modbook, I’ve decided to just stick with pen and paper and my Wacom tablet whenever I need to do something digital… for now.

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What’s his story? Tell me in the comments.

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I sketched this guy last night before bed. I have no idea what he’s supposed to be. I started with the wide open mouth, then the eyes, the nostrils, then drew his general shape, the bed, then the room and lastly the arms. Name him and tell me his story either by sending me a message @cksthree via twitter in reply to the blog post notification for this post in my twitter stream, by leaving a comment below, or by a video reply over at Seesmic. Here’s the video:

I’ll collect all the replies and post them in a follow up post (WARNING: trollish commenting is disqualified). If you all actually show some interest in this character and come up with a good story for him, I may make him into a regular and try to build him into some sort of web comic production that we all work on collaboratively a la what Stephan G. Bucher does over at Daily Monster.

Follow me on Twitter.
Follow me on Seesmic.

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I have several sketchbooks lying around, but they’re all filled with pen and ink sketches. I didn’t really have a good sketchbook just for pencil sketching, so I picked up one yesterday and some stuff to draw with as well:

It’s got a really nice feel to it and is filled with different colors of paper. Hopefully this will result in more interesting sketches than the crappy first one I did in it.

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Spotted this 9 minute German film over at Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy:

Very cool, or should I say: Ausgezeichnet!

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So they’ve not been daily or regular, but here’s another one from yesterday

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So I walked into my office this morning, and instead of finding my nice office chairs, I’m met with the following:

Funny. Here’s some action shots: normal and once more with feeling.

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Check out this comment by Noli Novak in reply to the comments left on a post I wrote back in 2005. Here’s an excerpt:

Crap hit the fan the day I decided to launch my own website. Everything stated in it then and now is nothing but true, but KS was (is) pissed for one simple reason: when I launched my website, his monopoly of the online hedcut presence ended, and the whole KS clan targeted me like a pack of hungry wolves. For Sharpie to say I’m branding the style as my own is utter nonsense and I challenge you to point to a link, a sentence, a line ….. anything to prove I ever said something remotely close to that! After all, KS made sure his claim to the throne of hedcut holy fatherdoom is etched in the online annals for the rest of times, but even I still pay my respects, mind you. For instance, I spent hours helping Ann Goodyear of the NPG putting the online hedcut exhibit together (link prominently displayed on KS’s site) and it was me who insisted that he be a part of the story (oh, you’re welcomed!). Maybe he expects the rest of us WSJ illustrators to quit stippling altogether? Not after we toiled over the technique and reinvented it many times since he left the paper over 20 years ago!

Noli sent me an email too, apologizing for the comment thread and her need to defend herself on my blog. No apologies necessary, Noli.

In any case, I have nothing to do with this skirmish, and no desire to be involved in it, but it is an interesting view into an apparently competitive and politically charged field. I just thought it was interesting how conversations like this can find a life in the comments to a blog post that was largely me thinking nostalgically about the choices I made in pursuing English over Art. The comments have nothing to do with the and have a more vibrant life thanks to having nothing to do with me.

Also, check out the last paragraph of Noli’s comment. Pass the popcorn; it’s like watching reality TV.

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This one kind of breaks the Daily Doodle rule, as I drew it while I was visiting my parents in Mississippi over the weekend. 3 days worth of scratching pens on paper.

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I colored it in tonight:

Originally, it was going to be all black silhouette, but the brush marker started to run out of black, so I made the hair area brown and the shirt gray and then I added the green swirlies.

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…and spent about $15 on assorted pens, trying to find the best one. I have a bunch of Faber Castel PITT brush pens which are great, but sometimes you need a non-brush pen, and the non-brush variety of the PITTs just don’t feel right on the paper. The clear winner is the Koh-i-noor Nexus pen. I grabbed two of these. One black and one graphite. I doodled this page of crappy doodles with them.

In any case, they feel *really nice* on the paper. They just glide along and are good sketching pens. I highly recommend them. So does this guy, who is the only other person I found blogging about them.

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Alvey’s new ComicMix project, which launched a while back, came out with some actual issues today. Check it out: We’ve got issues at ComicMix:

We have a new design. We published the first installment of one of our comic books online. We added the ability to leave anonymous comments. We added an easy way to listen to our podcast archives. Best of all, we moved the site to an entirely rebuilt publishing platform which will let us release new features over the coming weeks at light speed.

Very cool. Can’t wait to check it out in its entirety later tonight.

Update: Ooh… it works on the iPhone! Nice!

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The Scritch-Scratch of Busy Little Hands is a really cool animation short on YouTube. Check it out:

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This is awesome: How To: DIY Cintiq screen tablet » Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog.

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Check out Boring3D. Click on the High Rez archives link (here). Friggin’ awesome. I wish I were any good at 3-D computer graphics. I can sculpt things in meatspace, but not so much in digital land.

Found via Drawn!

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…thinks that this is my new favorite blog: comic tools. Awesome.

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They didn’t seem to have a double chin setting. Hmm…

Saw The Simpsons Movie Friday night with a bunch of the Mahalo Guides. Great flick. Really funny.

Kristin just saw this post and said that it looks nothing like me and that “You should have made yourself fatter.” Ah, love…

UPDATE:
Victor did me a favor and fatified my Simpson’s version of me. Here it is:

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I like this picture I took in LA a few weeks back.

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