Maybe it's only a matter of time....

Uh-oh....  I hope the greeting-card industry doesn't get funny ideas from the latest strip and start marketing "you're welcome" cards.  After all, don't they typically seize just about any opportunity to get people to spend more money on cards?  Hm.  Maybe I ought to jump in ahead of the curve and start marketing a line of  "CG and (N)J" "you're welcome" cards?  But only use them if you really want to mess with someone.  Next thing you know, the "Miss Manners" column will be overrun with people stressing over whether proper etiquette dictates a "you're welcome" card for every thank-you note received. ;)

Story to tide you over :)

Another weekend without an update?  Lame!  During the week, I need to rely mostly on lunch time and evening to get any drawing done, and lately, I've had more other stuff going on during lunch time.  Then when I get home, I find myself not wanting to do much more than surf the net and play online Scrabble!  Bad Scrabble addiction!  Then on the weekend, other than getting my long run in, I find myself just kind of tired and unmotivated.  ::deep sigh::

So in the meantime, thought I'd share a little story with you.  One of the days that I was doing other stuff during my lunch hour last week, I went out to lunch with my husband to celebrate my birthday.  We went to a little place that's just a couple of blocks from where I work in downtown Albany, and guess who we spotted?  The real and actual Crazy Guitar Guy, patrolling the streets with his beloved acoustic guitar.  Once inside the restaurant, we speculated as to whether he'd be pleased or not to know that he has a comic avatar.  I don't think I'll tell him!

In other news, I keep checking out this book from the library:

For around five months or so, I've been doing my inking digitally but not my penciling.  I want to become more proficient with my tablet and eventually go totally digital.  One thing holding me back is that I'd rather not lug my laptop and tablet around with me. 

My son keeps telling me he wants me to add color to "CG and (N)J."  I've told him that I might eventually do that, but it will take me a while to learn to do that.  And before I get there, I want to actually get ahead of my self-imposed deadlines consistently.  I'd like to be two weeks ahead. 

Free Comic Book Day

Well, I didn't scour the comics blogs or dispatch a team of crazy guys (which, of course, I haven't got).  I did just go to the nearest comic shop, though I had my guys with me (husband and son) and we each got to have six comics apiece!  Also a Green Lantern figure that promptly got broken from its base within 24 hours.  Same exact thing happened with last year's figure!

Somehow, I manage to come across the FCBD blog entries AFTER the day and see the super-amazing books I managed to miss.  Ah, well.  I won't obsess.  :)

Painful Reminder of "Save Early and Often"

My current process for doing CG strips is to draw the strip in pencil and make a scan of the pencil drawing.  Then I edit it in GIMP, creating a new layer to digitally ink over my pencil lines.  That way, it's easy to go back a layer and erase anything I don't want while still having the option of keeping some of my penciled structure.

I had completed that phase, which takes the longest, and was about 1/3 into adding the text (I use a font based on my own writing).  All of sudden GIMP locked up, and nothing I did would unlock it.  And of course, I realized to my horror that I had not been saving at every step, as I should.  Fortunately, the digital inking had all been saved, but the clean-up step had not.  I had no choice but to force GIMP to shut down, and when I restarted it and opened my image, I no longer had layers, which made cleaning up the pencil lines (and pencil schmutz) much more arduous.

Aargh!  Frustrating!  Just when I think I've thoroughly absorbed the old "save early and often" lesson.

The contract that Crazy Guy cites really did exist--my husband had come across it while studying contract law. :)