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. :)

Vacation week

I took vacation this week because my son was off from school, and it was actually a perfect blend of activity and relaxation.  Wednesday, we took a day trip down to NYC, where my son got to enjoy his first visit to the Met.  He'd learned about it in school and was excited about seeing it for himself.  He especially enjoyed the knights in armor.  We saw a kid's magic show at a local theater on Friday, and Saturday, I did a half marathon.  In the rain.  That's a different story (I guess it fits in with CG's theory about running and comedy!).  The other days, we maxed and relaxed.  :)

ComicCon

There was another Albany ComicCon back in October.  My guys and I went to it, and my son was absolutely delighted at the sight of people in costume, dressed as characters from Star Wars and various comic books.  After shaking hands with one of them, he exclaimed with glee, "I shook hands with a FANBOY!"

Now that I've put up today's strip, my husband thinks we should actually show up at the con dressed as "Crazy Guy" characters.  :)

Sense of Entitlement Girl

What can I tell you about Sense of Entitlement Girl that you don't already know by interacting with people just like her?  Hmm.  Well, she was inspired by an actual person.  In our apartment-dwelling days, we'd come up with descriptive names for the various people in our building.  Like there was WAS, aka "Walk Around Smoke" and "Smoky McFarty."  SOEG was a college student whose sense of entitlement was palpable.  I came up with "Sense of Entitlement Girl" off the cuff, and from then on, she was SOEG to us.

In the same building, there was another "Crazy Guy," but he was really just a bit eccentric.  The poor guy had a run-in with SOEG that ended with his family taking him in because she was threatening to sue him.  Something about him banging on a shared wall.

SOEG once insisted that we move our car to make room for hers.  The parking area in question belonged to a nearby college where I was employed.  So I had an actual parking permit that allowed me to park there.  She only had her sense of entitlement.  We didn't move our car.

I did a one-off comic on SOEG long before we ever encountered the guy who inspired Crazy Guy.  You'll recognize it as the inspiration for the standard "SOEG entrance" I use whenever she appears in the strip:

Click to enlarge.

  

Outsourcing tweets

I know that Charlie Sheen advertising for a Twitter intern isn't new news anymore, but I've been meaning to do something about that in the strip.  Sheen now has more than 3 MILLION followers.  More than 100,000 times as many as CG has.  You know CG can't stand that!  :)

Madoff

Another idea from my husband.  He came across the article I link under the strip--a New York Magazine interview with Madoff--shortly after passing the strip idea along to me.  Life imitates crazy!  Original idea had CG making signs, but I liked the visual of him making a t-shirt with Madoff's face and the "Freebird"-inspired slogan.  One hazard is that while I was working on this strip, I kept getting "Freebird" stuck in my head.  Darn Skynyrd!

Bubbles

My husband has two MBAs and a law degree.  He reads financial and economic blogs and makes predictions about the impending economic doom.  Today's strip was born in his brain, as are many of the economic/financial-themed strips.  Ha, it's all his fault I had to [try to] draw Cuomo for four panels!