awww puppies.

Hey all! Guess who started a new job this week?

Which... yeah. Having money again is cool, but retail's a harsh mistress when it comes to sharing all that free time that was lying around. So, not much progress on the picture book front-- this week, at least.

but, witty stuff later

comic now



Gift comic for the makers of Poe the Goodbye Puppy, another local creation that features a zombie doggie. I figured it was high time Poe and Mister Bitch got to have a play date together. Of course, zombies aren't generally known for their pep...

No means no, Mister Bitch. No means no.

Good news: There's a new display piece up for the Grey Bouquet card rack at the Source! With new art and the Nugget postcards for sale, even! Hit those fellas up sometime. Can't say it enough-- they're a keen bunch, them and their geek mecca of a store.

Bad news: Only half the art done for the display sign actually fit on the sign. Which is good news for you, 'cause you get to see 'em all here!



Print 'em out, if you like! You don't have to stick to the same boring coloring-page idea, either. Get creative! You can use them as seat placeholders for very small movie theater seats. Or stick 'em to the ends of dogs' ears with some tape, for a few minutes of free entertainment. Leave them at crime scenes and see what Batman-villain-style name the press starts giving you. The possibilities are endless!

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Speaking of picture books, how's the progress chart coming along? GLAD YOU ASKED.



Lookit! See? Lines appearing over a bunch of numbers! Lines over numbers is good.

night of a thousand tennis balls

Every day, you learn something new, eh? For instance, today I learned that I'm allergic to shellfish. (Or maybe mushrooms. Or tofu. Trying new Chinese food combo dishes are tricky like that.)

But don't think a little thing like various body parts going numb would stop me from this week's update! In fact, there's a new gag strip up in the main site's Comics section RIGHT NOW, so you should go check that out. Continuing the "favorite toys" theme from last week, this one gives you the heads-up on how Mister Bitch gets his entertainment.

NOTE: He can do that all day if Amnio lets him.

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Hey, that's right, I can add some more to the picture book progress chart, too!



As it turns out, my numbering fail means there's only 40 pages to the book, not 44. I'll spiff up the original chart lines to something less edited-in-Photobucket-at-the-last-minute soon enough.

One last Not A Card Yet design for y'all today. Here's the Get Well card, which might've had "I'd Keep You Around Even If You Were A Case Of The Plague" on the inside. Or maybe not. Never could figure out a good saying for it.



And with that, your humble doodle wrangler has officially burned through the entire backlog of pics saved up for this blog, so updates are going to be scaled back for the time being to MONDAYS ONLY.

You'll still get your cool stuff here, so keep checking back. I'll just be setting to work on the picture book that much harder in the meantime!

dem bones.

One thing savvy folks might've noticed about the gag strip this week is that it features, GASP, the first example of correct human-style bone structure since the whole Grey Bouquet series started.

Talking about the pelvic bones, in particular-- ie, the big butterfly-shaped part of the skeletal system, where your spine ends and where the tops of your legs connect into. Especially the obturator foramen (the holes on either side near where a person's butt would be). I swear, your humble doodle wrangler cannot seem to pin down where the holes in pelvic bones are supposed to go.

This only became an issue once I took Human Anatomy grad school courses early this year and realized how bad a track record I had on the hole-placement thing. Seriously. Had no concept of what was going on in that area when I was doing the greeting card art, and it shows.

Actually, that's a cool idea for a game to play whenever you see Amnio or Mister Bitch: SPOT THE HOLES! Sometimes there's four there. Sometimes two, but they'll be in the wrong places. Sometimes Mister Bitch's legs are coming from mystery holes that don't exist, and the rest of the pelvic bone'll have more holes past that. MADNESS I SAY.

Doing a bit better nowadays, as seen in this doodle I sketched out to quiz myself for class:


(Done from the feet up. I kinda got bored by the time I got to the head.)

At least for Amnio, I can claim it's because of shoddy research on his parents' part. They didn't see examples of human bone structure for very long a time, after all.

Where do they get those wonderful toys?

New gag strip's up in the Comics section, complete with a cameo from the A-bomb plushie Amnio's seen cuddling in the Miss You greeting card design (for those of you on the lookout for trivia extra-credit).

Speaking of obscure trivia: the 'gingerbread voodoo doll' idea came from a tattoo design I made for someone a few years ago. They asked for "a voodoo doll," and... it somehow never occurred to me to look up what a voodoo doll's generally supposed to look like before I started drawing. (Pausing here to state the obvious: this is NOT A GOOD THING TO DO when you do commission work. Just sayin'.) Lucky for me, the commissioner loved the icing/lava(?)-spewing result.



It also happened to look like precisely the kind of stuffed animal you'd find in a place people go when they hallucinate. (Or so I figure, uh. cough.)

Another day, another greeting card design scrapped 'cause it featured Amnio's parents who hadn't been introduced anywhere yet:



...One without inside text this time, either. Hm. Never could pin down a line that felt just right for this one.


Anyhow. New gag strip on Monday, and your humble doodle wrangler's got more promo stuff to work on in the meantime.