RED ALERT - RED ALERT

Doodle Wrangler's folks are due in town tomorrow morning, so any rushed feeling to this post can be chalked up to having to scurry around hiding anything in the apartment that probably should not be left lying around in front of said folks. Which should be interesting, given the fresh slice of awesome I picked up at SDCC that's currently hanging on my dining room wall.

So.

Update. Update... what DO I have for y'all today?

How about the linework for the Sockpuppet Love T-shirt? Might be able to print that puppy off for some color-in-or-outside-the-lines-as-you-see-fit funtime, right? Yeah. I'll go with that.



Lesson One in coloring: eating the crayons does not allow you to cross into another dimension where the colors look WAY brighter. Trust me.

Remember that picture book thing I mentioned? Well, I whipped up something for you all to keep tabs on where I'm at with it. Shoulder-snoop to your little heart's content, 'cause here it is:



It's like those advent calendars! If instead of chocolate, there was only SUSPENSE

SAN DIEGO YOU ROOOOCK

Now that I've had my nineteen-hour-long nap to recharge... LET'S DO THIS THING.


Based on a true story. It was either this, the Galactus hats, or the Adventure Time caps they were handing out.

Seriously now: everyone I met at San Diego Comic Con was AWESOME. And I swear, hearing Jhonen Vasquez, Jill Thompson, Phil Foglio, Tavi and Rikki of Studio Tavicat, and Tessa Stone / Shaenon Garrity (the creators of two of the best webcomics out there) say MY stuff was cool is going to have me skipping in ecstatic slow-mo like somebody in the latter half of a medication commercial for the next seventy-four weeks. At minimum. I hope everybody I met had as rockin' a time at Con as I did there Friday!

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NEXT ON THE DOCK: Oh yeah, the Nugget postcard's all ready to send to print, isn't it? I know what I'm doin' once I get up later this morning.

Plus, I started layouts for three of the 44 picture book pages on the plane ride over Thursday.


...Yeah. This week is gonna be cool.

it's ALWAYS playtime here.

So! De-Comic-Sansed the main site, if you're into that sort of thing. (Poor Comic Sans MS. ALL IT WANTED WAS YOUR LOVE)

This Friday will not have an update, as I will be schmoozing in San Diego and hopefully kicking up some buzz for the picture book, if not for the main characters/series in general. Freebie tables ahoy~

To tide you through your loss, have a bigg'un for a picture post. If any of you've seen the freebie fliers for Grey Bouquet scattered here and there around the Twin Cities this past year and a half, this here's the sketch used for the puzzle image on the back of those fliers. (If you've got a flier and don't know what I'm talking about, chase it down for a second and flip it over. See that number on the corner? If you've got all four of 'em, voila, you've got the picture below as well!)



If you don't know what those shadows on the wall they're dancing by are, here-- look it up. Then feel free to chuckle, or shift and say "oh..." a little awkward-like, or demand to know what I'm doing in your living room, or whatever else folks do when they 'get' it.

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You know what time it is again? Time for PROOOMOTIONS!


Y'all need to drop in for a look at this comic called Godseeker, by two of my peeps right here in the Cities. It's got pre-Babylonian-era romance! Intrigue! People getting eaten by crocodiles! Whirly plant vine things that look super cool! Boobies! (Kids these days like boobies, right?) ...And art and story and stuff that is WAY better than I'm probably making it sound!

You know what it DOESN'T have? Chinchillas.

Blah blah blah chinchillas are on a whole different continent when this story's taking place, there's an ocean in the way. NONSENSE. You need to tell these fine people there's only one thing that could make this comic any better, and that's for this to happen:



Scuba chillas.

I rest my case.

ffff. JUST THIS ONCE.

...Yeah, I had to.

Are you my mummy? No? Well, you DO look like family...

Found out today that it is possible to finish off the first season of Doctor Who AND finish up the back side of the first Grey Bouquet postcard in the same night. Unfortunately, the sheer hypnotic power of Christopher Eccleston on a flickery screen for these past few days means that Nugget usually would've gotten around to visiting the Clicky Box by this point in the week, and he hasn't yet. As the kids say nowadays, my bad, yo.

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Amnio shirts are indeed now available at the Source, along with the usual full assortment of niftyness! If Dinkytown's more your stomping grounds, I'll find out tomorrow whether Magus Books will be offering 'em or not, too.

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Keeping on the 'greeting card logos' theme, here's Nugget's version. His logo is kind of the odd duck out, compared to the other three. Only one card's ever featured Nugget-- and apparently, most folks who saw it thought it was supposed to be a Thanksgiving card, not for birthdays, like it was intended (though given the peacock-style tailfeathers Nugget's got on the front of the card, I'll admit it's not a big logical leap to make). It was never reprinted past the first run, so unless you've been checking the Source's greeting card racks for a while now, your chances of stumbling across this one are on the slim side.

Woo! So. Shirts. The new design's now available at Sacred Paths Center, and will be available at The Source this Thursday afternoon.

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How's about another one of those flower logos, eh? Ehhhh? Come on, you know you want more crosshatched plant stuff in your life.



Mister Bitch likes flowers. Flowers very seldom run away when he tries to eat them, and as his top speed doesn't get a whole lot faster than "zombie shuffle," every little bit helps.

NEW SHIRT

THAT'S RIGHT I SAID NEW SHIRT

IT'S THE AMNIO ONE

FOR SALE ONLINE

CHECK THE ETSY SHOP

YOU BEST BELIEVE THIS CALLS FOR A 'WOOT'

WOOOOOOOT


cough. okay, that's enough of that... capslock hurts my innernet throat


What are you waiting for?! Go see, go see!

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Don't let the shirt news make you think I'm cheating you out of a bonus sketch for the day. Have some detail art! This logo's shown up on the backs of the Grey Bouquet greeting cards that feature Amnio on the front.



PROTIP: Older cards didn't have all the nifty shading on the logos. If you turn your card over and notice there's only blank linework there, you'll know you nabbed a card from GBQ's first print run. (Feel free to pause at that point and pat yourself on the back for being ahead of the curve, if you want. You've earned it.)

So, turns out the head doodle wrangler here fails at camera flash settings, at least enough to not have the Etsy store updated with new shirts yet. This should be fixed tomorrow, sunlight willing.

In the meantime, are you getting a little tired of the Not Card sketches? 'Cause I know I am. Let's mix this 'card' theme up. Here-- have the art from the back of the Grey Bouquet business card.



Nugget with Il Pumpkinini, a sentient vegetable garden farmers used to play opera music to back before the humans were all, y'know, annihilated and stuff. The biggest pumpkin in the garden fancies itself an opera singer. It'll be in the picture book.

Hiyo! Have another not-card. Graduation Day, this time.

AND THEN, THE WORLD

Hey, all! Big sloppy hellos to any GBQ newbies coming here from CONvergence. Just finished tweaking some stuff on the main website, and the new Amnio design t-shirts should be in the online shop within the next few days. ALMOST got the hang of this new Monday/Wednesday/Friday update thing. Almost.

As always, if you're local and looking for Grey Bouquet merch, you can save yourself some shipping costs and head to one of these quality Twin Cities hotspots:

* The Source, Saint Paul
* Magus Books, Minneapolis
* Sacred Paths Center, Saint Paul

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Seeing as this year's CONvergence theme was "Bring On the Bad Guys," I figure it's about time I revealed a nefarious plot of my own. My ultimate goal with this series has been to make a picture book around the Grey Bouquet crew, Dick-and-Jane style-- and this past week, I finished up the second draft of said book's script.

What does this mean? Well, after I turn out the "Nugget Is Confused By Colors" postcard (which looks like it'll be ready by the end of the month), I'm gonna be taking a hiatus from doing any new merchandise. The good news is, it's so I can start working on layout sketches for all forty or so book pages.

As soon as I've got some art to provide, I'll be looking for an inker to help trim down on how long it'll take to bring the book to print. Know anybody who'd be interested? Happen to be an inker who's interested? Drop me an email! All together now: greybq (AT) gmail (DOT) com !

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Speaking of merch that didn't get made, here's your sketch for the day. This not-card's for weddings.



Same deal applies for all not-card designs, of course; if I hear enough people want to buy a certain card, I can be persuaded. Sort of like a popularity contest, only this one's got a chance at a happy ending!

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Shameless plug time: heads up, fellow creepy-cute fans! You should check out Poe the Goodbye Puppy, pronto! I met the creators over the weekend-- keen folks, and proud mad scientists, the both of them. We seem to be of similar minds, yet these guys have the added visual bonus of a world that actually has colors in it.

Plus, there's no such thing as too many zombie dogs, am I right?

it's Valentine's Day in July

There we go! The site should be 100% keen-o now. If it isn't, drop us a comment, yeah?

Busy at CONvergence, but before I dash back to my table, here's something for y'all to chew on. Folks need birthday and friendship cards all year 'round, right? But the two GBQ holiday cards out there had mixed success, and only during those parts of the year, too. There's a bunch of greeting card ideas that've been kicking around the ol' noggin, but mostly they've just been jotted down in a sketchbook and left there.

Until today...



There's more where that came from, too. And nothing says these won't ever get made into cards. Give a comment if you like what you see!