Milo Comic Strip #3

Click for full size, please, to enjoy the full effect.

Here we meet the first of I'm sure many airplanes to buzz Milo. I figured he needed a Charlie Brown vs. the football moment, and well, you see what came out. Also, just as a side note, it's now 1:05 a.m. and I'm done. Only meant to work another 20 minutes past midnight on this and go to bed, but I was on a roll, so I figured I'd just throw down with it.

Milo Comic Strip #2

This strip introduces Hank, a red balloon. Hank's last comment is a topic of discussion at our house right now, as my girlfriend thinks it's too much, that I shouldn't alienate kids by having him swear. I think it's not really an issue. It's not as if I have a daily strip in the Tribune. And anybody who's reading these needs to know that this strip is sometimes going to deal with bigger concepts and sometimes going to have humor that's a bit sharp. That's just who I am. I think on the whole, web comics are for thinking people, and not for those who would tune out because of a "dick" comment. I love my girlfriend for trying to make sure that I don't get myself in trouble, but I also think that if I ever got picked up for a gig where content was an issue, I could probably put together a Sunday Funnies kid-safe portfolio pretty easily.

If you're thinking you don't like what Hank says, just don't listen to Hank. He's kind of a "jerk" himself. See how easy that was?

Serious Bidness.

Messing around with some textures and coloring. Came up with this. Milo taking a nap after some heavy duty floating.

The first strip.

So here's the first comic featuring Milo the Cloud. I'll be posting more as I finish them, and I'll likely collect them all on the website once I get that finished. Till then, here's the first one. Milo meets Nimbo. At least the comic version of Nimbo. The book version is going to be a bit more huge and imposing. I like this version for the strip though. He's just kinda silent, and grumpy.

Still here.

So, I'm doing something really stupid and I'm writing a novel. In a month. I decided to do NaNoWriMo this year, even though I had no freaking clue what I was going to write about when I started. Still don't really, even though I'm a little over 10,000 words in. NaNoWriMo, for those who don't know, is National Novel Writing Month, in which a slew of people attempt to write 50,000 words during the month of November.

I actually sold a Milo this weekend, along with a DIY Milo sans face. I'm gonna talk to a buddy of mine about setting up an online shop within the next couple weeks, and I'll also work up the nerve to go into Rotofugi and bring in some of the little clouds, to see if they want to sell them.

Things are good, and busy. I've had a bunch of gigs lately, along with actually feeling quite settled into the apartment. Here's to busy-ness, and being able to do things that one loves to do.

And here's a picture of our halloween party.

Movin' on up!

To the west side...er...yeah.

So I'm now moved! I'm living with my lady in Ukrainian Village now, and the place is starting to look mostly unpacked kinda sorta. I'm really looking forward to having my office done, and having a place to work. I'm sure my girlfriend is looking forward to not having my art stuff all over the living room when I'm gearing up for a craft show. Thinking I'm gonna go grab a drafting table this weekend. My hope is to find something that can double as a flat worktable for pouring Milos and sculpting new toy prototypes as well.

Things have been so crazy with the move, and getting stuff settled in (in addition to spending a week and a half flat on my back due to that eeeevil flu bug that's going around, Captain Trips anyone?)

So, I'm looking forward to getting back into Milo-world very soon, and sharing that with you all. And since I don't have any pictures of me on this blog yet, I figured I'd share this favorite from our recent trip to Venezia. We saw these huddled guys on the side of a church and decided to huddle with them in fear of whatever stone menace was gunning for them. I love this snap.

Ignorance is...

This year, for only the second time in my life, I left the apple pie-ness of the U.S. and went to another country where the hot-dog is considered the root of all evil, but they'll happily serve you a slice of grey loaf containing recognizeable pig nuts/faces/bones. I loved my time in Italy, but damn if that loaf didn't make me long for the completely generic pink of absolutely processed meat.

And that of course leads me to think about what that longing means. It's basically a longing for ignorance, because I'm wishing I could eat all the parts of the pig/cow/manatee that are in a hotdog, without knowing they're in there. Without a reminder in the form of a bone I have to pick out, I'm able to pretend it's a hotdog from the hotdog tree in Hebrew National Park.

Obviously that's not ideal.

But it's also, I think, how most people survive in the world. If we look too closely at things as they are, we have a tendency to become depressed by them. Spend an hour with the evening news and you'll see what I mean. But if we don't look closely, we gloss over things that we need to fix. Ignore at your peril the religious right, and gasp in shock when you find they've distorted our society's constitution to suit their own desires. Ignore at your peril the fact that corn subsidies have dictated the use of high fructose corn syrup in just about 90 percent of products on the shelf in your grocery store. (statistics TOTALLY made up to prove a point, YOU AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION!! You don't know if it's true or if it's just somebody saying something on the internet to prove a point. Go find out!!)

The point is, that grey Italian loaf of pig brain/colon/eyesocket is what you're eating when you chow down at the ballpark, it's just way less grindy, and it's way more remindy. Today, ask yourself what else you need reminding about. And while you're at it, remind yourself that you need not be depressed by the things you're paying more attention to. You can actually choose something different and make the attention into a positive one. For my own part, I'm choosing (after the soda that's on my desk right now) to drink only a single cherry coke a week at the movies, if I go, and to not eat another hot dog until next summer. Attention, meet INtention.

Happy Pigloaf to you, my friends, and on a personal note, I ask you to take a peek at the ingredients list on that package of hotdogs that the GOP is trying to sell you from Alaska. From what I can see, she comes complete with pork barrel spending, religious intolerance, and a big steaming pile of bullshit. But I may just have bit down on a bone that the processing plant didn't catch.