Episode 1 Vero vs episode 10 Vero!

He got angier looking in 10 episodes!

Seriously, like the new look better.

Oh good, 'cause it takes me way longer to draw him now. :D

And yeah, he's been stewing!

Added 1 new A* page:

• A* Episode 10, Page 135

I added three pieces of enlarged or composite artwork from recent pages to the episode 10 gallery; you can get to 'em by clicking on these thumbnails:



I made them for my deviantART page, because that's kind of my collection of what I think have been the best drawings, and my dad and I are going to use it for choosing which pieces to include in the show of my prints that I'm going to be having at Ballard's swanky Caffè Fiore in less than a month. So if you have any particular favorites that you think I should go with, even ones that aren't on my dA page, now would be the time to let me know!

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Also I made some icons out of this latest page, 10:135, like this:



You can find the rest on the icons page.

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I'm going to try out doing my daily sketch comic, Sketchy, before I start in on A* each day; I don't know if you've noticed, but often my first A* panel of the day doesn't turn out quite as nice as the second one, so doing a Sketchy panel first will help me be a little more warmed up when I start in on A*. In theory... Tried it today and it still took me about four tries to come up with a layout I liked for today's page... For now though I'm going to blame that on lemon tart overdose. =p

im glad im not the only one who noticed vero has become alot more fierce in his look.


and i just noticed you met phil foglio... im pretty flippin jealous, and to top it off, he read your stuff... insta boner i bet.

Well figuratively speaking, yeah. ;) I fanboi-ed out pretty hard on him, I'm afraid! :D

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 10, Page 136
• A* Episode 10, Page 137

I gotta throw out a few thank-yous today, because I noticed I've been getting traffic from a few new sources lately: the comic list on the blog Daveawayfromhome, and the links page on Paul's Exciting Home Page. So thanks Dave, and thanks Paul, for linking to A*--it is much appreciated!

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The way Page 136 there turned out reminded me that a friend showed me the trailer for the upcoming "Tron Legacy" this weekend, a follow-up--in these days of rampant sequelization--to the 1982 original. Not that I was ever a huge Tron fan (although I did like playing our own version of "Tron Deadly Discs" with Frisbees, ie throwing them at each other; and I guess I *did* work for a company that made a recent Tron PC game), and not that this new one couldn't be good in its own right, but I thought it was pretty odd that they've mostly dropped one of the primary aesthetics of the original, namely the sort of grayish/negative rendering of skin; they seem to have settled for just overall grayish lighting instead.

Which is weird! Granted, the effect in the original is very artificial looking--but that was exactly the point. Maybe in these days of super high-res CG stuff, art directors are just too obsessed with achieving photo-realism, I dunno. Anyway for my money, the film from 28 years ago still looks cooler--but compare for yourself! Here's the Tron [1982] trailer, and the Tron Legacy [2010] trailer.

(And actually that wasn't the one my friend showed me; it was the LITERAL Tron Legacy Trailer Parody version. =P)

I thought the old Tron was pretty cool. I recall that, at the time, those computer graphics were pretty advanced. I remember loving the overall look of the movie.

I like the look of the old movie for sure. I also like the look of the new movie. I mean jeez, with all the eye candy thats possible today it must be hard for hollywood to resist.
As an avid motorcyclist its hard not to want to see the light cycle things.

And, Yay!, tron babes!

Heh, yeah, they've definitely one-upped the original in terms of girls in skin-tight outfits.

Added 2 new A* pages:

• A* Episode 10, Page 138
• A* Episode 10, Page 139

Hey I need to squeeze in some pimpage for the latest page of my Sunday fairy tale comic, "The Princess and the Giant." Hm I don't have a preview banner thingy for this particular page, buuuut let's see, okay you can get to it by clicking on this image I used as a reference:



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Today's A* page 139 was a case where I had an uncommonly decent looking thumbnail for it, so I started off by tracing over the storyboard, and went from there. A lot of times that doesn't work--saps the energy right out of it, which is one reason why I don't use the usual comic method of tracing over "pencils" with "inks"--but in this case I think it worked out. Here's the original storyboard:



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Found myself scribbling down notes for yet another little story I want to tell in my Sketchy daily sketch comic; that means I've already got two ready to go now--gotta wrap up the current "Tale of Death Boy," this burgeoning buffer makes me nervous! =P The story after Death Boy will be a comedy adventure, and then the one after that--if I stick to these notes--will be a sort of ghost/horror type of thing, which will kind of be a first for me. Maybe I thought of it because Halloween is coming up? Hm. I was actually kind of creeping myself out as I was writing it, but that doesn't mean much because I generally avoid scary stuff as much as possible. O_O