Weekend Update + Comic Stuff

Things have been going well enough, if not particularly exciting. But then, I guess that's nothing to complain about.

Jenny had her dentist appointment on Friday; she hadn't gone quite as long as I since her last check up, but it'd still been about 10 years. But she had nothing to worry about, as her teeth were in fine shape - no cavities or problems.

It's back to feeling like summer, with temperatures in the 80's and up to 90. Looks like more of the same this week, so I'm thinking we'll be breaking down soon and turning on the A/C. Which means higher electric bills. Yay.

Sunday was our monthly meeting of the Spokane Comicsmiths Guild, the group of local artists and writers that was formed after last year's 24 Hour Comicbook Day. We've begun planning for the next 24HCBD, which this year falls on October 3rd and will again be hosted by local shop Merlyns. We also discussed some other possible plans for this coming year which unfortunately are only in the discussion stage, so I won't go into details yet.

And, of course, we also sat around and drew. I began sketching out designs for another character in my Fight City superhero comic - a super-genius crime boss known as "Brains" McBannon. I think these are the closest so far to what I want:

Weekend Update

I think I've ingested enough cake to last me for a while...

Jenny had her Crafty Club Friday evening, and since Sunday was her birthday, one of the people brought a cake, which she had leftovers to take home. Then on Saturday we went over to Tigger and Lincoln's for a barbeque and birthday celebration for Jenny & I and Lincoln's daughter Elizabeth. There was more cake there, and since Elizabeth was turning 15, the house was quite a madhouse of sugar-crazed teenagers. But the food was good and it was still a lot of fun, even while dodging crazy kids.

Sunday we headed over to CdA and Jenny's mom had made a cake for us as well. They also surprised us with presents and took us out for Mexican for dinner. All in all, a good (and fattening) weekend!

Weather's been pretty nice (in our opinion) the past couple of days, which means grey, cool and wet. We even got quite the show the other night from the lightning storm that rolled in. Hopefully we won't have as dry of summer as last year - no need for more wildfires.

Cleaning up the Blog

I've been thinking about streamlining the design for this blog for a while, to make it easier to both read and update, so I finally sat down and did so today. The main thing I wanted to do was get rid of the daily Twitter posts. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I quickly realized how annoying it probably was,  and decided to shut it off and move the Twitter updates off to the side. My apologies for not doing so sooner.

I'll probably end up tinkering with it a little more, but I mainly want to simplify it as much as possible. Maybe now we'll get back to blogging semi-regularly again...

Quick Weekend Update

Went to the Spokane Comic-Con on Saturday, which was an awesome show and a whole lot of fun. We had planned on getting there when the doors opened, but got off to a slow start and ended up there around Noon, staying till the end.

I'm definately going to have a table there next year, and plan to have at least one of my comics started with some related material to sell. Jenny and I are talking about sharing a table, so she can show off her art as well. Figure that prints of her paintings would sell, and her jewelry should also go over well.

After the Con, we went out to dinner with some friends who were at the show and met a bunch of other cool artist/comic folks as well. All in all, it was a fun day!

I've got a bunch of different projects (mostly art but also writing & other things) to work on right now, so I should have no problem keeping myself busy. Just have to get moving and deal with this heat sapping my energy... I thought I was ready for summer, but I guess not.

Arts & Crafts in Spokane

Anyone who might be in the area this Saturday (May 30) should be sure to check out the 3rd annual Spokane Comic-Con, being held at the Spokane Falls Community College from 10-5.

Jenny normally works on Saturdays, but was able to get the day off, so we plan on spending the whole day there just hanging out and being geeks (next year I hope to have a table there myself...). Several of my friends will be there, however, so be sure to swing by their tables and check out their work. You can find a lot of them on deviantArt:

Ben Hansen
Jesse Acosta
Lars Brown
Levi Skeen
Matt Nelson

More information about the convention can be found here: Spokane Comic-Con 

Also this weekend (Friday through Sunday) is Spokane Art-Fest, the annual arts and music fair, sponsored by Spokane's Museum of Arts & Culture. You can find out more about it here: Spokane Art-Fest

And finally, Jenny also has her Crafty Club meeting on Friday, which she organizes through the library (where she works). Needless to say, we plan on being pretty busy this weekend, but it should be a lot of fun!

Blogging Catch Up

I haven't blogged (or even Twittered) in a while, so just wanted to start remedying that:

Jenny and I have both been sick off and on the past few days - sinus stuff and head aches, but thankfully no real flu. I also did something to my back last week which I'm still slowly working out. Probably wouldn't have seemed as bad if I hadn't got sick at the same time.

It seems Summer has arrived. It's been blue skies and sunny, and in the 70s the past few days. Still pleasant and not horribly hot yet. Just a matter of time, though...

I might have some temp work lined up at Borders next month. They're apparently doing a big re-organization of the store and will need some people to do overnight work for a while, moving stuff around, which would be perfect. I'd love to get back on with them, if even part-time, but they haven't had any regular hours to spare. I'm friends with the store manager, though, so if something opens up I'm sure I'll hear about it (which is how the temp job came up).

In the meantime, I've been trying to throw myself into art and also starting to write again. I want to get my superhero comic back on track soon, so I can start it up as a web-comic. I'm also working on a second, completely separate, project which I'm hoping to do something similar with.

We're still way behind on TV shows from this season, with the last few episodes of a few of our favorite shows still taped and waiting to be watched. We have been watching a lot more movies than normal, as Jenny's dad has been taking us out to see some of the big summer blockbusters he also wants to see. Besides Wolverine and Star Trek, we saw Angels & Demons last wednesday and are looking forward to the new Terminator movie this week. I wasn't really impressed by The Da Vinci Code, and mainly just wanted to see Angels & Demons for all the art and architecture that's shown, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It was incredibly rediculous, but entertaining.

Also, both of our birthdays are coming up relatively soon, although we don't really have any plans or ideas for what to do. Probably nothing too exciting, due to lack of money, but I'm sure there will be cake involved. :)

Wolverine Re-Design

Here's my entry for the current contest running over at Project: Rooftop. This one was to design a new costume for Wolverine, to go along with the release of his recent movie. 

I tried to make a somewhat "realistic" outfit for him, inspired somewhat by the X-Men movie costumes and those designed by Frank Quitely during his and Grant Morrison's run on the New X-Men comic.

This was actually the second design I came up with. My first attempt can be seen over at my deviantArt page: Discarded Wolverine Design

Speaking of Wolverine, I did see his new movie last week and it was... OK. Not great, but still entertaining. Some good action scenes, with a couple of CGI bits that could have been improved. But I did like it more than the last X-Men movie, so I guess that's something.

We also saw the new Star Trek, and it was excellent! JJ Abrams did a great job of re-starting the series for a new generation, while not erasing or stepping on any of the stories that came before. Well worth seeing in the theatre - I hope the inevitable sequels will be just as good.