Marriage is tough sometimes. There will always be issues and backgrounds that will remain separated for a husband and a wife. I say that but really mine has been fairly easy the first 15 years. My wife and I do have much different backgrounds. While we grew up with completely different religions we now agree nearly completely. I was also lucky to find her as she is one of the few native Texans with similar political beliefs as me. While my wife used to be more of a Mac person, economics made it easier for both of us to be PC people.

    In real life I will rarely give advice on relationships, much less marriage. The truth is I lucked out and had the good sense to marry my wife when I got to know her. I think the plain and simple secret to a successful marriage is marrying the right person.

    A work friend suggested I do a Mac vs. PC cartoon. So this is my attempt at it. I don’t want to stir things up too much with a Mac vs. PC  joke, although it can be fun. So when I do Mac jokes I prefer to joke in a larger sense about the community differences rather than specific hardware differences. As I have said many times before I would likely own a Mac if the mark-up was not so high. It is funny how much the whole Mac vs. PC discussions can be every bit as bitter as Democrat vs. Republican and many more of the “classic” vs. debates.

   I experimented a little bit on today’s cartoon. I tried a soften effect on the background and like the way it looked. I also tried a very subtle highlight on the sunglasses on the Geek as well. It’s hardly noticeable but I like the effect. I’m trying to add a few more dark lines than I usually do. I like the way the dark lines look but it is a balance on using them. I looked back at my archive and there are some toons I heavily used black lines as part of the shading and see now days I hardly use it. I really think my old style was better so I’m trying to recapture some of it back.

With the beginning of the year I thought I’d go back and look at last year’s resolutions and see how well I did. I also inclded my goals for 2010

1. Create or have a great logo created for Don’t Feed The Geek. Result=Success. Krishna Sadasivam @ pcweenies.com did up an excellent logo/banner for me.

2. Stick to a solid schedule. Until now I have been fairly random on my postings. Result=Success. Except for a week of illness I have published new toons every Tuesday and Thursday.

3. Do these toons with more professional techniques and get better. Result=Mixed. While I think there has been some improvement, I need to go much further.

4. Increase traffic to this site. Result=Success. (marginal) Traffic is up from the previous year and the schedule helped a lot.  I still want to see bigger increase, but I’m mostly pleased. I even picked up a few fans if you can believe that, and no they were not related to me.

5. Create the story line comic I have been planning, finally! Result=Fail. I started it but no where near being ready for anyone to see. I may abandon it and try a different story.

Goals for 2010

1. Increase traffic. Duh.

2. Participate more in the webcomic community and find new heroes to follow.

3. Publish a book. I’m close to finishing this one. I just need to finish some original art that will only be available in the book. And then have the guts to spend the money to do it. The mock ups look decent so far I must say. I hired Krishna to do the cover and that looks fantastic. In this case I want people to judge a book by it’s cover. I was hesitant to have someone else to do the cover but I see many examples of far superior artists have someone else design the cover, I had the good sense to ask krishna to do it.

4. Have a table at least 2 expos in 2010.

5. Get more mentions on other sites, positive mentions. 2009 was great as I “met” many great cartoonists who actually looked at my toons and some even had good things to say.

    When I first started doing a web-comic I naively just emailed various web-cartoonist I admired. Most went unanswered and unacknowledged. However Krishna Sadasivam of www.pcweenies.com and www.uncubedthecomic.com answered me right away. Not only did he respond he took the time to really answer my question.  He is hands down the most approachable of the best know web-cartoonist.

   That was a while back and over that time my admiration for him has only increased. So yesterday when I got an email from him with “fan art” in it of my main character, I was just down right giddy. I’m still just amazed the he took the time to do it and it really looks amazing. After last week doing my first comic expo and receiving Krishna’s amazing art this week I feel like I have arrived finally and belong here in web-comics. I’m even in the earliest stages of planning a short run book by the end of the year.

   Krishna, thanks again. You made my day and then some.

   To all my web-comic buddies out there. Jealous much?

    This Saturday November 14th I’ll be doing my first expo to promote my this website. The is the first time they are holding the Dallas Web Comic Expo, you can find for information at www.dwex.info

   I’m excited and nervous and not fully sure what to expect. If it turns out to merely be an event I get to hang out with a lot of web cartoonists that will still be worth it. I had some swag made up to sell and give away. I have several version of a mini-comic made up to give away. I also had some mouse pads and t-shirts made up.  I’m probably going to sell the t-shirts for $10  for the show. I’ve not come up with a price for the mouse pads, mouse pads just aren’t used like they used to be.

    I have some shirts I may just give away and may end up doing the same with the mouse pads. Just to see if anyone is reading this I have a few things I will give away to the 1st 3 people that come up to me and give me the code word “aardvark”. If you know me you don’t qualify, sorry. I’ll give them a small care package of things, some are things that I won’t be selling.

     This is a low quality picture of some of the swag I have and a sneak peak at my banner.

   I have an idea of which shirts will sell and which won’t, maybe none will. I guess we will see. I have shopped around and have gotten some great deals over the last few weeks on this stuff so I don’t have a lot of money invested. If I break even I’ll be happy. Heck, I’ll be pleased just to get some stuff in people’s hands that promote the site.

   So I’m prepared to have some fun and I know the guys putting this show on have put in a lot of work and we are all grateful. Thanks guys! See ya’ll at DWEX.

   Ever since I heard about dwex.info I tried to talk myself into doing it. DWEX is the Dallas Webcomic Expo on November 14th.  It’s the first year for it so my timing may be good, if it were one of the big shows I know I would not be able to talk myself into going. It’s ironic that there is a cartoonist who is not doing it because it is in it’s first year, and that is one of my reasons for doing it.

   Brian Powers of liltoon.com and I will be sharing a table so that also makes it easier. I don’t have any merchandise to sell but I’m putting together some mini-comics to give out. I also need to come up with some sort of banner I guess as well. It’s going to be fun getting ready for it, let’s just hope my head can get around it by then.

More to come.

  We have a small water garden in the front flower bed. Thursday’s toon will go into more detail and there is a cartoon to go with it. We found the 3rd male toad tonight. It is really cool, especially considering the world is losing frogs and toads in rapid numbers. Some species are literally disappearing from one season to the next. They seem OK for now in our little suburb. Here is an animated version of part of tomorrow’s toon.