So if you do webcomics have you done this? You work hard on a background and then some of the best details are hidden by characters or other objects and can’t be helped. I still think all the details, even unseen, are important to me.

So, taking a queue cue from my interweb buddy Samantha at http://www.witchytech.com/lifesawitch/ I’m posting what the full image would have looked like. Maybe it’s boring but I spent a lot of time working on it. BTW, if you have never seen “Life’s a Witch” you should go right now and check it out. She is funny and safe for he whole family, even though her humor is targeted for adult type people like me.

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   I love the show Medium on NBC. I recorded Monday night’s episode and finally got a chance to watch it last night. Like most episodes she (Allison) has a dream about some killer, in this case someone wanting to kill her. She goes to the people she works with, the DA and police, and tells them and they don’t believe her. OK, later on she gets some dreams wrong in the episode, but come on. So week after week she has dreams and identifies the killer and solves the case but each week she must convince the same people that she is right. Man that is so frustrating!

  So it occurred to me last night that really Scooby and Shaggy have the same problem. Week after week they are the first to see the “ghost” or bad guy ’ du jour’ and what do their friends say? They don’t believe them. So yeah the last fifty times I told you what I saw I was right but this time I just imagined it, yeah right! How about some credit here folks. It matters little that the ghost or monster turns out to be Old Man Jenkins, they still saw what they saw.

   These issues will not stop me from watching Medium, or Scooby Doo (watching for nearly 40 years now) but I think Allison, Scooby and Shaggy should dump thier current teams and join forces. What a team they would make. Maybe no crimes would get solved but at least someone would believe them.

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   A inter-web cartoonist buddy, Samantha at  http://www.witchytech.com/lifesawitch/ came up with the idea of a sketchout group for a few of us wanting to improve our skills as a cartoonist. The idea is to take turns handing out assignments on Friday. This week Samantha assigned us “Characters in motion”. I did the assignment and it came out just OK.  This exercise showed me I need a lot of sketching exercise, so this group will help me out so much. Check them all out here. Check back later to see more as they get added.

Enclosed you will see the work in progess, the final drawing and an *animated GIF file of the work in progress taking a cue for Sam.

*(if it works right, it does at photobucket  at least) 

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I got a kick out of doing this, so I thought I’d share it. I used open source programs for this while thing. I used Paint.Net to draw it, CamStudio to capture it, Windows Movie Maker (not really open source), and of course WordPress and a plugin to post it. I may do more stuff like this. It’ll probably be cooler a more detailed drawing. The cartoon I’m drawing in the video can be seen at http://dontfeedthegeek.com/2009/07/09/how-was-your-week/

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  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.

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   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.

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    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.

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    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?

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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.

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I just started playing with some new animation software. I have a project I’m working on but as a quick exercise I wanted to do a animation with lip syncing. My web buddy and fellow wanna-be cartoonist Bo Lumpkin(as if that’s his real name, it isn’t actually) www.Bolumpkin.com does some funny cartoons and videos. i decided to take one of his old videos and his character and animate it. It was fairly easy once all the components were draw. Drawing 10 different mouths shapes took a while. I use Anime Studios Debut and I liked it a lot and recommend everyone at least try the free trial that is interested in animation. The only complaint I have is there was no built in tool to make the video web ready. It took longer finding a way to reduce the file size of the default sizes. Anyway I hope to do more of these as well. Like I said the Bo Lumpkin, www.bolumpkin.com , really lends itself well to this kind of animation.

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