200 - here comes 2013! Everyone run!

Just a quick little hello to start the year. Noodle, the noodle armed boy says hi! Hope you like his hat.

2012 was really great for me.

I started a pod cast - The Next Element Podcast - and put up over 20 episodes on podbean and iTunes which has gotten some great feedback and very few death threats. Colin Addington and I had some great fun and the pod continues on in earnest. Sharing and chatting on the twitters about and with other podacsts made me a huge fan of An Elegant Weapon which lead to some great episodes, meeting a ton of other podcasters and becoming part of the super cool and all powerful Junk Food Podcast Network.

I showed much interest in an amazing Kickstarter called G.E.E.K. by the man himself Matt Cohen of Bagged and Boarded fame. This unbelievably lead to me getting the coloring job on that book, which I will go back to once I'm done typing this. The story is great, the art is epic, and I can only hope to get the colors up to the standards of the amazing guys I am working with on the book. Matt Cohen, Shawn DePasquale and Axel Ortiz are now some of my favorite people in the world. To stay updated check out this sexy little website: www.geekcomicbook.com.

Plenty of other happenings but I'm not going to get into all of them. The only real goals I set for myself last year were to make more art and by way of that post up more blog posts. According to my little tracker here I put up 59 posts in 2011 and upped that to a nice 71 in 2012. Other than 2009 I have increased blog posts each year since I started this thing in 2008. As far as I am concerned this is a trend I am proud of and plan on continuing. So for 2013 I will have 2 goals, increase the number of posts to this blog - aiming for 80 plus with almost all of them having art if possible, and finish coloring GEEK. That is all. 2 things to focus on and now it is time to start. If you are one of the people reading these things each and everytime they go up I just want to say thank you and you are awesome. We will continue to be awesome together.

Have a great year peoples!

199 - Front Desk Man!

Had a bit of fun this week doing a farewell piece for one of the workers that is leaving us this week. Our man David is having his last day at Health & Welfare tomorrow and is off to continue helping people with his new position at the Boise VA. As a way to show him how much we all appreciate him and will miss him the idea was brought up to do a kinda super hero caricature of David.
Being the artsy type guy in our office the task was given to me. I think it turned out well. Breaking out the Copics for the first time in to long was a lot of fun. The final result looks pretty good in the frame co-worker Amy snagged for the picture. Should go over well tomorrow.
If anyone is wondering David is portrayed as Front Desk Man which is the hardest position in Child Support Services. I know, it's a position I held off and on for about a year. No one seems to want to come in and talk to Child Support when they are happy so you spend 8 hours a day doing your best to help people understand their position and what you can and can't do for them while trying to be as helpful and understanding as you can be, it is a damn tough job. David's been doing it for a while and it seems he was pretty dang good at it. He will be missed around our office and the VA is lucky to have him.

Small note:  Tonight we did the first ever MEGAPOD with almost all the members of the Media Junk Food Podcast Network, it was epic and a blast to do. If you want to give it a listen it will be up soon on my podcast which can be found HERE. 

Hope you all have a great recovery weekend after the stress of Xmas.

198 - is this the Electro Foxx you're looking for?

Are one of these the expectations you have of Jamie Foxx playing Electro? If the new news is to be believed then Jamie Foxx has indeed confirmed he will be playing Max Dillon in Amazing Spider-Man 2 which I think could be great. I'm hoping that we get the first picture above and don't fall prey to a possible script that doesn't bring us the Max from the comics that I know and love. Wanda with electric powers scares the shit out of me!
With all of Jamie Foxx's turns in great flicks and putting out amazing performances like Ray, The Soloist and Ali I'm hoping we get the bad ass actor that we all know Foxx can be. And come on, Dean 'MF' Jonesin Horrible Bosses was frickin epic! I guess we will just see what we see.

197 - Getting my Nova on! And a new do again...?

A little try out with some of the wife's markers. Did my best rendition of the cover of The Man Called NOVA #3 by the incredible Sal Buscema. If you are one of the people who have only met "Nova" as a punk ass named Sam on The Ultimate Spider-Man Disney XD don't hold that against the REAL Nova which is a bad ass named Richard Rider who has been kicking ass in the Marvel Universe since the 70's.

We also have a new picture that I took the opportunity of my Halloween haircut to get done. Art supplies along with my 2nd degree black belt. That's right, just cause a guy reads and makes comics doesn't mean he can't start some shit!

196 - the Halloween do's

Wanted to share with you guys the fun I had at Halloween this year. Picture 'A' shows the final results of me not cutting my hair for about 8 months and not shaving for the 3 or 4 months prior to Halloween this year. I had an idea that I thought would be fun for work and starting growing the hair out with the idea that it would shock everyone when my hair changed so drastically for one day. It was really fun as the days drew closer and all my friends at work kept guessing what I was going to be. The crazy thing was the last day when someone mentioned a possible character with short hair and someone else said "No way he would grow his hair out all this time just to cut it off." I almost did a spit take right then but I held my composure and no one seemed to actually guess that that was my idea.

So after work the day before Halloween I headed off to Sports Clips and they proceeded to make my head look like 'B'. It was a blast, the girls at the shop had a blast looking at the Mr. T pictures on my phone. And we all had some good laughs when they hit me with the clippers and all that hair started hitting the ground.

Which all lead to 'C'. I showed up at work on Halloween in full mma gear with finger tape that said PITY and FOOL. It was a fun day. All my work colleagues seemed to be impressed and I had some fun.

Now, what the hell am I going to do next year...?

195 - Happy Holidays!!!!!

Happy Holidays Peoples!

Here's hoping you are all having a fine holiday season. Mine has been full of ups and downs. Life is strange sometimes. I have been unable to get on my desktop computer since Saturday morning so I have been unable to get any coloring down which has left me very unhappy. I have a stack of pages and all I want to do is work on them and right now I can't. It's so annoying. My partners in GEEK have been kicking ass lately. Axel is kicking out pages drawn and inked, Shawn is dropping letters like crazy and each day I am falling behind. Matt's going to be unhappy if I don't get caught up. The good news is a that I have a virus scan running off of a thumb drive right now that might fix everything, and if it doesn't I have found my Windows 7 disk and will have the fun of doing a full re-install. The wife has been really helpful with this whole thing which is good, because I was pissed. And really just wanted to punch my computer. It wouldn't have helped but it would have made me feel better.

As it is I will be getting all GEEKy colorful as soon as possible and plan on spending all weekend coloring watching Netflix and listening to podcasts minus the time I will be watching Ryan Stegman do a live ustream for the people that backed his Kickstarter and sketching live, should be a blast.

That next blog will include a pic I've been working on to show the fun I had at Halloween this year and I do have a couple of things I have been working on that I can share so good stuff is coming.

Enjoy your holidays! Don't let your families ruin it for you!

194 - the last photo

Here it is. The last picture of me with all the months growth of hair and beard in preparation for Halloween tomorrow. Right now I look a lot different, and tomorrow it will be more so. It's going to be a fun day.

The Next Element Podcast is rocking along and kicking down doors, give it a listen.

Coloring different pieces and I keep having opportunities thrown at me and I keep doing everything that I can fit into my schedule. I'm learning and I keep getting these great opportunities and I will happily share them with you guys once I am able to. Really great news coming in the next couple of weeks.