Ahem.

The Nutroll: The Illness teaser page is done and uploaded to the site. Finally. By finished, I mean that my shambling, bloodstained shell of flesh limped to the finish line with this thing because nearly everything on this damned planet was trying to keep me from doing this. The sketchbook with layouts for pages 1 through 3 is one of the only two things that I haven’t found since having to move in February. The other thing? G.I. JOE the Animated Movie on DVD. In other words, fate decided that I should stop “Nutroll: the Illness” at the teaser and that I should be denied the glory of watching Big Lob make his move. People seem to like the teaser so far and that seals the fact that I should just leave it as a teaser until I find the original layouts for the next few pages. Besides, I have some website and commission artwork to do now.

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Here’s the Thank You pic drawn to show my appreciation for 20,000 visits to Illmosis’ front page. Not bad considering how many people go straight to the galleries instead of the index page. Oh-damn-well. The theme of the picture is “two” and features Two.P from Capcom’s Final Fight, my character Twofold and the ultra-legendary Mr. Wrestling #2. I wanted to draw a bigger piece that also had Duo Damsel, Jack-2 from Tekken 2, Two-Bad from Masters of the Universe, the Two-Gun Kid, the evil twin brothers Tomax and Xamot from G.I.JOE and Two-Face. Between all the work I’d put into the comic and my sinus problems getting bad enough to make my head throb, I cut it down to 3 characters with outfits that had a nice place to stop before getting to the legs. That’s why Mr. Wrestling #2 is in a suit. Plus, I’d never drawn a masked wrestler in a suit, one of the coolest visuals known to the frail eyes of mankind. Two.P is there because I can’t think of a reason to not draw Two.P when the chance makes itself known AND I could cut him off at the bottom of the coat. Not that you asked, but still.

It’s done. That “Nutroll: the Illness” teaser page I’ve been yakking about for-damn-near-ever is finally done. The weather reports have been filled with computer-frying thunderstorms for most of this week, so I’m glad that the necessary stuff is done now before Raiden or Thor bring the wrath. It’ll be uploaded to Illmosis on Sunday and I’ll bug-check everything until then.

Most of the grunt work was done at a resolution where I can convert a lot of it to be put in a book. All the extra cleaning and detail work is what made this take so long. I figured that I may as well do it like that since it was already late for the site. It’s good to have that danged page done.

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I’m a sucker for comic book reference material so my soul was filled with the happy after reading the Newsarama story about the upcoming All-New Iron Manual by Eliot Brown, the technical adviser to the old Marvel Universe handbooks and the original Iron Manual. This book will drop mad science (as the 90’s would say) about more armors than most people even know exist. Remember that 1990’s armor that got it’s own foil comic book cover only to be replaced about 10 issues later? There’s new art of it in that Newsarama link. That’s thorough, group. I’m sure that most comic blogs all over the interbutts have posts all about the cool technical bits of the MU Handbooks, but I’ll have to make my own personal list one day.

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In epic happy real life news, the owner of these apartment buildings I’m living in announced that he won’t add gas meters to the rest of the apartments and will put that money towards fixing the shoddy 1970’s insulation. These places have some really bad draft zones and it looks like it’d be cheaper to just fix those than to add gas lines.

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Legendary blogger David Campbell closes down Dave’s Long Box, his comic book blog. This was one of the first blogs that I ever checked out on a consistent basis and I’m sorry to see it close. It’s all for good reasons because he’s busy with all sorts of good stuff such as blogging for ABC. If, for some reason reason that defies the odds of reality itself, you’ve never checked out either blog, go and give both spots a read and be fully entertained.

I’ve only posted this Harley Quinn picture in a few places, but the response has been surprisingly positive. I’d like to thank everyone who had a kind word to say about this one. The funny thing is that I drew this just to have something new on the site for the week. You can see and learn a bit more on the Illmosis gallery page. I was trying to give her a slightly Looney Tunes vibe with the pose as if Bugs Bunny was up to bat against the Gashouse Gorillas but with a shade of sex appeal. I just noticed that she’s also channeling a bit of Ed Grimley in the legs there. I’ll give you a few seconds to be disturbed by thinking of Harley Quinn, Bugs Bunny and Ed Grimley at the same time. Time’s up.Check out how I ran out of room and had to draw the mallet on a separate piece of paper:

Really, I was (and still may) lightbox all that onto bigger and better paper or bristol board, but I scanned and reassembled it anyway. You can barely see the second, silly face I’ll probably use as a variant version of the pic.

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Work on Nutroll:The Illness continues! These people will be on monitors in the background. They were drawn with the hasteness since you’ll barely be able to see them anyways.

The woman in the upper right corner will be a reporter in another book.

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I bought two more Cobra Troopers this weekend which brings my grand total up to 10. They had two more and I had more than enough money to buy them but I decided not to be a hoarder and left them for someone else to get. 10 is probably enough for any set-up or diorama I want to do anyway.

Random, butt-kicking real life developments have slowed my posting to a slow crawl. Instead of my usual “BAW! Things are crazay right now!” routine, I’ll keep it simple: things ARE crazy. How crazy?



Yes. It’s like that and please believe it. As always, I apologize for not making my usual rounds to bring you my gifts of random, unwanted ramblings. Let me bore you with some details:

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For the record, HKFlix.com is on my list of sure-shot online movie places to order from. I bought the PanMedia version of “Kid with the Golden Arm” a few weeks ago and I just got today’s purchase of John Woo’s “The Killer” (for my sister) and a 4-disc Brentwood Sci-Fi collection that has one of my favorite bad attempts to cash in on Star Wars: War of the Robots. I’ll yak about those movies at a later date. I’ve always heard good things about the store and they did not disappoint. They’re having a huge sale on martial arts flicks including region-free discs. You’ll find a crapload of Shaw Brothers titles so don’t sleep on this sale.

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Nutroll:the Illness will be put on hold (again) right after the Teaser gets posted. Besides still wanting to find that really killer layout for page 1 that’s been lost since the move in February, I just got a request for some commission artwork. It’s some pretty fun stuff and I’ll point you to the website as soon as they get it up. Just because I’m not doing pages doesn’t mean that the Nutroll story won’t be fleshed out. There will be some additional content that may be too “meta” for some people, but I probably wouldn’t like those people either. Those of you who like the fun and the crazy may get a kick out of the later stuff.

Another reason for putting the rest of the story on pause is that I’ve finally decided that I’m going to put together a small comic. Yes, a real comic made of paper and ink and staples. Depending on how much money I have by the time the work is done, it will either be a small ashcan comic or a real B&W comic with a color cover. Expect to hear more about this in a few weeks.

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You want to know what one of my favorite new comic books is?

That’s right: Tiny Titans. Aw Yeah TITANS!

All of those work hours and steak knives may have kept me from debuting the new Illness pages today, but that didn’t stop me from finishing the early version of Illmosis’ new comic page script with Nutroll:

Nutroll Comic Page

See that creepy looking picture that’s the cover for Nutroll: The Illness? That’s temporary artwork quickly colored from what will eventually be the real cover. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to draw it all not to mention that it’s potentially spoiler-based. Once you see the end of Chapter one and see the cover, you’ll get what I mean. The funny thing is that I almost didn’t even have that temp version done because it kept coming up as “invalid file” when I tried to open it up in PaintShopPro this morning. I almost deleted the file out of psychotic rage. Minutes later, everything else running on my computer stopped working and I had to restart. Once I restarted and the ScanDisk check ran, the file reopened and everything else was okay. Luckily, that was the only stupid April Fool’s Joke I got hit with today.

To hell with long explanations. Here’s the 1040EZ why no one on the internet has heard much from me lately:

Work: Started working a third cleaning account two weeks ago but I’ll be back down to two next week unless more sudden news pops up.

Hands: Right hand still has a clickly middle finger and is at 90% and the left hovers between 50% and 80%. Good enough to draw without pain. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Ear vs. Steak Knife: The steak knife is gone for now but I still have some throat pain and a buzzy headache. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Legs & Spine: Not really getting better since having to move during the crappiest week this winter. All these aches may worse thanks to the Ear vs. Steak Knife virus/allergies/whatever-the-butt-it-is. I spent part of last weekend walking with a cane but was still faster than most people walking through Wal-Mart. Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two.

Illmosis site comic design: Most this week’s free time went into writing a comic script/template/page design for the site that works like my galleries do. You can see a poot-butt preview version of it by clicking that link. For now, it only needs to be just good enough for the upcoming Nutroll:the Illness including redrawn panels. Guess what? Progress slowed down by working three accounts instead of two and aching hands that hurt when typing.

Sorry for not being around on the internet too much lately. I’ll try to post some good news, fun stuff and reviews once I get the chance.

I’m currently having fun with some of the following symptoms:

• a pain like Sonny Chiba punched me in the throat hard enough to make my neck explode in slow motion.
• my head being inflated by the guy from Dig Dug but not enough to explode because he had to turn around and pump up a Pooka that was sneaking up on him.
• the feeling that someone tripping off Angel Dust is feverishly rattling a steak knife around inside my right ear as if there’s still some peanut butter stuck in the corners and grooves.
• that time Monday night when I coughed up Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.

If you know me from anywhere else, I apologize for not posting much and for how my posts are more garbled than usual.

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My search on Sunday night didn’t turn up the Nutroll page layouts but I did find the fat brick of multipurpose paper I use for artwork and other stuff. I also found a sketch of a storefront that appears on page 2 so I’m getting closer to having everything that I need to start this. I still haven’t found the small sketchbook and I’m starting to think that the layout sketches are still in that. I took another shot at laying that page out while in “Ear vs. Steak knife” mode this morning and even got around to designing the makeshift mask for an upcoming character redesign. I’ve given up looking for the older layouts because I’m sure I’ll only find them after I draw from the so-so sketches that I just did. I’m just telling you this to lower your expectations for the comic just in case they weren’t low enough already.

So I was gathering the layout sketches for “Nutroll: the Illness” only to find out that I only have about 50% of what I was looking for. Of course, that 50% turns out to be the GOOD version of the beginning pages. I thought I had it set out with the other group of layouts and character designs, but it’s not here. I wanted to start on that this weekend, but it looks like I’ll be spending Saturday and Sunday looking for it. My Pissedoffometer just hit a level usually reserved for disgruntled ninja assassins and surly town drunks. For all those who plan to bring some s*** today, please be aware that I will have none of that and will use sudden violence to demonstrate that fact. For Rilla.

You will know I haven’t found it by Sunday if you think you can hear some random Black dude from Ohio yelling a stream of non-stop curse words at about 3 AM. That’s 3 AM Eastern Standard Time and the running time will range between 10 to 23 minutes with no commerical interruptions.You have been warned.

Whether you’re an average jill, a common joe, gift procrastinator extraordinaire, 5-star holiday cookiesmith, Cindy Lou Who, Wong Who, a snot-nosed punk what don’t deserve nothin’ due to being a snot-nosed punk all year, or a fictional character who is pouting for being drawn in a goofy Santa costume, may all you party people have a Merry Christmas! For all of you that celebrate other things either have happy ones or happy belated ones! If you don’t celebrate anything at all, have Happy Days OFF! If you don’t have days off, have a non-messed up time at work in comparison to other days that you have at a job that won’t let you off for the holidays.