Cartoonist, Artist, Geek, Evil Crafter, Girl Scout Troop Leader and Writer. Also, a zombie. I haven't slept in I don't know how long.

Rats! Episode 69 – Ready, Aim…

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Ah, the joys of shaving cream pies. There’s nothing like hitting an upper classman with a pie, so long as you hit the right upper classman.

Back in my day, we had to get permission to pie an upper classman, and the person we got that permission from had to be of a higher rank than the person we pied, so it was very important that you pied your intended target and not some other upper classman. Otherwise, you might wind up in a bit of trouble. Of course, the upper classman who gave you permission might get in trouble too, even if you did get your target right. I can recall one evening we pied our battalion XO as she was coming up the stairs with a freshly delivered pizza. We creamed her and the pizza, and when we were done, she demanded to know who gave us permission.

“The battalion CO, ma’am!” we all chirped.

“I am so going to kill him!” she growled, and then she disappeared down the hall to the battalion CO’s room. A bit of screaming soon followed, and a little while later, the battalion CO came out into the hall wearing a shaving cream pizza.

“Ladies,” he told my buds and I as he wiped pizza sauce and shaving cream from his face, “Never, EVER tell the battalion XO who gave you permission to pie her!”

So, remember two things. Always hit the right target and never give away vital information to the enemy.

The end.

It’ time for PerCaDraMo!

It’s November first, and for about five minutes today, I toyed with the idea of participating in NaNoWriMo. Then reality took over and gave me a firm shake. I am exhausted from the 3 all-nighters I pulled this weekend, Hubster won’t be home until after very late tonight, and the kids need to get homework done. And of course the day was spent on catching up on all those items I needed to do this weekend but couldn’t get around to because I was working hell-bent-for-leather on a volunteer project.

But I still want to do something, and there is this other idea I’ve sort of been toying with – drawing a cartoon a day. Nothing fancy, just something to boost my cartooning skills and get me even more into the habit of drawing daily.

So for this month, I’m going to attempt to do PerCaDraMo, Personal Cartoon Drawing Month. The goal is to draw 30 quick cartoons, none of them taking more than 15 minutes to complete. I hope to avoid using a pencil, would prefer to draw on paper, but will cartoon on the iPad when necessary to complete my goal. Like I did tonight. Here is the month’s first cartoon, a self-portrait I like to call, “Is It Time To Freak Out Yet?”

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Whatdaya think?

ACW 135 – Why Today’s Web Comic Is Late

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A funny thing happened to me last Thursday. I had been contacted by the girls’ school about helping out with a t-shirt for a fund-raiser the school is hosting in two weeks. They needed someone to convert 16 JPG graphics into EPS format, which I said would be simple enough to do. But when I got to the school to talk to one of the staff, things sort of snowballed on me.

Not only did they need the JPGs converted, they also wanted to know if I could lay out the back of the shirt. Apparently, the printing company had decided to tack on extra fees this year to do the EPS conversion at the price of $35 an hour. I understand why they would charge that, being a freelance illustrator myself, but this is a shirt for a fund-raiser. The point is to raise more money than you spend on running the event. So I said yes, I could design the back of the shirt as well. After all, how hard could it be to convert 16 black and white JPGs to EPS and then lay them out in a 4×4 grid with a bit of text above saying “Thank you to our sponsors!”

Only the graphics weren’t black and white. And a lot of them were very tiny and badly pixelated. And some of them were in file formats that I had never seen in all my years of doing computer graphics.

And did I mention the school also asked me to do the artwork for the front of the shirt as well?

In the course of 24 hours, I went from converting 16 sponsor logos to converting 27 sponsor logos and designing both the front and back of the t-shirt.

It was supposed to be a 3-day weekend for us. The girls had off from school on Friday, so I was going to spend the day with them running errands, swimming at the Y, picking out pumpkins to carve from the local pumpkin patch, and helping them finish up their costumes. I had also planned to do a bit of client work and draw today’s cartoon, plus polish off a personal project that I had been waiting weeks to get to. And there were also several loads of laundry to do, a kitchen to clean, a pumpkin carving party to go to, a couple 15 mile bike rides to take, and so on and so on…

The girls and I did run errands, get pumpkins and go swimming, although by that point I had already pulled my first all-nighter so we were a little slow getting out the door and I had to cut the day short to get more work done. And we did make it to the pumpkin carving party, where Mich began assembling the braid for Pixie’s “Rock Star Goth Rapunzel Vampire” costume. And I made it out for one bike ride around the neighborhood. But that was it. The rest of that 3-day weekend was devoted to creating that t-shirt. I pulled 3 all-nighters in a row. I bitched and moaned a complained on Twitter and Facebook while doing it. I played very nice with the ladies organizing the charity event and did not kill anyone. And I worked 27 hours in 3 days and basically pulled a few miracles out of my ass.

I have been asked if I would design another shirt for next year. I have said yes, upon the condition that we start this process in the spring of this school year, after I get through Girl Scout cookie sales. That way I won’t be forced to deal with another rush job that leaves me sleep-deprived and dangerously snappish. I have been thanked heartily for my work, which is always nice, and I have ensured that I will not need to do any further volunteering for the school for several months.

Yesterday, after the worst of this weekend was over, I told the Hubster how psyched I had been at getting this shirt done. In spite of all the hassle, the lack of sleep, and the stress over doing a rush job, I did actually enjoy myself. This was in my area of expertise, after all, and I was in the zone the entire weekend, crushing each and every challenge that came my way. I worked miracles, folks, and I enjoy doing that. But I was also really depressed that all this work had been done for someone else. Sure, it was for a good cause, but it upset me that I never got to do that sort of thing for myself. If I were to spend that kind of time on my own projects, there’d be no stopping me! I’d rule the universe! But I could never possibly put in such long hours making my own miracles and masterpieces for myself.

“Well, why not?” the Hubster said.

“Because you’d never see me,” I replied. “If I worked like that on my own stuff, the laundry would never get done, the house would be a disaster, the kids would have no idea who their mother was and you’d probably forget what I looked like too. I just can’t do that every weekend.”

“Well, no, not every weekend,” Hubster said. “But what if you did it one weekend a month…”

And at that moment I knew I had married the best man in the world.

Essentially, Hubster has agreed to give me a free pass once every month to disappear into my office and bust my ass on my own artwork. He will take care of the kids and the house while I do it. It is an incredible gift on his part, and I love him dearly for it. I don’t know when the next weekend will be yet, but when it happens I will let you know. And when it happens, I’m going to call it “Helen’s Art Binge” and I’m going to gorge myself silly with time spent on my projects just for me. I will tweet and post to Facebook all through that weekend to let folks know of my progress, just like I bitched and moaned all through this weekend over that t-shirt, and when the final product is done, I will share it for all to see.

So stay tuned. There will be interesting things happening in the near future. All thanks to my very understanding Hubster.

Rats! Episode 68 – Responsibilities and Hypocrisy

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I think someone took offense at a cartoon I posted earlier this month wherein I called Irwin a hypocrit. Apparently they thought I was calling all upper classmen cadets hypocrits. That wasn’t the case then and it’s not the case today. Fact is, most upper classmen are working hard to become the kind of officers we need in the military today, the kind who know how much work it’s going to be to lead in a combat zone, and they know hypocrisy won’t cut it when they get commissioned.

However, having said that, I have run across my share of hypocrits amongst upperclassmen cadets, and was a hypocrit on occasion myself. Like the above cartoon, I always thought that if you were going to be in the Corps of Cadets, you needed to do what was asked or get the hell out. It’s a lot of work being a cadet, but you get out of it what you put into it. It’s an honor and a privilege to be part of the VTCC.

It’s just that at on some days… Well, you know what days I mean. The days when you get up at 4AM to trudge all the way through the freezing cold out to Lane Stadium to run stadium steps for an hour and then when you’re completely exhausted you have to trudge all the way back to the cadet dorms and grab breakfast and throw on the uniform so you can make it to that three hour lab at 8AM and then you have a paper to write and two tests to study for and ROTC lab after that and oh, don’t forget evening formation and there’s an AUSA meeting you have to attend where you’re planning a fund raiser, and did we mention you’ve got guard detail tonight? Yeah, on those days, it’s hard to remember that you yourself said, “Do it or get out.”

The thing is, the rest of your life is going to be like that. In fact, it will be even worse. Right now, you cadets are single and in college. Believe it or not, your life is easy and you have relatively few responsibilities. In a few more years though, you’ll be in the military, going on deployment. You’ll have a spouse and kids and a house to take care of. There will be PTA meetings and parent-teacher conferences and math homework that your oldest child just does not understand and you majored in Military History because you never understood math either. There will be school bake sales to prepare for and your front yard desperately needs to be mowed and have you put up your Halloween decorations yet? Oh, and you still need to sit down with your husband or wife to discuss upgrading the flood insurance on the house and don’t forget you volunteered to help out with the Girl Scouts this weekend and on and on and on and on…

It. Never. Ends. And there will be plenty of days were you will think, “I wanted to do this, I chose to do this, and by thunder I’m doing it! And people who can’t handle the pressure shouldn’t have kids/a spouse/a home/a military career!” And then there will be days when you will look at your life and think, “I would really just like to go back to bed now and stay there…”

But that’s life. It’s terribly, terribly busy and it will keep throwing challenges and responsibilities at you until the day you die. Then and only then do you get to go back to bed and stay there. But until that day comes along, I suggest you keep moving. And indulge in a little hypocritical whining every now and then, because if you don’t, you’ll most like have a massive stroke and die.

In any event, have fun this weekend!

ACW 134 – Pressure

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Honestly, I really do feel a lot of pressure these days, but I drew this because I wanted to draw me with just a skull for a head. I thought it turned out well.

But about that pressure. We haven’t even finished October yet and I already feel like my head is about to explode. A lot of it is due to Girl Scouts. Both Princess and Pixie are in Girl Scouts now, so last week we had 3 troop events. This week I have two meetings and a training class to go to. Next week we’ll have another troop meeting. And very soon, cookie sales stuff starts up again. We don’t actually start selling cookies until January, but we do start paperwork and training prior to that, and it’s my goal this year to get started before everyone leaves for Christmas break, because once folks are gone, it’s kind of hard to get all their permission slips signed and turned in on time.

So yeah, a little bit of pressure these days. I saw a news piece last week about how more and more women are taking anti-depressants and it really struck a nerve with me. I know why those women are taking meds. I’d like to figure out how I can avoid taking them myself. As I told the Hubster, the problem isn’t how I handle the stress, it’s how much is being piled on me. If I can reduce that load, then I’m good. The question is, how do you reduce that load.

If anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Move It Mama Monday! Just Dance 3!!!!!!

Hubster picked up a copy of Just Dance 3 for us last week and I’ve had a few chances to play with it. I love it, just like I loved the two previous incarnations, but there are a few imperfections with this game, as with previous incarnations.

The plusses first. The game is fun, as always. I didn’t recognize a lot of the song titles but I’ve been through 2/3rds of the playlist so far and enjoyed just about all the songs. It’s dance music, for Pete’s sake! How could I not enjoy that? Also, the graphics are as colorful and kookie as always. I’ve noticed a couple songs seem to play up a steampunk theme in the animated backgrounds, especially Gwen Stefani’s “Tick Tock.” But there are plenty of other styles of graphics as well, and the music is very diverse.

The Just Sweat mode had been modified a bit, though I haven’t fully explored that yet, and there are more group dance modes that I haven’t fully gotten into either. I mostly play by myself for a work out, but I can dance to any song that comes up regardless of the mode.

As for the annoyances, they’ve been few. My two chief complaints are that the Just Sweat mode still only calculates how many “droplets” you’ve burned, but not how many calories, and there’s no indication of how to equate droplets to calories, so that bothers me. Also, anytime I play the non-stop shuffle mode, I have a problem getting it to stop. In theory, I should only have to push the plus button on the Wii-mote to get the menu to let me stop. In practice, I’ve had to hit every button on the Wii-mote multiple times before getting a response from the game. Maybe it’s my Wii-mote that’s the problem, but I can’t be sure.

I’ll talk more about Just Dance 3 in future posts, as I get more time to play the game with more people than just myself. But for now, it’s a fun game and a great workout! ‘Nuff said.