It’s not unusual to see artist just starting out drawing the arm and leg of the same side in the same movement. What do I mean? I mean the right arm+right leg are shown moving forward while left arm+left leg are pushed back. While the body can move in this manner, it’s a little awkward. Try it. You have to think and concentrate to do it. You’ll also notice that your hips pivot sharper and your knees are a little more straight and locked. You also don’t tend to move as quickly.

For a more fluid walk cycle, try drawing the opposite limbs moving together… right arm+left leg forward while the left arm+right leg are pushed back. This allows your hips to rock in a comfortable, half-circle motion, your balance/posture to be maintained, and speed to be achieved.

For additional emphasis, try adding a little swing to the shoulders and (especially for women) the hips. Enjoy!

“Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, you tell me what you know.”
– Groucho Marx

The RSS feed is now working again. Matt and I noticed this morning that the feed hasn’t been doing its job for the past week or so. Sorry about that. It’s all fixed and should be running along smoothly now. If you ever notice that the feed is not working properly, please drop us an email and we’ll fix it right away. Clickthulu, the program running the ‘Hunter’ website, is still new and under production, so things happen now and then. Thanks, guys!

As I mentioned a few days ago, the data has all been recovered and we’re getting back on track. Supporters, your updates will resume this Monday (Feb 8th). Thanks everyone for sticking with us over the last two weeks! You guys have been awesome!

And, finally, the pre-order for “The Incident” is now available. With the base-under-tone color version, the tone version, and the sketches of each page it comes out be a 73 page PDF. It’s still being drawn so please remember, this is a pre-order. The PDF will be sent out via email once the issue is finished. This may take a bit, since I’ll be working on the regular pages as well.

And, I believe that’s all for now. Thanks again, guys, and take care!

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Confucius

We heard back from the data recovery group yesterday afternoon. The analysis so far is they have to rebuild part of the drive physically before they can try reading it. We gave them the go-ahead and should hear back from them sometime Wednesday. I’m sorry for the extra delay.

I’m not sure about Matt, but I can tell that I’m stressed. I’ve eaten about everything in the house over the last few days. It’s murder on my waistline.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on a cover for a special issue. As I said a few days ago, RCSI Publishing was able to front a lot of the cost over the last week but, Matt and I had to float the business a loan from our own funds. Friends have suggested we hold a donation drive to re-coop some of the cost but, Matt and I want to offer something in return.

So, we decided to do a special, full color issue.

This issue will be available for download only. I plan on coloring/shading it like I do the covers, not the ‘base under tone’ color I do for the Supporter re-colors. In other words, no tones. Color is expensive for us to print because our print runs for ‘Hunter’ are still so low. If we ever get to the point where we can reliably move a 1,000 books, we may take it to print. Until then, it’s download only.

This means it will not be available for free online. Also, it will not be available for free in the Supporters area. We know some people won’t be happy with this idea. We apologize. But, what it comes down to is I’m doing extra work to create a product specifically to help the business recover financially.

This special issue is not part of the current storyline. It’s a flashback and isn’t required to understand what’s going on in the comic. In other words, no complaints about us holding the comic hostage, please.

So, what is this special issue about? It’s called “The Incident” and shows just why Max and Bullet don’t like each other much…

While doing Ghost rotation at Buckingham Palace, a young Max and Bullet decide to pass the time by daring each other to do stupid stunts. The end result… Bullet finds himself stuck in a suit of armor and Max is missing his clothes.

It will be twenty-four pages long, full color, rated PG-13 like the rest of the series, and available as a PDF. The cost… $4.00.

Matt and I aren’t sure yet if we want to take ‘pre-orders’ or not. It’s going to take a bit to finish. I have to get the regular updates done and possibly redraw pages if the data can’t be recovered. And again, these will be in color which takes longer per page. If we do open it up for sale before the issue is finished, we’ll be able to keep tabs on who’s ordered so, no worries.

At the moment, I’m waiting for some books I’ve ordered for reference to come in. They should be here this afternoon. Which means, I’ll start work on the pages tomorrow.

Again, while I know some people may not like us doing this, I hope everyone understands. It’s not to be malicious. It’s just to recover some of the money spent keeping RCSI running this last week and a half. Thanks in advance!

Oh! In other news, ‘Joshua’ won the vote last week. 141 votes to 97. Thanks to everyone who voted! I’ll get to work on the first segment of ‘Joshua’ once the special issue is complete. It’s shaping up to be a busy year.

Thanks guys for sticking with us! Take care and have a great weekend!

“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
– Ray Kroc

It’s been a few days and things are starting to settle back down. Thank goodness! It’s been a week and we’re in the home stretch. Godzilla (the old computer) has been replaced by Mothra (the new) and she’s humming along beautifully! The only problems have involved getting familiar to a dual monitor system and figuring out where some of the settings are. Photoshop is much faster on Mothra and much, much more stable.

The Time Machine is also working beautifully. Each hour, on the hour, it winds its way through Mothra and backs up any new or changed files.

Plans are in place to repair the Linux box upstairs. That Linux box served as a backup for the house’s computers and the server. So yes, fixing that is important as well.

The damaged drive is currently on its way to California by FedEx and should arrive this afternoon. We’ll know by Friday if the missing master copies can be recovered. If they can, we should have them back by next Friday. If not, I’ll start rebuilding page 19 of Issue 9 Friday and have it ready for you Monday.

Now, has this all been cheap? No, this hasn’t been cheap at all. It’s been quite costly, in fact. But, Matt and I believe in a few concepts when it comes to running a business. Number one is… when you make a mistake, have a misfortune happen, or basically flub-up, you pay for it and do the best you can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Yes, we did have backup measures in place. I wouldn’t have any of my files if we did not. Instead of loosing over 500 masters (I’m counting the color pages as well since those are also done at 300DPI) I’m missing only 14 B&W/Tone masters and 15 Colors. I’m also not missing any of my fonts or my tones. Our main backup fried. Our auxiliary didn’t.

We did the best we could and will continue to do so. Remember the saying, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Despite all your planning, something may still go wrong. So when that happens, you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and get back to it.

I’ll be honest with you, RCSI Publishing was able to front most of the cost, but it can’t handle it all right now. Matt and I have fronted the business a loan using our own personal funds. We do have a plan in place to help re-coop some of the cost. I’ll have more information on that in a bit.

So, why bother recovering the drive at all? For starters, we’ve some big projects coming down the chute in the next few months and taking the time to redraw 14 pages is not ideal right now. While we offer the comic online, we are actually a publishing business. Halting the printing of issues so I can go back and recreate 14 pages while still working on new content would be crippling, especially with our first con coming up in a few months.

But, there’s another reason. Matt and I are expanding RCSI Publishing this year, including the hosting service. The last thing either of us would want to hear if we were clients is, ’sorry, dude, the backups failed, I lost all your data, and it’s too expensive to get it back so I’m not even going to try.’ It’s not something we’d like to hear, and it’s not something we want to say. I’ll admit, I’m wary about the cost because it’s just my data. But, when it comes down to it, we’re setting a policy here. This is how we want to conduct business. We’ll do the best we can to prevent a situation like this from happening again. But, if it ever does, we want it clear we’ll also do all we can to get your files back.

Even if it means taking a hit.

I’m aware some people will think we should forgo the drive recovery. I’m also aware some people are against the fact we bought a Mac. To anyone who feels this way I’m sorry, but what it comes down to is, this is our business, not yours. We’re running it the best we can. Is it the best route to take? Only time will tell. But personally, for us, we feel it is.

I’m sorry again for the chaos of this last week. Thank you for sticking with us through this.

“The first rule of luck in business is that you should persevere in doing the right thing. Opportunities will come your way if you do.”
– Ronald Cohen

First off, I’m sorry about this. It seems the middle to end of January is not a good time for us. Chaos stalks our home like some large, stalky thing.

What am I talking about? As Matt mentioned earlier, Godzilla, my computer of around 18 months or so, is dead. He hasn’t been the same, really, since the fire around this time last year. He’d been dropped, while running, by the cleanup crew and needed to have his hard drive replaced. That same hard drive finally gave out this last Wednesday.

I was almost finished with Issue 9, page 19 when Godzilla froze. I couldn’t even get the Task Manager to come up. So, I turned him off and, after waiting a bit, turned him back on. Except… he didn’t come back on. Boot drive error. It’s happened before.

Matt came home that night and did the normal fixes (because unfortunately I know little when it comes to fixing computers) but no dice. Tom helped us out with the recovery after the fire and said for us to come on up. But unfortunately, it just seems too far gone. The discs spin, the drive clicks, but the computer can’t read it. We’ve tried it in different computers. We’ve tried switching the controller-board (we’d bought two of the same hard drive last January – long story). After swapping the board, the computers recognized there was a drive but, they still couldn’t read it.

End result…

Godzilla’s dead and we’re unable to access the master copies (the 150MB copies of the pages we need for printing) of pages 6-19 of Issue 9.

Why no backup? Because we found out that our backup, a Linux computer upstairs, got fried by a power surge as well. (Lesson, check your backups and check to make sure your backup power supply device is working. Always!) The reason we have the masters we do is because I’m still paranoid something will happen to the house while we’re away and insisted we bring a copy of the files with us to MFF.

So, what’s happening now? Well, a new computer has been bought. On the advice of Tom and Trish, we went for an iMac. Matt can explain to you our reasons why if you’re so inclined to tell us how PCs are better or such. In the end, it came down to the computer we were planning to build later this year would cost almost as much as this Mac and we got the three year Apple Care and the Time Machine backup system on top of it.

We still need to rebuild that Linux box though.

So yes, step one is done. The new computer is up and running. While things are a little different, I’m familiar with Macs from my time in the library sector so, not too big a deal.

The next step is the data recovery. We did find a company in California who can do the recovery. They’re one of the few out there. Trouble is… the cost is high. VERY high. Matt’s going to try one more thing Monday and if that doesn’t work, he wants to send the drive out. I’ll have more on that when we find out just what we’re looking at.

What does this mean for updates? Main side, you will continue along uninterrupted. Supporters, please bear with us as we finalize the data recovery bit. The plan is to see what the analysis is – can the files be recovered or not – before setting a date. If they can, we’ll be back as soon as I get the page 19 master back on my drive. If not, I have to redraw it as well as the remaining missing files. We’ll see.

There are a few pictures of Godzilla, the drive, and Mothra on my
Twitpic account, I don’t have the FTP running yet.

For now, I’m sorry again for the delay and hope you’ll stick with us. Thanks guys and take care!

“If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee — that will do them in.”

This is not good, as comics are now stalled due to a lack of machine to draw them on.  We’re working on getting a replacement, but it’ll be a few days before we can do anything about it.

On top of that, the hard disk containing all of Darcy’s masters for issue 9 is non-responsive.  We’re going to need to locate a data recovery service in order to retrieve them.

We’ll keep you up to date as things happen.

Place the manikin in the center of the Lazy Susan and secure it with a little masking tape under the base. This way, you can slowly rotate the manikin by turning the Susan. This alone will give you a general idea of where shadows fall on a three-dimensional figure.

Want your shadows a little more pronounced? This is where the desk lamp comes in handy. (If possibly, try to find one that can pivot, both at the area where the bulb connects to the arm and in the arm itself.)

Want the figure to look like it’s walking towards you with the light source on its right? Turn the Susan so the figure is facing straight at you and place the lamp on your left-hand side.

Want the lighting to look like it’s noon? Stretch the arm of the lamp up till the bulb sits as close to the top of the figure as possible.

Want sunrise/sunset lighting? Lower the arm of the lamp so the bulb is near the top of the Susan and pointing slightly up.

Experiment and see what you get. Now, is this a perfect tool? No, not by any means. But, it’s a decent and inexpensive way to see where shadows fall based on the location of a light source. This can also work with dolls/action figures, provided you have a stand for them. They tend to fall over otherwise. Oh, and if you decide to take a picture of your manikin for your morgue (an artist’s collection of references)… be sure to turn the flash off first.

“Come into the light of things. Let nature be your teacher.”
– William Wordsworth

I have two titles in mind at the moment but, I’m not sure which to do. So, I thought I’d let you all decide. Cool, eh?

First though, before anyone becomes concerned no, this doesn’t mean I’m stopping ‘Hunter’. ‘Hunter’ has a long story left to tell and I’m not interested in abandoning it. I’d just like to try something new in the meantime as well. ‘Hunter’ is still my baby and will always come before any other comic I do.

Whichever title is chosen will updated once a week. I don’t plan on doing a supporters section for the new title, but that’s still something Matt and I need to discuss. Also, the new title won’t start until sometime this fall. I need time to make up a buffer and build a site.

But enough of that. Here’s the two choices…

Ruby’s father, Joshua Pyrenees, has been mentioned a few times in ‘Hunter’. But just who is he? When Ruby’s mother sends her Joshua’s journals, Ruby gets a closer look at her father’s life.

‘Joshua’ will be rated PG-13 for some language, violence, and issues. ‘Joshua’ is a series of story arcs, each arc a journal. This first arc covers Joshua’s entry into RCSI and his time in Astoria. Each arc is around 100-200 pages, I don’t have everything fully mapped out yet. ‘Joshua’ will be toned like ‘Hunter’.

Beelz dreams of becoming a world famous violinist. But, when you’re the son of the devil himself and your father is against fiddling of any sort, following your dreams isn’t easy.

‘Beelz’ will be rated G, no hash language, violence, or issues here. ‘Beelz’ is a one shot story, not a series. We’re looking at something between 50-100 pages, I don’t have everything fully mapped out yet. Because it’s a shorter comic, it will be in simple color. ‘Beelz’ is not set in the ‘Hunter’ world.

So, ready to vote? Please do so below. I’m really excited about bringing you another comic and would love to know which you’d prefer.

Thanks guys!

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”
– Dr. Seuss

While I’m a little shocked at how quickly the time has passed, I have to say I’m not sad to see 2009 go. It’s been a strange year, filled with unexpected surprises. But, a new year is right around the corner with a chance for a fresh start.

Matt and I don’t normally make new year resolutions, but we thought with all we have planned for the upcoming year maybe it’s time to give the whole resolution kick a try. The goals are bundled up depending on what project they’re based around…

‘Code Name: Hunter’

• get the new Clickthulu site up and running (the site is almost finished, just some final bugs to work out)
  
• add transcripts for each page to make things easier for translation into other languages / searching
  
• continue to make small improvements to the art / writing
  
• send Issues 9-12 to print
  
• make back the remaining balance on the A Political Spell trades and save up in anticipation for the Queen’s Trump trade in late spring / early summer of 2011
  
• increase our readership by 10%-15% percent

• expand the RCSI Publishing catalog to include printing / distribution of other creators’ works
  
• combine RCSI Publishing / Capn’Bells Hosting into one business
  
• re-work the RCSI Publishing site into something a little more functional and professional looking
  
• do weekly audio recordings / podcasts discussing what’s going on behind the scenes
  
• attend more conventions and become more active in the convention scene
  
• advertise more often and with greater regularity – Project Wonderful, but also including flyers, postcards, ads in con books
  
• bring in a minimum of $500 per month

• begin planing for “Beelz” project
  
• begin planing for “Joshua” project
  
• develop a contract for charity auction commissions
  
• do some additional artwork for sale at convention art shows
  
• develop a greater sense of pride in my accomplishments

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
– Edith Lovejoy Pierce

The reference for the top panel of page 11, of Issue 9 is the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. Part of the reason I chose this as a reference is because it’s iconic and easily recognizable. But, there’s another reason that’s kind of funny. It’s a story I heard in college about an artist named Grant Wood.

Grant Wood’s famous for the painting American Gothic. Now, Wood was commissioned to design some stained glass windows for the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. He wanted glass makers in Munich to create the glass for the windows. The story goes that the Daughters of the American Revolution didn’t approve of Wood using glass manufactured outside of the States for a veterans memorial. It was unpatriotic.

(A little background for anyone not familiar with the DAR. The DAR is a lineage-based organization of women. To join, you have to a: be a woman and b: be a decedent of someone who fought in, or was involved in some way with, the American Revolutionary War.)

Wood, who didn’t approve of the DAR’s restrictions and elitism of the time, painted in response Daughters of the Revolution, an unfaltering portrait of three old biddies standing in front of the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware.

I’m sure you’re thinking, so what? Aside from the fact they’re not good looking, how is this a slam? Ah, here’s the thing… the artist of Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Leutze, was born in Germany, brought to America as a child, and then returned to Germany as a adult. So, one of the most iconic paintings of the American Revolution was painted by an artist who was not American. And, it’s that painting Wood chose to put in his.

I guess it could be seen as a reminder of sorts – it’s good to be proud of your heritage, but your heritage isn’t just restricted to those who were around at a certain time period.

Again, I’m not sure how true the story is, though it is true Wood didn’t like the DAR much. I just thought the story was funny and wanted to use Leutze’s painting as a reference if I could.

And no, I’m not eligible to join the DAR. Nor can I claim my ancestors came over on the Mayflower like many people around here do. My great-grandparents came over from Germany in 1902. *grin*

Oh, and Wood did get to build his windows with glass made in Munich. Unfortunately, those windows were destroyed in the massive flooding that hit Iowa last year.

“America is not like a blanket: one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.”
– Jesse Jackson