I did two artistic things in the last 24 hours,
and the second (my ISIDTA strip) should probably
have been fixed using the method of the first (GIMP).

Therefore, I have slightly altered my image file for Phoenix Wright:



It looks better, but I still think I could probably draw the hand better if I spent a few days just practicing hands.

Then again, maybe not.

...Is it okay to say I'm proud of the job I did on his jacket?
Because I feel fuckin' great about how it turned out.
Especially the creases and the shading and the shape of the lapels...
I'm really proud of it, basically.
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Odd how the more I become involved at DSI Comedy Theater, the less I see Sketch. Did I make a choice or something?

In any case, we didn't meet up this week, and that meant my mental creativity computer continued the last sirections it received: "Draw a one-panel strip depicting a slightly twisting of the name of a favorite video game."

Well, this week I played xenosauridae's Nintendo DS and discovered just how subtly awesome "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney" is. (Lefthanded bunch of bananas indeed.) Therefore, this week's MR CIM is as follows:

(size reduced to non-obnoxious dimensions; full-size picture found here)


I look at that hand, and I wince. It's kind of the most important part, and I screwed it up. But I just couldn't get it to look any better, so I scanned it as is. Also, Phoenix was so lengthy, I actually had to draw his hand separate since his arm went off the page.

Also, Sketch has mildly frowned on my using clipart instead of drawing it, but 1) I feel that I sufficiently added to it by MS-Painting 'to earth!' out of only the letters in "Objection!" and 2) it's 4:30 in the morning. Damn me and my dedication.

And damn Steven Wright.
His special (no surprise:) sucked.
And I knew I'd hate it, and I watched it anyway.
Instead of drawing this all earlier.
I don't know why.

Shut up. Go make fun of yourself.

PS: I just spent another 45 minutes reading a Phoenix Wright plot summary site (the entire 3rd game - Japanese), trying to find an appropriate subject line for this post. I give up. Deal with it.
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Sketch's strip (assuming he hasn't been caught or killed) is here.

This week, Sketch and I did one-panel tributes to our current video-game obsessions; Sketch laid a hilarious prep-school template on Kratos of God of War 2 (go here to see it), and I put to paper an idea that's been poking at my mind for the past couple weeks.



The hairstyle of the guy eating the Guitar Hero Sandwich is based on the hairstyle of my favorite character in the game: Johnny Knox. He's got a total Stray Cats vibe, and he's also awesome. Add my newly unlocked America guitar (guitar whose body is shaped like the continental US), and he is a Rockabilly Rock God of Rock.

FYI:
Green=Olives
Red=Pepperoni
Yellow=Squash
Blue=...Blueberries
(shut up, there is blueberry sandwich bread)

You might notice there's no Orange, and that's because I hate the Orange button and pretty much refuse to even try Hard Difficulty because of it. I'm sure some day we'll reconcile our differences and I'll play with the Orange button again, but that day is far in the future, and therefore the current strip reflects my Orange button eschewal.

I'm actually pretty proud of that logo. It took forever, and I really don't think that a tiny-sized version is enough. Therefore:

( Look Behind The Cut )

I do so love Guitar Hero 2. I've gotten 5-star ratings on all songs, all unlockable songs and all my 3 downloadable songs on Easy Difficulty, and now I'm trying very diligently to get all 5-star ratings on Medium Difficulty (and perhaps even a Perfect somewhere in there; I've gotten fed up trying that though after four times missing one note 3/4 of the way through).

Long sentence. Too long.
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I'm hurting right now. My mouth just hurts. I hate stress and wish it a stress-induced suicide...which it would sort of have to be, by definition, I guess.



Sketch's strip is here.
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Sketch and I decided to start a side project (looks at clock, then at calendar)...since we're doing so well keeping up with just the one. The concept is a triple-panel comic strip that we'll be going for putting out daily, alternating days for drawing and posting them. They'll be going up on a separate blogspot account (3squaremeals.blogspot.com), and --after today-- they'll be completely separate from the normal ISIDTA strips.

Or rather, that's the glass-half-full plan. Here's the first strip of (hopefully) many, it's...



For Sketch's strips go here.
For a story recipe, go here.
For a recipe story, go here.
For Reciprocity, go here.
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Due to the Town of Chapel Hill's annual Community Art Project, entitled "Why?", Sketch and I have dedicated this week's ISIDTA strips to posing/answering that very question.



I decided to go for the classic, which turned out to be more difficult than I thought as I had a hard time trying to pixelate my idea. I have a newfound respect for the Old-School programmers; getting across concepts in 8 bits or less is not a job I would want.

Also, I would like to note here that I HATE the game Frogger. The entire reason is that I am so bad at it. Horribly bad at it. Collossusofrhodesally bad. However, I find the game as a zeitgeist exciting and worthwhile.

For Sketch's strip, go here.
For the definition of the word "pixelated," go here.
For the definition of the word "pixilated" (it's different), go here.
For online Frogger, go here.
For live (yes, LIVE) Frogger, go here. It's towards the end of the video.
For an educational film on Prince of Persia by these same guys, go here.
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This week's challenge was for Sketch and me to come up with a reimagining/updating/new spin on a famous character, a la She-Ra, Princess of Power on this cover of the new British cartoon magazine, "cereal:geek".

( Cover picture behind cut )

Or --to pick a less awesome example-- a la The Loonatics:



In any case, we had to find a character to reimagine, and that meant randomly flipping through Sketch's myriad of books all called "Encyclopedia of ______ Cartoons." We weighed a couple ideas, but it finally was agreed that we would reimagine Ri¢hie Ri¢h (Richie Rich, for those whose monitors won't read those symbols, or for those who've forgotten what a cent sign is at all).



Obviously,I have trouble sticking to one cartoon. Perhaps the above is less a reimagining and more a mashup. But what kind of DJ would do such a thing?
I can only guess.

To see Sketch's reimagining, go here.
To see skeletal structures of cartoon characters, go here.
And hey, I haven't plugged Project Rooftop here yet. No better time.
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Last week, I visited friends in Atlanta, and thus I was distracted. Not "I didn't have time" or "I didn't have my supplies" or "I didn't have an idea." No, I just didn't have drive. Which is ironic considering how much of that was required over a three-day span.

Anyway, here's the Better Late Than Never edition of MR CIM SIXTEEN:



Speaking of "Better ____ than ____," this week's strip may become a regular thing...if I can keep my letters straight (yes, Sketch, I know: use a ruler).



Oh, and as regards the left-middle picture, I do know that it could have been 'battery, father snores' with some great little Don't Wake Daddy homage and a thought bubble, but you see, this is what I get for doing ANAGRAMS BY HAND: in my sketchbook, it reads 'BATTERY FATHER REASONS' which, as I realized AFTER scanning it all in, has one too many A's. Dmnation! Crp! What an ss! There. I've thrice atoned.

Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "I would never have noticed if you hadn't pointed it out, Kit," or "I wouldn't have wasted my time looking at that if you had kept your mouth shut, Kit," and in fact, I briefly considered posting it unchanged. But then I remembered that kosherpickle and captainstekimal read this, and I knew I had to correct myself before they did. If I'd noticed it earlier, I'd've even drawn a new picture, but hey, I was lucky to get this up before 2pm when it was supposed to be up at 10AM, so... whatever.

To see Sketch's perpetually punctual strips, go here.
To check my anagrammatic work, go here.
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Today's strip is brought to you not by Kit's State Of Mind, but instead by Kit's All-Purpose Tendency To Procrastinate and by Kit's New Video Game Poetry, Which Kit Is Pretty Damn Proud Of[1].

Yay for its unveiling at Salon Wednesday night!
Yay for Sketch's strip this week (link here)!
Yay for the concept of three cheers (etymology here)!

[1]KSOM, KAPTTP, KNVGPWKIPDPO
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This week's ISIDTA strip DOES require a tiny bit of explanation:
Sketch and I decided to alternate panels by swapping Moleskines back and forth during our weekly inspiration session. The rules were simple, and --unsurprisingly-- changed quickly as they got mutually cumbersome.

1) Draw four blank panels in your Moleskine.
2) Get a topic. I did this by randomly opening the newspaper to the Briefs section for a random headline. The suggestion therefore was "Tests rule out all but green onions." ...Don't ask.
3) Using that for inspiration, draw and ink your first panel. You have ten fifteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds to do so.
4) Hand your notebook to the other artist.
5) After looking at his work, you have 15:27 to draw and ink the second panel of this new strip.
6) Repeat steps 4 & 5 twice more, finishing off the 3rd and 4th panels.

Amazingly, both strips came out very funny, despite our mutual consternation upon seeing our third panels. So, without further adieu, here's my strip, for which I did panels 1 & 3 (but clapped on the 2 and the 4).



For Sketch's strip (which I heightened and buttoned, as it were), go here.
For the origin of that bizarre headline, go here.
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Today is February 7.

On February 7, 1982, I was born in Louisville, KY.

February 7, 2007 is written as 2/7/2007 or 2/7/27, also known as the Day of Angels.

2007 - 1982 = 25, otherwise known to anyone who knows me as:



To celebrate, I'll post a piece I wrote a little before my last birthday:

( An Ugly Sort of Numb )

More birthday celebrations to follow: recap of this morning's Dark Tower Release Party, Salon tonight, family dinner tomorrow followed by watching Rachel sing at Lindas, DivTac coming this weekend (must clean house even though they're not taking advantage of my hospitality after all), Sketch dinner next Tuesday for a special ISIDTA the next day, and I'll probably even have a celebration planned for, like, 365 days from now. I'm crazy like that.
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Yeah, you got no introduction for that, did you? That's because it was this week's ISIDTA challenge from Sketch Hobgood (see his entry here), circa Monday, but I didn't get to it until 9:30 at night. Whyyyyyy? Because I was working on the drawing to go along with the newest installment of



Oh god, it's 4am. Why the hell is it 4am? I feel like my fingers are loaded with rubber bands and I have to stretch the rubber bands hard just to get my fingers to type.

I have stuff I wanted to say to go along with this, but maybe, what with the two strips already hogging space here and what with it being 4am, maybe ,just once, I'll close without posting any trademark FitzSimons insight.

... ... ...

Yeah. The right-thumb band just snapped, and I can't make it do anything right now. ...I think it's crying...?!

Okay, thinking my nonfingers are vocalizing displeasure equals time to go to bed.

GRENOBULAX!
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This week, MR CIM delves into the realm of story and non-scribbled-over stick-figures. An uncharted wasteland most only know as "good comic artist techniques." Like I have time for that crap though, right? We'll see how long it lasts.



If you want to see Sketch's strip, go here.
If you want to see a Noir Detective game I should own, go here.
If you want to break out into the love song from Les Miserables, grab the nearest hottie's hand, and lose yourself in the moment, go here.
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This week's MR CIM stems from a Google Chat with xenosauridae, who suggested that Gillette should put out a product called Occam's Razor with the tagline: "The simplest solution to a stubbly face."

This of course led to an Occam's Razor-off, or --as some might call it-- an Occam's Race, the culmination of which was my idea for this week's ISIDTA strip.



Sketch's strip will be available through this link.
More info on Occam's Razor can be found through this link.

In closing, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, Joy.
Remember that when you're stressing.
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MR CIM this week has jumped on the bandwagon. What bandwagon?
This bandwagon. The message is a sound one, and I think I can safely say the world would be a better place if more apes in comics were more like Detective Chimp. Or Ape, from George of the Jungle.

For Sketch's strip this week (we've cobandwagoneers), go here.
For an awesome picture that sums up the message in a way I'd hang on my wall, go here.
For no evil monkeys, go here.
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I'm coughing up things the color of pieces of the following MR CIM... which I'm the first to admit is a reprint of a non-ISIDTA picture I made. Also, this is not drawn; it is completely done via MS-Paint. Also, it's already noon, so it's late AND it's not conforming to any previously set standards.

At the moment, I cannot bring myself to care.



Here's Sketch's strip.

God, I feel like crap. I'm working from home, my work laptop refuses to connect to our wireless connection, I'm lightheaded, probably starving (though not in the least bit hungry), hacking uselessly, and generally feeling like shit. Also, my pseudo-boss has asked me to rewrite my job description because he "wants a sense of all the work involved in the Registrar position." Not "in your position," notice. So, I'm back on the outs in employment terms as well. And I'm not in the office where I could remedy the situation. And I'm trying to catch up on work that came in over the holidays when I'm not in a position to use it in conjunction with the internet except via some complicated USB-transfer thingamajig.

Happy NYears, everyone. Unless someone close to you has died, 2007 is guaranteed to have been kinder to you than it has been to me so far.
.

Okay, I'm totally posting my I'm Sorry I'll Draw That Again strip 2 1/2 days early because I'll be out of town from tomorrow afternoon until NYears. Maybe I'll be able to post, maybe I won't but I can't be sure.

...um, because MR CIM SEVEN is CMas-themed, so I needed to post it for Monday. ...Yeah. That's it.



'Cause at ISIDTA, they'll take a week to draw a single comic, and they'll even take American Express, but they won't take "My dog ate my deadline."

Wednesday mornings. We'll call each other at work if it's not up by 10.

Wednesday morning, Sketch's strip will be here. If not, I'll know, Sketch. If I'm not at a computer, I'll call someone who is. And...and have them describe it to me. And I won't tell you whom I'm going to call, so you can't insidiously connive them into telling me falsities. I know you, you conniver you.

Anyway, here's MR CIM SEVEN. Merry CMas.



Actually, speaking of "Merry CMas" maybe now's the point to tell about the origin of MR CIM. I don't have the picture cued up on photobucket, but that can wait. Sketch and I were buying our Moleskine sketchbooks at Borders to start this project, and I was trying to think of a title. While standing in line to check out, I noticed a stand of CMas cards, and one of them was a series of blocks that spelled 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' ... only they were three letter to a line, so it looked like this:

MER
RY*
CHR
IST
MAS

Look at that acrostic! It's awesome! MR CIM was born. I pointed out the acrostic, Sketch totally told me that was my title. Thank you, Mr. Hobgood for your brilliance.
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Damnation, this morning has kicked my ass.

Whatever. No excuses, right? I'm late, Bob Loblaw, let's move on.

Here's the MR CIM for this week:



No, I'm just kidding.
I'd never try that big a cop-out.

No, here's the real MR CIM SIX:



Here's Sketch's ISIDTA strip for the week. His was up on time. He wins.

Also, I took this meme:

I am: Gregory Benford A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

Which science fiction writer are you?

I can only say:

"Uh...who?"
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The above, for those who don't look for wordplay in everything I do, is a [bruce] Banner Statement, just like the inspiration for this week's MR CIM.

This week, Sketch Hobgood proposed a challenge he had seen in one of Scott McCloud's books on Drawing/Making/Producing/Directing Comics. The challenge was for us to each use the top fifth of a page to create a text-only banner statement, some sort of slogan or title. Then we switched pages, and the week's challenge was to depict a scene/sequence that fit the words.

You can see Sketch's turn of my phrase here:
It's not what you say, but how you say it.

In the meantime, here's MR CIM FIVE:



I'm actually a bit irked right now about something related to this: I'm a moron. See, here are some factoids that I managed to not connect:
1) I'm watching the show called 'House' -- about a doctor of the same name.
2) House is great at differential analysis, using seemingly unrelated facts to find connections.
3) His best friend is named Wilson.
4) His apartment number is 221B.

So, yeah, I connected the 221B part to Sherlock Holmes, but --being a complete moron-- I failed to go that one extra step and see HOLMES -> HOMES -> HOUSE, DR WATSON -> DR WILSON. It's really very irksome. One of those I'm-gonna-kick-myself-when-you-tell-me,-aren't-I? situations.

Anyway, in a gratifying twist of fate, Corey Brown has decided to join in on Sketch and my weekly webcomic challenge. He didn't do a Banner Statement (as NYC is a bit far for us to trade banner pages), but his comic (seen here) does raise a very important issue: how drunk is too drunk for a ninja? Will you look at that, Sketch; we're inspirational.

As always, comments/suggestions are welcome on this (or any) week's MR CIM. I'm very reactionary; my motto is, "If nobody says it's broke, don't fix it."
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Don't you hate it when you're busy and people --for some ungodly reason or another-- want to interrupt your important work to force you to deal with problems you really don't want?

Don't you hate it when you get that feeling and you're a receptionist at the doctor's office?

Don't you hate me prefacing my MR CIM strip for the week?

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Here's this week's link to Sketch Hobgood's strip (updated regularly).

You know, I keep thinking I should somehow put in the strip that it's a doctor's receptionist. I nixed the idea while putting it together because I wanted it to be as simple a scene as possible, focusing on the people, but maybe... should I put a little Scene-Setting box at the top [At Dr. Richard's office] ?



EDIT: Now the strip is a tiny bit more colorful, and a tiny bit more clear.
EDITEDIT: Yes, yes, 'clearer.' Bob Loblaw.