Friday, November 26, 2010

Experimental Comic: Texas++

In January of 2009, I attended the Walker Art Center Multiples Mall and I had a new silly book for sale. Craft was really not my goal, telling a silly story in a new manner was. It was based off of a diagram in my Borland C++ Graphics Programming book. The original diagram was a drawing made on a computer with 1992 MS Paint-like technology. The diagram was of two different  computer mice that were specifically for graphic programming. One mouse had 4 buttons, while the other had 16. Imagine 16 buttons! Anyway, I made that diagram into two of my favorite characters.

4-button cursor Sheriff and 16-button Skully McShootface:


I then made a really small format 64 page graphic novel. Each page is roughly the same size as a trading card. I printed 25 of these little books, sold them all and then never printed more. When I printed the book, I wanted to try an experiment and draw every cover. So, I signed the back and sketched out one of the characters on the front. My folks have a copy of every one of my books, but I had to steal this one because I didn't even have a copy.



I reformatted it for the web to show 4 book pages per web image. Oh, there's also a bonus hand made note in each book that is part of the story. You'll see. So, without further ado, Texas++:

















Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Trip to the dentist

I really don't recall the last time that I was at the dentist... at least 4 years ago. Longer probably. Health care is a pretty new concept for me too. Japan has it right with National Health Care and people not being afraid to go to the dentist or doctor. I write down my dreams every morning and often have really terrible dreams about my teeth. I think my dreams were trying to tell me something.

Before going to the dentist, this photo realistic drawing of me was made. Obviously, I'm terrible anxious to go to the dentist.


Another photo was taken. The smile in question:


The tooth in question: It's the one with black spot. Please divert your eyes from the nose hairs.


Riiburu Dentist:


Happy Sean at the dentist:


Woman avoid the oncoming x-rays, and laughing at me about to be zapped.


This thing took a full panorama of my teeth. It was so nice that it even sang me a little song as it zapped me with x-rays. Seriously it had a little jingle that went with it. The sign directly in front of me said to stay still, so I tried with everything I had to not laugh. 


Do you remember that scene in Total Recall when Arnold takes that thing outta his nose? This was a little like that:


I was so excited to see the X-ray.


This dentist was the man. He told me that facts and got me outta there in less than an hour. I paid a little bit of scratch and the rest was covered by Japan's National Health Care. Lovely.


Now back to more normal matters:

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Nuclear Twilight

 I recently got an e-mail asking about whether or not I'm selling copies of it. I hate telling people that I'm terrible at setting aside time to print and sell my stuff, so I've decided to start putting up books on my blog along with my normal jib-jab.

When people at the cons point to Nuclear Twilight and ask about it, I usually tell people that it's the biggest downer in the world. In the last page it says that it was made after visiting the Hiroshima Peace Museum in Hiroshima, Japan. One of the first moments that I shared with Mako's family was at the spot in Hiroshima where only 300 meters above, the bomb exploded. Her father made sure I knew the importance of the spot. It hit me like the moon crashing into the Earth. I couldn't shake the dread for a while and I had to somehow work it out of my system. 

Nuclear Twilight was that catharsis.




























I made this book when I was mainly working in my old C++ Graphical Programming manual, so there's a ton of text all around the images. Sometimes the text helped the story at almost a scary level. I don't do too much of this style anymore, I work in this manner when my main focus is illustration though.

The main focus of this book was how shitty I felt that as a nation we had done this. There's a ton of stuff that our American history books don't tell us about the choice to drop the bomb. Like, the fact that it was never debated whether or not it was going to get dropped, it had been carefully planned and cities were off limits to fighter bombers. We wanted the cities to be pristine so that we could later evaluate the damage in the clearest manner, but... that's another discussion for when I return to Ukashima in 2011 and wrap up that whole project. There should be a new Processing after that...