Geek Tragedy Blog Archives

	March '08
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31 / MAR / 08 - 1102 CST : If at first you don't succeed, pay someone... Hey folks. Three things to talk about today. For starters, I just wanted to let y'all know that a new GT² strip will be headed your way later today, so keep a look out for that. Better luck next year... Secondly, if you look up and to your right, you'll see that Wizard World Chicago has been downgraded from a definite convention stop for me, to tentative. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that I'd really like to have the site professionally redesigned this year, and I'm beginning to think that the money I'd be spending on that trip might be put to better use there instead. You see, I'm fairly inept at coding (which is putting it mildly), and thus far my efforts to chip away at the redesign have proven to be about as fruitless as trying to get an orange tree to grow out of my ass. In fact it's getting to the point that I'm wasting so much time on this endeavor that were I paying myself only minimum wage to do it, I'd still end up costing myself twice as much as I would if I were to hire a pro to do it. As well, every frustrating hour I spend on this project is an hour that could be much more productively spent getting my artwork done. So after giving it a whole lotta thought, and despite the fact it's a con that I've been wanting to check out since I started the site, Chicago has once again become that elusive creature I keep hearing so much about, but fear I'll never get to see in my lifetime. Damn you Wizard World Chicago! Why must you always be my Snuffleupagus! I hear these talkies are really catching on... And last but not least, I wanted to mention that the first ever Geek Tragedy *audio* con report will posted by the end of the week. That's right folks. Thanks to the magic of the internet, and hours and hours of me trying my best not to sound like a total ass, soon all those MegaCon pictures I posted a while back will be brought to life with the sultry sound of my voice whispering in your ear. As of right now the entire con report has been recorded, and once I've finished up the final bits of editing I'll be sure to swing on by and post it here for you guys to listen to. And with any luck, should this prove to be something y'all enjoy, maybe I'll be able to do all of my con reports this way in the future (only in a much more timely fashion than this one I hope). Alrighty! My strips aren't going to draw themselves, so I guess I better get back to work. Later, -Ed **** 28 / MAR / 08 - 0845 CST : A day of changes... (or at least a day of talking about them) Hey folks! There's a lot of stuff I want to cover today, so I'm just gonna get right to it. First and foremost, let's talk about today's update. There are two possibilities at this point. One, today's update will in fact be part XXIII of the Noname Clause, but will once again be left in its black and white form to be coloured later this weekend. A course of events which, for those of you who have been hanging around these part for a while now know, has pretty much become Friday tradition. However the second, and at this point more likely of the two possibilities, is that today's update will be that of some sort of sketch I'll be posting in lieu of an actual strip. As for what that sketch might be...I don't know. Maybe it'll be a sketch of Frank or possibly Noname in some sort of whacky hijinx. Or perhaps it'll be some Hello Kitty fan art I've been just dying to whip up for months now. Maybe some nude figure drawing I've done of the neighbors who never seem to remember to shut their blinds at night...who knows? The deciding factor between my doing a strip or a sketch is how much time I have left once I get a few things done around the house, and then go out and do some running around. And while I'm hoping that this will still afford me enough waking hours to get the next part of the story done ('cause to be honest guys, we're so close to the end of this tale and I really want to move on to the next one at this point), I seriously doubt that'll be the case. One thing I know for though is that regardless of whether I go with the strip or the sketch, I won't have the update posted till later on this evening. It's not the size of the strip that counts, it's how many word bubbles I can manage to cram in there...** Once this storyline and the subsequent "epilogue" type strips are finished up, I'll be changing the format of the strip a bit. And by changing, I mean changing back. Which is to say that instead of doing a strip of this length: I'll be once again testing out how I feel about doing ones like this: Truth be told, I really like the size of the strips I'm doing now. They are, my opinion at least, the perfect length for me to get across everything I need to in a single update. Unfortunately though I have a bitch of time getting them done twice a week (along with two GT² strips), without neglecting a whole lotta other stuff in my life that needs serious attention. So yeah, in few weeks I'll reverting to smaller strips. However, if it saves me the amount of time I hope, then maybe...maybe I'll see what I can do about filling up my currently barren Wednesdays and getting Geek Tragedy's update schedule up to five days a week. MAYBE! Less typing, more working... Okay, because I don't want to end up spending all my time writing a news post and thus squandering what little working time I'll have today, I'll forego a few of the things I was planning to mention and get back to them at a later date instead. Before I do take off though, I just wanted to give a big Thank You to my Aunt Susan for catching a couple of mistakes I made in the last couple of strips. I really appreciate it, 'cause If anyone needs and editor, it's me! So thank you so much for giving me a heads up! Feel free to correct me anytime! Oh, and I also made a slight change to the art in Tuesday's strip so that it wouldn't look quite so murky. Alrighty! That's it for me everyone. Have yourselves a great weekend, and I'll see you when I post the new art for today! Later, -Ed **** 26 / MAR / 08 - 2054 CST : Breaking the silence... Hey folks. Sorry for my lack communication over the past couple days, but I was kinda bogged down with both Geek Tragedy and non-Geek Tragedy related tasks. Oh, and then there was that whole, "I couldn't get anything to upload to the site" issue I had for most of yesterday. Yeah, that didn't help the flow of new content / information much either (luckily yesterday's strip managed to get posted just before the problems started). However, things now appear to be working once again (well actually I won't know that for sure till I try and upload this update, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed) so I figured I'd use this opportunity to say hi. Also, I wanted to let y'all know that I am currently working on a method of doing con reports that will not only ensure they get done in a timely fashion (for a change), but should hopefully allow them to be a bit more enjoyable to behold in the future as well. Now I don't want to say anything more about it right now, as it may not pan out quite the way I'm hoping it will, but you should be hearing more about this over the next couple of days. Or at the very least I'll be filling y'all in on just how badly I failed with this particular idea. It's hard to tell at this point which way the wind may blow... Alrighty folks! I'm going to take off and see how much work I can squeeze in before I head off to my job-job. See you guys tomorrow when I post the next installment of GT²! Later, -Ed ** 24 / MAR / 08 - 1826 CST : Edgier animals... Hey folks. So it seems that fine folks over at Animal Planet, who brought new meaning to the word "cute" with shows such as The Puppy Bowl, have decided to change up their format a bit and a bit more bite to their programming. Personally I'm all for it! After all, if it one thing this world needs, it's less family friendly programming at the expense of showing the same type of sensationalistic crap you can already see on every other damn channel on TV. Anyway, I was planning on writing a bit more here about a few other non-animal related topics, but it seems I've managed to pull something in my neck. So instead I think I'm going to go ahead and lay down on a hot water bottle for a while, and try my best not to think about just how old and decrepit that statement has managed to make me feel. See y'all tomorrow when I post the next full strip! Later, -Ed 0715 CST : Squaring off later on... Hey folks. I'm still doing my best to enjoy the couple of extra days off I've been given this weekend, so while there will be a GT² up today, it most likely won't be posted till later on in the evening. And in other news, Friday's Easter strip has now been coloured. Alrighty, time for me to go and eat some leftover ham! Later, -Ed ** 20 / MAR / 08 - 1219 CST : Pikachu, they apparently don't choose you... Hey folks. I'm not sure how many of you stay in touch with foreign affairs, but I personally like to keep a very close eye on pressing world issues. And so it was that while perusing news from around the globe I stumbled upon this article discussing Japan's newest ambassadorship and who they chose to fill it. That's right, Japan now has an anime ambassador, and they actually assigned an animated time traveling robot cat named, Doraemon, to take on this official government position. Which oddly enough makes him the third cartoon character to become an ambassador to the world, with Astroboy being the second and of course, Geri Halliwell being the first. Alrighty guys, I'm outta here. See y'all tomorrow when I post the next colour strip. Later, -Ed ** 19 / MAR / 08 - 1909 CST : More links will follow... Hey folks. Before I forget again I just wanted to mention that two of cool new people I met out in Orlando were JT and Kevin from the podcast, The Gigcast. JT did an interview with me out at Megacon, but unfortunately the audio got botched. However we're currently trying to work out a time to redo it sometime over the next few weeks or so. Also, if you go back in their archives and check out Gigcast #130 you'll hear a nice little review about Evil Inc's recent switch over to colour. Anyway, more links to come once I get all write up for Megacon done, but for now, back to work! Later, -Ed 1047 CST : Because they're supposed to be worth a lot of words... Hey folks. If you head to the left and click on the link that says "Pictures" (or you can just CLICK HERE), it'll take you to a section of the site where you'll see some of the pics I took during my weekend at MegaCon. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance yet to add in the actual report part of the con report that's supposed to go with the pics, but that should be done soon (I hope). Also, I'd like to throw some links your way so that you can check out the sites of some of the wonderful folks I met out in there in Orlando, but unfortunately I'm currently writing this from my car dealership's service / parts waiting area (yes, my car troubles continue) so I don't have any of that info with me. However, with any luck I'll remember to get those out to y'all once I get home later this morning / afternoon. Alrighty everyone, that's it for me for now. See ya tomorrow when I post the next GT². Later, -Ed PS: To my mother who had her connecting flight canceled, and had to spend the first night of her vacation in a Chicago airport hotel...Keep your chin up mom! I'm sure your pilgrimage to the holy land will go better today, and you'll be standing before the shrine of the one true King before you know it. PPS: Have fun in Graceland! ** 17 / MAR / 08 - 0845 CST : He's at it again... Hey folks. So with today's GT² I bring you the long awaited second installment of the ongoing series, Grey's "Yo mama" jokes. Okay, so maybe " long awaited" is a bit of a stretch, but at least the "second installment" part of that statement is true. And for anyone who's interested, the alternate text I was thinking of using on Grey's T-shirt was " Please don't 'P' in my 'OWNED' " And if anyone doesn't know what it is I'm playing off of with either of those statements, I'm guessing you never knew anyone with a pool growing up, did you? I'd also like to apologize for not getting the colours done on Friday's strip this weekend. Saturday and Sunday were actually quite productive for me, but only in the way that it allowed me to catch up with almost everything in my life except for the site. I'll do my best to get that strip finished up before I post tomorrow's offering, but I'm afraid I may have to leave it as black and white for a while yet. Also, for those of you who were wondering, I am working on a bit of a con report for MegaCon 2008, but it won't be up till Wednesday at the earliest. I was going to try and finish it off today, but I figured that my time might be better spent trying to get a nice head start on Tuesday's comic instead. Alrighty guys! I'm off to get a bit of sleep, work on the strip, take a shower, and eat some soup. That's right baby, I'm just living the dream! Later, -Ed ** 14 / MAR / 08 - 0845 CST : Sleep, it does a comic good... Hey folks. My body's clock is still having a bit of a freak out after being exposed to daylight for the better part of five days, so my sleep schedule is all out of whack and has left me extremely tired and cranky at this point. So before I finish off the inks for today's strip, I'm going to go lay down for a while and see if I can't manage to get at least four hours of uninterrupted sleep before my brain decides to wake me up for no damn good reason. Once I do wake up, I'll go ahead and post an inked version of the strip once it's done, followed by a finished coloured version a few hours later (or at least I hope it'll only be a few hours later). So if I had to guess, I'd give an ETA of about 7pm for the strip to be up. Okay, nappy time. Later, -Ed ** 13 / MAR / 08 - 1759 CST : Oops part 2... Y'know, when I scripted out this last strip, I didn't have "the" in front of "Hulk" when he said his name, but somehow once I started putting in the word bubbles I managed to turn "The Hulk's" speech pattern into that of "The Rock". Anyway, that has now been fixed. Later, -Ed 1629 CST : Oops... One quick note. Yesterday I wrote that the GT² strips were updated on Mondays and Wednesdays, when I actually meant Monday's and Thursdays. Sorry for any confusion. Thanks for catching that for me Grace! Later, -Ed 1507 CST : The Ed agrees... Hey folks. Well as you can no doubt tell from today's GT² I've managed to check out the full trailer that's been released for the new Hulk movie, and much like The Hulk, I plan on reserving judgment till I've seen the full film. Don't get me wrong, I think the the trailer looks pretty amazing, but then again that's what I thought about the first one too, and look how that turned out. Alrighty folks, time for me to start working on tomorrow's strip before I get too tired. Later, -Ed ** 12 / MAR / 08 - 1603 CST : For new and old alike... Hey folks. I'm taking a bit of break from doing some colouring, so I figured while I've still got full use of my mental faculties I'd swing on by and say a few things. Now most of this stuff isn't really related to one another, so I'll just throw this all out in point form. - Megacon: I'd just like to thank everyone who swung on by my table while I was out there in Orlando to say hi, check out my work, buy a shirt, or grab a flyer. I'll try to get a bit of a con report up later on (or at the very least post a bunch of the pics I took) so I won't go into great detail right now, but I do want to say that I got to meet a lot of wonderful new people out there, and overall it was a pretty cool experience. -Updates: First off, for those of you who grabbed a flyer out in Florida, please note that the info regarding when I update was a bit outdated as it says that I update on Mon, Wed, and Fri. That's not actually the case anymore. The way it stands now, I have full strip updates (or if I'm really busy, at least some sort of filler art) on Tuesdays and Fridays, and GT² strips posted on Mondays and ~~Wednesdays~~ (oops! that's supposed to be Thursdays, not Wednesdays) Also, because I've been so busy getting stuff ready for the con season I've been throwing up a lot more "filler" art on the site than I would've liked to. However, now most of that work is done, things should be getting back to normal so you can expect the next installment of "The Noname Clause" to be posted Friday evening. -The strip: One of the reasons I've gone ahead and started doing the GT² strips was to offer more content on the site on a weekly basis. However, I also wanted to give new readers, who may find it a bit daunting to start in on a storyline based strip with three years worth of back-story, an easier way to ease themselves into the GT universe (btw, Care Bear Zombies...huge hit in Florida!). I feel this is especially important right now, as the current storyline is pretty much a climax of sorts that at times requires a decent knowledge of past events (though I do try to end each strip in a joke that is a punch line unto itself which hopefully doesn't require any archive diving to be funny). With that in mind though, I wanted to let all you new readers out there that once this tale wraps up I will be going back to doing shorter, less GT history dependant tales that will (hopefully) stand perfectly well on there own. Granted I will always eventually go back to the main story arc(s), as that's the driving force of the strip in my opinion (plus this particular chapter will end up posing a few more questions come the end, rather than sum everything up), but once I'm done with Agent Oshiro laying the smackdown on the evil albino, know that y'all can look forward to some slightly more light hearted stuff for a few months. -Forum / site redesign: For those of you who have been waiting for the forum to go back up, I'm sorry to say that you may have to wait a while longer. I'm currently working on a redesign to the site, and so I'm holding off on the forum till that's all finished. And once the revamp is done (hopefully by late summer) on top of relaunching the forum I should also have the long dead areas that are the cast and contact & info pages finally up as well. Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I will be using ComicPress to do my redesign. Alrighty! I think I've bent your ears (or eyes) long enough, so time for me to get back to work. Later, -Ed ** 11 / MAR / 08 - 1032 CST :The morning after... Hey folks. Well now that I've managed to get some stuff unpacked and had a decent night's rest, I've come up with a plan of attack for today. 1) Go out and buy some food. 2) Make myself some lunch. 3) Get a few things done around that house that need to be done. 3) Post some artwork that was done up at the con by myself and another artist in lieu of a full strip today. 4) Play a bit of catch up with my Evil Inc colouring. 5) Get as much Geek Tragedy work done as possible before I head into work tonight. I also wanted to mention that now that the con craziness is over (for this month at least), things should all be on track as far as updates go after today. Which means that Friday's strip will in fact be a regular strip again, and not just some filler art to tie you over while I'm trying to get buttons made, prints printed, and T-shirts shipped off. Alrighty folks! Thank y'all for your patience over the past week or so, it means a lot! Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go get me some vittles. Later, -Ed 0036 CST : Now that I'm home...** sigh Last flight was delayed for over an hour...was stuck in a terminal about the size of my living room with four planes worth of people for far too long...just got home now...strip up when I can scan it in and finish the word bubbles...tired...oh so tired. Now, time to do a bit of unpacking. Later, -Ed PS: Note to self, set up twitter on your cell phone before you go out of town again. **** EDIT: All of the news for March 10th was written while I was stuck in the airports. The wireless connections there made it impossible to update the site while I was there. Sorry for the lack of news and strip for today, but it was sadly unavoidable. 10 / MAR / 08 - 1859 CST : Let's try this again... Okay. Everything I said before you can just apply to this post...except now I'm in Chicago...and the plane isn't delayed...and hopefully the wireless access actually works well enough for me to get this info out to you guys. Anyway, I'll be sure to get the GT² up for y'all just as soon as I can once I get home, so look for it shortly after midnight or perhaps in the wee hours of the morning. Later, -Ed 1423 EST : I'm on my way... Hey folks. I'm currently sitting in the Orlando airport waiting to board the first of two flights that will be taking Grace and myself home. The first flight has been delayed about 30 minutes, but we've got a huge buffer once we land in Chicago for our connecting flight, so there's no worries there. While I was at the con I managed to get the artwork of today's GT² done so that it'll be ready to be scanned in once I get home. However, we're not scheduled to land until around 11pm CST, so it most likely won't be posted till after midnight sometime. Alrighty folks, time for me to log off and check some e-mails before I get on the plane. Later, -Ed ** 06 / MAR / 08 - 0845 CST : Goes from -32 to +23 in 12 hours... Hey folks. Well in a few hours I'll be leaving home (where it is currently -32C), and flying off to Florida for MegaCon. Now, I won't be getting back here (where it is currently -32C) till late Monday, so the updates for this Friday, Monday, and Tuesday will most likely be various pics from the trip instead of actually strips. But at least there should be something up for you guys to look at on those days. Alrighty folks, I don't want to miss my flight out of Winnipeg (where it is currently -32C), so I better head off. See ya in Orlando (where it is NOT currently -32C)! Later, -Ed PS: Thanks for house sitting for me mom! ** 03 / MAR / 08 - 0845 CST : The first time is always the most painful... Hey folks. So in prepping for the con, I bought a very specific type of paper to have my portfolio pages printed on. I've been using it for quite a while now and I really love how it looks, the weight of it, and how it reacts to the ink. Over the past three or four years I must have gone through at least ten or so of the 20 packs. Well this time around when I needed to buy some more so that I could update my portfolio, I noticed that they came out with an 80 sheet pack for much cheaper than it would cost to buy four packs of the 20's. I checked to make sure it was the exact same company's product, with the exact same type of paper, in the exact same packaging, and it was. So of course I bought it. Well imagine my surprise when I opened up the pack at home and found the wrong freakin' paper inside. So yeah, today's GT² is pretty much the dialog that went off in my head after I put the pieces together and realized that the sticker saying "BONUS" on it, was actually some ass backwards way of the company telling me they had a surplus of another kind of paper, and figured they would be doing their customers a favor by offloading a product they didn't want in the first place. Gee, thanks guys! I can only hope that one day I'll be able to shake the hand of the person who came up with such an innovative marketing scheme. Of course before I do, I'll be sure to substitute that shake with the bonus upgrade offer of a boot to the ass instead! And at no extra cost to you! Anyway, enough with the complaining as I've got to something else I need to mention. I've still got a few things for that I need to have ready for Mega Con by Wednesday at the latest, plus I'm spending most of today helping my buddy Travis move into his new house (something I don't think either of us are looking forward to, but he's done the same for me a few times now so it's the least I could do) , so it's looking like tomorrow's update has a high chance of being some type of filler art instead of an actual strip. And if that's the case, I apologize in advance. Alrighty folks, time for me to log off, eat some breakfast, and then carrying some heavy shit through the snow (I'm totally psyched!). Later, -Ed PS: Taking another look at the headline I used for this news, and reading back through what I wrote, I now realize it doesn't really apply to anything in there. However I'm pretty sure when I wrote it I had meant to talk a bit more about how much of a pain it's been getting ready for the first con of the year, but hopefully once all this work is done the rest will go a lot smoother. Yeah, that was probably it...I think. ****