Sketchbook

At the End of the Goth Rainbow.

The Ugly Fishling

A Haiku: Eating bad toadstools. Starts seeing Little blue men. Gargamel bugs out.

The Jimmy Show

I got sucked into this movie earlier tonight and I just need to vent. "The Jimmy Show" synopsis:
Independent film about a working class shlub in New Jersey. Loses job, loses wife, loses kid, mother dies, the end.
One of the most wretched and self-indulgent movies I've ever seen. It was like having to sit through a two hour recitation of poetry from a Fifteen-year-old goth kid.
If anyone feels the need to experience this movie, all you have to do is drive to the Pine Barrens in Jersey on a cold winters day and gently place a gun in your mouth. Oops, looks like you can't afford bullets, so there's nothing left to do but crumple into a fetal ball and cry and cry until your tears form frozen walrus tusks on your chin. Awful.

The Quest for Peace

My hat's off to you supes, especially the bricklaying. I never knew that among all your powers you also had masonry-vision.

Get it? It's a pretty plesiosaurus with sugar on top. Hah!

Another Threadless Win! Hooray!!

That's right folks, Roni and I won on another Collab on Threadless for "A very Naughty Bear". I just got my shirts in the mail and they look freaking great! Hurry up and get one, they're selling out pretty quick.

I likes me sum tee sharts.

Hi gang,
Check out my new winning designs on www.moderntee.com !! And while you're there you should vote on the designs that I still have in the running.
Should be getting printed soon, so do your part in helping the economy get back on track by pre-ordering several dozen shirts now. Unless you're some sort of commie terrorist hippie type, in which case you can go suck an egg.

Globalization is such a choad

Okay, Here's my spiel: Work has been slow. Like, really slow. I've been doing this professionally for over a decade, so I really don't want to have to resort to getting a "regular" job and start all over again getting paid bupkus for an honest days work. I've tried agents, but agents rarely replied to my emails and when they did, they told me that they're having a hard enough time getting work for the artists they already have on their roster.
T-shirt contest sites like www.threadless.com and www.moderntee.com have been very good to me, but I can't live off of contests.
So there are freelance sites like guru and elance that offer quick jobs for illustrators. You pay a yearly fee, and you get to bid on jobs they post on their site. Simple right?
Yeah, except for the part that in a global market, folks from China and India are charging $2 an hour or less. It doesn't matter how good you are, or how much experience you have, businesses will usually pick the lowest bid of the most adequate illustrator, even if it's awful.
Plus, there are a LOT of scumbags out there who'll try and scam the system. They'll email me and say they're considering me for the job, but they need a quick (and free) example of how I would tackle a sketch. And of course, being desperate to impress and also being a ginormous chump , I say okay and lo and behold, they never get back to me. Here's the scam: they ask the same thing from dozens of other artists, and before you know it, they've got hundreds
of pieces of free art. Inconsistent styles, but these guys aren't exactly looking for quality here.
Pretty sneaky.
Like this guy who wanted a few quick concepts of a tank underwater:

Whipped those out in a few hours, he requested some revisions, I begrudgingly revised them, and then he pulled a Keyser Söze and poof. Gone.
Seriously man, I hope that guy drowns in a bathtub filled with hobo pee.
Whoa, that's a bit harsh.
Maybe just regular pee.