Blind Angel

It's hard for me to tell if the good times or the bad times have affected me more. Don't get me wrong, I love a good time as much as anybody. However, I think I'm in a heightened state of creativity when I feel like my whole world is crashing down.  It doesn't mean I have better skills or even come up with my best ideas when I'm depressed, but when I find more comfort within my own crazy worlds in my head I'm not as tethered by reality. I try to be a happy guy, and It's easy since I love my life. It's just something I think about from time to time.

Something Amazing...

Like I said, something amazing. No, I did not fight a pack of coyotes, but I did imagine Spencer from Harmontown beating a few up when I heard their last podcast. I swear, I'm not only going to post stuff about Harmontown, but I couldn't help it! After posting it on facebook, Spencer even made it his profile picture. And I don't even know the guy. That made me feel even better than the fact that I got a raise today!

The Farmer and the Elephant

I found this sketch in between some museum studies notes. This was around the time I found out what would make my at-the-time girlfriend loudly weep. It was sad cartoon eyes. For some reason, I decided that a small elephant was one of the saddest creatures to put those eyes on. The fact that the elephant was upside down was purely coincidental. For the record though, the didn't actually cry. She just kinda made a sad face and did a scream type "Waaaaaaaa!" sound. The relationship didn't really work out.

The Giant

This was one of the greatest Harmontown shows that I had the pleasure of going to. It's a very involved situation that the characters found themselves in ultimately ending with them all trying to deal with a frost giant king who stepped on Sharpie. After Kumail's character tried to reason with the king, he attempted to insult him as you see here. This was right before the giant squished him as well. While all that is going on, Erin insisted that they "put on a show" while Jeff had his face in his hands. I couldn't stop laughing.

Wise and Otherwise

The last time my parents came to visit, we played the crap out of one of our favorite games: Wise and Otherwise. It's a game where we come up with our own endings to certain old sayings. They are not well known saying, but they are old. My mom especially enjoys writing them all down, so that she can remember them when choosing which one she believed to be the right one. The traditional way to play is to come up with a second half to the saying that sounds like it could be correct, but when you have some players who just like choosing the funniest one, it can get pretty crazy. I don't even remember which ones on these three lists that are the correct ones, but I thought this was a good batch. The initials and symbols represented our guesses for the correct saying so I don't remember exactly who wrote what, but I remember liking "Every man gnaws on...and on." It's a great game, and you should play with us some time.

Attack on Titan

Every couple years or so since the dawn of Nexflix streaming I come across a fantastic movie or show that makes me say "I have intelligent friends with good taste! Why has nobody told me about this?! This is amazing!" Unfortunately I can not say that about Attack on Titan. For a while all I saw online were parodies or references my friends were making to it and for whatever reason. I didn't really pay much attention to it. I decided a couple days to give it a shot. I have been having a hard time not spending all of my moments watching it now. It is very good. It's a bit dramatic, and some of the high intensity action scenes are just stills with white motion lines going across the screen, but overall it is a high quality program. My friends were trying to tell me, but now I see it for myself. 

But I still don't feel like getting into Mad Men.

Oh, by the way, here is a sketch of some bad guys for a flash game project that me and my good friend Drew were doing back at SCAD. We were trying to make an Evil vs Cute game.

Jump n' Choke

Alright, I feel like I need to somehow explain myself here, but I really don't know how to do that properly. This wasn't even in a sketchbook. This is a loose scrap of paper with this drawing on it that I kept because it still makes me laugh. I'm assuming that I drew this around the time I was really into the Scarlet Spider, because for whatever reason, I named this character "Ben Reily." Not sure that it matters if that's not even the correct spelling. Wait, no, yes. Nope. Nope it definitely does not matter. Anyway, I really have so many questions about this. One of which being, was I in a happy or angry place when I drew this. I could easily see Angry ChuD scribbling this down in grade school because he wanted to choke someone. I could also easily see Whimsical ChuD drawing this comic in high school because he wanted to show off his comedic writing talents. Yes that's right, I have no idea what age I was when I drew this. I'm assuming it was somewhere between fourth grade and senior year of high school. Quite a range. Whether or not this makes you think I was a twisted child, or am a twisted adult now, I still laugh at this strange attempt at dark humor.

Phyrexian Delouser

At some point I became very interested in the word "Deloused". After the Mars Volta album, "De-Loused in the Comatorium" I just thought it was a very cool and very silly word. What I don't remember is why I wanted to draw a Phyrexian who's sole purpose is to kill lice. This was in August of '03, a couple years after the release of Magic's Invasion block, and I think I was very interested in the design of Phyrexians. The idea of humans and beasts that are both machine and flesh is a disturbing and intriguing notion, especially when the line gets so blurred. I don't know if I thought this would just me a funny sketch, or if it was an idea for a new Unglued card. Either way, I found it, and I think the annoyed giant cockroach who is clearly not dying is worth sharing.

The Seven Wurms of the Apocalypse

This is one of those rare instances that I had a vivid dream, REMEMBERED some of the dream, then drew what I could recall. In this case, it was the apocalypse. In my dream, the end of the world was being brought on by "The Seven Wurms of the Apocalypse." I think this was wurm two or three. It does not look like a wurm, but I knew it was in my dream. It was a gigantic furry monster with foldable legs. While its legs are folded it scurries along the ground very quickly. When its legs unfold, it grows very tall and moves slowly. I don't remember if it ate people or abducted them with it's tentacles, but it later dispensed them as pitch black zombies. It would gently lower them down from its underside and place them on the ground where they would stagger around looking for victims. Supposedly, this wurm was already stalking the land for a day, and since one wurm would emerge every day, I witnessed another wurm sprout out from the ground in the distance. This one was more wurm-like, but I didn't get as good of a look.

So, there is a censored part of this image. For whatever reason, I wrote down several of my fiance's passwords in the corner. I don't remember why. She might have been trying to log into her apple id, or some other thing she doesn't use that often.

I got a scanner.

Hey! I actually bought a scanner. As it turns out, scanners that are not attached to printers don't exist anymore. Apparently. Best Buy had a sucky selection. What I mean by that is that there was nothing there that could scan something larger than a normal sheet of paper. So I gave up and left. Then I saw a Staples across the street. Turns out they had one that could scan bigger things, like my bigger sketchbooks. It was on sale, and it was a great idea. Until I started walking home with it. Yup. I decided to take a nice walk to the store. It's not that far away, but it's a bit far for carrying a fifty pound box of technology. It made me very sore and sad. I grabbed the nearest sketchbook to me and scanned one of the first drawings in the book. There's no date in the book, but I do have some notes in it from my Museum Studies class. I think that was in 2007 or 2008. These are characters I made for a story world of mine that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Chicago. I probably drew the girl (Lump) first, and then drew the other guy's (Meatplow's) face. I'm hoping that explains the awkward body position I put him in.

Don't

My intention is to start scanning my notebooks and sketchbooks and start posting the images on here, but I also have a large number of digital sketches I would like to put here as well. Also, I don't have a scanner yet. The plan is to get one today. 

Living in LA (I'm just gonna call it LA) opens up a few opportunities for me. One of which is access to a lot of great comedy shows. One in particular I love is Harmontown. My schedule doesn't let me get there as often as I would like, but at least I can hear the podcast. There's something special about seeing (or listening to) someone in "The Industry" being so honest and open that gives me a little more faith in humanity. 

This is a transaction that Dan's character (Sharpie) has with a demon right before he electrocuted it to death.

Welcome

Do you want to know what happens? I can tell you what happens. This is what happens when you are in the midst of an existential crisis. This is what happens when you move to a new apartment and still have a hard time calling it home. This is what happens then you start questioning everything you are, and everything that makes you happy. This is what happens when you are trying to write your own words without typing the same words you are hearing from the music you are listening to. This is what happens when you get ripped out of your nice, comfortable, safe bubble. This is what happens when you have to go back and forth between changing the thermostat because you can't find that sweet spot that isn't too hot or too cold for you to comfortably sit down for more than fifteen minutes. This is what happens when you need a release that you can't seem to find anywhere. This is what happens when your room is filled with old drawing and notes to the point where it's an actual storage issue. This is a Notebook Explosion.