5/21/2012

So we had a Comic Convention this weekend. I had a budget and stuck to it. Picked up a lot of cool, cool stuff. A lot of dealers were selling their Silver Age stuff for half-off the marked price. So I got good deals on a whole slew of books. Filled in my Power-Man/Iron Fist run. Picked up a bunch of issues of Kamandi, John Carter, Warlord of Mars, Jonah Hex, and Weird Western Tales. Some dealers had their books for $2. Spent my last $20 on a nice Neal Adams print, and had him sign it. A good exhausting day. Ran into a bunch of customers finding good deals too. As long as they spend their money at my store, I'm cool.

I would have gone Saturday, but I had other things to do. I am now the proud owner of a 2011 Hyundai Accent. Great mileage and even more important, it has great air conditioning. After 7 years of enjoying the intolerable, oppressive heat, I am now planning on being very, very, very comfortable.

5/18/2012

My quest to own sword and sorcery movies from the 80's is down by one. Went to Entertainmart and found a DVD set called Fantasy and Action Movie Pack. It includes the Beastmaster,starring Marc Singer and Tanya Roberts and directed by Don Coscerelli. Plus Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert and some Asylum pictures. For $2, and all in widescreen, it was a deal. Beastmaster ain't no Deathstalker, but whatchu goin' to do? I know some of you out there are shaking your head in disbelief, but as God as my witness, if I found a decent copy of the Ator, or Yor, Hunter from the Future, I would own those bad boys.

And for those of you psychically high fivin' me for the deal, right back at ya, my fellow geeks.

The Sci-Fi Expo is this weekend. I'll be going...either Saturday or Sunday. I haven't decided yet. I think there are going to be ton of people on Saturday to see all the celebrities who are there on Saturday alone. I'm looking for a few deals so I'm leaning towards Sunday. Don't know yet. I think if I get there when they open, 5 hours is enough to find some deals in there. Of course, I could wake up Saturday and think it's a a good day to go then. Don't know. I still have much to do, before then. We'll see.

Anyway, have a Great Weekend, everybody!

5/16/2012

I got everything fixed. I deleted about half a dozen steps I gave myself. I've decided to not use the free program GIMP. It seemed to adjust the fonts a bit for some bizarre reason. Inkscape is pretty intuitive, and easier learning curve than Illustrator was/is. It's a lot easier to make word balloons. Of course, most of my knowledge of Illustrator was self taught, or at least I found some tutorials online. I feel a ltitle bad about that. Most of the tutorials were artists selling books with more information in them, but I got all the info I needed from the brief tutorials.

Basically, I do the tone and fixing up in Photoshop, do the lettering in Inkscape, save as a .pdf and adjust it for web back in Photoshop. I used to go Photoshop, tone and fix, then Illustrator for the rest. An extra step or so, but same results.

In other news, I'm not as far ahead as I should be on this comic. I've got next Friday's on my drawing table. Searching for two OLD programs that apparently have been deleted from all existence took up some time. Fiddling with the new programs took up some other time. Being lazy and watching too much Netflix took up a bit of time. I blazed through Avatar:The Last Airbender and Eureka, and watched a bunch of movies of varying degrees of quality.

But I do have the next few pages laid out and ready to be drawn up though.

All righty then, it's Wednesday! GO BUY SOME COMICS!

5/14/2012

Sorry about the almost-a-month-impromptu hiatus. I managed to pick up Photoshop Elements 10 and it had all I needed for the clean-up and shading I do. It was a little shiny and some of the things wern't where I had them last. How do I adjust levels? I haven't figured it out yet. The free vector based Inkscape is pretty cool, but it doesn't want to 'Save As' as a .jpeg? WHAAAA?! I think I got it worked out. We'll see.

Go see "Avengers".

R.I.P. Tony DeZuniga, co-creator of Jonah Hex.

See y'all on Wednesday. Oh, and if you haven't 'friended' me on Facebook, I'm Chris Medellin, with the Simpsonized Green Arrow as his avatar. Or maybe I'll change it to the DeZuniga Jonah Hex my buddy Pat got me when he was in town a couple of years ago.

Still working out the kinks in my new software set-up. I seem to have to go through more than half a dozen steps to get what used to be three. The lettering is going to be a bit off on some pages. Sorry. I'll try to get that fixed soon. Also the pictures are going to be a wee bit smaller.

4/16/2012

So, unfortunately, I will be going on hiatus for a while. My exterior hard drive did crap out. It pretty much is scrubbed clean. Yay me. Which means I have to find another copy of Illustrator 9.0. I know there are about 6 later versions, but I've heard they changed a bit at 10, and I got used to 9.0. Unfortunately, I'm having a hell of a time finding an inexpensive version, for PC, anywhere. Really eBay and Amazon stores? I thought I could find everything at y'all. I'm so disappointed in both of you. It's 10 years old, man, what's up with that?! Plus,...I know, I know, "What else, Chris?" Photoshop isn't wanting to import from my scanner anymore. Well, at least until I find out what the problem is.

Until then, guys, it's hiatus time. And I had most of this weeks drawn and almost ready.

Oh, go see "The Cabin in the Woods". It is a lot of fun, and has some interesting concepts woven into it. GO SEE IT!

Wednesday, Go Buy Some Comics!. Friday, Have a Great Weekend!