I was alerted to this video by Kris Straub of Starslip Crisis fame. It really is amazing the amount of work that must have gone into this video. It’s also a pretty bold statement on how commercialized and corporate the world has become. Seeing all of these logos in one volume (and I am sure this is just scratching the tip of the iceberg) is almost overwhelming. How many do you recognize?

Note: This video isn’t family friendly

Logorama from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.

News that I have long awaited has finally reached me, StarCraft 2 will ship on July 27th. Now I’m sure that this may be semi-old news for some, but for me it makes me as giddy as a school girl waiting in line to see Justin Bieber.

It’s my opinion that the wait for this has been far too long. I will be shucking out the cash for the $100 collectors version most assuredly. The thing in the linked article from Gamestop that I find the most amusing is the fact that, in the collectors version, you will receive a flash drive loaded with the original StarCraft AND the xpac Broodwar – IN A FLASH DRIVE! Oh how times have changed Come on July!

StarCraft 2 July 27th

In my attempts to further build my mobile design studio (and to prepare for my inevitable purchase of an iPad at some point) I stumbled across an app from Autodesk called Sketchbook Mobile. The reviews were all very good and once I dug into the features I could see that this app would soon be one of my favorites.

The interface as well as the navigation are pretty intuitive. It took a little bit of fiddling with things, but once I got the hang of where features were (I suggest looking at everything that the help menu has to offer as well as the tutorial) I was up and running. My first actual drawing came out less than desirable, but on my second attempt – and with a bit of photo reference and some Youtube tutorials – things went a lot better.

I wound up making a crude stylus out of a Nintendo DS stylus and some tin foil because I found that even though you can zoom in really tight, working with my fingers just didn’t give me the kind of control I have come to enjoy using a Wacom Tablet on the PC. Overall this app is going to serve me very well. My plans are to use it on my iPod Touch to create quick sketch mock-ups for brainstorming sessions with clients or to create a quick sketch for later use in the comic or to just doodle around on when I am bored. It’s good for me to be as mobile as possible in creating artwork and this app goes a long way to helping me out in that regard.

I posted a few character development images of Kara Thrace for the upcoming Battlestar Galactica story line I am working on for the comic that will debut about mid June on my Live Journal tonight. It’s important to me to keep developing adventures and stories for all of the characters of the comic while working in current and popular culture where ever I can.

It’s also very important to me to continue to develop my drawing skills and to keep getting the characters as fluid as I can in an effort to begin drawing faster and better in the hopes that I can, one day, get back to delivering a quality daily color comic. I am using this BSG story to help do that, so expect stuff that you may not have seen in the comic up to now and expect a storyline that you definitely haven’t seen until now.

One last request, vote on TWC while you leave and lets get the comic moving up the list

Hey guys. Sorry for the lack of a comic today. I had initially thought I may be able to get one done over the weekend, but with all that went on Friday (check out my Twitter Feed to get the skinny on Friday) and the fact that Sunday was Mother’s Day, the weekend was just pretty much a bust with productivity.

Fear not, though, because I plan to use this week wisely and get next week’s comics in the que and perhaps one or two more to create a buffer as well (a boy can dream can’t he?) So, again, sorry for no comics this week. Check out the archives if you are new here and thanks for all the support with everything guys, it means a lot

I heard news going around on Twitter early this morning that Frank Frazetta had passed away today. At first I believed it, though I didn’t want to, but as more tweets rolled in I couldn’t find any official word anywhere on the web that this rumor was fact. Sadly, the official word has come down and the rumor has turned into truth.

Many of my friends and family don’t recognize his name, but they all recognize his work. The fact that Frank Frazetta was one of the most prolific artists of his time and the fact that his art is easily at the top of the industry makes much of his work instantly recognizable to everyone. The linked article from Comics Beat speaks more eloquently about his art career and his projects better than I can in this short article, but did you know that Mr. Frazetta was also a baseball natural. In his early twenties he was offered, and seriously considered, a career in professional baseball. I read an article years ago, when I was a kid – which is ancient times here – that Frank Frazetta just knew baseball. Frank was a natural, he could just walk onto the baseball field and play flawlessly with the best of them, this was just the way Mr. Frazetta was.

Frank wasn’t just a natural on the baseball field, but a natural in the world of art as well. Published comic artist at 16 and successful fine artist up to the the age of 82. He inspired generations of artists and illustrators, myself included. His work guided my tastes in the direction of impressionism, science fiction, fantasy and illustration art. Mr. Frazetta probably did more to shape my life than anyone else has. I am the artist that I am today because of him and he and his work will be truly missed. Rest in peace sir, you deserve it.

Update on the summer schedule for the comic: sporadic or erratic at best. This month marks the twelfth month I have been creating the comic. The first year of the comc has been a huge success, now it’s time to step up the game.

This year was spent, mainly, finding my voice. The upcoming year will be spent refining that voice and making the comic look and read much better. To do that things are going to have slow down a little bit. What I mean by this is that I am going to have to begin creating art for the comic out of the desire to improve and not just to produce. I won’t go into great detail right now on how to acheive this, but updating the comic is going to change.

I know I’ve announced a lot of things coming up this summer and I plan to get to them all. There will be a comic book collecting the black and white strips and the BSG story should go up as well. The main thing to change is that the comic won’t go up on a regular schedule any more.

As usual I will announce new comics as they go up on my Twitter feed. I plan to get one up each week at least, unless things outside my control arises. I want to thank everyone for all the support over the past year, you guys are the reason the comic keeps improving and why it has come this far. Now let me get to work so we can have another great ten years