November 26th, 2007

Hoo boy, I wish I could've spoken to this guy writing this blog about 6 months ago, and told him about the bottom sort of falling out on the whole school thing. I just re-read that last sentence I wrote. perhaps If i knew then what I know now, I wouldn't  have been so callous. But then, I guess that was the whole point of being callous. Short story is, the loans kind of dried up, and here I was without a job. Things got rough. The upshot is, I got a new job way out on the west side, doing the Layout/ad design for a little newspaper.   Pretty cool, I think. It proves I can get hired to do this thing. Scheduling classes has been the new obstacle.  with only classes offered in the middle of the day, it makes having a job difficult.  The irony is, as soon as I can swing going back to night school, and working a real 9-5, I will.  So that's a little story I like to call the most fascinating thing ever.

March 1st, 2007

I almost have two quarters under my belt.  I am learning a great deal both in class and on my own.  I decided a couple months ago that it would be in my best interest to go a little faster.  At part time, I will not Graduate until late 2010.  If I throw caution to the wind and quit my job to go to school, I could finish as early as summer of 2008.  Big difference.  So this April I'm going ahead with that idea.  I've registered for four classes, 16 credit hours, and loans be damned.   

September 17th, 2006.

Well the big news is that I'm going back to school!  I've been Accepted into The Illinois Institute of Art- Chicago, And I will be starting October 2nd.  The preparations for that have kept me very busy, and I have seriously neglected adding to this site.  But today, I just FINALLY finished the first Martin comic.  It is all done, and ready to be seen on the Martin page.   I am very excited to be going back to school.  It has been a long time, but I believe I am up to the challenge.      

June 5th, 2006

A few weeks ago a remarkable thing happened.  I got paid to draw!  A co-worker of mine was getting married soon and wanted to write a small book about her fiance.  It was kind of a cute little story of his life from childhood on, and she wanted illustrations with it.  I think I did a pretty good job ( I'll post them soon in the "Sketches and other oddities" section), and she paid me- and quite well I might add- to do it.  Believe it or not it's a new experience for me.  It made me see that this was possible,  that I could really do this and make a living (that's a ways off, but I'm thinking big).  As a friend of mine  always says: "If you're good enough at what you do, somebody will pay you for it."

May 26th, 2006

The list grows and grows of things I want to do here.  It sure is a lot of fun, though.  As you may have seen, I've been working on the new Webcomic.  The whole "Martin" concept is based on a socialist friend of mine, Mike, and his adventures trying to fight the good fight.   I just visited him and his family yesterday in Kalamazoo, Michigan, so I am brimming with ideas.     

May 8th, 2006

Just added a new section to the ROMAN page.  It's an archive of the stuff I did early on for the paper.  This was real rough and not as neat.  I didn't have as sure a hand as I do now.  But the funny was there from the begining.  This week I've been cataloging the strips to keep track of what I've posted and where.  I didn't realize there was so many.  There were some definite duds that I had to scrap, like one referencing the Rosie O'Donnel show. Yeesh.  That will not see the light of day.  Work progresses slowly but surely on LOW BROW#3.  I'm analyzing the script, breaking it down into managable chunks. I guess the first step is seperating the story into things that pop out as something that can be presented visually, things that can only be communicated in words, and things that could or should be both.  It's a fun but slow process. 

May 2nd, 2006

So I've gotten most of my work posted now.  I still need to add pages from Low Brow #2 so you all can see it.  But next is the fun/hard part: new projects.  I have two things that demand my imediate attention.  I will be starting to write a script for Low Brow #3: Junior gets short end, part 2.  The story itself came from a story a friend of mine told me, and I recorded.  So I've transcribed the recording, and now I need to type it up and begin analyzing the script, break it into beats,  and separate the narration from the dialogue.  It's the real foundation building that I dig a lot.  The lump of clay starts to be formed.  This will begin what so far has been a long, slow process. I enjoy it, and I learn a ton about comics everytime I do an issue.  The other thing that's on the shelf is I want to start publishing a web-exclusive comic. You may have noticed the space on the home page already.  "Martin" is about an alien race living on a distant planet.  The title character is a hum drum ship mechanic, until he gets one antenna bent in an accident, and he suddenly can see the world in a whole new way.  This will be a colorfull, fun, adventure comic with political undertones, and my biggest project to date.  I will keep you up to date with my progress.  To fun and creation!

April 25th, 2006

Pardon  our dust.  We're building a media empire.  I added a lot more strips today, as well as a few pages from my book, Low Brow.  I'll be continuing to push all the material onto the web until I get the bulk of my work viewable.  Look for the new section I created with the Roman Sunday pieces.  I'm having a lot of fun doing this, as you might have noticed.   Here's a picture of me at my old apartment.  I built a pully system off my balcony, so I could bring my bike inside at night.

April 24th, 2006

Yesterday's experiment was a success.   Google makes it really user friendly.  I built the skeleton to the site and uploaded about 40 strips.  Today I added about 10 more ROMAN's, and added two more links: now you can see some 'Barry' cartoons as well as 'Union Corner', a series I did for the paper when I was getting burned out on ROMAN.  The stuff you're going to see is more recent, when I really started to figure out what I was doing, and knew a lot about paper, ink, and composition.  Later, I'll post some of the early stuff, when I was drawing with a ballpoint on computer paper.  There were a lot more fighter-jets shooting at dinasoars, too.  I don't even know what that has to do with anything. 

April 23rd, 2006

Well here it is, the long awaited Paperbag website.  Long, that is, because I've been wanting to do this for so long, and have bveen dragging my feet.  I live in Chicago, and I just moved in with my girlfriend in awesome, awesome, Logan Square.   So there's been a bit of time off to focus on that and everything that goes with it.  But now the desk is set up, the internet is installed, the gluetraps  are set.  Look for this site to grow quickly.  And I'll be keeping notes on how the progress is going. (THIS IS NOT A BLOG.  I'm not wasting anyone's time spewing hatred on the latest Family Guy episode or complaining about how lame and embarrassing my little brother is.)  So today, I'm going to start by putting some Roman Strips on here.  Let's see how that goes.