Archive for ‘Blog’

46 items.

From the mind of my 3 yr old

May 18th, 2009

So it’s been a rough couple of weeks and somehow my 3 yr old son knew the best way to cheer me up today. I try to get him to draw all the time and for a while he loved to draw with me but lately he’d rather play games, put together puzzles or play with his geo-tracks, but today he must have realized I was bummed out because he came up to me and said “we should lay on our bellies and draw”. So here are the masterpieces from the mind of a 3 year old. There’s no possible way you’ll enjoy them as much as I do, but hopefully you’ll dig them anyway.

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Endings and Such

June 2nd, 2009

So one of my favorite webcomics has ended. We the Robots hasn’t been updating at all lately, so it’s not really a surprise, but it’s still depressing. That makes two of my favorite comics that have ended this year (the other being Ugly Hill). I’m pretty impressed and happy with the way both have ended, though I’d much rather them keep going.

Ending a serialized story in a way that is satisfying to the die-hard fans is a pretty tricky thing. I remember a lot of people hating the way Seinfeld ended, but I thought it was brilliant – how else could you end a show like that but with something completely unexpected and pointless.

All that being said, I know exactly how As the Grass Grows will end when the time comes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping that day doesn’t come for a long time, but the idea of how to end it came to me before I even committed to doing a regular strip. It’s one of those things that just makes sense (no I’m not telling… you’ll just have to stick around to the end).

So anyway, if anyone has any suggestions for good webcomics that will get me out of my current depression let me know.

-Brad

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Preview of a new character

June 17th, 2009

Just wanted to give you a quick preview of a new character that will be in an upcoming storyline…

ferret

Yes… he’s a ferret

-Brad

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Video of me drawing a strip

July 10th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago I started playing around with Ustream so last night I recorded the process I go through to draw a strip. You can check it out on the Extras page. I always find it interesting to see the tools people use and the process they go through when they draw so I wanted to give  a little insight into what I do.

I plan to do more live broadcasts in the future, so if you’re interested in watching me live, follow me on twitter and I’ll let you know when it happens.

-Brad

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The latest storyline

August 18th, 2009

The latest storyline is in full swing, so I figured I’d give you a little info about it. If you noticed, it’s called “Homeland” so you can probably guess where it’s headed. I’m not giving anything away by saying that the gnomes are on strike, so of course it will be up to Gnorm to fix it. Which means he’ll have to be traveling back to the gnomish homeland, Gnomania. Gnomania has been in my head since before the strip started and I originally had a different story in mind to take Gnorm back there, but when the idea of a gnomish strike came up, I had to run with it.

Along the way, we’re going to be seeing a lot more gnomes and a little bit of the gnomish culture. Should be a lot of fun.

-Brad

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Anniversaries

October 1st, 2009

So the strip turned 1 year old last month. Yes, I completely missed it. Shows how big of a deal it is to me, huh? Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud to have only missed one update in a year, but really, I’m more interested in numerical milestones (the 100th strip is coming up soon) than dates where the strip is concerned.

There were also a lot of other things going on last month that caused me to push the 1 year anniversary of the strip down on my priority list. I left my day job for a new one, my son started his first day of preschool, and, most importantly, my wife and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary with what will most likely be our last vacation without kids for the next 15 to 20 years.

So no celebration. Nothing special going on. I’m just going to keep plugging away trying to make the best strip I can and at the same time trying to grow the readership. As always, I really appreciate all the support I’ve been getting. I’m really excited to explore Gnomania more and to let you guys know the outcome of this storyline.

Maybe we’ll have a celebration next year.

-Brad

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100

November 2nd, 2009

Wow, 100 strips… pretty crazy. Actually, it’s funny because sometimes I’ll look back through the archives and won’t even remember drawing some of them. I guess that’s a good thing because it means I’m looking forward and not dwelling too much on each strip. Honestly, it’s kinda nice to take a step back every now and then and take in the entirety of what I’ve done over the last year and some weeks. Wait, that sounded pretty arrogant… “yeah, look at me, I’m awesome because I drew 100 comic strips”. Actually, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Self-confidence has never been a virtue of mine (I am an artist, after all), but for someone who has had trouble over the years getting things started and then actually following through, it’s a pretty big accomplishment.

So I wanted to take a sec to say thanks to everyone who has supported me over the last year, especially my wife, Sarah, for not only putting up with me spending all that time drawing but also for helping me get through some bouts with writer’s block and brainstorming ideas with me. You’re the best!

-Brad

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My Robot Friend Gnomo-Z

November 4th, 2009

Gnomo-Z In case you haven’t been to my links page lately, my friend Sean recently started a new site called MyRobotFriends.com. It’s a really cool concept – he creates an illustration featuring one of his friends as a robot in a different style that suits their particular brand of robot-ness.

Anyway, I have the honor of being this week’s featured robot (you can see the thumbnail preview here but you really should click it to go to the site). Sean drew a really awesome manga-style gnome-bot that I must rip off and incorporate into a future strip at some point :-)

Also, Sean is a web designer, so his site is pretty sweet. So go check it out and go back every week for more roboty goodness.

-Brad

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Vetrans Day

November 11th, 2009

Just wanted to take a minute to say thank you to all of the men and women in the military. Almost all of us know someone who is or has served (my cousin Chris is on his way to Afganistan right now) so hopefully everyone lets them know how much we appreciate them doing the hard work so we can have the freedom be silly back here at home. Stay safe.

Thanks,
Brad

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Goodbye to a friend

December 3rd, 2009

GeequeIf you follow me on twitter, you probably know that a few weeks ago, the real-life inspiration for Jack had to be put to sleep. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now. I wanted to do a sort of tribute strip (which is up today), but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the Homeland storyline that was going on.

Geeque (strange name, I know) was a good little dog, if a little high strung. I always had a feeling his tendencies to freak out at every little beep or knock or gust of wind would cause him to have a shorter life than he deserved. Dachshunds are prone to back problems and that can be made worse when they freak out, jump off the couch, run to the end table and try to jump up to destroy the phone every time it rings. But he was always there to cheer us up when we were sad or make us laugh with some weird little thing he did.

Hopefully dog heaven doesn’t have telephones or dryers with buzzers. We miss you buddy.

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