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Reading old Teen Titans trades ("Judas Contract" and "Who Is Donna Troy?") made me want to draw some Pérez-style rubble, so here you have it. I think it turned out well, but I got some details on the monkeys wrong (they're based on real plush toys belonging so some former co-workers of mine).

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It's been a while since I've managed to sqeeze in any drawing time, but this Chirstmas, I took some time to put together this collage of my girlfriend's dog, "Elvis". It's a total cheat of course, since I had the photos right in the Photoshop document for tracing and color sampling. Basically, it's a more refined version of the technique I used to draw my old cat "Sidney" way back when. It was still time-consuming, but I'm happy with the results.

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Had a few more episodes of bad TV to plow through tonight, resulting in this friendly little guy. From Shoujo to some kinda freaky Craig McCracken, Powerpuff Girls ripoff thingy. I think Dubyah's speech is getting to me. Let's blow some stuff up, starting with fuzzy slippers, and pixie sticks. Then we'll engage in a pre-emptive strike to put a stop to tea parties and E-Z Bake ovens before they are used against us. No, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

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I was apparently feeling a Shoujo vibe with this one, even though I haven't read any manga in years. I have no self control when I sit down to draw. I don't know what I'm doing here!

The poor WACOM has been gathering dust for so long, but I just had to veg out tonight with a pencil and some paper in front of dumb TV. It's been so long, I bet nobody will see this, but that's fine. Some day archeologists will uncover this site and marvel at the unrecognized genius of the magnificent -- GOLABUTRON!

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I don't know why I think anything is funny, but I enjoy abusing nameless cartoon characters through mean-spirited jump-cuts. I guess it's just me.

I needed to draw a robot... It's some kind of emotional addiction that I developed as a small child, when I would draw these epic tales of robots blowing other robots up. It was truly epic stuff. A much better drawing than this formed in my notebook during a meeting this morning, but of course that's relative.

I still don't understand how I can live in one of the most enlightened cities in the world, yet I don't get the Cartoon Network on Basic Cable. I miss Mister Thundercleese the most. There is an emptiness at the core of my being that thrives from his absense.

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Hey Stop! Read the comic first! Then skip the rant below!

I must be the most naive dweeb in the world. I read in my KQED magazine a couple weeks ago that HMOs are actually trying to purchase Club Card data from Safeway and other stores... and I was almost surprised! I knew it was a possibility, but I always thought that it was too evil, even for an insurance company to try. And I should have known better, being the son of an insurance agent.

Insurance companies hate one thing above all else: people who will actually file a claim some day. Their perfect business model is to have a huge pool of customers paying premiums for insurance they'll never need because they represent the peak of human perfection.

There is a solid argument that club card data can be correlated to health risk. It can hint at "high-risk" behaviors like heavy drinking, smoking, junk food binging, etc. Never mind all of the reasons why this data proves nothing... if there is a statistical correlation it will be used.

Club cards are scary all around, but usually not in ways that can affect your life as much as this HMO business. Usually it just means you get more junk mail, and eventually your shopping cart will bug you when it's time to swap the sour milk at the back of the fridge for a fresh carton. I can live with all of that because it doesn't cost me. It does bug me that before long, the only way anybody will be able to afford food is to sign up for one of these things. Luckily, good ol' laissez faire will someday lead to the mind-boggling innovation of clubless grocery stores, where the prices are low for everybody who comes in and wants to spend money there. I can't wait...

For now, of course, the only solution is to subvert the system as much as possible. Use fake names, or avoid using the cards for as long as that is an option. But I would argue against trading cards with a friend, lest you pay for their bad habits later on.

Anyway, rant terminated.

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It's been a while since I did anything with this weblog's namesake, and this just seemed like something fun to draw at a time when inspiration is running kinda dry. I used a mechanical pencil and some felt-tip pens (and a sheet of paper!). And I have to say that the Sharpie is the greatest pen ever created. And that's not just the fumes talking!

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More random goodness. The woman is imaginary, but I own one of the Ty plush Godzillas that her companion is based on.

I drew this while watching the first disk of Babylon 5's new Season One boxed set. I was underwhelmed when B5 first aired, but when the 5-year arc started to kick in, I was hooked. It's still one of my favorite TV shows of all time. I'm enjoying Season One, but I'm really biding my time until the Season Two set comes out early next year. Bruce Boxleitner rocks!

I wish I could update this site more often, but my daily life is rather on the exhausting side these days. Pity me!

One of my roommates and I had a pumpkin-carving party on Sunday. This is my contribution. Kathleen said all of my Jack-O-Lanterns look like they have deep concerns for the future. Is this another one of those "sometimes a jack-o-lantern is just a jack-o-lantern" moments?

The photo was stolen and cropped from Pat's collection. Go check it out and bring his DSL to its knees!

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Yet another pencil sketch. The instinct to hit "UNDO" is burned in now, thanks to all the time using the Wacom tablet. Man, I'm such a slob!

More bad art! That old chestnut, the disembodied brain in a cyborg body! My classroom notes were coated with these things. I skipped using the Wacom, and drew this with a very modern mechanical pencil while watching the third Andromeda DVD. Here goes my last shred of geek cred, but I'm starting to really like that show. The episode where the captain makes contact with his old girlfriend from 300 years in the future has won me over. It's cheesy sci-fi time-travelling melodrama at its best. And to think I have four whole seasons to go before I'm caught up!

I just needed to draw something tonight because it's been so long. I don't have much to say other than 1) Rush job, 2) I like Gnomes, and 3) if this one had a caption it would be "Is it safe to come out yet?" I just had kind of a trying week.

BTW, OWNZORED is ongoing, but I think I've got it under as much control as I'm going to for now. I'm not as freaked out as I was last week, at least.

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Okay, here is "Random Chick" #2. I was mostly playing around with tinting and other goofy Photoshop tricks this time.

The locale is kinda sorta the Twin Peaks tourist trap, which is a quick jaunt from my house on Panorama Dr. in San Francisco. That's supposed to be Sutro tower looming in the background, much as it always does around here. The perspective and placement is all wrong, but she's probably looking straight at Market Street, which cuts through the center of downtown with its blinding array of streeet lights.

I wandered up to Twin Peaks tonight and spent about an hour vegging at the view of San Francisco and the surrounding area. It sometimes still blows my mind that I actually live in "the city" after all these years. It's a weird paradoxical feeling, since you can only feel so special for living in a big city, being surrounded as you are by millions of other people who all live there too. But it's something I've always wanted to do, and I'm gonna enjoy it while I can.

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BONUS: Original sketch! (9k)

I've always liked the dumb Hulk the most. I think a lot of us can relate to that feeling that the whole world is out to get us. Of course, I never had Thunderbolt Ross commanding a battalion of tanks to interupt my solitude. Not yet, anyway.

I scribbled this on a sheet of paper (gasp!) and traced a scan with the Wacom to get the clean lines... the most indirect one yet! I like this techniques because I can watch TV and draw at the same time. I got a half hour or so into Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky earlier, and now that I'm done with my silly image of the day, I'm going to finish it off!

Side Note: I like how when I squint at this drawing it looks kind of like a disembodied brain. What does this mean, I wonder?

Some days, you just have to appreciate the little things in life and forget all of the troubles of being the henchman of an evil warlord bent on crushing the universe between the gloved fingers of his star-spanning gauntlet of merciless dominion.

This is the kind of thing that seems funny at 1am, but probably won't seem funny after I've had some sleep. I spent the majority of this weekend trying to clean my room and reading James Kochalka comics. Plus a bunch of other stuff like meeting up with Kathleen to catch a Midnight Madness showing of Harold and Maude, watching the Critereon DVD of The Seven Samurai twice (the second time was for the awesome commentary), and picking up Capcom vs. SNK for the GameCube and getting beaten down by my roommate. The mess has been reduced, but it still looms. Overall, a good weekend.

All right, I confess, I am a cat person!

I felt like cheating tonight by tracing a photograph on the Wacom. It's not as easy or precise as I thought it would be, but eh... not bad for a half hour's work I say!

I miss Sidney. He's still alive and well (I assume) living with a friend who can provide a much better home than I was able to. She calls him "Sid" rather than the fully-expanded "Sidney," as if he weren't a big pansey. (No offense to all you Sidneys out there!)

I had to give Sidney up (along with his neurotic buddy Waldo) when my life went haywire last year, and I think they're both better off because of it.

I brought Sidney home shortly after my first cat, Illyana, died in late 1997. Check out the online memorial I made for her at the time if you're so inclined. It's very sappy, but it did help me out to write it at the time, and I hear other people who stumble across it have found some comfort there.

Some day I want to have cats again, but it will have to wait until I have my life a little more together... like in ten years or so.

CLICK FOR YOUR RDA OF SHAMELESS DRAGON ART! (60k)

Awwww.... Isn't that just adorable?

Yeah, I know... *RETCH*!

It's been a while since I've posted any "new" art here, so here's one that I've had on the backburner for a while.

This dragon started out as a napkin scribble during last week's Pub Trivia night. I used the tracing slide on the Wacom for the first time to bring the scribble into the digital world and finished it off there. Pretty nifty feature, since one of my biggest problems with the tablet is that the shapes always come out more flat than I would like.

This one is kind of rushed, but I like how it turned out. My goal was to be in bed by midnight... well it's 12:02 so better luck next time!

CLICK FOR INCREASED SHAREHOLDER VALUE! (36k)

This is the first of a series of Icon-Based "Lost Episodes". Years ago, Pat and Bapper came up with a bunch of ideas for Icon-Based strips that, for whatever reason, I never bothered to draw. They even went as far as to fully script and lay out a few of their ideas, which I still have in my big ol' Bastich art folder. Now that I'm drawing semi-regularly again, I'm going to blindly implement these old scripts without concern for whether they are dated, unfunny or otherwise detrimental to the health of our great society. You have been warned!

This first strip was actually laid out by me, but I'm pretty sure it came from a collectively drunken night at the Icon-Based HQ. There was a scribbled note in my handwriting next to the final panel saying to change the punchline to something that's actually funny. Well, sorry buddy - you snooze you lose!

It's been a while since I've drawn a battle chicken for this blog, and I wanted something quick to do, so here it is. I was trying to reclaim my white trash heritage, but I think I've fallen out of the trailer for good. Enjoy!

CLICK FOR MINDLESS BLISS (76K)

No, this is not Rick Hunter! Unless you want him to be, in which case, be my guest!

This is the antidote to "WEEP DAY" from a few weeks ago. I deliberately set out to draw something stupidly "happy" this time. I used the same "technique" as I did with WEEP DAY, which basically amounts to smudging all of the paint around until I like what I see. It's a very mind-numbing process, which was exactly what I needed. I'm still digesting everything that happened at the reunion last Saturday. I feel happy about how it went, yet I also feel emotionally devastated. I could really use some mindless cheer tonight, so here I go.

Rock Solid OS, my arse! I managed to totally crash OS X during my first pass at this drawing, losing all of my work and having to start all over (no, I'll never learn). I was impressed at how friendly OS X's version of the BSOD is, though. The screen goes dim and a pretty little dialog box floats in with some hex codes and instructions on how to hard reboot (hit the "on" button twice -- of course!). I could blame the Wacom drivers, which are still in Beta, but it's more fun to blame Steve.

Tonight is my 10 year High School Reunion, so I'm heading home for most of the weekend. Enjoy this cheesy cartoon, which got more and more rushed as I worked left to right (bombshell first, of course)...

I'm still not sure what I hope to get from this reunion. I won't know anybody there since my friends were mostly in other classes. I think my main motivation is that I don't want to regret not going. But I'm not too worried. Worst case scenario: it sucks and I'm out $60, but I still get to spend the rest of the weekend with my family. So it's not a huge risk.

(BONUS: This is the first "published" Bastich drawing since, I dunno, 1998! Whee!)

CLICK OR YIELD TO THE BAP-O-MATIC! (42.2k)

I worked on this comic last night, but I started too late in the evening to finish before exhaustion took its unforgiving toll, so here it is a day later than intended.

WARNING: This strip is not necessarily funny. It was based on a suggestion from Pat, but nothing here is to be considered his fault. The joke was perfectly served by Pat's one-line IRC message to me, but it sounded like it would be fun to draw so I went for it. I didn't put much effort into the dialog this time. My goal was to see if I could do a better job on the art than the last Icon-Based, and at least there I think I succeeded. The rule seems to be that Mtn. Dewd has to be shaking his fists in frustration by the 3rd or 4th panel. Hey, it's a winning formula!

Icon-based newbies should read this old gem from four years ago for the first appearance of the BAP-O-MATIC. That one is a favorite of mine across the whole IB/Bastich canon.

This also marks the return of the bearded BAPPER! Yay! Just in time for the real Bapper to announce that he's once again clean-shaven yuppie scum. Well, I give up, man! Bapper and Mtn. Dewd are staying AS IS from now on! Quit getting married and cutting your hair, ya freaks!

I have fond memories of the original Icon-Based days. I spent a great deal of my last semester at Chico State hanging out at the Pat-and-Bapper pad. I was kind of going through a "rough patch" at the time, so I really appreciate the friendship they offered, which helped keep me sane. They were also an excellent source of material. Most of the old "Icon-based" strips were group written or at least inspired by some conversation we had over too many beers. I have a folder full of unused ideas from those guys, most of it indecipherable after all these years. It was just a huge, fun time, that eventually had to end when we all packed up and headed off to start our "adult" lives...

Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

PS: Sorry about the gnarly font. I built the whole thing out at 4x its published size, and Helvetica doesn't look quite as good at 10pt as it did at 40. Oh well. Back to the hellspawn, Arial!

CLICK OR DON'T! (49k)

I got about 1/3rd through my real drawing for tonight, and decided it was time for bed. Here is a quick one because I've gone too many nights without posting.

I need to start drawing before 1am on work nights!

CLICK TO SEE WHAT HAS OL' GUTHRIE HERE SO SPOOKED! (82k)

This was a failed experiment from a few nights ago that I attempted to resuscitate tonight. This is one of those cases where I wanted to draw something fun and quick, but the actual execution took longer than the idea was probably worth. It also served as a reminder of just how poorly noisy line art compresses in either GIF or JPEG! 82K for 400x400 black and white!? Highway robbery!

But no matter what, you just gotta love that cowboy! Any similarities between the crowd and any living persons is completely unintentional and I blame the Wacom, and that's the story I'm sticking to.

CLICK FOR GRATUITOUS ANGST! (53k)

Tonight, in an effort to acheive some sort of arty "emotional range," I set out to draw the weepiest thing I could think of, so here we are. This guy is obviously upset about something. Probably found a crease in his copy of Sandman #1 or can't find his Floodland CD.

I used a different "technique" than I've been using up till now, so it's even more rough than usual. I didn't use any linework, and just splattered a bunch of "paint" around to get the shapes and details. It turned out okay for the subject matter.

I'm finding it hard to maintain my required minimum angst level these days, but I will be strong. Weepiness is a core element of my being and I will never surrender! NEVER!

CLICK FOR MORE WESLEY'S BARNEY SMACK-DOWN! (71k)

This lovely image is in honor of tonight's EFF/CAFE fundraiser at the DNA Lounge featuring the real-life Wil Wheaton taking on Barney the Dinosaur (or an EFF lawyer dressed up like Barney). The stunt is based on an old on-line match-up between the two from years ago... I bet those guys never thought their little joke would get played out in real life, did they?

If you're reading this, it's probably already too late for you to go. Thanks to Pat (and a hard-earned $50 donation), I've got a VIP pass, Suckaz! Pat is, of course, the EFF's webmaster, and will be participating as one of Barney's Lawyers. I anticipate heckling the poor fool the whole way through.

The one thing that weirds me out is that I'll be hanging out with the other VIPs and the man, Wil Wheaton, himself. I'm not one of the huge Wesley Crusher detractors, but even if I were I wouldn't hold it against him, since he was just ACTING! But I'm also not sure how to act around celebrities. I tend to want to treat them like normal people, but they're at a disadvantage because I always know more about them than they know about me...

Anyway, enough with this dalliance. To the DNA Lounge at once!

CLICK TO EXPERIENCE FREAK-FEST #1 (31k)

All right, this is very vintage me. I used to draw stuff like this every day. Just random characters, whose design was fueled by some combination whimsey, hormones and media mind control.

Drawing the "Leather Babe" character in this image reminded me of a large part of why I stopped drawing regularly years ago... my lame tendency toward the politically correct. I realized at some point that I was drawing these impossible women, which of course meant I was an oppressor of women everywhere. So I stopped drawing one of the most fun things there is in the whole wide world to draw. Well, not any more! Tomorrow: Amazon armies! (Not really)

Not surprisingly the Wacom tablet is getting easier to use every night. I'm starting to whittle it down to the same problems I always have while drawing. I have the advantage of unlimited redos, and as many layers of "blueline" as I need to rough out a drawing... but that can't make me any better at anatomy or composition, except through dumb luck...

Lou is my favorite of the three freaks, of course.

BEHOLD - THE (UN)ORIGINAL BATTLE CHICKEN! (21k)

Okay, this is lame but I felt the need to post something today to make up for my laziness last night. This one happened to be out, and I remember Pat asking me if I could scan it in, so here it is, only five billion beej seconds later.

As previously stated, I love drawing these birdie beasts of burden for a number of reasons. This one was scratched out on the back of the "visual" for that week's pub trivia at the Mayflower (though I can't remember which week that was any more). The front side is a photograph of one of those babies that was lost in a well, cruelly augmented with cybernetic implants by some insensitive git.

This also happens to be the one that Kathleen commented on, though I resent the implication that I am a one-dimensional, poultry-obsessed appliance!

CLICK FOR THE EXTREME PATENT EXCITEMENT! (40k)

I was talking to Beej a few nights ago about the ActiveBuddy patent, and how incredibly lame it was. I decided to try and comment on it via a comic strip, and this is what I came up with. The art is incredibly rushed, but I think I made the point I was aiming for.

Normally, icon-based would include Bapper as well, but I only needed one character so poor Mtn. Dewd "won" out. He just seemed the natural character to use since he gets dicked around so much in real life. :)

BTW, this is the first online comic strip I have done since 1998, when the last icon-based came out. Woo-hoo!

CLICK THE HELMET HEAD FOR FULL CAMP EXPOSURE! (78k)

Today's image is a confessional piece... it's me owning up to probably the single most embarassing recurring character from my late-80's art book.

The Scarlet Seagul was yet another old RPG character of mine from way back, this time for TSR's Marvel Super Heroes game. The most notable thing about him was his origin, which should sound familiar. Once a wimpy lab geek, "John Hammer" found super powers thrust upon him after being hit with an irradiated bird dropping, transforming him into a bulging Arnold Schwarzeneggar stand-in. He immediately used his newfound strength and agility to fight crime inside the flight suit he had been working on for the science fair. His character sheet lists Hank Pym and Shadowcat as his primary contacts within the Marvel Universe.

But, hey! What's not to love? SS has it all... a stylized comb/razor-sharp mohawk, wannabe Gatchamon bird helmet, Archangle wings and Tony Stark's own patented metallic leotard design. And who could resist those comfy-looking talon tabi boots?

I must never allow myself to forget.

I always had a hard time taking RPG characters seriously. My characters were usually pretty ludicrous, and my playing quickly devolved into comic relief, as I found it more and more difficult to keep a straight face. I once played an entire campaign as a drunk swordsman... a good five years before I bothered having a drink in real life!

I wonder why nobody ever asked me back to play any more RPGs..?

CLICK FOR TRENCHCOAT FUN! (21k)

This was another quick flight of whimsey. Frendo Preston was an RPG character of mine from way back (>12 years). The RPG was either TSR's Marvel Super Heroes or Teenagers From Outer Space... but you would swear it was from Paladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles based on how I drew the character... Hey, TMNT smacked me over the head in the late 80's as I dug back in time into the source material for the cartoon. It was bound to influence my style!

Frendo has always been a favorite doodle of mine because I love trenchcoats. Since the dawn of time I've always wanted one, but I resolved myself to the idea that I would never find one that fit me (one of the main disadvantages to being 6'7" is looking like your mother even gave up dressing you). And of course, now it's all passe to wear trenchcoats so the point is moot.

You'll notice in this drawing my two biggest weaknesses... guns and shoes. I can't draw either realistically. But hey, if Rob Liefeld could make a carreer out of Toaster Cannons and pointy little feet, then I can get away with my automatic cigar box!

Tonight's output is wimpy because I am very sleepy, but it turned out okay for the ~20 minutes I spent on it. Genma Saotome is the father from the manga/anime Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi - but you already knew that!

Ranma 1/2 is bar-none my favorite manga series. I don't know how it plays in Japan, but as an American I particularly appreciate how it generally takes the piss out of gender politics, yet pulls it off in a pure, good-natured fashion. With our fidgety ways in this country, Ranma 1/2 should make me feel dirty, but instead it just makes me laugh.

Maybe tomorrow I'll come up with something original rather than ripping off the work of yet another creator!

CLICK SPIDEY FOR A LARGER IMAGE! (60k)

Kathleen probably predicted this centuries ago. How long could I resist my Marvel Zombie brainwashing..? Well, 4 days I guess...

But -- Oh, the humanity! I had such high hopes for this one, and so much went wrong! What possessed me to attempt such a difficult character so early in my Wacom tablet boot camp? I'm still having a lot of coordination problems, obviously. The webbing was a real challenge, and the head just kept coming out melon-shaped, so eventually I just went with it. It may be that I am permanently on the path of further cartoon abstraction, since this isn't anything close to what Stan Lee & John Buscema taught me all those years ago in "How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way"... I think James Kochalka, Brian Ralph and the rest have had an irreparable effect on my style. Hmmm... well I guess I can live with that.

CLICK FOR MORE G-RATED FUN! (20k)

Second only to the Battle Chicken is the "random anonymous chick" drawing. If I'm on autopilot, this is the kind of thing I'm most likely to draw, which isn't too surprising since, well, all indications to the contrary, I AM A GUY! I try my best to draw "realistic" women, or at least as much so as my style allows for these days... if these pics are driven by some inner desire, it's more sappy than prurient.

If I keep my promise to myself that I will post a new drawing to this blog every day, then there will probably be many many "random chicks" on here before too long. And battle chickens. But most of all battle chicks on random chickens... or something like that... I gotta stop posting these things half asleep...

The color saved this image from the bin... I think... I'm doing all of this stuff on a laptop computer, so there's a chance the skin is all wrong. If the skin is bright pink or maroon or green and silver paisley, please keep this in mind!

BTW... does anybody have a suggestion for a better word than "chick"? I know some people find the word a bit offensive when used to describe women, but what I'm looking for is something that has the same weight as the word "guy" does for men... something that is less condescending than "girl" and less formal than "woman" or "young lady" or whatever... Most of the women I know use the word "chick" for this purpose, but I can understand why others would have a hard time accepting it.

Just an experiment everybody has to try out I guess. What do I think I look like, rather than the haggard stranger I see in the mirror every morning and those poor souls at work have to look at every day... apparently I have no face.

A little bit about me.
This is the part where I officially go all out and talk about myself as if anybody should care... Just think of it as if you're eavesdropping on some psycho having a conversation with himself, and you'll probably enjoy it more.

Anyway, I was born in Southern California in 1974 and grew up primarily in the northern extremities of the San Francisco Bay Area. And by "grew up" I mean I managed to reach 6'7" before my frightening ascent into freakdom finally halted when I hit college. And by "college" I mean California State University, Chico, where I acquired a BS in Computer Science and almost but not quite a Masters in the same subject. Along the way I worked the student helpdesk and had a 2-year stint as an intern at Hewlett-Packard, all along putting out a weekly comic strip for the campus paper called "The Bastich" that had a parallel existence on the web from 1995 to 1998.

Now I work in San Francisco as a web developer for an interactive ad agency. My focus has been in building web sites and branded video games, but I also work on banner ads and other fun marketing stuff. I do a ton of server-side coding as well as plenty of client-side Flash, DHTML and Java coding... a combination that keeps the job satisfying overall.

Comics!
I'm a huge comic book geek... which should come as no surprise if you've seen the illustrations I've been posting to this webblog. I was going to be a cartoonist until I "discovered" computers and opted for a more secure future. Now I have a job where I can straddle the line between my two childhood goals, and play both technical and creative roles on a regular basis.

Music...
My favorite band is They Might Be Giants, the one band in the world I would consider flying across the country to see play... However, there are a lot of big contenders in my own little pantheon, including Talking Heads, XTC, Frank Black, James, and Placebo. 80's New Wave in general also dominates my listening time. I am just a complete sucker for cheese...

Outlook...
I have to say -- right now is one of the better periods of my life so far. The past year was a nice little stretch of hell between my own personal set-backs (layoffs, breakups, you know the drill) and of course all of the national ultra-disasters and escalating fear and loathing on a global scale...

But right now, I have a good job where I feel I'm carrying my own weight, an excellent group of friends, and a kick-ass family. Until my next personal disaster, I'm going to enjoy these good times while I can. I could use a bit of romance, of course... something that will take a lot of effort for me to bring back into my life, but sooner or later one of my hair-brained schemes will pan out!

BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF THE BATTLE CHICKEN! (70k)

It has been brought to my attention that I draw more than my fair share of "Battle Chickens" and the truth is I just can't get enough of them. They're about the easiest thing to draw in the world because they look cool and are almost completely immune to intrusive and annoying issues such as "anatomy" and "plausibility". In fact, I've noticed that including a Battle Chicken automatically grants the illustrator full diplomatic immunity from making any sort of sense at all. It's as if, once you decide to toss in such a baffling beast of burden, a disbelief-suspension field is created and spread across the canvas, and the viewer's mind simply quits trying to apply reason to anything he or she is seeing. Mobius and Vaughn Bode both used this technique to great effect, driving entire generations of teenagers to a life of drugs, psychedelia and Paladium RPGs way before their time.

This drawing is also a rare attempt at coloring... I'm mostly a black-and-white kind of guy, because as anyone who has seen my wardrobe will attest, I am not to be trusted with color. To make matters worse, I'm working on a laptop computer, where experience tells me what I see on the screen is highly suspect.

The Wacom tablet continues to grow on me. Coloring with the stylus was a breeze, freeing me from the paint bucket and all of its potential for aliasing away all of my happiness!

"CLICK ME FOR A LARGER IMAGE, EARTHLING!"

Welcome to my first weblog entry. What can I say, everybody else is doing it! I intend to use this weblog to post random thoughts and doodles as they come to me. This is still shaky territory since I'm hardly an extrovert, but it just looks so fun, I have to try it out!

Who the heck is this "GOLABUTRON?!"
Golabutron first appeared here, years ago, in an old online comic strip of mine called "The Bastich". He's basically just a wannabe over-the-top, megalomaniacal, Darth Vader villain-type who was going to invade the Earth some day. The funny thing is that I just now realized how drastically his design has changed since then, including a complete shift of his superfluous tubing from the back to the front of his head. Now he's gone from Darth Vader to the scumbag who ratted Luke and Obi-Wan out at Mos Eisley. How did this happen! I have no clue. Call it a theme. Anyway, I've always liked the name, so now it's the title of my weblog.

How WACOM has ruined my life
So my first doodle (above) was created with my brand-spanking new Wacom Intuos2 4x5" graphics tablet. I'm obviously still working on technique here.

This purchase is actually a huge step for me, as I've been kind of a ludite artwise for the past few years. I realized a while ago that I wasn't a such great artist, but that most of my enjoyment in illustration basically came from shoving lead and ink around a sheet of paper anyway... so I've never been big on 3D rendering or even vector art because it was always so detatched from the pacifying experience I yearn for. Staring at meshes is not what I really want to do right now.

Don't get me wrong... this isn't some debate on what is "art" and what isn't. This is the kind of thing you always hear blurted out in art classes: "It isn't art if you didn't make it with your own hands!" Well, I say thee nay! Art is so utterly in the eye of the beholder that I'm not sure there's anything in all of creation that doesn't qualify somehow. Every new technology is going to be challenged in this way. Just wait until the robots start writing music! What! You say they already are!? Well, eventually it will be just the robots creating art for other robots, so we may as well get used to it now.

Anyway, it's meaningful to me on some primal level to doodle, and I hope this new Wacom tablet will free me up to do cooler things without losing what I enjoy about this stuff in the first place.

But MAN, is it a pain to learn. It's better than using a mouse by far, but I'm still having major coordination problems across the board. Nevertheless, I intend to plow through this and become the Wacom Master.