An internet hug from Ira Glass

A nice piece that certainly applies to anyone making art.



parts 1, 2 and 4 are pretty interesting as well.

Know Your Rights!

actually, Complete Control would be a better Clash reference for this story...

caution: when you see this label, run:



so chances are you may of heard of the new tokyopop contract-y thing[pdf] going around. apparently it seems to be written in "friendly" non-legalese ("hey stupid, you should be able to understand this!"). it's actually written in sleazy con-artist-ese.

anyway brian lee o'malley has posted a reponse on his blog. it's definitely worth a read. he breaks it down, and nails all the important bits. go read it.

in closing, fuck tokyopop.

James Bond

Penguin Books updated the James Bond novels with new cover designs featuring the art of Michael Gillette, proving that books should be judged by their covers after all. If you bought any of these, I think you'd be obligated to store them cover-out on your bookshelf.

Another one bites the dust

Hey everyone I got engaged! Yay! Below is a picture of my fiance.

MOTRO on new ACT-I-VATE website launch!!!

There's a new website for ACT-I-VATE, the webcomix collective i'm a part of. Everyone shall check it out!!!!!!

here's the web address.

http://www.activatecomix.com/

DC probably a bit upset

Kind of a big deal,

Siegels now own half of Superman

Alex

Non-Repro Blue

I'm about to start working on some pages but the last thing I want to do is spend time erasing when I'm done inking- I'm not too great at photoshop so does anyone know some good blue pencils that would be easy to remove in photoshop?

Hallmark Contest

http://www.hallmarkcontests.com/funnyness/index.cfm

Want to make a Hallmark card?
Now's your chance. Hallmark contest thingy.
I think I may submit my Monster valentine.

Frank Stockton

I've recently been visiting the blog of illustrator Frank Stockton. Not only is he a talented illustrator, but he uses this blog to give insightful tips on the business side of illustration , talk about artistic integrity in a commercial art form, and show his creating process step by step. It's been helpful and entertaining so far. Check it out.

Street Fighter Contest

http://www.udonentertainment.com/blog/?page_id=86

Udon is putting out a Street Fighter book. There's an open call for Street Fighter based entries. Winners get into the book and a free copy of said book.

Interesting? I may have to do a Dhalsim drawing for this.

Ben Ross on Drawn.ca

Ben Ross animation featured on Drawn

Gotta go with 'Ducky Fire' as my favorite so far.

a fancy thing for your website perhaps...

FancyZoom is a lightweight javascript that enlarges images inline. there are some examples at the link.
it took me less than a minute to get it up and running on my site.

i've never been crazy about the behavior of opening images on websites. either it takes you away from the page you were on and forces you to hit the back button, or it opens up an additional window which is plain rude.

i was using the lightbox js on my website, but i was never satisfied about the default functionality. it had a cool feature for viewing sequences of images, but i felt the effect was too severe for one at a time viewing. i'm sure it's possible to alter the lightbox script to suit different needs, but that's outside my code monkey abilities.

anyway i like FancyZoom. it's from Cabel Sasser of Panic software. (if you're using a mac and maintaining a website, i highly recommend you give Coda a try. what little coding i am capable of i taught myself using Coda.) FZ is free to use for non commercial websites. if you make money off your site (i sure as hell don't) it's a one time fee of 39 bones. though i'll gladly fork over the money if things get rolling over at inksktink.net. ha.

apparently FancyZoom has issues in IE 6 (because IE 6 is terrible), but for reals... nobody worth knowing uses IE 6 anymore.