A number of artists here post pictures that are larger than 1000 pixels. That takes forever to load on a phone. Plus they don't use progressive dithering so it's like downloading pictures from AOL in the nineties.
I'm wondering if my 800 pixel size is also too big?

Just got done updating the comics for my first Gardenia comic book. Intend to assemble them all to self publish, but for now I want to clean up all the comics to the point where they're staying at Castrovolvo. I wasn't happy with the way Kabby's house turned out, and that's the real thing I'm trying to fix.

I've been cleaning up a comic every day, and have almost finished the contents of the first comic book. As I reach the part about Frankenbob asking Pudgy to build the coffin and whatnot, I'm reminded of why I stopped making artwork for so many months. Although I didn't originally make the comic as a statement about commissions, it pretty much sums up my experience. A coworker of mine asked me to make a fan picture of some vampire dude from a TV show, because she had a crush on him, and was going to send my artwork to him. But it was never good enough, I always had to fix something, and then after I put all this work into it, she's like "ha ha that's terrible." So maybe I don't draw female hands so well, and it pretty much made me feel that dad was right and my artwork is trash.
Anyway, that's Frankenbob and his hubcap coffin, and I'm the dog growling at him.

I'm improving the art on a bunch of comics. Not sure if a width of 800 pixels is everyone's favorite, but it makes it super easy to read, especially on phones.
...Is it really considered remastering when the original wasn't any good?

Didn't have anything prepared to post, didn't know the date, but happy teddy bear day.

I got a huge amount of scans that I haven't done anything with. Just starting to work through them so I actually have a reason to draw pictures again. Finished with my anaglyph doodles, now just doing a series of 3D comics, and going to finish all those Gardenia comics I scanned. The whole month of May I had been doing nothing but writing stories. Trying to have fun with being creative, so not totally consistent. Moving to a new apartment really slowed me down too, but I hope I can afford to stay here.

Here we continue the story of Cupcake and Frankenbob, with the idea that maybe Frankenbob is still sick. This is a work in progress. I've got a good start on it, but I don't think I'm ever going to finish the story. I'll post the work I've already done, then more when I have time. It usually takes me three days to make a comic page, if I'm lucky.
You have the pandemic to thank for lack of progress, and the Covid themed comic pages.

This is called finally getting to the friggin' point of the Doctor Who parody.
447-458: Concluding the story, making it all in Frankenbob's head, and solving it with placebos is kind of a cheat, but I've got so many sketches for continuing the comic that I won't be done with this in my lifetime. And since nobody's paying me for it, and there's little demand, not much of a motive to keep doing it. At least I can say I completed the comic series.

Recap Comics:
Flashback Recap 1-4, Cupcake's Diary and Plot Synopsis 1-10, Talkin' Gardenia 1&2:
It seemed I lost my readers, so I made a few attempts to explain the story as well as text "diaries" with an explanation. Don't think it worked because the comic never caught on. "Talkin' Gardenia" is supposed to be a parody of Talking Dead. By the way, nobody told me for five years that I posted two articles called Gardenia Plot Synopsis 4.

Gardenialand 393-416:
Got more experimental with some dynamic visual shots, and also made the comic more romantic, more enjoyable for me to make.
417: Nobody seemed to care for the Airwolf parody.
419: Pudgy is wearing a Logan's Run costume. Scott dresses up like the X-Men.
419-425: The romance between Cupcake and Pudgy is probably the best of the series, but a few people seemed indifferent about it.

385:
I knew this girl in gradeschool named Lacy. She was a real tomboy. Wish I knew her last name. I'd like to get in contact with her again. Guess it's just another one of those things you never find again.
390:
Funny, no comments on Cupcake's pole dancing.

This marks my first "Smart comic". Before this I used a template and made huge backgrounds that I squished into the little boxes instead of drawing a whole page. I admit I cheated and copy pasted a lot of the same character heads and bodies on multiple comics, but I think people saw through the deception, or I would have had more readers. What works for animation obviously doesn't correspond to comic books. At any rate, I wasn't getting through enough story with that method of comic creation, and I really didn't need to have a full background for every single panel, especially with throwaway gags. Got a lot more emotional variety out of the new style, and it took less effort because I didn't have to draw an entire 8X10 background every time.

382:
Great picture. My inner child, that made the pizza restaurant with the teddy bears, liked it. I took a massive hiatus from making comics at this point. I recall how it looked lonely, being the only thing posted there for such a long time.
380-383:
TOOL's logo is obscene, but I didn't make it up, and it's something different for Kabby to wear. I tried to work in some comments people had posted before (or maybe this is where they posted the comments?) in regards to Kabby getting treated unfairly. Well, okay. She's still kind of a jerk, but everyone's entitled to their opinion...dad.

My official "I'm burned out" comic. I had foolishly set up a schedule of creating and posting one finished piece of art a day, in the vain hope of becoming famous or something. I lost sleep, my life suffered, I dated some terrible women. Nobody really read the comics either, so I tried too hard. I'm not getting paid for this, nobody's noticing, so why not slow down and get some sleep? I don't know what you think, but I think that's a great friggin' plan.
In retrospect, I should have depicted the artist/writer in a shabby hovel, not some weird mansion thing.

338-336:
Finally got to the whole point about the castle being an illusion. Also threw in more crazy Kingdom Hospital-like medical scenes.
346 Onward:
Nobody ever gets my joke about Philip G Zimardo being the Master from Doctor Who. I guess it's too highbrow a joke for most people. You'd have to take Psychology in college to fully appreciate how creepy Zimbardo truly is.
351: Illusionary castle.
367-369:
After I found out my highschool crush had a boyfriend and a kid and stuff, I made these comics.
371-377:
Now that the camp story is out of the way, I didn't need "Hellena". I thought people would get a bigger laugh about the blow up doll joke, but they didn't.
Flashbacks 114-121:
This is called "Oops, forgot about these last pages."

Had a falling out with Oren Otter at Ottercomics. Said something stupid to him and he got mad. What I said didn't even make sense, but whatever. I didn't like how slowly his page loaded my comics and how nobody looked at my comics there, so I used other sites. I invented this "Harnessed Otter" thing (reference to the Falling Skies TV series) to poke fun at him.
331: Going with the whole "illusionary castle" thing, Scott finds a Dune outfit and a holideck. Okay, so he's not a mouse. Maybe he's a Harkonnen?

At this point I did a reworking of the whole Pudgy story (Ghatsi Smoke/Pudgy Gang computer game project I did in College) Some of these were pages I posted on Comics Sherpa or Ottercomics.us. At any rate, basically the same plot without the glowing sword and owl knight involved. I improved a lot of old comics and saved time and effort by not actually making new comics. By the way, these were all drawn on oversized comic art boards, then shrunk at Kinkos or Officemax to a size that actually fit on my computer scanner. Never getting comic art boards again. It's a waste of photocopies and money.
I threw in a couple scenes here and there to hopefully remind readers that it's still Pudgy telling the story from the illusionary castle/hotel. I don't think people kept up with these comics because I could only humanly finish maybe one or two a week.

Again, put too much effort into a Castrovalva Doctor Who parody. Wanted to put in some realistic medical images into it, so i did some studies from a Kingdom Hospital DVD and other stuff. My friend gave me some Doctor Who books, so I made a Silurian surgeon and a Human Dalek nurse. Mikeyfan did an art request, so I included the mummy guy later on.

I really tried to make an accurate furry portrait of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, but honestly it doesn't look anything like them. Mostly I ripped off the Osbournes' TV show. I think I tried a little too hard.

Kabby is a combination of roughly three different people. In addition to my scary highschool crush, I briefly dated a girl, a friend of this redhead that worked with me at the supermarket. Hoarder. The girl's house was a dump. Of course, my parents' house was worse. Every time we wanted to pay a bill or look for a car title or something, it was an epic battle against a mountain of hoarded random $###. With many tears, we grieved the loss of important objects. Dad hit me a few times for "pretending" to look for things that positively couldn't be found.
Then there's my dad. Nobody in the house got to have an opinion about anything but him, especially about religion. He also loves heavy metal, especially Ozzy Osbourne.

(Note: #57 is an obscure gospel song nobody's heard of).
#62-43:
Here begins an extremely long parody of the Doctor Who episode "Castrovalva." I pretty much ripped off the whole thing. Plot summary: The Doctor is "dying", they build a miniature TARDIS out of a room inside the TARDIS, and carry him inside it, to a castle that turns out to be an illusion created by The Master. I kinda got it mashed together with The Leisure Hive. Also, I'm obsessed with the 1984 film "Troll" and drew some of the monsters. In addition to that, I threw in some Mesoamerican art.
Anyway, put a lot more effort into this than I should have for a stupid parody of an episode most people haven't even seen.
I brought Pudgy back. Of course, at this point nobody understood the whole backstory of Pudgy being in the same campground as Cupcake, so the joke fell flat. Anyways, the point is that he's a scout and can build stuff. He's basically me. I made it to Eagle. Some people say that highschool or college or something was the best time of their life. I think the best time I had was with the scouts.
Also: The panda bear, as previously mentioned, was based off a Korean woman I met in college.

Bally Total Fitness, man, what a joke. My first collections job. They trained me for a week and just threw me out there.
A little explanation. Ballys had a 90 day "Free trial" period, and they'd "get you" on Day 91. I don't know what happened at the clubs. Maybe they intentionally processed the cancellation forms a day late. Maybe they had to mail them to headquarters or fax them and just couldn't prevent them from being processed on Day 91. But people got on the hook for a $50,000 gym membership and nobody wanted to pay for it. If I'd been a more experienced debt collector, I would have been able to pitch credit bureau benefits or something, but all they told us to do is "sell healthy living" and these people had every excuse in the book.
Honestly, I think at least one person really did step in a club on Day 90 and yell "I'm cancelling my membership" and slam the door, believing that everyone knew who they were and what their gym membership number is.
Only one manager to handle all those calls.
She came up with the plan to have us write down all the escalated calls, but it pretty much filled her inbox to the ceiling, so she stopped that.
The woman had a relieved smile when she stepped out to the break area and smoked like a chimney. Considering the nonstop calls she took all day, it's not surprising she was a nervous wreck.
The manager was so busy, you sometimes had to wait an hour for her to have an open line to connect to. And I was supposed to collect money! Kind of hard to collect money when you're sitting with one non paying person for half the day.
Being an inexperienced agent to begin with, I got desperate waiting for a manager and did stuff like fibbing to customers about stuff we'd do for them and I seriously considered transferring them to pizza places and bible phone numbers just to get rid of them. I called myself Smith in hopes of avoiding getting in trouble, but they kept coming back. I wrote down my lies in a journal so I could keep track of them all. I'd tell them anything just to get them off the phone.
They'd call back, and my coworkers would transfer the call to me. Every. Damn. Time.
Everyone wanted to talk to the cancellation department, but they don't actually have a number. Why? Because each customer would call the department day and night until their gym membership contract was completely nullified and removed from their credit report. Nobody gave me the number, so I couldn't give it to anyone. It's probably one person, the CEO.
People made jokes about how my manager had horse teeth, making whinnying sounds behind her back. That's where the horse boss came from.
So yeah, I'm basically like Cupcake. But when she gets no-nonsense, I also partially based her on some African American girls I knew from work.
And they did fire me, by the way. Frankenbob wasn't involved.
Frankenbob's character actually came from a different job. When I worked at the Grandview Sunfresh supermarket, I had a coworker named Wade George. He used to snort coffee beans and make Pillsbury doughboy noises. I also combined his character with a hyperactive childhood friend of mine (the same one that inspired the Jewish mouse). He always did Cookie Monster impressions.

2002-2006
Once out of college, I studied prepress and eventually got a job at a printing factory. I spent a lot of time working on the Quaceb comic (also on my gallery), not so much Pudgy's adventures.
Then I lost my job.
As I worked for a temp agency, I brought Pudgy back with a different drawing style. I also focused the plot on a Jewish mouse (inspired by a friend) and a Cajun alligator. I thought I could put it on Comics Sherpa and get rich, but I actually lost money paying them to host my comics. So much for my dream of being a syndicated newspaper cartoonist.
I know it was a temp agency because we were moving furniture out of the Suntron offices and I showed this guy some of the comics I did. One of them was a really lame gag about President Bush Senior, really outdated joke.
Not sure how I paid for Comics Sherpa, considering the unemployment. Maybe I had leftover money or something. I think I had the comics already posted on the Ottercomics website and I just reposted them there. I didn't start the Cupcake story yet, the story of her gym membership collections job was based on Bally Total Fitness, and I wasn't working there yet. I think I DID post all the comics about Pudgy in Osceola, though.

1997-2002
In college, I had an opportunity to make a video game in Director 6. After reading The Hero's Journey, I came up with the basic outline for the Gardenialand story and spent just about every free moment at school working on it.
(To summarize the story, just look at Gardenialand Flashback 1-114)
The basic gist: Pudgy lives in a secret campsite in Osceola, Missouri with Cupcake the bird and a blind panda bear named Patricia. Pudgy wanders down to a convenience store deep in the woods, where Scott the owl lives (I named the owl after Scott's Iconium Store). They fall down a ladder into Uncle Wiggly Cave (a place in Osceola) and the owl pulls a coupon out of a forbidden coupon dispenser. This opens an underground supermarket full of shadow monsters. Pudgy and Scott destroy the monsters with flashlights (I tried to make an action minigame with Director 6 but it didn't work so well). At some point it floods and their tents wash down into a magical furry Native American land ("The Ghatsi").
The Ghatsi are modeled after the Mic-O-Say Boy Scout organization. (Mic-O-Say teaches kids to appreciate Native American culture, crafts and customs).
I had ideas for a sequel, but I barely had time to finish the first installment. It already consumed one entire Iomega Zip Disk and half of another, with the sound and not-so-good cartoon clips.
People said the animation and stuff I made was like South Park. The teacher said "Good grief!" when he saw all the production notes I had on it. I got an A for the course, but the game was made on Apple and I wouldn't have access to expensive computers like that again, so I don't have much to show for it.
In college, I got captured by a crazy Korean lady and dragged into her Korean bible study group. It's because of her that Kimpap and Patricia exist in all versions of the Gardenia story. They're not stereotypes, I'm depicting the woman basically as I remember her. Including her ability to twist people's arms and drag them into things they don't enjoy.
They wrote their own bible study books by hand. That was their thing. And she was an amazing cook, except when she attempted to make American food (she made a pizza with ketchup).
My video game is outdated by now. All I have to show for it are some movie files. I could piece it together and post to Youtube if you're interested, but it's not very good.
The next semester I brought the story back as a comic book, using the Fred Flintstone method (ball point pen, cheap paper, colored with colored pencils). It didn't look very good, and I gave the whole thing to a friend who never returned it.
Lacking the comic book, I remade the story into the children's book, "Ghatsi Smoke," which you can see in my gallery. The good parts, anyway.
I made a couple color copies of the book at Kinkos, horribly expensive, and it only resulted in rejection letters from children's book publishers.
The important part: The back story to Gardenialand is firmly established at this point, and I was getting burned out on using Pudgy as the main character.

1990-1997
In middle school, I tried to make the characters more "cool" by turning them into sort of Ninja Turtles things. I developed my owl knight concept then. Of course, a classmate defaced my drawing, so I thought I'd better change the characters to something that people would hopefully respect more. Something along the lines of X-Men. Human superheroes. Well, humanoid. They still had vaguely animal features, like a guy with hooves or a person with floppy dog ears. I even kept part of the names, like "Sam Pudgy." I kept working on that allthe way through highschool. I still have the characters. You've seen some of it in my gallery, like "Pamiela Kipson" who shows up in the Quaceb comic and pictures.
I met a creepy girl in highschool. Kinda had a crush on her. She liked rock music and was generally irreligious. Honestly, mixed feelings about her. A lot of the concept I had for Kabby the cat comes from her.

1980-1990
I first got the idea for Gardenialand as a child playing with stuffed animals. I fancied myself Mister Rogers and imagined the group of animals going on a quest like Dragon Warrior 3. I put the stuffed toys in a Barbie Winnebago and pretended they were going on trips. Sometimes my little brother got involved. I had all the characters:
Pudgy: A spread armed yellow dog in a shirt that says "I Wuv You This Much". I got his name from a Gremlins storybook from Hardee's. Gizmo's hand was "Pudgy."
Cupcake (A.K.A. "Birdy"): A blue bird with a stocking cap and sleepy looking eyes. It squeaked.
Monster (Don't remember what I called him): Purple Gremlins looking thing. Kind of like My Pet Monster, made by Applause Toys.
Puma (A.K.A. "Cat): Black oversized stuffed puma. Didn't fit in the Winnebago.
Pony: A little brown (or white?) horse. Forgot what color it was.
Koala Twins: Two identical koalas. Might have gotten them from a restaurant. They had arms designed for clinging to twigs and stuff.
"Tweety" (Toucan): Had two of these toucan toys. They had an elastic thing on their heads so you could bounce them and make them squeak. I think one lost their eye or something, which figures into characters I made up later.
"Cupcake": A white bear with wings, probably some Valentine's Day thing. I later changed the character to "Mary Cupea," an alien lady with roboticl limbs. Unrelated to Gardenialand.
Ollie Alligator: An alligator in a polo shirt. Probably from Applause toys. I don't think any of these animals wore pants.
*"Owl" (Now "Scott"): A gray owl with head tufts. Dirty orange feet. My favorite of all stuffed toys. I still have it.
"Mousie": A green mouse from a bear claw machine at a laundromat. I superglued swim goggles to its face.
"Pammy": A Shirt Tales character, a panda. It inspired Kimpap and Patricia.
I also had three teddy bears. With them I pretended like I was running a pizza restaurant. I even made a little menu, but I lost it somewhere.
I still have some drawings I made as a child, which illustrate the Dragon Warrior concept. Since I grew up in an era without the internet, I had this idea that Nintendo could somehow make a multiplayer Nintendo game with eight controllers to control all these animal characters. I also made a little comic with an unoriginal idea of the animals all living on a starship like they have on Star Trek The Next Generation. If you're interested, I could post some of these.