Well, its that time if year again, and I'm heading to Megaplex once more. Looking forward to meeting and hanging out, etc… This year, I'm doing something a bit different, and hosting a panel! That's right, if anyone wants to see me in the flesh, In full eye popping 3D, I will be hosting my Advanced Foam Sculpting Techniques for Fursuiting panel on Saturday night! At… ah- Midnight(!) until… 1AM(!). My mistake for requesting "late night", I guess… Well, at least everyone will be available, eh?

If anyone here has questions labor suggestions for topics or problems you want help on with regards to foam sculpting, this is the place to make them, so maybe I can work them into the demo. Looking for as many ideas as possible, here…

For those who have been waiting for drawing updates, or have given up on them altogether, know that I am currently working with a new doctor to try and figure out just what the Hell is wrong with my body, that has me so unable to sit and draw -anything- without (mildly) excruciating pain. If you want to experience what I've been dealing with for the past 2 or 3 years, take the digit of your choice, fold your opposite arm, and press it hard into the nerve that passes through there- what most folks call the "funny bone". Do it until you begin to feel you might throw up from the pain, and then, imagine that all up and down your Left side, hands, back, and chest. sometimes it feels like what people describe when they are having a heart attack.

Thats pretty much what happens whenever I work on something in front of me. So yeah, no drawing right now until I can pay for the MRI stuff (no insurance). The chiropractor I've been going to for the past year or so doesn't seem to be able to help anymore, so its time for drugs and/ or surgery. I can barely sit down to type anymore. Sculpting, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be a problem…!

Its been a long while since I've posted regularly to my comic, I know. Life has been leaving me with little energy lately to add "drawing the comic" to my to do list, and my eyesight hasn't been helping much, either. I haven't abandoned this place, or my little corner of it, but my time has been pretty well used up of late- for some time, actually… Trying to keep up a house thats falling apart takes a lot of energy!

Anyways, now that my whirlwind Spring show season is finally over with, I'll be posting some more stuff soon. Its already been drawn, just haven't gotten around to coloring or cleanup just yet, and I've just now started to get used to the new bifocals, which I test drove for my trip to Munich last week. Of course, in the spirit of keeping my own little furry drama alive, Mum fell in my house while I was away in Germany, and broke her arm. So now, I have that to deal with daily… Never mind the fact the well went dry also…

The bottom line is, my efforts here are but a small part of my free time. I work around 80 hours a week, both at my regular place of work, and my own workshop/ studio- making ends meet. I miss the days when the house payment was made by the folks, my dad was still alive, and I had a house to live in- you know, when I was first posting my "strips". Things have changed dramatically now. As much as I would love to have the extra 4 hours a day I would need to make my posts regular, its not going to happen anytime in the near future. There is much work to be done before I have that much free time again- namely, I have to build my new house, and that takes a lot of time, and money…

For everyone who is awaiting for more, fear not. It'll be getting here eventually. I'm looking forward to telling the story just as much as you all are looking forward to reading it!

Well, it's show season again, and that means today, I'm in Denver. The air is so fricken dry! I snored last night, and my throat is all swollen. Boo.

Not quite every day, but quite often on my way to work, I would see a beautiful flamingo like bird rooting around in the ditch that runs along the road leading past my house. Its a fast road, 2 lanes, and pretty much everybody flies along it like they have someplace important to go, mostly because I guess there are relatively few stop lights on it. I would love seeing him there, if only for a few moments, as a reminder of the wildlife that used to call this place home before our area was flooded with all the arrivals from New York and the other northern states.

Now, there is one fewer.

I was out a few minutes ago, on my way to the store, when I saw that familiar flash of shocking pink, but it was not where it belonged, down in the relative safety of the ditch, looking for food. He was lying there, broken, twisted and contorted, on the wrong side of the road. For a moment, I couldn't believe it was him. I turned around and pulled my truck off one of the side streets, and watched for a few moments as the traffic callously filed by at 10- 15 MPH over the speed limit before hopping across the ditch to pull him off the road.

I sat with him in my hands for a few minutes, and straightened his bloody wings against his sides, remembering what he looked like in life: playful, beautiful, so flamboyant in his pink regalia. I looked for him every day. i named him spoon, an obvious choice, I know, but fitting for such a silly bird.

I'm going to miss him.

I've been thinking about starting the story over for a long time. When I originally started, the current story of Ober and Matilda was just one drawing after another, like one of those exercises where the story gets passed off from one person to the next, and they each push the story in a different direction. While its great for character development, and trying out different situations, the whole thing moves along in a very disjointed way, which is why I'm thinking about cleaning all of this up, and restarting the story from scratch. The basic premise wouldn't change, but it would be a lot more recognizable as a story, instead of a bunch of somewhat broken moments.

I'm not sure how to do it, except maybe to stuff everything I have currently into a mess folder, and start posting the finish work sequentially, clearing everything from the gallery into a separate place for old work.

Any ideas?

Well, it's that time of year again. Maybe I'll get some gifts this time. Matilda "suggested" I stay padded for the day- so there's a new tradition here, I guess. I'm not going to argue with someroo with a right like hers...

One of the biggest reasons I haven't been posting much of anything of late has been my computer situation. My old machine had become somewhat geriatric, so I have been moving toward using the new computer more and more. My copy of Photoshop, however, did not make the move. So despite my dislike of all things Cloud, I signed up for Photoshop CC, and after wrestling with getting my fonts transferred over to the new machine, I have begun to post- as you all might have noticed…

So I guess this is it- get ready for some more Ober and Matilda!

Well, that was an exciting weekend. Not in the "had a great time, can't wait to do that again" kind of exciting, but more in the "never want to repeat" kind of exciting. I live in Sarasota, you see- and folks around here are just no that used to seeing -tornadoes- headed their way, not THIS far South. anyways, imagine my delight; sleeping in my Tornado Magnet brand TRAILER, having the EMS alert go off on my phone at 4 AM Sunday morning. While the "house" wasn't shaking violently, my dog was FREAKING OUT, barking and circling the room, and I told my mom to get dressed, because we were going to get the fuck out of here, RIGHT NOW. Because when the warning says find "a significant building in which to take shelter", a 60 year old (!) trailer AIN'T FUCKING IT.

Unfortunately, looking to the driveway, I noticed what was going on out front just then. Strangely, though my house wasn't shaking violently, the power lines out front most certainly WERE. About every 3 seconds, the wires made contact with one another, sending showers of white hot melted aluminum raining down, and making loud, terrifying noises that scared the shit out of all the animals, especially my terror stricken macaw, who was huddled at the far end of the porch, as far away from the melee as possible. I brought him into the house, and set him on my bed, while I prepared once again to flee to the only solid structure I had access to at this hour: the Wal-Mart. I stepped down into my bedroom to unplug my computer, and was greeted by a soft "pop" as the voltage in my house suddenly went from 120 Volts to somewhere around 14,400 volts- the primary on the line transformer had flashed over.

The power lines out front MELTED, the front yard was ablaze with molten aluminum and broken cable. The lights that didn't get vaporized by the surge because they were on the other half of the branch circuit began to flicker on and off like a horror film. Looking out into the darkness, I could hear the distinct whistle, and roar of a good sized tornado tearing through Siesta Key. The sky was lit with a trail of green-blue flashes as pole transformers gave one last gasp before being ripped from there poles and dashed onto whatever lay below them. I pushed the remote to unlock my truck. It was time to go. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans that moment, because in the light cast by my trucks side and rear lights I could just make it out through the rain…

The (LIVE!) power lines were laying all over my new truck, hissing threateningly.

Well, fuck.

In the end, everything turned out fine- Me and my mum didn't die, the house didn't blow away, and the layers of surge protectors I installed protected my computers and stereo, but I'm afraid they are now toast (its their job). Two other people weren't so lucky- the tornado that passed to the South of me by 2 miles or so went on to kill them and tried to kill the rest of their family- inside their trailer.

Not looking forward to Friday.

Well, Its time to begin posting again! I've been away from the computer for a long time, and the lack of pages has been ridiculous. So, in the coming weeks, I'm going to be kicking things into a higher gear, and posting more regularly than I have in the last year. I've been dying to get the story running again, and I think I have a system in place to make it possible, now. I hope everyone enjoys, and I look forward to some more updates real soon!

Well, its been an insane amount of work for me these last few weeks. Projects all piling up, patrons of my 3 dimensional enterprises clawing hungrily at my shop door looking for "their stuff", and I've been stuck standing next to my workbench as a result for seemingly days on end most of the time. I say seemingly, but its pretty much a reality- I have spent every free moment not at my day job standing next to my bench in my un- air conditioned shop here in central Florida. In August. I made the mistake of hanging a thermometer in there that I might see what I was subjecting myself to for sometimes 12 hours at a time, and was surprised that I hadn't died yet: The temperature in my shop during the day hovers at between 125 and 140 degrees during the day. By 11 AM the needle had already swung past 110. I bought one of those big drum fans around the same time I got the foul thermometer, at least.

The biggest problem is the uninsulated aluminum roof over my head- the sun bakes it, and it in turn bakes the contents of my shop- like myself. When it isn't hot, its raining, and the roof leaks… Vigorously. All of this makes my fursuiting exploits pale in comparison- no way that wallaby suit is as hot as my infernal workspace.

Of course, all this was followed by the moment when I tried to carefully lower the rather large set of shelves from the top of my work bench by sliding it carefully down the side… Too bad the fingers on my Left hand decided to get in the action, and were nearly severed when the (falling!) shelves caught them like a guillotine against the bench top. As it turned out, I just ended up losing all the skin on my knuckles, and cracked the bones a little…

I think I'm going to be done with doing woodworking for others a while after this.

Ober and Matilda are about to finish their first night together, and its been a looooong night… I'm looking forward to letting them out of Matilda's house, so they can mingle with all the regular folk out there. I'm looking forward to the trip to the drug store right now, because it promises to offer a lot of opportunities for awkwardness and such.

Not to mention new characters… :p

Its been a long time. Need some new pages.

Hello everyone.

I haven't been around much of late- I have had tons of post CES work to do, and my crappy house has been the source of WAY too much work for me in the meantime. This amount of work leaves me with little to no energy to finish my artwork, even though I have about 3 pages in the line work stage right now.

I'm looking forward to posting work up here again soon, and I'm anxious to have Ober and Matilda finish their first night together which so far has lasted like 3 YEARS.

Next month, I'm off to my timber framing course in Maine. I have to drive there from Florida- about 1600 miles, according to the 'nav. Its a good thing I don't mind driving long distances. I'm allowing myself 3 days to get up there, and I'll be camping once I arrive- I can't afford the crazy Bn'B scene they have up there. I had no idea just how FAR Maine was from here!!! So, here's to adventure, I guess…

I just hope this is the beginning of my building a new home, instead of the soul crushing realization that I can't do it on my own that my family keeps telling me it will be. I don't have money, folks. Just these 2 hands. I'm hoping the cottage is not too ambitious- 2 stories can be a challenge, I've been told.

I need to get my sketches together for the course, and maybe the class wont tease me to much when they see how much the place I've drawn looks like Fluttershy's house, because, you know… it kinda' IS… I've been told the stars will become a pain in the ass, but I don't know that I care, really. I just love the FEEL of that place. It just needs the stereo room…

A long time ago, I started working with/ on audio equipment. The two main ventures of mine, Art and Audio, have kind of run parallel since I discovered the latter. I went to art school- they call it a "college", now- and worked at one of the local audio salons at the same time, working on and building equipment while at the same time making the arts.

A few years ago, when Disney decided that they no longer needed animators, my primary purpose in LIFE was pretty much extinguished. I watched my friends and fellow students who were computer animators weather some rough patches while the excess of their population were weeded out by competition and better workflow, while I made my due and paid the bills with electronics. It was a somewhat flavorless meal for me. Eventually, a head hunter, who had been hired by a manufacturer of some of the shiniest, unobtainable audio gear, learned of my fevered existence from one of the local equipment dealers for whom I had done a number of repairs for.

Long story short, I hopped on that gravy train pretty damn fast. My hasty goodbye call could be heard echoing softly from the distance, distorted by the doppler effect as I disappeared over the hills. I didn't feel badly. There were times when I was denied my pay because the "shop" didn't have any money, when the owner had plenty of his own he could have given me, and he would frequently change the conditions of our agreement for pay when the mood suited him.

So, yeah, Fuck that.

Anyways, I had built a pretty nice little stereo to call my own over time- trading equipment up, selling it, repairing or building things and trading them for other things- no significant money changing hands in the process. I can't afford to BUY the things I build every day. No way in Hell. These things always come as a surprise to my customers. They always assume that my boss and I have some insane stereo system at home, because thats what they just bought from us. But the truth is: You don't get rich making things FOR the rich.

So it was with a little sense of disappointment that I let go of my dream pair of speakers, and a dream pair of cables last month so I could pay off all my credit card bills with the money. The need to rebuild my credit was greater than my need for sweet sounds, and though I miss the damn things, I miss having a roof over my head even more. This one is looking a bit shaky at the moment. So at least for now, its back to using the pair of speakers my boss bought at the pawn shop for me for $300- they sound pretty good, after I modified them, and I've started building the replacements that will hopefully turn out even better than the ones I had to let go.

Here's to hoping the $700 a month I've been paying out to the credit cards makes a difference in my finances. Its funny, though. It doesn't feel as liberating as I thought it would.

Well, I'm back from my annual trip to CES. It varies a little bit every year, but its always the same: The crushing depression that comes with returning from a place like Las Vegas, and my clean hotel room (suite, actually), and returning to the hovel in which I currently find myself trapped. I know things are going to get better, but right now, things are really, really bad.

As seems tradition, just as I was winding up my last day at the the show, looking forward to maybe a better year, I get a phone call. Apparently my neighbors behind me have decided they don't like the way mom's cats are getting into their garden, so they are now threatening to stab us in the back by making my life just a little more difficult. They are now threatening my family with calling animal control if we can't keep the few that wander out onto their 5 ACRE yard.

So it seems I have another tall, ugly fence to erect since apparently they can't be trusted with any information about my yard, either. I have really come to HATE well off people. It seems they have nothing better to do than make folks they see as living beneath them suffer.

Well, I have ways to make them squirm, too. Time for some Tit for Tat.

Think I'll go over there and take a shit in the middle of her lettuce garden.

Its CES time, furs. And that means in a few hours, I will be leaving for Las Vegas. I will be gone until next Sunday- a little over a week from now. Since I don't pay for internets while I'm there, it will be unlikely I'll be up here (too busy with work every day anyways) until I get back.

I was trying to get another short page done for the comic, but I'm too tired to go on at the moment, so I'm going to bed for this evening. My plane leaves tomorrow at noon, so if I wake up early enough, I might finish it up, and get it posted before I leave, we'll see!

If I don't see you all before then, see you all next Sunday!

Well, even here in Florida, the weather has turned cold. Its in the high 40s outside right now, and dropping. Its supposed to be 42 in the morning. Not unheard of for this time of year, although not normal, either.

For a babyfur, though… Well, it makes the prospect of being padded that much more enjoyable. At least, when you're not all wet… Even my favorite big overstuffed plastic disposable diapers go pretty much unnoticed this time of year, and I can wear pretty much anything I want without becoming overheated. In fact, its downright cozy being a crinkle butt when the temperature falls.

I guess I can hate winter a little less now.

Well, I did something again! I have been without hot water pretty much the whole time I've been in my new place, and I bought a new water heater some time ago to remedy the situation. But the new water heater came with dire warnings about hard water destroying its frilly pink inner workings, so: Given the fact that my well water is pretty much capable of standing up on its own, I needed a new water softener, also. Tuesday afternoon, I finally decided to take the afternoon off from work, to completely fuck everything up.

That means, replacing the water line to the house from the well, burying it, dumping the old outdoor water softener, hooking it up to the new water line, getting the new washer plumbing done, and then getting the gas company out to fill the old tanks and hook them up to the new tankless water heater I've set up outside, because I REALLY don't want gas burning anywhere inside my death trap of a trailer. So, I figured I would get the new line buried, plumb everything, and basically build the new system in parallel to the old so that the system would be ready to go and finished, giving me days to complete the work, and I would be out of having water no more than an hour or two, tops.

On to reality.

The second I went to dig the trench for the new line, I found one of, it turns out, MANY lines the insane former owner had put underground. I knew I had found it when the fucking GEYSER of muddy water erupted from the ground with the first shovel full of dirt I dug. The line was connected to the high side of the pump, and further illustrating the genius of the former's plumbing- there was NO shutoff valve for that part of the system.

So, I could only watch as a 750 gallon holding tank blew its load all over my (now flooded) yard. I turned the power off and headed to Home Depot for supplies. When I got home, I proceeded to start digging again, since now, I was going to have to repair the line BEFORE I would have water again.

My well system sits under a big oak tree in my back yard, so of course, digging means cutting through ROOTS. LOTS of them. So, I didn't find it unusual to meet resistance as I made my way across the yard, swinging an ancient tool know as a Mattock (think wide bladed, sharp pickaxe) in ever more painful arcs into the defiant tree roots. Some of them were 5 inches thick. I was nearly there when I encountered a really tough, but surprisingly small "root".

Turns out Fiber optic lines are really tough. It took at least a dozen blows from the mattock before it finally gave way, and I had my prize: The neighborhood FIOS trunk line that for some reason runs past my house. I had killed the entire system. I could hear confused noises from some of the surrounding homes as football games ended suddenly, pornography stopped downloading, and various internets and baubles went dark, returning my neighbors to the early '90s.

The FIOS team got out here this afternoon, and I'm hoping no one saw the truck. Pretty sure everyone wants to know why the latest episode of Survivor is absent from their DVRs. At least I have an internets again.

I've decided to try something new for my workflow. Its simply taking too long in my linework preparation and coloring for me to put out the kind of work I want to for the comic strip. I know I've seen Tailbiter working on I think Paint tool SAI, and it looks like it works really smoothly for her, but I'm wondering what some ofyou might suggest as an alternative to my Sketchbook Pro to Photoshop timesink that I've been using that cocks in at right around 6 hours per page!

I need something that gives me better lines, and allows me to draw smoothly. I tend to sketch first, with lots of fine lines, then I darken them in photoshop, knock out the background to make it transparent, and paint in layers (which works great, but the line prep is KILLING me).

Any suggestions? I use Mac, BTW. But jumping the tree hugger ship isn't out of the question.

Well, no… actually. Not really.

One of the great benefits of losing my house has been not having anywhere to put my stuff. Since I've been paying for this… place I'm currently living in, there was no money left in the budget for a storage unit. So it turns out, I missed the fact that all of my books and some other, well… "perishable" things had been left outside, in my back yard under a big tarp for the past few months. The past few, rainy, months. Long and short of it- I've pretty much lost my entire library of books.

I'm trying hard not to look at them, lying in those moldy piles outside where I'm sitting right now. Mum wants me to catalog them, so I can find them again… I don't think I will. There is no point to it, really.

She dried out a few of them and set them aside to dry, whereupon the glossy pages all stuck together, ruining them pretty much forever anyway.

All of my Disney art books, all of my Japanese art books (The Art of My Neighbor Totoro, etc.), my pair of first edition Blinky Bill books signed by Dorothy Wall in like the '50s, and about 95% of my entire library of children's books have been wiped out. I had a few of my books inside here- in a bookcase, but everything else is pretty much gone, along with more than a few boxes of electronic parts and gizmos I really don't give a shit about anymore anyway.

Good times. Still, I'm looking forward to the future. Some day I'll be done getting rid of all the worthless crap I'm currently buried in, and I will have simplified significantly. Maybe by this time next year…

As many of you may have guessed by now, this illustration stuff isn't my "day job". If I had the kind of time I really need to do my art, I'd have to be pretty much totally unemployed. No, my career is high end electronics, and it puts me in sometimes intimate contact with all sorts of folks who have the kind of money many of us must imagine God might have, if he needed money… Whether they be dealers of our gear, or customers, I get to see the other side of the fence A LOT. A couple weekends ago, I went to such a place as a guest- kind of like the way Mozart was often found sharing space with the folks who loved music, so am I.

Its hard not to look at your own life and find it… wanting, for lack of a better word, after spending the weekend tooling around in your host's brand new Ferrari FF, or the F12, or the Maserati "daily driver". The food is good, too. Somehow, even the Costco chocolate covered raisins they offered seem exotic and special when you are eating them seated at the end of a brown Tourmaline and Labradorite covered kitchen island that is longer than my entire house and cost 6 times as much.

It must be nice to be able to afford what I build. Funny how the cobbler's kids never have shoes, isn't it?

Well, its been raining for like 7 fucking days straight here. My roof is leaking- of course, water is dripping from the ceiling in the ONE ROOM I keep my valuables in!!! It was like this last year as well- about this time- all my new avocado trees died from the deluge of water. I hate this bullshit. But I guess I never really paid attention to it before- having a real house and all. I can't wait to pull this piece of shit down and have a real home again. Difference being- I have to build it with my own two hands THIS time. My back yard has about a 6 inch layer of water covering it right now, and that can't be good for my new trees. God, this sucks. I'm going to build the new place on an artificial hill to avoid this crap. I'm above it right now, but as soon as I step outside, I'm in it again.

:p

So, now, I need to find some good fur. I've used CR Crafts fur before, but I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for some fur that would look good for him?

So, its that time of year again… I'm thinking about making my next suit, and I want some opinions!

Should I make an Ober Rivers suit, or maybe a hedgehog? I haven't seen too many hedgehog suits, and I think making the quills would be a unique challenge…

So I guess those are the two I'm looking at doing: Hedgehog, or Otter- (Ober, of course!)

I know everyone has things that set them off, and more often than not, these are pretty irrational. I've found that trying to get people to recognize that they are being unreasonable is often quite difficult, if nit impossible. Which makes analyzing and identifying your own problems especially difficult. So it is with this in mind that I pose to all of you the following question (kind of long):

Is it unreasonable to expect someone to respond to you out of respect? I mean, when you call someone multiple times, leave messages, and send texts over a period of hours, days, or even weeks- is it unreasonable to expect someone to respond?

I try to make it a point to respond to anyone that sends me an email, or message, or any kind of overture that requires a response. Sure, there are some times that I'll miss the note, or call, or find it late enough that a response would be unreasonably late, or whatever, but if there is one thing that will make me drop the nuke faster than ANYTHING- its a person who is really TRYING to ignore my attempts at communication. Unless my fingers are broken, or I'm lying in a ditch somewhere, you can pretty much COUNT on a response from me.

Is it wrong to impose this on others? I really don't feel its right to ignore someone. If you want them to piss off, then so be it: Tell them to PISS OFF! But this business of just apathetically just cold shouldering- I just consider it completely fucked up. Literally NOTHING pisses me off more!

Its not like I'll send a bunch of messages, or calls either. When I'm trying to get ahold of someone, you can count on getting at most 3 or 4 calls over a period of days. After that, I consider it being ignored, and you're on my shit list.

I have a vendor, "friend", and collegue right now who is getting on the "never speak to again" list i fhe doesn't answer my text. Its been 3 weeks, and I've sent him 4 messages, 4 phone calls, and literally asked him to respond. If he doesn't respond tonight, he is losing a $40,000 sale. I'll tell my customer to cut his shit off- NOW, and demand his money back.

Wont think twice about it, really.

Its going to look bad for him real soon- all because he wont pick up the fucking phone.

I'm going to give him 90 seconds to answer the text. Enough time?