had a blast tackling a round of Inktober-related stuff this year!
kind of neglected all my other art projects during the month...
...but it was really nice to zone in and focus on small individual pieces every other day

the every other day format also helped keep it from ever feeling toooooo stressful

the main reason i wanted to tackle Laika: Aged Through Blood though, was because i technically have an outline for a Laika fan comic
hadn't made too much Laika fanart minus a few loose sketches in some sketchbooks, so this was a nice start

i'm not too confident i'll ever do anything with this project idea
mostly because i already have way too many projects i want to tackle



...but here's hoping i find some time to work on it ^^

gonna get some practice in with some vinyl records on Twitch at 7pm PST tonight.

stop by for a bit if you're interested ^^

https://twitch.tv/grillweaver

lol not really

but! the image quality of my old scans is something that has been bugging me for a long time now
so i grabbed my giant folder of MitM pages and got to rescanning at a high resolution

some of them were in pretty rough shape though
and since i was going to the effort of doing this i kinda wanted to do something else too...

thus!
sepia-toned texture thing-a-ma-bob

i've reuploaded every page on my official website with the new look and higher res copies
i think i'll still post black and white copies here, but go check it out and let me know what you think ^^

heyo!

hope everyone is doing well ^^
we're already 2 full months into 2025 (holy moly), and i'm excited to say i've been doing a fair amount of art :D

first i was able to complete my first Eclectic Fidelity video (woohoo!!)
i'm so happy to have finished off my first true video for my YouTube page
like i mentioned elsewhere, it is pretty rough around the edges, but overall i had a blast making it
looking into potentially posting some of the original music i made for the video separately, along with maybe one or two animations
excited to do more!
(also check it out here if you're interested >> https://youtu.be/YHQAlJh0OgY?si=BGU1OS7EF7Qqs9XT )

secondly, my scanner is working again (yay!!)
i had 3 MitM pages that i hadn't been able to properly post until i fixed it,
but they're up online now!
i probably should check in and dust off my webcomic's blog too soon...

i've set a personal goal of at least finishing one MitM page a month (but hopefully more) this year
i do want to make more videos and music though as well, so we'll see how things unravel

anyways thanks for reading my rando life update
hmmm...
...i thought there was one other thing............


OH YEAH!!
I SOMEHOW HIT 100 WATCHERS HERE ON FURAFFINITY!!!
OMYGOSHHOLYCRAPTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOHERGBLABLAOMGAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

(seriously though thanks ^^)

yeah, lol, not really.

although i suppose it was technically the "worst" year for Mutt in the Middle though.
just one page (plus a halfway-done WIP), which does break my low record of 2 for a year (wohoo?)
also! apparently i never posted the last 2 pages here (whoops!)
i even have a third one ready, but unfortunately my scanner has been on the fritz recently, so i need to find a good alternative soon

apart from the low MitM output though, it was a good year
still made a lot of personal art in several sketchbooks (that i'm slowly trying to get more of it up here)
did some traveling
went to several great concerts
AND! finally got something posted on my YouTube account that i made forever ago

i only have two songs on there for now
,but hopefully,
i'll get more of a "complete" video made soon

i set a rough timeline of by the end of February for myself to get one done
so wish me luck!



it's crazy to think 2024 is already over
i hope everyone had a wonderful year
thx

HOLY MOLY BATMAN!
Did you hear?
Chapter 6 of Mutt in the Middle is finally finished?!
After only 6 years too!! xD

Some crazy stats for those interested:

It stands at a whopping 41 pages total, that’s 2 more pages than Chapter 2 (which used to hold the record for the longest chapter). There are 545 word bubbles (you know, give or take like 10ish in case I miscounted. I ain’t about to do a word count though). It took 6 years to complete (yikes!), and the page-to-year spread looked something like this…

2017 – 14 pages (alright! and 34 for the whole year if you include the pages from the previous chapter)
2018 – 11 pages (meh, almost once a month, I guess)
2019 – 5 pages (oh no)
2020 – 2 pages (oh my)
2021 – 2 pages (not again)
2022 – 2 pages (I’m sensing a pattern)
2023 – 5 pages (hey, at least I went back to matching 2019)
So in review, I never want another chapter to take that long >.<;

Setting aside the time it took to finish, I actually think the length wasn’t too bad though. Chapter 2’s length definitely bugs me. Chapter 6 has a large selection of different characters in jumps between, a lot of dialogue that advances plot and motives, and a fair share of action later on. Chapter 2, on the other hand, dragged out to its length largely because I had trouble figuring how to wrap it up :[

I do think the most notable art quality jump mid-chapter happens in 2 though, so I guess there’s that.

Anyways, now! Onward to Chapter 7!!

After all this extra time, I “totally” have the next chapter’s title already figured out…

*cough cough* O_O

"Update"

Yeah, I suppose this journal title is unassuming enough I suppose.

I hope this entry finds everyone in good health.

I finally finished those 4 MitM pages I was talking about posting all at once (when was that? a year ago you say? yikes...)

---

In the time that I've been absent, I'd say that it wasn't about leaving FA, but instead more about just cutting out social media from my daily life. I don't fall into the camp that preaches about the evil of social media (that's a bit of an overreaction in my opinion), but I would note that I felt less pressure to stay "up-to-date." Unplugging (even at a minor level) was a good de-stressing experience.

I did continue to frequent FA though, much more than other sites even. However, I've been ghosting on here more than I should have been doing. I just felt anxious about engaging. There were hundreds of journal entries. Thousands of submission notifications. For every post from an artist that I enjoyed, I was worried there was a post from a dear, old friend just around the corner. I felt guilty to reach out to one friend and accidentally leave out someone else.

Apologies for the angsty journal entry, but if there's one thing I've always appreciated about FA, it's that it was such a great place to get things off your chest.

---

Needless to say, I'm here. I had to nuke those old notifications though. As much as I didn't want to miss out on what everyone's been up to, I knew I'd never come back here if I didn't start "fresh" so to speak. So PLEASE(!), tell me what's new! :D

For whomever this journal reaches, how you been? It would be lovely to hear from you ^^

Hey there.
It's been awhile ^^;

I hope the close of this decade finds all of y'all in good health and standing.

I currently have a cold, but everything else is mostly normal.

Things feel like they've been flying past like crazy. This was the first year that I did not create a Christmas sketch for MitM since its inception.

Kinda bums me out honestly.

I've spent most of this month relentlessly completing a Christmas project for some friends IRL.
At the end of November I had the "bright" idea to make custom mixtapes for several of my friends that share my strong passion for music. I was aware that a few of those people didn't actually have a tape deck (I mean, why would they?), so I came up with a plan. I would record music from my (fairly large) vinyl collection onto my laptop, mix the songs on my computer to be one continuous mix (songs blend seamlessly), plug my computer into my tape deck, record the (roughly 45 minute) MP3 onto one side of the tape, repeat process for side 2, create hand drawn artwork for the cassette J-card covers, upload the MP3s to a website I created for this project, AND write on the cassette the URL to visit to download each tape.

I wanted to do 12
I barely completed the 9th on Christmas Eve.
I may have been a tad too ambitious.

Anyways, y'all are more than welcome to give 'em a listen. The track listing is only on the back of each cassette, so you'll basically have to go in blind listening. Also all the tapes are basically eclectic as shit, so I don't really know if they're super approachable apart from who they were initially curated for. But by all means be my guest and tell me if you find any keepers though ^^

http://griswelldesign.com/selections/

Why am I mentioning this here?
I don't know.

I guess I'm just kinda trying to prove that I have been doing stuff, just not much on FA. Also if something like this catches your fancy, give me a shout, some music ideas, and maybe you'll convince me to make ya one.

Oh. Also I posted a (huge) update post on the MitM blog.
http://mitmcomic.com/wp/2019/12/30/.....le-big-update/
It's more about my life over the last decade rather than specifically about MitM though.

I have missed FA. I have several graphic design practices that I've been stockpiling, so I'll make sure to post those soon.

Till then, have a good holiday.
Cheers to 2020
~Grill

Wow…only one MitM update in September (and on the last day of the month too…) :(

So while I didn’t get around to updating the comic much, I ended up doing a lot of other stuff (mostly not art related though). I got a new job (thank goodness), and moved to a new apartment (also equally important). So far these two new steps have been treating me well, which brings me to some news that I would like to share real quick…

1) MitM IS GOING ON BREAK.
Yeah, I know, it’s basically been on break already, but hear me out. I plan on trying my hand at Inktober for the first time and that will undoubtably take a lot of my time and effort. Because I have not been very consistent with my art recently, I figured attempting a challenge that would require me to be drawing on a daily basis would be a good step back to making MitM a weekly deal once again. Speaking of Inktober...

2) I WANT TO GIVE INKTOBER A SHOT!
It's something that's always sounded like fun, but I've never even tried to make it through even once. I want to use the opportunity to just get better at inking overall. Also expect to probably see some random MitM related artwork make its way into my Inktober ^^; Also more news about MitM...

3) WHEN MitM RETURNS, IT WILL UPDATE ON SUNDAYS
So the new job has a very consistent schedule, thus my weekends are always…well that…the weekend. I feel that moving weekly update day over to Sunday (instead of Thursday) will help me to have a goal for my weekends and hopefully result in a more regular update pattern.

and 4) I WILL TRY ME BEST TO CATCH UP GUYS!
Being gone for more than a month builds up quite the backlog. There's like more than 2000 something submission notifications alone! I'll be doing my best to see what y'all've been up to in my absence ^^



Anyways I posted something similar to this on today's MitM page commentary on my blog (attached to the MitM website), but I wanted to repeat it (plus some other stuff) for those of you that don't visit the blog.

That's all.

Now I'm gonna head to bed...

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////Hello World!!



"Oh, Look. It seems like that WindGuardian fellow didn't die after all."

Yeah, so it looks like my complete silence ended up stretching out for roughly 4 months. Wow...
Did I just need a break from art?
Did life just get busy like usual?
or was I just too lazy like normal?

Honestly it was a pretty solid mix of all of the above ^^;
Although there might be another factor as well...

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I just might have too many hobbies.
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I kinda have a tendency to get interested and involved in quite a broad range of stuff. Whether it be live music and anything vinyl related, retro video games and new ones, Japanese anime and animation/movies, sports (okay I guess that one's mostly just Baseball), novice music editing/creating and naive music blogs (which I have also fallen behind on), outdoors recreational fun, and obviously comics and manga. And that doesn't even begin to talk about me as an furry artist and the time and effort spent actually CREATING artwork.

So maybe I should dial back some of my hobbies and just try to focus on specific stuff. I'm fairly certain that would help increase my productivity in whatever I choose to center around...but.......what's the fun in that! :P

Seriously though, as good as narrowing the field might be for me, I do feel like my extremely eclectic tastes and hobbies are one of the things that have really help me develop as an artist and define my work.

I don't know...this is just some random thing I've had on my mind for a while and I wanted to put it down into words to kinda talk myself through it. Not really sure what significance it has to you guys, sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

==========================
--Stuff that's actually relevant to y'all----
==========================

WOW! I REALLY fell off the face of the Earth for this last dry spell!

I hardly checked FA, ignored Twitter and Facebook, and forgot about the several webcomics I had been following religiously. I've just begun to weave through the thousands of notifications (even if they are just submission notifications) and try to catch up on some webcomics.

This may come as a surprise, but my sketchbook hasn't been completely devoid of action for the past few months.
I have been sketching, admittedly not a lot, but still some.
I even completed a fully colored design piece that's sitting on my laptop at the moment and another that's in the works.
The next MitM page has been in a half-complete state for weeks since my markers ran out of ink...
..But I just bought some new markers yesterday, so that can get finished (finally!)

However, I do really want to try to catch up with several artists on here before I get around to posting stuff, so I'll be in the process of marathoning through stuff in the coming week hopefully. Wish me luck! :D

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Well it's hard to believe July is only a few days away (and all the end of the month checks that go with it...), but I hope you'll see much more of me in the coming month than in the previous 6 combined ^^

So for the few of you that have been wondering where's last week's MitM page, I thought I'd do a quick update journal.

I've been traveling around like crazy recently, both for work and personal. I just got back from Denver last week, now I'm in New York, then I'm heading to Chicago at the end of the week, and next week I'll be in Portland. Needless to say, it's been a little hard to find some time to just sit down and draw.

I have been able to get some rough sketches of the next few pages on my long flights though. This last week I did actually have a little extra time and I probably could have finished a page if I really pushed for it, but the next page may or may not end on a much more serious cliffhanger than the last page. Since I will definitely not have any free time in the coming weeks, I figured it would be best to break where the current page is rather than do the next one.

Also...my markers are dead and need to be replaced... :(
(you can kinda notice it if you look closely at the last two pages)

And to top everything off, I'm trying to prepare for my first ever art dealer table at a local Boise Anime Con in late November. Trying to get everything in place for this is going to be pretty hectic and time consuming. While most of my work related travels will be done by October, this art table is what I'm worried may keep MitM on the back-burner longer than I would like to keep it there...

I personally feel like this chapter is a slight cut above my previous work, so I will do my best to get back to it as soon as I can ^^;

What are "LP Mondays" you may ask?

They were a fun side project I pursued for awhile back at the end of last year on MitM's blog. I almost always draw while listening to music, and I happen to love to collect vinyl records. I thought, "Why not share some of the music that's been on my turntable that week?" The idea of LP Mondays was to take one of my vinyls and burn two songs off the album (or LP) and share those on the blog. I would also do some minor research to write up a little about the band, album, and songs. They were a lot of fun, but I had to quit making them after my turntable broke. However, I'm about to start them back up again next Monday! :D



More info about this: http://mitmcomic.com/wp/2017/09/12/lp-monday-news/
If you're interested in some of my old ones, they can be found here: http://mitmcomic.com/wp/category/vinyl/

Hello everybody. Once again, I prove how sporadic my journal entries are...

Anyways, today's topic is a little more important actually.

My friend Kyle is currently running a Kickstarter for his webcomic "Of This Light," a dark, action comic revolving around a group of empowered individuals trying to survive a treacherous city filled with mysterious creatures. The disheartened party's only hope lies in the unusual crack in the sky which spills forth light.

I'm really excited for his first Kickstarter experience, and I've already pledged some money to help him reach his goal. If this sounds like something that might catch your fancy, please consider funding the project ^^

Visit the Kickstarter here >> https://www.kickstarter.com/project.....ight-chapter-1

And if you'd like to read the webcomic to help convince you, that can be read here >> http://www.ofthislight.kylenewbridge.com/

Don't have enough comics to read? The go check out my comic strip series Carpal Funnel! (link at bottom...)

So "Carpal Funnel" was a comic strip I did for my college design internship at a small tech company called Funnel 33 (go check 'em out >> http://funnel33.com/). The comic normally centered around the odd quirks of the tech industry with a few oddball comics now and then.

Anyways, to make a long story short I posted all of them into a simple HTML file on my server. This way I can have access to them if I need to reference them for my design portfolio. The comics didn't end up getting publicly used (at least so far) by Funnel 33 (minus one comic strip that made its way onto Twitter once). My understanding is that there has been some changing of hands at the company as far as leadership is concerned and its looking like it will never make a public appearance.

That said, with my limited legal understanding, I'm still attributing ownership of the comic strip series to Funnel 33 and listing me as only the artist. ^^

Well if you want a few laughs, good luck. Maybe you'll find something here >> http://griswelldesign.com/other/funnel33/

So I wanted to ask you guys a question...

Should I try to open up and do some commissions?

It's something that I've thought about several times before, but I never did it. I was kinda avoiding to awkward situation of opening up commissions only to have no one commission anything. That and I was never really sure what I would want to charge for my work. But my recent Weaver Design posters have made me wonder if I could do commissions based around that idea. I could draw your character in your choice of design era. I was tentatively thinking around the $50 price tag for a full poster cause I really do sink several hours into each of those...

Anyways having a really rough time landing a job right now has made me think a little harder about money (and how I'm gonna afford next month's rent >.<)

Alright so more of just an update journal, since I've been gone for a bit now.

November sure seemed to fly by. In honor of NaNoWriMo and all those involved I did not participate :P
That is super impressive to write a novel within a month and there is no way I could come near that. I did however finally get around to posting a short story I wrote over a month ago, but hadn't got up the courage to share it with many people yet. I have a few other short stories just collecting digital dust on my desktop, so those might find their way up here too.

MitM is almost completely back!! The cover page for Chapter 5 was finished last week, and I'm currently working on page 111. I have every intention to finish it by this Thursday, and like i mentioned, I might find a new update day before long. Also if you haven't gone to go see the new MitM website, it would mean a lot if you go check it out and tell me what you think. I put several hours into that new site and I'm fairly pleased. I'm also excited for the possibilities with the blog portion of the site to try out some new stuff. I'm also excited to share my love of vinyl on the new blog ^^

As for personal life, I'm back on the job hunting trail recently. Last job didn't work out so well......so I called it quits and am seeking out something else.

Yup. I'm going to that.

I know it's literally next weekend, but I had that weekend off and Portland (or so I am told) is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Seattle. That and the ticket prices were really a great deal in my opinion.

Any of you guys been to it before? I've only been to the small anime convention in Boise the past few years, but this one should be considerably larger.

Anyways, really excited and this seemed like FA journal worthy news :P

Now I just need to find a cheap hotel...

Alright the first step is done: I have moved to Seattle. Now for the harder step: Find a job...

Although in just my first day here I did turn in one application and dropped my resume off at two other places. Staying hopeful, but not really sure what to expect. Well you know what they say:


"Job hunting is hard work, and it doesn't pay very well."

Also no MitM page this week. Sorry, I know I just hit page 100, but that doesn't mean I can slack off. I have a rough sketch of the next page, but considering the job hunting, the moving, and everything else, I just won't have the time to actually draw it.

Also Pokemon Go just came out over here, and that's been eating up all my free time x3
Well at least I'm getting my exercise though with it ^^

That's it. It's officially done. 100% officially graduated. No more college. (at least for now...)

Yup. If you haven't heard, last Saturday I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Design and a minor in Computer Science. I even graduated with honors! :O

Now comes the frustrating experience of actually finding a job that applies to my degree. I am currently looking to move to the Seattle area and look for a job in either the video game industry or something comic/illustration based.

In other news, I plan on trying to get some more overtime work done on MitM. Maybe do some stuff like character ref sheets and extra illustrations to just help me flesh out some ideas. I also just finished setting up my portfolio site! It's located here: http://griswelldesign.com/portfolio/

If the landing page is any inclination, the site still needs A LOT of work done. It's all coded from scratch and the mobile version needs the most work. The landing page will display my logo when I finish that...

Apart from finishing up all my college work and finals, internship has been sapping all my time the last few weeks. So that's what happened to all my free time and why MitM has seen a seriously patchy updating schedule, but hopefully that's behind us now...



Well now you know what's been occupying my time and what is going to occupy my next coming weeks. Oh and I plan on updating my profile info since it was all basically written by my high school self more than 5 years ago...

...

I just wanted to say a small prayer for all the people involved in the Paris attacks.

...

Bring peace to those who need it most. Amen.

Finally!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

www.mitmcomic.com

My personal website that I built from the ground up for my webcomic, Mutt in the Middle (MitM), is finally complete!

It took a whole lot of time to finish, but I'm glad it's up and running (with only a few minor problems...). The site where I've been uploading my comic pages probably won't stick around for much longer. Instead I will only post here on FA and on the new site. I do have a Facebook page as well that you can like and follow if you are interested in the comic.

www.facebook.com/muttinthemiddle/

Well this a project that's been in the works for at least the last year. I hope you guys think it looks good, because this will be the future home for my webcomic ^^

I hath returned from mine adventure in Costa Rica!

Yup, after more than 3 weeks I'm safe and sound once again in the states. It was a truly fascinating venture to a country I knew very little about and where they speak a language I know even less about (my Spanish is terrible!).

My college, Northwest Nazarene University (NNU, located outside of Boise, ID), requires all students to have a "cross-cultural" experience (and then write a 10-page paper on it, which I have not done...). Requiring something like this kinda empties out what's left of your wallet after paying for tuition and such, but I thought the trip was truly worthwhile.

If you have never visited another country, I would highly suggest it. Just seeing the similarities and the differences between how you live and the lives of those who are miles away from home in what feels almost like another world is quite amazing. I still have a personal dream of visiting Europe, but living in a shack without internet and phone service in the middle of the rainforest was pretty special!



Now that I'm back there seems like so much to catch up on. Today I spent a good couple of hours browsing through what my buddies had been doing here just on FA. Don't get me wrong, it was awesome seeing all the great stuff you guys have been up to, but I apologize if I was getting just a little tired by the end of it ^^;

That said there are so many cool things going on right now. Like the Dreamkeepers Kickstarter. I've read all that's available online, but I've never owned a physical copy, which I hope to correct before it ends.

I just got an apartment in Nampa (just outside of Boise) and I don't have any roommates. Gonna be a big responsibility and a lot different than the crowded dorms. I am visiting with family back in Montana this weekend, but I head back to hunt down a job to pay for my new housing arrangement.

MitM (Mutt in the Middle) is coming back as soon as possible I swear! There are only three more pages left in this chapter (SPOILERS!!) so I want to get those finished as soon as possible. The break will not be nearly as long as it was for the last chapter (thank goodness!!), but there might be a little downtime until I at least hunt down a job.



On a completely unrelated matter, tomorrow is my 21st birthday so my family wants to do a little something special. I might go find an authentic Montana beer to taste before the day is over, but we'll see. The last day I spent in Costa Rica, I ordered an Imperial beer as an early celebration of my 21st because 18 is the legal drinking age there. The Imperial is the national beer so I thought it might be fun. It tasted......okay...what can I say I ain't a beer drinker XD

Anyways I've seen a lot of bad crap drinking can cause for a person's life, so I ain't about to dive head first. That said it does sound kinda fun to celebrate with a small drink with my family, who don't drink X3



Wow, now I'm rambling and half of you have stopped reading while the other half have fallen asleep. Anyways here's to a good a summer for all of you! Treasure it till school rips it away from some of you in the fall XD

Going to college in the Boise area means I'm not really that far from Oregon, but I rarely go there.

This weekend though I'm heading that way for our college's concert band tour!
After we get back on Tuesday, the very next Friday I go right back with the art department as we visit the art museum in Portland for the weekend!

I thought I'd mention it because, one, these next few weeks are going to be crazy busy for me, and two, I vaguely recall something about someone living in that state and you might find this entry intriguing :3

For our concert band tour our first performance is in Centralia, WA. Then we go to Tacoma, Portland, and finally Hermiston.

So yeah, random life update...

So I probably mentioned something about a figure studies class I'm taking this semester at college. Anyways it's helped quite a lot with my understanding of the human figure and stuff. It also helped me realize that I am much better at stylized cartoon characters rather than realistic people >.<

Anyways I thought that I'd throw a couple drawings from class up here on my gallery (and likely throw them in my scraps) to kinda show off what else I can do artistically.

Awesome movie -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SlB-SpDMKI

There are times when you get hounded or even ridiculed for liking anime or being a "furry," but after you tell 'em to shut up, show them this trailer. Wolf Children is a beautiful movie that deeply discusses growing up and the true beauty in life. I consider myself a die-hard Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli fan, but this movie quite honestly has taken its place in my heart as possibly my favorite anime movie.

Even if you aren't into anime at all, please, I urge you to give it a shot and try to appreciate the movie for what it is. If you are an anime fan though, what are you waiting for?! This is one of those that will easily be remembered down the road as a film worth viewing.