drew weing dot com

We meet again, the Internet.

on June 19, 2006

Oh… hello, the Internet. It’s been a while.

Let’s see… briefly, since I last posted: Eleanor and I visited Tucson AZ (her hometown. ) We went to Eleanor’s sister’s high school graduation. We stayed in a cabin in the Chiricahua Mountains, where you can see about a million shooting stars every night. We hiked up a canyon. We visited Bisbee AZ, about the coolest little town I’ve been in. It’s an old mining town (now taken over by hippies) that’s built into the sides of a steep valley, with hundreds of staircases leading up the stacked layers of streets and houses. We stayed at a motel where all of the “rooms” were vintage 50s Airstream trailers. I got back to Savannah to say goodbye to most of my recently-graduated Savannah friends, as they headed off into the world. We went to Savannah’s Asian Festival, and I ate three countries’ worth of food. I got a phone call with some good news about one of my comics… but I’ll hold off on the details until it’s all in writing.

I’ll have a new Set to Sea panel up for tomorrow, but for now, here’s a silly self-portrait I did for promo reasons recently:

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Set to Sea 40

on May 16, 2006

The story so far…

I had a little time between projects today, so I inked up another Set to Sea panel! I figure at this rate, it’ll wrap up sometime in 2015.

So, what’s up around here? Well, it seems like a lot of our friends are getting ready to move out of town. We’ll be following them pretty soon, most likely. Eleanor and I are looking into moving to Athens GA, about 4 hours away from the SAV. We’ve got some friends up there, and it’s a pretty cool place to be. But we’ll be leaving behind some good friends here, too.

The other day we all went out and saw Art School Confidential… I don’t particularly recommend it. I’m kinda selfishly hoping it flops, so Clowes will get back to comics.

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Of Old Russia and Baronesses

on May 4, 2006

Still working on the pitch. I’ve been reading a lot of books about Russia while working on this pitch, and looking at a lot of Russian art. Have you heard of Ivan Bilibin? He is a pretty amazing Russian art nouveau guy. Remember, I heard of him first, so that means I get first dibs on ripping him off.

Today while Eleanor and I were at the coffee shop, a guy came up and introduced himself as a kid I’d gone to elementary school with back in Lexington, VA – he said he’d seen me around but had never said hello before, and that at one point he was living two houses down from me for a while. We went to the same hippy preschool place, and I think we were in a summer painting workshop together when I was in middle school. Now he’s playing in a thrash metal band called Baroness. What a crazy world.

A few days ago, my friend Joey was trying to name an 80s tv show, and the best he could come up with was “Chachi Does Two Guys.”

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At least I listen over headphones

on May 3, 2006

Here’s a couple more “version 1.0” character sketches.

I’m still having fun doing “version 2.0” character designs, though Eleanor has pointed out that I’m spending way too much time on them if I expect to be done with this pitch in the next week or two. I often find myself procrastinating by spending TOO much time on a drawing, which is slightly better than the normal way of procrastination, but still no good for your output.

While working, I’ve been listening to almost nothing but videogame music. Eleanor is mocking me for this, but I think anybody who just listened to Andrew Bird’s “A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left” literally 32 times in the last 24 hours (and I checked the iTunes play count!) is living in a glass house.

Yeah, I’m a dork. I like videogame music. I hardly ever play the actual games anymore, but listening to the music is even better, because you can actually, you know, do things whlle you listen to it.

I recommend The Advantage (nothing but NES tunes rendered in garage band fashion) and The Black Mages (the actual dude who composed all the final music’s band, which plays suspiciously hair-metal-ish renditions of FF tunes.)

I do turn my brain to more intellectual matters occasionally. For instance, I just read Camus’ The Stranger, so now I can listen to The Cure’s Killing an Arab and feel “in the know.” I didn’t actually like The Stranger very much. I suspect I should have read it in high school for maximum appreciation. If you are in high school right now, and you’re reading The Stranger, please take it with a grain of salt. Ditto for The Fountainhead, which screwed up my head until I was in college almost. “Howard Roark laughed,” my ass.

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Graphite smudges

on May 2, 2006

What a waster of a day; I hardly got anything done. I’m still working on the character redesigns for my “book pitch.” I’ve been doing them as full pencil renderings, with shading and all. I’m pretty rusty – before this I don’t think I’ve picked up a #2 pencil for over a year. Hopefully I can post them up pretty soon.

Meanwhile, here’s some more of the “version 1.0” character designs: