Another Friday. Thirty-eight weeks into the year of our lord Two Thousand Twenty-One. Thank you again for opening this email. Thank you even more if you read it.

These Days …

I’ve been summoned for jury duty! When I got the notice I was momentarily excited. The post office pays your regular salary for time spent on jury duty. I checked the dates and was disappointed to find that the date falls on my next scheduled vacation. This will be the fourth (maybe the fifth) time I’ve been summoned since moving to Seattle. The first couple of times I was working for a company as the office manager. If I’d actually been chosen for a jury the company would have been without anyone to answer phones, schedule appointments, bill clients and other such important activities so my bosses got me excused. The last time I was summoned I did the previous day call in thing and was told I didn’t need to show up. That was pre-covid. According to the summons jury selection will be done remotely. If I’m not contacted by a bailiff by October 6th I’m no longer in the running for a jury.

I’m interested in serving on a jury sometime. I suspect I wouldn’t make it through the selection process but I’d like to see what a trial looks like from the inside.

That’s the first week of October. I will have the whole week off. This week … bleah. The best way to handle a mess is to expect a mess. So I go into work each day with the expectation that I’ll be working at least ten hours, probably more. I got myself a good powerful headlamp so I’m ready for that evening when I’m stuck out after the sun has gone to visit another part of our planet.

This week has been an improvement over recent ones. I only carried my own route on Monday and Tuesday. I did overtime because of the volume of parcels (on Monday) and Red Plums (on Tuesday) but I was done before six pm. Wednesday was my scheduled day off. I took Thursday off because Sarah had doctor’s appointments.

We’ll see what today brings.

Transmissions / Power Dynamics

… will return next week.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I’ve gotten four commissions in the last couple of weeks. One was for a pair of spot illustrations for a Call of Cthulhu book. The second was for a portrait of a family as their favorite superheroes. The third is a re-coloring job updating some art from the 1940s. The fourth is an illustration inspired by the current kerfuffle happening in Sebastopol (the small town where I spent most of my childhood) over the merger of the two rival high schools. I’ll post some of that when it’s appropriate.

I’ve also been trying put in time sketching. Now that my online stores are up and have a good variety of images I’m wanting to create some comics. I have ideas. Kaiju Weather. The Witch Engines. Both are long graphic novels that I’m not ready to tackle yet. So I’m sketching to see what comes up in the meantime.

Some of these sketches are NSFW. Fair warning.

I’ve also discovered that Google Sheets is a handy way to outline a plot. I set up a spreadsheet for the number of pages I want for, say, a chapter of a stpry. Each box of the spreadsheet represents a page of the comic. In each box I write a few sentences describing the action of the page. That allows me to figure out the basic plot and action. From there I can work up a script (for the dialogue and captions) and thumbnails (for the layout of the illustrations).

One of the advantages of Sheets is that I’ve been able to set it up on my phone and make notes during breaks at USPS.

With Sheets I’ve outlined a long graphic novel twice. The first time the story came to 600 pages – that is, 600 boxes in a spreadsheet. Fifty 12 page chapters. I lthought the first version was a good start but it needed another pass. The second time the story came to 660 pages – Fifty-five 12 page chapters.

I doubt that either outline will be expanded further. They were good practice. I imagined the final pages to be manga-ish – smaller than American comics, three to five panels per page. I had originally thought the story might be about a hundred pages but, as I outlined, the characters started escaping the original plot. They refused to do what I wanted them to do. They chose to do things that were better, worse, different. Still, 600 plus pages is too ambitious at the moment. Those characters were fun to work with so perhaps they will find their way into another  story. Versions of some of those characters are depicted in these sketches.

As I said, Google Sheets was really useful. Having the plot laid out in a grid allowed me to see where to schedule page breaks, plot reveals and gage how many pages to dedicate to a series of actions. I did most of the writing early in the morning. I’d take a half an hour and jot notes. The first draft took a couple of weeks. The second draft a little less. I didn’t use my phone access much but it was handy to have available.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading. I appreciate it.

Remember that there’s a Might Nizz calendar available for 2022.

See you next week!

Friday arrives, stumbling and confused. Everyone waits for it with anticipation but, with plague and overwork and no work and missing friends, no one remembers what to with the weekend anymore. The week hasn’t ended. The chaos rolls on and on.

Hell.

That’s no way to greet you.

Howdy! Sorry about that. I clearly haven’t cleaned up around here lately. There’s some black mold growing in my attitude. Time to toss around some bleach and do some mental scrubbing.

These Days .. 

Stuff happened. There was a holiday on Monday and I had a day off on Tuesday. With Sunday off as well I had three days in which I didn’t deliver mail. Yay! I really needed the break.

I was reminded why I needed the break when I went back to work on Wednesday and found that my T6 (the person who delivers my route on my day off) had had to deliver one of his other assigned routes and broken up my route for other carriers to deliver instead. And one of those carriers hadn’t been able to do that. I had trays of mail that needed to be sorted into the current days deliveries. I had Red Plum coupon tabloids to deliver. And I was asked … mandated … to deliver a third of another route. Another twelve hour day.

I’m tired. I know my fellow carriers are tired. A lot of the routes needing to be covered because carriers are on vacation but, even when we’ve got a fuller complement we’re still shorthanded. We need more carriers. I’m happy to work some overtime. I’m not crazy about twelve hour days. I’m not crazy about multiple twelve hour days.

Complain. Complain.

Transmission 05

Wilhelmina Grace felt the noise upon arrival. This place throbbed. It pulsed. It came from all directions and from all the machines. She could feel the power and pressure through her suit. She felt the hairs on her skin rise. She felt the vibration in her bones.

She checked her suit’s sensors. She expected that this place would be hot. It looked sweltering. It looked torrid. The sensors read the environment as cold, near zero in temperature. The machines, linked and connected, went up and down as far as she could see. 

Power Dynamics – The Face

Welcome to another edition of What The What, the podcast in which I interview some of the more unique personalities in our society. I’m Blane Walker. For the next few weeks I’m going to be speaking with superheroes, those folks with powers beyond the normal. This week we’re chatting with the Face. As usual, I’m speaking to you from my home studio here in Portland, Oregon. The Face is calling us from an undisclosed location. .

Blane – Hello, the Face! Can I just call you Face?”

The Face – If you want.

Blane – I have to ask – who are you really?

The Face – I’m a citizen who wants to make a difference.

Blane – Why put on a mask? Couldn’t you make a difference without it?

The Face – This is just one way of acting. I don’t spend my life in disguise.

Blane – Why this particular mask? Why green?

The Face – It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Blane – When was this? I mean, when did you put on the mask the first time? There are reports of you, your … “Face” … going back at least five years.

The Face – I can’t speak to the specific incident without putting people at risk. But who doesn’t love a mask? Who doesn’t want to punch a bad guy? You could say I’ve been preparing for this since I was a kid.

Blane – There is a lot of debate about that “bad guy” label. Some of the “bad guys” you’ve been punching have been cops. The video of you attacking a line of police officers during the BLM riots goes viral every time someone uploads it.

The Face – “Attacking.”  “Riots.” You’re letting your capitalist, statist, copaganda indoctrination show Blane.It was a peaceful protest. The cops showed up in riot gear. They used tear gas and weapons on unarmed citizens. The violence was initiated by the police.

Blane – There had been property damage …

The Face – There had been murders committed by cops hiding behind their badges. There was and continues to be violence against marginalized people committed by cops. Cops who are well paid and who remain on the job.

Blane – But is violence the way to stop violence?

The Face – Did you think that question through?

Blane – Are you a member of Antifa?

The Face –

Blane – Was that a bad question?

The Face – That was a dumb question, Blane. Antifa is as real as bigfoot. Actually, that’s a bad example. I’ve met sasquatches. They’re real. They just aren’t the things urban legend thinks they are.

Blane – Bigfoot is real?

The Face – Bigfoot is as real as I am. Bigfoot is as much a member of Antifa as I am.

Blane – Bigfoot is Antifa?

The Face – You’re easily distracted, aren’t you Blane?

The Calendar for 2022

The Skookworks calendar for 2022 is now available through my Zazzle shop. Twelve months of the Mighty Nizz! Fourteen illustrations! 365 dates!

That’s it for this week. Thank you for visiting!

Stay safe. Stay sane. Drink your milk.

You’re back! Seven days have passed and you have opened another missive. Huzzah!

These Days … 

Lots of overtime at USPS this last week. Bleah. More time handling mail (mostly Amazon parcels) means less time having a life and therefore less time to write about having less time to have a life. You’re probably getting used to, and perhaps tired of, this complaint.

Moving on …

Transmission 03 

Wilhelmina Grace almost laughed. The transmitter had found her a safe location. She stood on solid ground. It appeared to be the only solid ground for thousands, if not millions, of miles. It seemed to hold a much stronger force of gravity than she would have expected in so small an object. Nonelheless she stayed still. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves that might launch her into the void.

At first she took the glowing objects that drifted past as comets but then she heard faint music. Music, coming from glowing objects, in airless space? Wilhelmina checked her thoughts. This destination only appeared to be airless space. This was not her home dimension. There could be an atmosphere outside her suit. The music from the not-comets was atonal, staticky and vaguely electronic. She thought it sounded like Chinese opera as played on a Theramin.

Super Portraits

I’ve done team up shots of my “Weird Heroes”. I’ve done solo images. I figured it was time to do portraits of each character. My standard work flow is to start by sketching with nonphoto blue pencil.

There are five “Weird Heroes”. I hate leaving empty space so I drew a cat.

Once I was basically satisfied with the blueline sketches I went over them a “B” lead pencil. Once I’ve scanned in these drawings I will drop out the blue using a function in Photoshop. I’ve made process gifs of each portrait and I’ll be sharing those in my next few newsletters.

I went ahead and inked the cat.

The final version of this critter is available on schtuff in my Redbubble store. If you’d like to see it on Zazzle merch just let me know.

Once again, thank you for opening this email. Life is full of distractions. I’m honored that you let me be one of them.

I hope you are well and sane. Remember to get some exercise. See you in seven days!

Good morning fabulous reader! Thank you opening this email. The only viruses it contains are love and appreciation.

These Days …

Cleviosity is not a recognized word. Not yet. It’s a term invented by Patrick McLean. He says, “Cleviosity (or Cleviousness) is my term for when you are trying so hard to do something smart that you wind up doing something stupid”. He has an essay about his own Cleviosness here.

I’ve been using the word frequently since I read it. There’s a lot I do that’s intended to have one result but ends up producing different ones, ones that could have been predicted if I had thought three or four times instead of just twice. This newsletter is a good example. I started it because I’d been reading a lot of other email newsletters and I found a lot of them inspirational. I’ve been writing it in part so I get practice writing. Writing and producing writing to deadline. And I’m getting that – the experience of writing and producing a newsletter to a weekly deadline.

The thing is … I want more practice writing and drawing comics. Writing a newsletter gives me practice stringing words together. Comics are not words. Yes, most comics have words in them. Yes, most comics start with a written script. But a comic story is not a newsletter. I can ramble on here for a few hundred words and get a satisfying product. I don’t have to plan much.

A comic story requires more planning. Whether the story is five pages or five hundred, each page needs to be composed so that the images can be read clearly. If there’s dialogue it needs to be considered while planning the page so it can be read cleanly. Too many words can overwhelm the images. If the story requires a page count it must be planned so that the action is presented well.

A newsletter is not a comic book. Also, the audience for a newsletter might not be the same audience for a comic story. Not everyone who reads this newsletter will want to read my comics. Heck, not everyone who subscribes to this newsletter opens it. Not everyone who opens it reads it, I know some folks just look at the pictures.

That’s fine. Really. I long ago stopped worrying (much) about the results of my creative endeavors. I do notice the results and, when the results aren’t what I was hoping/planning on, I make adjustments.

Putting out this newsletter on a weekly basis is useful. I do get practice hitting deadlines and writing prose. I made a commitment to put out this version of the newsletter for a year and I will. We’re now far enough past the half way point of 2021 that I’m thinking of how I want the newsletter fo function in 2022. I have some ideas. If you’re one of the folks who reads each issue, I’d love to hear your feedback.

In the meantime I need to figure out how to add “write and draw comics” into my schedule.  Hopefully I’ll manage it with less cleviousness this time.

Transmission 02

Wilhelmina Grace arrived gently. The transimission process was supposed to work that way. The machines were supposed to calculate a stable arrival point for the subject and desposit it there precisely. Theory and application were not always the same. Grace was relieved that this arrival had actually gone as designed.

She was disconcerted that the transmitter had placed her on top of some sort of stalk. She wondered it was a plant or a fungus and recognized that she was attempting to apply Terran biological classifications to organisms existing in otherdimensional realms. She also recognized that she would need to maintain her balance on this stalk for the ten minutes until the transmitter forwarded her to the next destination. The transmitter would find her if she moved but she realized that she could see the ground from where she was balanced. All she saw were waving stalks and floating creatures.

She was beginning to think that the ten minute destination visit idea might have been poorly thought out. 

Expansions

I’ve been continuing to update older images to better fit on merchandise in my Redbubble store. I’ve realized that most of my earlier images were composed as if they were comic book panels. I tried to fill all the available space as if I only had so much space available. That meant, when I tried placing the images on a variety of different products I’d often either have to crop out cool parts of the image or just not place the image on some products. Fortunately most of the work I’ve done in the last five years exists as large, layered photoshop files. I can make adjustments to sizes and lines and colors pretty easily.

Singing for Shub Niggurath 

The original –

The updated version. More space at the top and bottom of the image, more flesh on the singer, and simplified colors.

It Came From the Landfill

The original – inspired by creature in the movie The Milpitas Monster.

The updated version – more room at the top of the image, more vibrant (lurid?) colors.

Three Girls and the Heap

The original –

THe updated version – more room at the top and left side. Highlights on the figures.

And that’s it for this week. I appreciate you spending some of your no doubt limited attention here.

Get some rest. Say hi to friends. Give your work the love it deserves.

See you on the 27th!

Please leave a message at the tone.

If there is no tone, please whisper your message into the nearest sanitary ear.

These Days ..

The weather is hot. We’re short on carriers. Amazon continues to send us big heavy parcels that require extra time for delivery. Rinse. Repeat. .

Transmission 001

Wilhelmina Grace ceased to exist. She felt it happen. She expected it. It was part of the transmission process. But expectation and experience can be very different things. One can imagine not existing. Feeling nonexistence was something she hadn’t anticipated. The moment was brief but palpable. She felt, knew, a moment of complete discontinuity.

And then she was in a space that was not a place. It was a betweenness. There was no ground. No sky. Colors that she could not name. She felt like she was falling but couldn’t orient herself to up or to down. She felt relieved that she would transmit again in ten minutes. She knew she could deal with this experience for ten minutes.

Unless there was a down, a ground, a place where gravity mattered, somewhere in those ten minutes.

Unless minutes meant nothing in this no place. 

Back in the Light

I’ve done a lot of illustrations for role playing games. Most of them were for some version of The Call of Cthulhu. One of my favorite companies to work for was the one I started with – Sixtystone Press. I’ve looked through my archive of illustrations to see which ones could be converted to merch. Not a lot, I think. I could be wrong but most of the pictures seem too specific to the scenarios which they are illustrating to work as stand alone images.

Most but not all. I found three images in the scenario book Lost in the Lights that I think can be appreciated without context. All I needed to do was edit them so they worked better on t-shirts and such.

Above is the original front cover illustration of Lost in the Lights. The scenario takes place in Las Vegas during a convention of celebrity impersonators. One of the most prominant celebrities to impersonate, especially in Vegas, is Elvis. Below is recontextualized version of the image.

Most of the book’s interior illustrations are scenario specific but I found a couple that I lked just by themselves.

Skulls! Who doesn’t love skulls? People who don’t have skulls perhaps?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colorized version.

Creepy masks! Who doesn’t love creepy masks? People without faces maybe?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colored and colorized and edited version.

Shop Talk

Hahahahahahaha!

I wrote that the above section on Sunday morning. The featured images have been in my stores for a few weeks now. On Monday I got this email from Redbubble –

Hi David Lee ,We’re sorry, but we had to remove your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace, because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. The owner of these rights has provided us with guidance describing the type of content they consider infringing that should be removed from the marketplace. In most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal, but that Redbubble has detected potential similarity between your removed work and one or more words, phrases or images included in the rights holder’s removal guidance. More information: Rights holder: Sony Music Entertainment Subject matter: Elvis Presley Affected Artwork: Cosmic Horror and the King of Rock and Roll https://www.redbubble.com/people/skookworks/works/81545321-cosmic-horror-and-the-king-of-rock-and-roll What you can do next: Do nothing Your artwork will not be reinstated, and you should not upload it again. This usually brings the matter to a close. Contest the removal This is only appropriate if you believe that removal of your work is a mistake or that your work is parody, satire, critical commentary or other fair use. More information on the counter notice process can be found here. Important: Re-uploading the same content without going through this counter notice process may result in penalties being applied to your user account, including account suspension.

I like specifics. I wanted to know how I specifically violated Sony’s rights. I know they control the rights to most if not all Elvis’s music but I wasn’t aware that they also controlled rights to any depiction of him as well. So I asked for a copy of the guidelines that RB used to decide to take down the image.

I got this instead –

Dear David,

Regards,

The links in that bullet list are broken. I’ve interacted with RB over copyright before, weeks ago, and gotten the same broken list. That tells me that RB isn’t paying much attention to my response. I’ve pointed out those links are broken before yet they haven’t been fixed. I’m not taking it personally. The complany claims “Redbubble is a community of independent artists and designers who take sole responsibility for the content of their work. We value originality and creativity and strongly oppose infringement of copyright, trademarks, intellectual property rights and publicity rights.” It’s a nice sounding slogan but a hollow one.

The takedown of the my Elvis art isn’t the issue. There’s enough wobble around who can profit from depictions of the man that, if I were RB, I’d find it easier to remove the design too.

My issue is that RB hosts dozens, if not hundreds, of stores that sell stolen designs. Those stores are pretty obvious but reporting them doesn’t get much action from RB. They hide behind their rule that only the rights holders of a design can report a stolen design. It’s a rule that is no doubt intended to prevent malicious takedown requests but mostly just lets RB avoid responsibility for enabling thieves.

Ah well.

And that’s it for this week! Thank you again for visiting. Stay safe! Stay sane! Don’t eat your roommates if they die. Let your cats do that.

See you next Friday!

And so we come lurching to the end of another week – according to the USPS HR department. My payweek runs from Saturday to Friday so today is considered the finale of my toil. Since I still have to work tomorrow I’m not going to feel like I’ve finished my week until I clock out tomorrow evening. Thank you for allowing me to toss this missive into your mailbox. I hope you are doing well!

These Days …

As of August 12th, I will have been working for USPS for 8 years. I’ve had my own route for about six and a half years but I’ve continured to carry off other routes in that time. I’ve delivered to almost every mailbox in the four zip codes that our station services. Yay me!

We’re doing a lot of mandatory overtime at my station. Between being short on carriers and having carriers on vacation those of us who show up for work are often “asked” to carry part of another route regardless of whether we are on the Overtime Desired List. My body isn’t happy with me because of this.

Well, not just this. On Saturday, July 24th, Sarah and I loaded up the car and drove from Seattle to Santa Rosa. The distance is a little over 800 miles. It took us about 16 hours.

On Sunday the 24th we attended the memorial of our friend Andy Syversen. Andy had passed away last September but his family had held off having an event until some covid restrictions had been lifted.

On Monday the 26th Sarah and I did another 16 hour drive back to Seattle.

When we woke up on the 27th we both hurt. Apparently sitting in one place with minimal breaks for exercising isn’t good for you. I had taken the 24th and the 26th off from work (thereby sticking my coworkers with filling in for me on my route – sorry folks!) but that Tuesday was a scheduled day off. From the post office. We still went to visit one friend who is in town for medical care and then had dinner with one of my high school classmates who was passing through town.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday I limped through delivering mail. My supervisors held off scheduling me to carry extra the first three days because of that limping but I still did overtime. There was an election here in Seattle on August 3rd and the candidates had to get their mailers out. Many many mailers. For some reason political marketers have decided that oversized cardstock mailers are the way to push their clients. Those things are a nuisance to case and often don’t fit in the mailboxes easily.

On Sunday, August 1st, we had breakfast with a couple of passing-through-town friends and then an early dinner with our in-town-for-medical-treatment friend.

Monday and Tuesday I worked overtime. I’d recovered enough that my limping was minimal so I got to deliver parts of other routes.

Wednesday was this week’s scheduled day off. I spent it doing catching up on chores.

Thursday – overtime.

I’m expecting more overtime today. We’re supposed to be scheduled for one eight hour day each work week and, if that doesn’t happen, any overtime we work on the day that’s not an eight is paid double. So today I’ll either go home at 3:30 or make a little extra cash. I’ll be happier to go home early but the cash wouldn’t hurt.

Revisions and Edits

It should have been obvious to me. Circular designs look good on t-shirts. They make good magnets and buttons and stickers. But it still took me a few months before I grokked that. Once I did, I looked through my older images to see which ones would look good in a circle.

I did this King in Yellow illustration back when I was relearning how to color on the computer. I was posting a black and white image and then the colored version to my website.

I liked the black and white version but the original colors needed some work. More contrast. More luridness.

Much better!

The next image was an even earlier one, done when I was finally having time to draw again after my first year of a heavy, time devouring postal work. These first drawings were only done and posted to my website in black and white. This is one of my various interpretations of the atomic zombie fishmen from The Horror of Party Beach. 

I made some edits to the lead fishman before I started coloring. I’ve had enough practice recently that digitally adding to the drawing is easy. I couldn’t have done when I originally drew it. I still can’t draw an image from scratch digitally but perhaps if I keep practicing ..
.

The next illustration was done for an RPG supplement that will probably never see print. The featured elephantine critter is one of the “brothers” of Chaugnar Faugn, a Great Old One invented by Frank Belknap Long. The original version was/is in black and white. I’ve put some of my black and white illustrations into my shops but I thought this one would look good with some color.

Lurid color of course. I hear some folks aren’t into lurid color. Silly people.

These designs can be found on various schtuff in both my Redbubble and Zazzle stores.

And that’s it for this week.

Be good to yourself. Be kind to others. Say hello to passing dogs. Rest when you can.

Cheers!

Hello wonderful people. It has been a long week for me. It was a good week but a busy one, much of it spent away from my computer. I will try to tell you about it next week. I hope you are doing well and getting the rest you need. Here’s a process gif of the Mighty Nizz.kicking leaves.

Hello beautiful people! It’s so good to see you again! Thank you for gracing me with your presence. I have less words for you this week. I love you just as much as ever!

These Days …

I went to Analy High School in Sebastopol, California. I moved to Seattle in the early 90s and I’ve only sporadically been back. Through the magic of the internet and social media I’ve learned that Analy has been renamed West County High School. There’s a Facebook group dedicated to reversing that. I’m part of the group. I don’t participate much. I don’t pay property taxes in Sebastopol so I don’t feel I have much say in the decisions about the school. Apparently enrollment both there and the “rival” high school, El Molino, has dropped so much that changes needed to be made. El Molino has been shut down and the student there are to finish their high school years at Analy. The school board decided, apparently without consulting the general population, to rename to school. This will require new signs, uniforms and other things that will cost money. Which is weird to me since I thought the whole point of consolidating the schools was to save money.

Most of what I know comes in dribs and drabs from the FB group. There are a lot of people passionately opposed to the changes. A very 21st Century part of the fight has happened at Wikipedia. Analy’s entry has been subsumed into the West County High School entry. Not so odd. The ridiculous bit is that, for a few days, many notable alumni had their entries changed to say that they had graduated from West County. That name is only a month old. No one has gradutated from it yet. No one can graduate from it retroactively.

I’m tempted to add “graduated from Analy High School” to my Wikipedia entry but not enough to actually do it. I’m just not that nostalgic for my high school years.

While I don’t have much attachment to the school, I do have bonds and love for friends I made while attending  the place. Early tomorrow morning Sarah and I will take a road trip down to Northern California. Last September my friend, Andy Syversen, passed away. Andy and I were in the same graduating class at Analy. We remained friends. His family is finally able have his memorial. Flying had already become an unpleasant experience before covid. Adding in the possibility of having to deal with idiots and uncomfortable seating while flying and then figuring out rental cars and places to sleep at the other end and we decided we’d rather just drive. It should only take twice as long and we’ll both be happier. We’ll drive down Saturday, attend the memorial on Sunday and then drive back Monday.

On Tuesday I’ve got plans to meet up with another former alumni who will be passing through Seattle. Hopefully I’ll have recovered enough to be good company.

The Mighty Nizz

This kid. This kid, the Mighty Nizz, has her own collections in both my Zazzle and my Redbubble stores. Clearly she’s one of my favorite subjects. I did a lot of illustrations of her before I opened the stores. I’ve done more since. As I’ve gotten more experienced designing for physical objects I’ve been editing and/or expanding some of the early illustrations. Here are a few of the before and afters –

This kid leads a busy life.

As do we all.

May you find some joy in all the activity. And some peace.

See you next week!

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the latest issue of the Skook Works in Progress newsletter in which I show images and ramble on, sometimes about the images, sometimes about life, sometimes about completely unrelated things. Thank you for visiting.

These Days …

This is one of my Long Weeks. Because of rotating days off every six weeks postal carriers have a week where we work six days in a row. Monday I worked 13 hours. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked about ten houes each day. Yesterday I did a little over nine hours. We’re supposed to get an eight hour day at least once during any five day week so today I should be scheduled for it. Whether or not that happens will depend on how many carriers call in sick. We’re already down a lot of folks due to vacation time. If I work more than eight today I will get paid double time.

I am hoping for eight. A friend of mine had surgery yesterday and I’d like to have the energy to visit her in the hospital. I’ve heard things went well and we’d planned to visit her on Sunday but if we can see her sooner that’s better.

Found Objects

The Salesman and the Cartoonist walk into the Studio. The Cartoonist is drinking a large mug of cold coffee. The Salesman is drinking water. The Cartoonist sits at the drawing table. The Salesman turns on the computer and settles down in front of it..

Salesman: You’re finally going to do a new version of The Desktop?

Cartoonist: Sure. It’s a good image and I think I could design a version that looks good on a coffee mug.

Salesman: You can’t just color the original?

Cartoonist: I’d have to make a new scan. The only version I’ve got saved is a low rez jpeg. I can’t do anything good with that. The original art is in one of my flat files but it would take less time to draw a new version than to try to find it.

Salesman: The original is the wrong layout to work on a mug.

Cartoonist. That too.

Salesman: You are going to make it so it works on t-shirts and things, right? We want to maximize the potential of all the art.

Cartoonist: You want to maximize the potential. I want to design a cool coffee mug. If the image fits on a t-shirt as well, all the better. But first I want it to fit on a mug. T-shirts get worn one day and then washed. A coffee mug is an every day companion.

Salesman: You’ve changed the design.

Cartoonist: I did the original almost 20 years ago. It got published in the first issue of The Black Seal but I drew it before I’d started contributing. I submitted it along with a bunch of spot illustrations I did specifically for the magazine. I draw differently now. And I want the image to work on a coffee mug.

Salesman: What is the significance of all these things? Do they all have stories?

Cartoonist: Sure. But I’d rather not say anything. I’d rather the viewer made up their own stories.

Salesman: It’s easier to sell something if it’s accompanied by a story. Human beings think in narrative. Images without context are less likely to generate interest in the observer.

Cartoonist: Is there a story we can tell about a mutant baby in a jar that will appeal to a broad audience?

Salesman: Probably?

Cartoonist: It’s a collection of weird objects acquired by an investigator into the paranormal and occult. It’s samples from a cabinet of curiousities.

Salesman: What’s with all the pills and medicine bottles?

Cartoonist: Some of the objects have properties that can only be observed while under the influence of psychedelics. The investigator is also self medicating to manage the trauma and PTSD they acquired in the process of acquiring their collection.

Salesman: Is there a happy, Disneyesque version to this story?

Cartoonist: With songs and dances and helpful animal companions?

Salesman: Yeah!
. 

Cartoonist: Ask me after I’ve had more coffee. Preferably in one of these mugs.

Salesman: You still haven’t explained the mutant baby in the jar.

Cartoonist: It will tell its own story in a song. Go get us a movie contract.

Shop Talk 

So this happened –

That’s my design in someone’s else shop on Redbubble.I found this on Sunday morning. The pirate was nice enough to copy my tags when they copied my design so it showed up when I did a tag search for “skookworks”. Their entire shop was filled with designs stolen from other folks. I reported them but I expect that this is only my first experience of being pirated.

This does seem like a good time to talk about tags. Again.

I belong to a Facebook group for people who are selling designs on Redbubble. After I’d contributed a few comments about what I’d learned about using tags on Redbubble, one of the moderators asked if I’d be willing to write a post about them. I said I’d think about. I didn’t and don’t feel like an expert. I’ve got a lot to learn. I do find learning fun so I’ve been doing research to see if I can use tags to help folks find my store and therefore purchase my stuff.

First off, for those who don’t spend a lot of time social mediaing, a tag is word or phrase that can be used to help search engines locate stuff (information, posts, articles, photos, videos) online. I’m going to use the Found Objects design above as my example for using tags on Redbubble. I used my greatest variety of tags on this design so it gives me the best example of how a diversity of tags can call up a diversity of results.

At this writing I’ve attached 25 tags to this design. Redbubble recommends that you use up to twenty but allows as many as 50. As far as I can tell Redbubble puts no restrictions on the words or phrases you can use for tags. When I was first doing test searches on tags I checked to see if there were any forbidden words. I started with the standard “four letter” words. Thousands of results. Then I searched using derogatory and offensive terms. More thousands. Everything I searched for turned up multiple designs using that tag.

This is a little deceiving. Yes, every word I could think of has been used as a tag. However, not every phrase has been specifically used as a tag on the design found. Consider “monster porn”. That phrase turned up 223 results. Yes, quite a few results featured suggestive images. A significant number of the results were innocuous – images of cookies or flowers or sushi. I checked the tags on some of those. None of them had “monster porn” as a tag. One, a image of chocolate chip cookies, had the tags “cookie monster” and “food porn”. Other designs had similar combined results. “Monster” in one tag got linked in “porn” (food porn, flower porn, luxury porn, etc) in another tag.

You can edit your designs at any time to add or remove tags. I might do that down the line if I learn new ways of using tags.

Using my current tags, these are the number of results I got when I searched each tag:
cthulhu – 13075
cthulhu mythos – 1729
h p lovecraft – 1837
lovecraftian – 3677
green – 2,027,540
necronomicon – 2184
skulls – 447,049
fetish – 22,634
idol – 29.593
sorcery – 10,574
madness – 17,291
insanity – 3877
great old ones – 1553
fetus – 2500
drugs – 72,319
hallucinations – 6978
crystals – 102,087
potions – 21,696
skookworks – 123
david lee ingersoll – 124
old gods – 11,298
occult – 88,005
occultist- 786
cultist – 449

Hmmm. My first thought is personal and practical. I’ve got over 125 designs posted. All of them should have “skookworks” and “david lee ingersoll” as tags. There should be the same number for each tag. Clearly I’ve missed some.

In one of the discussions in the FB group someone asked why they should include their name in the tags. They expected that customers would search based on descriptors for a design. I said that having the designer’s name helped fans of the designer find that designer’s work. This is probably more useful for designers who are producing original cartoons or illustrations. Current cartoonists and illustrators are probably more likely to have fans than folks who are producing more anonymous designs – funny sayings and quotes or repurposed public domain art. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this section, pirates will copy your tags when they copy your product. If your name/store name is one of your tags you’ll be able to find stolen designs easily.

My second thought is that some of these tags are only tangentially helpful. “Skulls” has too many results for my design to show up sooner than the 100th result page. Searching “fetish” would also not be much of use. “Skull fetish” on the other hand – 142 results. Is anyone going to search for “skull fetish”? Maybe?

“Cthulhu idol” – 43
“green fetus” – 53
“Cthulhu cultist” – 132
“Lovecraftian madness” – 122
“occult drugs” – 195
“skull sorcery” – 835

It appears that having a variety of terms for Redbubble’s search engine to combine can narrow the results. But again, will anyone search for these terms in these combinations?

This is the tricky thing. Tags only help people find the designs they are looking for. They don’t inspire anyone to look for your designs specifically. That’s what marketing is for. That’s what social media is for. I’ve posted both versions of this design to my tumblr, deviantart, Facebook and artstation accounts with links to the designs in my store. I’m writing about it here.

Redesigning

One of the things I like about print on demand is the ability to update (or remove) a design at anytime. As I’ve gotten used to designing for the various merchandise available on Zazzle and Redbubble I’ve rethought a number of my older uploads. I really liked the circular designs I came up with for the repurposed Unspeakable and Inhuman illustrations so I’ve been applying that idea to other images.

Frankenstein’s Monster –
Before –

After –

A Portrait of H.P. Lovecraft –
Before –

After –

Helen Vaughan from The Great God Pan –
Before –

After –

And that’s it for this week. I hope life is being good to you. If not, I hope you’re at least able to be good to yourself. Thank you again for reading!