Surprises About the New iPhone

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From the crazy folks at Cap’n Wacky:

Users required to use AT&T for phone service, iTunes for music downloads, Fantastic Sam’s for haircuts, and Jimmy Toledo’s House of Hats for headwear.

Advanced speech recognition software detects users talking about repulsive medical conditions on a crowded bus and delivers a powerful shock.

Disobeys the first rule of robotics.

Takes not only photographs, but also x-rays and limited-field MRI.

During outgoing calls it records samples of your voice, and after approximately 15 minutes has enough vocabulary to convincingly converse with your Aunt Shirley without your actual participation.

Can (and will) disable all SideKicks within a 200-foot radius.

When you ask “iPhone, iPhone, in my hand, who’s the fairest in the land?” phone calculates your BMI and replies “Not you.”

When two iPhones are placed in a ring, they will fight to the death. Victorious iPhone absorbs address book and MP3 library of losing iPhone.

Despite depiction in commercials and ads, iPhone is really just a phone duct-taped to an iPod.

Pressing ‘Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, A, B, Start’ at menu level will grant unlimited text messages.

Will, in fact, walk your dog, clean the house and balance your checkbook, but it won’t do a very good job of any of these things.

It knows kung fu.

Comes equipped with new ‘iSmell’ technology, allowing iPhone to smell like selected object. However, the only smells currently uploaded for selection are ‘cabbage’ and ‘Carol Channing’.

It will not, in fact, cure cancer.

Can play songs without even having a tape in it! What will they think of next?

Busy Busy Busy

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I got a call on Friday for a rush project that is due tomorrow. Since I was out of town all weekend at a cabin for my brother’s bachelor party, I’ve got a lot of work to do over the next 36 hours. I’ll be pretty much chained to my drawing board with my wife bringing me meals, an occasional backrub, and if necessary energy drinks to get me through the night. Jennie, you’re the best!

I’ll also be out of town Saturday through Wednesday of next week with two back-to-back family get-togethers, which means I’ve got a lot to catch up on before I leave. When it rains, it pours. Thankfully having a Macbook Pro and a Wacom tablet allows me to take my work on the road. I can’t draw nearly as fast on a Wacom as I can on my Cintiq, but it gets the job done. Also, my iPhone allows me to check e-mails pretty much anywhere, anytime (the other day I answered three e-mails while standing in the checkout line). Now all I need is a Modbook (a tablet Mac) and my studio will be completely portable. (I don’t mean to sound pretentious, I’m just a techno-geek).

My goal is to try and post something on this blog every weekday. That’s going to be tough this week, but I’m sure gonna try. I need to come up with something clever like Tom Richmond’s Dreaded Deadline Demon. In the mean time, thanks for your patience, and check back tomorrow.

Sketchbook Update

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Here’s a few recent doodles from my pocket sketchbook. As I thumb through it’s pages, I realize that I’ve drawn a lot of faces lately but very few full-body poses. That’s not good. Faces are easier for me to draw than the rest of the body, so I hope I’m not getting lazy and only drawing what I’m familiar with. The more my skills improve, the stronger the temptation for me to do easy sketches that look “professional” rather than awkward, messy sketches that reveal my weaknesses. But those ugly sketches can be the most important. How else am I going to keep learning and growing if I don’t wrestle with the hard stuff? If I ignore my weak areas and just start “coasting”, in the long run I’ll wind up stunted. Next time I go out sketching it’s gonna be full-body poses.

The Thriving Artist

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Last year storyboard artist Mark Simon published a 3-CD audio set containing his lecture “The Thriving Artist” given at the National Caricaturist Convention. Simon’s website describes the lecture as a “non-stop energy presentation packed with insider secrets and industry stories you won’t hear anywhere else.” The first two CD’s contain the lecture, and the third “bonus” CD is Mark discussing all the information he didn’t have time to include in his presentation.

Since I’ve been freelancing for over ten years now, I didn’t think there would be much information on the CD’s that I didn’t already know. But I was pleasantly surprised. The CD’s are jam-packed with very practical info, and although much of the content is material I was already familiar with there were quite a few tips and insights I hadn’t heard or considered before, or that I looked at in a new way. Simon is an artist who is also very much a businessman, so he does a good job of presenting important business-related topics in a very relatable way. His speaking style is very energetic and confident, but not over-the-top like what you might expect from a lot of “self-help” type material. If you make your living as an artist, or if you aspire to, purchasing this CD set would be money well spent.

Here’s a list of the topics covered in the lecture, taken from the back of the CD jacket:

• What is a Thriving Aritst?
• Learn how to earn more money, without doing more work.
• Should artists ever work outside the arts?
• How to get art jobs.
• Fighting the Starving Artist Myth.
• Dealing with families who say,, “Get a real job.”
• Artists have more job opportunities than any other profession.
• Rates and Salaries.
• How to turn clients into evangelists for you
• The 80/20 business rule.
• Accounting for aritsts.
• Marketing do’s and don’ts.
• Artist rights.
• Artist resumes.
• Artist websites.
• The 5 steps of hiring freelancers.
• And much more.

You can order “The Thriving Artist” here.

The Cat’s Out of the Bag

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I can now reveal the name of the hush-hush project I’ve been working on: 3-2-1 Penguins!

Penguins is the number one rated show on Qubo, the Saturday morning cartoon block on NBC. It’s a fun, quirky series from Big Idea Productions (creators of VeggieTales) about four penguins who travel the universe along with two young children, Jason and Michelle. It’s a fun show with snappy action and lots of humor. Here’s a description of the show from the official Big Idea website:

3-2-1 Penguins! is a video series that tells the story of two young kids (Jason and Michelle) and four out-of-this-world penguins, as they explore the galaxy — and learn important, Bible-based lessons and values along the way.

Starting this fall Penguins will be getting it’s own weekly slot on NBC with brand-new episodes. I’ve been hired to design characters for several of those episodes, and I feel very honored. It’s long been a dream of mine to do work for Big Idea, and there are a lot of super-talented professionals working on this project (including Tom Bancroft, Rob Corely, Tod Carter, Eddie Pittman, John Pomeroy, Tony Bancroft, Mark McDonnell, Tim Hodge, David Nethery, and many others). Each team member has a very impressive body of work, so the bar for me has been raised pretty high.

Balancing this with my other freelance work has been a challenge, but I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun working so hard.

For the official announcement about the new show, click here.

To learn more about 3-2-1 Penguins!, click here.

Links

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Today is a busy day with deadlines for several projects all converging between now and Monday. So no time to post. But there are a bunch of very talented artists listed to the right, please check them out!

Also, on Tuesday I will be sending out my quarterly e-mail updating past clients (and potential new ones) about my latest news and projects. If you would like to join my mailing list, click here. I send out one e-mail about every 3-4 months, and a piece of “snail mail” once or twice a year.

Have a great weekend!