the cat has fallen. the situation is at a loss.

inhuman updated!
(and yeah there's inks on DA)

man i really got nothin for you guys this week. we had to get the fuel filler neck on the car replaced which sucked, btu at least now when gas gets pumped into the car it actually goes into the gas tank and not out various holes all along the tube.

but uh see you next weekend (maybe) at FAU?
cause that's where i'm going!

new jersey fans swing on by!

inhuman update!
(the inks have been on DA for like a week, too)

also there's a new unintentional mishaps page!

i buy myself a neon green ruler so i won't lose the damn thing and immediately lose it under a pile of books. i'm a genius.

sorry about the delay there, that trip kinda threw more of a monkey wrench into the works of my art-time than i thought. BUT WE'RE BACK NOW AND I'M BACK ON TRACK. the trip was nice, we somehow managed to go down south during the week of a huge heat wave up north. so uh, it was actually cooler in the deep south. score??

went to the huntsville space & rocket center. if you're unaware, that's where they built/tested most of the rockets for the early american spaceflight missions. i think they also trained astronauts there, i was kind of overwhelmed between 1) ROCKETS!!!!!!!! OLD SPACETECH!!!!!!!!!! and 2) the heat outside so i had a hard time actually retaining much of what i learned. but here's some photos!

( not a whole lot though )

and uhm...yeah, that's it! next month i'll (hopefully) be at fau thanks to the kindness of amber, so if you live around the jersey area, consider grabbing a day pass and checking it out. if i do go, it'll be my first con in six years. dang!

that's all i got. next week!

inhuman update
(and inks on DA like normal)

still running behind schedule by a day, though this WOULD have been up sunday evening...if not for the fact that it spontaniously decided to be hotter than the freakin sun around here. the studio is on the second floor and on the south side of the house too, so that means it gets a little oven-like towards the afternoon on hot days. i had the page done by 2, but the heat sent me crawling for cover about the same time. my apologies, i'm just not adjusted to it feeling like it's in the 90s just yet.

not a whole lot else to report this week? i've been feeling kinda down, some Bad Things happened on the internet. let me go on record and say a thing? if someone is out there being xenophobic of any given group thinking it's super duper funny? i don't care how famous they are, how well known their comic is, or how much they donate to charity. being all LOL THAT GROUP ISN'T PEOPLE ROFL is bullshit. also publishing private emails to "illustrate" that you're soooooooo wacky and clever for making fun of these minority groups is bullshit. i'm pretty fucking done with penny arcade, is what i'm driving at.

another thing i want to say? PUAs ("pick up artists") are super gross. if you want to be a PUA you are gross. if you think PUAs are wise you are gross. please check yourself in to the nearest grossness recovery clinic and stop being gross. if you really want a ladyfriend you know what they super ultra like? respect. the end. do not write books about hurting or disrespecting ladies. do not fund kickstarters for books about hurting or disrespecting ladies. condemn all PUAs to drown in their own urine, and that is all. kickstarter to drown PUAs in urine even. okay i'm done i swear.

still playing animal crossing. i think we have to dogsit for a few weeks starting this weekend but i'm not sure. this heat sucks. and we're out of coffee.

Inhuman update!
(inks on DA par the normal)

hey again all :B not much to report this week. weather's warm, ants attacked our sugar bowl, rain's been keeping me from walking to the post office on the few days i have time and uh...that's about it. EXCITING HUH

though there are some animals coming out into our yard, and that's nice. there was a groundhog last night out back eating buttercups. whistlepigs!

i had to stop by the art store this week since all my greytone markers are DEAAAAAAAAAAAAD and while out there alf spotted a comic store. we went inside and wowowow the place was super cool, they even had newspapers commemorating the moon landing for sale for like FIFTEEN BUCKS. plus tons of old games and systems and controllers, a million and a half records, old action figures and widgits and (obviously) comics. it's a shame it's not closer but wow what a cool store. if only i had a billion bux to spend :O

in terms of comic stuff, let's see. i have a bit of fanart to share. there's stuff by ravagefox of theoruff being a theofluff, there's also pictures of kyo by both kiki-uma and furinkazan! and ehly dropped off a really amazing drawing of grey in his creepy old apartment.

let's see, i really only got a chance to draw this, for sokki this week... no real time to draw for myself, apart from the comic.

you may recognize him as teh argumentive myche (aka 'pinky') who works on the shard :o

right, i'm off to finish my coffee then.

edit:!!! i nearly forgot!! kiki-uma and mick39 are holding an indiegogo for an art book of their alien world. for a mere 10$ you get a digital copy of ten really really nice looking drawings and a pdf explaining each species and their culture and stuff. you should completely pledge and help them reach their goal!

inhuman update!
(and the inks are on DA)

if you look at the inks stage and then the final page, you'll notice i accidentally drew grey's reflection the wrong way around (oops, forgot it was a reflection?) and had to fix it later. considering that, i think i did a good job repairing it. i am a gel pen correction master.

i really haven't got a whole lot else to say. arc 11 is now done, and it clocked in just about at the size i wanted - i had shot for 32 pages, landed at 34. some things (like the stabbin's in the hospital) caused it to run over a bit. but two pages over isn't bad! i got everything i wanted to do with it done - showed people how em died, suggested how marie died, foreshadowed akia and cin for Upcoming Scenarios, sprayed some blood around and made grey come to a concious choice about future behavior. about the only thing i'd add if i had more time would be like a statement or two explaining how he got from earth to ando but that's largely irrelevent at this point. YOU KNOW HE GOT SENT THERE, THE SPECIFICS OF THE SENDING ARE NOT THAT EXCITING.

next week and the week following will be cover art (the back cover for 11, front cover for 12) and then we'll be back on board the shard with aslilin and ash and soshika and koji and all them.

ah well. upwards and onwards.

double inhuman update!
(with inks here and here on DA)

wow. okay, so, double update aside? i wish i could say this was another quiet week. but obviously, that wasn't the case.

as many folks know, i live in massachusetts. i have friends in boston and surrounding areas, and it turned out family members were within two blocks of the bombing on monday. it was a very harrowing week for me. i am really amazed at how quickly and effectively the boston PD executed a manhunt, and am amazed they took him alive. i did not think that would happen at all.

but one thing i have seen a lot of this week disturbs me, and that is this sense of "you can't be sad/worried, someone ELSE has tragedy in the world!" this is kind of...broken logic. when tragedy strikes, you feel empathy - that's the normal human thing to do. but if tragedy strikes close to home, it hits your emotional core harder than if it's across the world in a place you have never been and don't have ties to. and there's nothing wrong with this. this is normal. this shows you care about your home town, your friends, your loved ones. there's no reason to feel shameful over that. and the notion that one human suffering is more 'worthy' of concern than another? is also broken thinking.

all suffering is suffering. it is all worthy of concern. no suffering is invalid simply because it comes from a certain place.

to say we don't care because we're being most vocal about a suffering which touches us personally is unfair. it is, if anything, a low blow. humans survive by showing solidarity for our tribes - be those tribes family, friends, citizens of our city, citizens of our coastline, citizens of our country or of another country all together. where our emotional bonds are, that is where our tribes are. that is how we survive. that is how we have always survived. it does your tribe little good if you mourn for a stranger at the expense of neglecting your own sickly. you should not be made to feel guilty for caring for your own. you should not be made to feel guilty for caring. period.

the people of boston and her visting friends were stunning this week. the citizens reacted in ways i had almost forgot people could - with bravery, with kindness. they gave so much blood that the hospitals were at capacity within the hour. they gave away food, shelter, cell phone charges to complete strangers who were trapped during the initial bomb sweeping. they ran towards the blasts to help, not away. they listened to police. they helped the police. when the police said to stop tweeting scanner feeds during the manhunt, people did.

and when they rejoiced, it was with a relief and sense of closure i didn't know a city could feel.

let no one make you feel guilty for your compassion, boston. let no one make you feel unease for your rejoicing. you are an amazing and beautiful city. you are full of amazing and beautiful people, with amazing and beautiful friends and allies. and let no one in this time tell you otherwise.

there's a poisonous attitude on the internet these days, one which seems determined to rob people of the validity of their own feelings and experiences. it's often sold as 'social justice' but the real name for it? is nihilism. or maybe cynicism. or maybe just 'tragedy hipster.' unless a cause is so underground that it's never been heard of, your empathy or feelings for it mean nothing. it's not to say that there aren't causes which need more attention - there are - but no cause should be promoted solely on the basis of cutting down the emotional and personal struggles of others and saying they mean nothing. all humans are capable of suffering. all of us can experience inconcievable times of hardship. it's been said before - it's how we overcome it that defines us.

to tell someone there is no hardship simply because of where they live, or the colour of their skin, or their diet, or their sexual orientation, or their body size, or any other factor? is to tell them you don't believe they are human. you don't believe they are capable of feeling or enduring or suffering. that you feel they are less than you. and that, my friend? is the exact opposite of raising social awareness or finding any form of justice. that is not making the world a better place. that is not healing or helping. that is hurting.

do not do that.

to the other places in the world this week who suffered disasters, large and small, i feel compassion for you too. i hope you are able to fight, band together, and rebuild. but you will forgive me when, as a citizen of massachusetts, my concern was first with my tribe this week.

and no one should be made to feel bad about that.

may our next week be better, all.

...otherwise, there's fanart from kwerey. there's also a kyotoshi minecraft skin by zach.

and yeah, that's all i got. sorry for the little rant there, friends. next week.

Inhuman update, for reals this time.
(with inks on DA)

HEY. DO YOU LIKE FAT BLUE PLUSH SNAKES? OF COURSE YOU DO. GO GIVE THIS ONE A FIVE.

a mostly uneventful week, though it's finally started to warm up here in sassachusetts. most of the snow has melted, and the birds are starting to come back in the early morning/late evening. this makes me mega happy, i like to listen to them. though unfortunately it seems the month for spoilers. no matter how often i tell folks not to blather about new pokemon or the new metal gear, some wiseass always starts yacking. it's p rude and it's ultimately made it difficult for me to really surf any of the sites i normally go to. bleh :P

but this month is also my wonderful spouse's bday month! so in light of that i've decided to bring back the donate for an extra comic page insentive thingie. 100$ gets an extra page this week. and also goes a ways towards the planned gift. which i cannot type here. because he will see it. and then it will not be a surprise, if i manage to get it.

right now this arc is looking to clock in at 32 pages. two pages more than i had originally planned for, i think i hadn't anticipated em's conversation with cin to take up as much space as it did. woopthie.

this week kyo answered questions about lava lamps, north tek cuisine, what items he was allowed to keep in the hospital, where he thinks soshika is and grapes for some reason.

coppelia aka dollmancer drew a really cute wine chuian fanart for gloucester earlier in the week which you should totally go look at.

and uh...that's it :O see y'all next week. and in the meantime, remember, if someone says no spoilers - don't be a jerk! no spoilers means no spoilers!

inhuman update!
(and the inks are on DA like normal)

as i mentioned, this week's page skips ahead in the timeline. you will find out what happened and how grey and em's meeting in the hall resolved and all that, but over the next two pages. I JUST NEED TO DO IT THIS WAY OKAY SHHHH. also this page is a giant callback to page 123.

it's been an uneventful week here, though an old shoulder injury's been acting up. DIDN'T KEEP ME FROM MAKING A COMIC THOUGH.

ren's recovering, she seems much better and behaviorally back to normal after a few days. she ate voraciously for a while there though. poor ren :<

i also know i said i'd try to have the mite homeworld background this week, but...well...i'm still working on it. what i have instead is an ash pinup background (no more lewd than a coca cola pinup though) which i promised ages ago when people responded to a poll on who they'd like a pinup background of. that's in the wallpapers section for ya.

i'll be working on the mite homeworld drawing today and over the next week.

in fanart this week there is only kep, because sokki got some ATCs from him :>

but i drew a bunch. yep.
( butts, blood and smoochy drunk nikitaks under the cut )

that's all i got. next week is....well by jove, it's right on the cusp of april first! what wickedness will it bring?
see you then!

Inhuman update!
(and the inks are on DA as always)

cripes what a week. first off, inhuman DID make it to the first round of the comicmix march madness tournament! WOOO!!!

...but then voting shifted to 'need a facebook to vote' status, which effectively nuetered its chances of going any farther. there just seems to be a very strong correlation between inhuman readers and people who dislike using facebook, so we did lose out to shortpacked. but that's okay! shortpacked is a stellar comic which deserves a shot at the gold :O you should go vote for them in round 2!

well, if you have a facebook that is.

a lot of people were complaining that's not fair, requiring FB to vote. while it does kind of skew things in certain directions, you have to understand where comicmix is coming from. it costs them money to handle all the traffic for march madness - their site went down once a day just handling the seeding round votes! in fact they went so over their hosting plan that their site actually got shut down in violation of its hosting terms during the seeding round. and speaking from personal experience, that's expensive to fix. it's even more expensive to fix when you haven't planned for it.

so to alieviate some of the stress on their servers AND to prevent people from accusing them of cheating/rigging votes (happened last year) they outsourced to another voting website. that site just happens to use facebook to authenticate votes. is it ideal? no. but does it enable them to actually hold their contest without their entire site going down constantly? yes.

so while it may have cost inhuman a chance at round 2, i'm honestly okay with it. i think they did the right thing to enable them to hold their contest in as unbaised and reliable a manner as possible. maybe next year's won't need FB, though! that'd be cool!

additionally i'd like to say sorry for how late this page is. we suffered a double whammy here in MA - both alf and i got sick over the weekend AND the dog we've agreed to foster for a while from the local shelter arrived. so it's been a lot of stress, schedule changes and sick and between all that the comic fell through the cracks for a few days. i apologise for that, hopefully it won't happen again.

the dog himself is very sweet but terrifies ren. because of that we're not sure how much longer we can continue to foster. we'll wait until this weekend in hopes that they acclimate to one another. he's an extremely sweet dog, really a sweetheart. but we can't risk ren's health or comfort for him. it's really tragic though because except for interactions with ren, he's a really wonderful canine. you honestly could not ask for a better rescue pet. if we can't continue to foster him i REALLY hope someone comes along and scoops him up for adoption soon. he does not deserve to rot away in a shelter for the rest of his days, he's too sweet for that.

in other news there's fanart from coppelia/dollmancer and transatlantic alien. alas, there is not much from me.

keep your fingers crossed for moe the dog and for ren. i'll see y'all next weekend, barring further illness or bad timing.

Inhuman & Unintentional Mishaps update!
(and the inks for the inhuman page are here on DA)

so like i worried about last week, visiting family kind of forced the comic to be shifted to the back burner for a week. but now it's back!

along with the new page of unintentional mishaps by sokki! we get a peek at the bounty hunter crew :O dun dun dunnnn...i guess y'all will have to wait a while longer to find out if mint & company have survived the crash unharmed.

additionally....

THE CHARITY DRIVE ENDS MARCH 3RD!

and currently the myches are in the lead! that means if they win you'll get to learn aaaall about the myche homeworld. :o plus a fancy background of just...the scenery of it all. AND please remember that a kind anonymous donor has offered to match the grand total of the drive's raised funds and donate it to a charity of our choosing! so you can make your charitable works count for double, you just have to do it BEFORE MARCH THIRD!

oh, and cosumin was so superkind and drew a valentinesy koji. <3

anyways, here comes the arts by me toot toot :O
( mostly safe for work, a bit of blood here and there )

okay! that's all i got! see y'all next sunday...WHEN THE CHARITY DRIVE ENDS!