Augie Bytes

The day I found out that Palisades was picking up the Invader Zim license was a very good day in my life. (I’m very easy to please) The sun was shining… The birds were singing… At least in my head they were.

Alternately, the day I found out that Palisades was going out of business after only producing 2 waves of my prized figures was very bad day. Up to that point, I had hunted down all the variants (which were plentiful through the Hot Topic chain) and purchased the exclusives from the Walk of Doom and Germs. I even had the box set of wave 1 with variant paint jobs and/or heads. Yes, I have lots of Zims, GIRs, and Dibs!

I decided that I needed to carry on the line. I had dabbled in sculpting a few years back when I made some custom HeroClix figures of Invader Zim, The Flaming Carrot, and The Maxx. I had to try! So based on some supply advise I had heard, I picked up some Sculpey modeling clay and gave it a whirl.

My first creation was Eric the Blob. I thought he turned out pretty good and looked even better once I painted him. Here are some nice fuzzy pictures for you to squint at. Click them for larger views…

After that, I decided (for some unknown masochistic reason) to try something a bit harder. Tak from Tak the Hideous New Girl was my choice in her human disguise. Skinny, lanky, big head, odd shapes, and all. I almost threw it at the wall a few times, but when I was done I was again very pleased and even decided to add in Mimi, her SIR unit. Again, click for larger views…

So there you have it! I made these two a few months ago now and REALLY need to get back to it. I was dabbling with the idea of making some non-Zim figures, but I’ve decided to stick with what’s been working for me. So to all 3 of you who read this, please do either or both of the following. Tell me what you think of these two. Tell me what character(s) I should focus on next.

Bring it on!

I did a bad thing. I was on eBay the other day, and thought to myself, “Oh look, my favorite searches!” Yes it was the feature I had used so many times years back when I was looking for many of my 80’s nostalgia. I clicked and there it was. The search term I had blocked from my mind for the past few years. Yes, “M.U.S.C.L.E.” was the term and I began to drool.

Those wonderful little pink guys that helped me through so many afternoons of playtime were back in my mind. So I searched. Scads of them and they weren’t selling for the rediculous prices they had been during the late 90’s/early 2000’s. It was on!

So yeah, I won a couple auctions yesterday. I’m going to wait until I get those two shipments to see if all the warm fuzzy feelings come back. I expect that they will. And I expect that (like all things I start purchasing) my internal completionist monster will wake up and force me to hunt down the rest. Of course my sons will be happy about this too, because I’ll likely give them the extras I’ll be getting.

Fun for me, fun for them. Everyone wins! Well, except the pocketbook…

I know this is a bit late for those who have been watching the site non-stop, but ComicSpace is back up and running!  Josh (the site owner/operator) has been struggling for a week or so to get the site back up at a new hosting facility.  Apparently the host he was using was being less than helpful with some database issues he was having.  Bad service =Bye bye customer!  Why don’t service companies understand this?

Well, this news also means that my profile page there is back up as well!  Woohoo!

So you were looking for a restaurant in your area called the Speakeasy only to land on some splash page filled with crazy looking cartoon characters? And then you clicked one of them and it brought you here? Amazing!

I’ll try to explain a bit. The domain thespeakeasy.com was purchased by a web design company that I co-founded with a friend known as Shemp back in the 90’s. It was to be a little playground for us to use to try out new ideas and promote creativity. Unfortunately the company (Dancing Ink Media) was dissolved. He kept dancingink.com and I kept thespeakeasy.com domain. I’ve planned for years to actually produce a comic called theSpeakEasy with many of the characters you saw on the home page and still hope to. I was using my profile at ComicSpace.com to get those creative juices flowing, but that site is currently having database and hosting issues. So I wait…

In the meantime, I’m trying to get this new “blog” version of my personal site moving along while also trying to figure how best to move over some of my old content to this new layout. Of course, I have no time for any of this. Back to work!

One of the local comicbook creators has an ongoing book called Wicket & Imp. He’s (er, I mean the characters are) about as deranged as they come. He called out for pin-ups for the next book coming out and here’s what I came up with. He got the black & white version, but I thought I’d color this photocopy with my Copic markers. Since it was just copy paper, I couldn’t pull off much of the blending or effects that make Copics so great, but I like it anyway…

OK OK!!! I see that the largest amount of traffic coming to my domain is still coming on keyword phrases like “Invader Zim Images” and “Invader Zim Pics”, so I’ll try to make that my next goal. I’ll work on getting the gallery ported over to this new layout soon, so you can either check back soon or just sign up for the updates (top right corner) and I’ll announce when it’s back. Mmmm, gallery goodness…

Updated 06/14/2007:  The gallery rebuild has begun.  Please click here. 

Gah! I finally got my old cam hooked back up and I think it had an aneurysm or something. Once upon a time you could make out details like whether you were looking at a person or a burlap sack. Must get a new cam soon! Sorry…

For the past 10 years or so, my wife and I have faithfully gone out once a week on “date night”.  With our first daughter it was easy to just take her with and go out whenever we felt like it.  Once the twins were born and that was less likely, we decided that it would be helpful in keeping our relationship fresh if we established a night out for ourselves.  We didn’t want to become one of those couples that works relentlessly at raising their kids for decades only to find themselves in an empty home with a stranger they had forgotten about years ago.

Now it’s not like we live in a huge city where there’s always something new and exciting to go see or do, so after several years patterns tend to form.  Out to eat, Hobby Lobby, Goodwill (for her), the comic shop (for me), a movie (sometimes), etc.  We’ve continued to enjoy being out with each other, but at the same time “shopping” seemed to become a mandatory part of the package.

Last night, we officially tried something we have talked about doing for over a year.  The weather is getting nice again so we drove out to a small town on Lake Michigan.  There we had dinner at a great little Italian restaurant (to which we will be retuning!) and then went to the beach.  We took our beach chairs, a blanket, and some books to read.  I also brought my sketchbook.   We found a nice area back from the water (and the people) and claimed our spot.  We read, I drew, we watched the sunset, we talked.  It was a great night.  After about three hours at the beach it was dark and it was cooling down, so we packed up and headed home.  It was a great night and we both agreed that it was the most relaxing night out in a LONG time.  We will do it again soon…