Staedtler Brush Pen Tip

I saw in comments where some guy talked about extending the life of his Staedtler Mars Graphic Duo 2000 brush pen ("The brush pen with more names than any other") by removing the plain tip with a pliers and somehow switching the ink supplies. He gave no details so I wasn't sure how that would work. But I pulled of the plain tip end (the pens have a plain tip on one end and a brush tip on the other) with pliers and, indeed, it had a little foam ink supply, fat and juicy with ink.

The brush tip end pulled off easily as well, and it was bone dry of course since that's mainly all I use. It's a simple matter then to switch the foam stick things. And re-insert the tips. It worked brilliantly, the brush tip was instantly back in fine fettle. What a boon this will be to humanity (or at least cartoonists.)

ps. Chris Garrison (who writes/draws "Our Heroes" on dummcomics.com) put me onto these great pens, that you can't buy in your local art store, for the most part, at least if you live where I do.

"Slob-oids" (now with color)

I wasn't going to color this, but then my pal DMS suggested we make it into a "book & record" style comic, with an audio soundtrack and camera pans from panel to panel (the way some book & record comics are presented on YouTube.)

I still wasn't going to color it even then, because we have many ambitious plans that don't all come to fruition. However, now, it looks like this one may actually happen since we're at least 90-95% done with the audio. (And it sounds really good! Mr. Smith has done a fantastic job mixing the voices, music and sound effects together.)

So, with all that going on, I felt it should definitely be in color to make a better presentation. Some of the b&w panels were a bit muddy, so hopefully the color helps clarify things somewhat.

post #48

This T-shirt design is for a school drama dept. It will say something like "Don't ya wish ya knew the code?" And then the large sheet of paper will have a list of "codes," i.e. slang terms particular to the drama dept.

For this one, a school band wanted a James Bond theme featuring their bulldog mascot. That presented the unique challenge of trying to turn bulldogs into Bond girls -- sort of hard to be a simmering, sultry babe with jowls like that.

post #47

some recent freelance jobs:

More Mascot vs. Mascot cartoons

Rah rah rah!
We are the Tuff Guys!
Y'all are the Puff Guys!
Rah rah rah!

Smoke 'em if you got 'em...

Cullman, AL Cartoon Map

Just what the title says... The whole thing is really too big to view properly on most computer screens, so I'll just show several close-up sections.

Game-day T-shirt drawings

Some recently commissioned football-related merch... It always cracks me up how "our team" is these big bad-ass tough guys and "their team" is these shrimpy losers who just can't get it together... :-)