The Juneau Blockbuster now has giant pickles for sale. They come in hermetically sealed pouches filled with day-glow pickle juice. I haven’t yet been brave enough to try one but I think maybe tomorrow will be the day. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m not as scared of pickles as some people but these things are spooky. They feel like the kind of thing you need to open with tongs and a Homer Simpson style reactor suit.

Alaska Robotics Comic: In a Pickle

Here’s a preview of my latest work, “Catching the Crosstown Night Whale.” It was inspired by Kazu Kibuishi’s illustrations for the Flight comics anthologies.

The crosstown night-whale is like a bus driver. He’s not necessarily grumpy but there’s a bit of monotony to his job. He’s glad the war is over but secretly wishes he were still serving on the flying whale brigade instead of spending his autumn years working for public transportation.

Long live the queen.

If you’re in Juneau this Friday, stop by the Ruby Room for Gallery Walk and say hello!

Labor Day is rolling in fast and I’m starting to get that nervous, excited feeling about our little Bumbershoot adventure. I created a couple new shirt designs and hopefully they’ll do well in Seattle.

The turtle design was inspired by a visit I took to the Monterey Bay Aquarium a few years back. I’m pretty sure that sea turtles can fly and just choose to do so underwater.

The fire hydrant design is a natural extension of my shuttered fire hydrant obsession. I think they look like little armored men standing around on street corners, sentries posted to observe and report on the human condition. They’re everywhere and when you really start to look for them it feels a bit like you’re being followed.

I feel like the process of vectorizing my sketches in Illustrator sort of has a dehumanizing effect. It smooths out some of my signature imperfections and I can’t quite feel the same magic that’s in my blobbly little sketches. It’s like running something from a typewriter through an optical character recognition program, the letters are all the same but the feel of the printed page is more sterile. I probably just need to get better at using the program so I can preserve what I like and draw out even more.

Today I added two new pirates to the crew section of the Alaska Robotics website. Cristina draws the Guilty Pleasures comic strip which is a semi-fictional semi-autobiographical story and Dani draws Geek Fetish which is a fount of quirky geek art and humor.

Dani Byers
Born and raised in a small fishing village, Byers has always been close to the sea. An incomparable chef and feared knife fighter, her precision and control of a fine tipped blade are next to none. She’s a bit rough and tumble but Dani has a soft spot for lumbering giants.

Cristina Reitz
A beautiful specter of a woman, a skilled dancer, and a feared assassin, Reitz moves like a steady sea breeze. Her origins are largely unknown, a mix of half truths and secrets. Listen carefully and you may hear her dark laughter come across the water on a cold night.

I think the next crew portrait should be a little chimpanzee with an eye patch and a guitar.

Excellent news! We’ve been offered the opportunity to be vendors at the Bumbershoot 2007 Indie Market. The big information packet arrived today and we’re sifting through it as I type. Well.. Aaron is sifting, I’m typing. It should be a good place to hawk our Alaska Robotics and Smack of Jellyfish goodies.

Here are some sketches of our proposed layout, if you’ve got any suggestions to make it better let us know! I think maybe we need to install a crow’s nest.

Bumbershoot Tent - Top View
Bumbershoot Tent - Front View

Keyboards are a pain in the ass to draw.

Thanks to Autumn for sharing the twister idea with me. Now I realllly want to get a giant sized keyboard and host a boggle party.

Comic - Keyboard Twister

When I go into my apartment the first thing I do is survey the contents of the refrigerator. It’s one of those unconscious habits. I open the door and I’m like a woodland critter bound in the tractor beam gaze of oncoming headlights. My mind empties and the world fades away as the cool air pours over me. I float in that white light without any concept of time or space until my senses come clattering back. Where am I? What was I looking for? What is that pool of liquid on the top shelf?

Comic - Fridge Vortex

Last week the entire world vanished into a wash of white and gray. High winds kicked up dry snow along with an already generous helping from above causing the National Weather Service to issue a full fledged blizzard warning.

I love to see mother nature do her thing but I think I’m sort of elemental about it. I’ve never been interested in getting near a pyroclastic flow or catching a hat full of lightning but I can’t get enough heavy snow and high water.

In my comic this week I tried to capture some of that sense of storm front adventure. I wandered around in the whirling winds snapping pictures of the occasional lost sole. Then I came back inside and used them as a reference to develop my comic.

Thanks to Mitch Watley for his Photoshop painting tutorial which gave me a head start in developing my snow scenes this week.

Comic - The Blizzard