Contrary to what you may have heard (or hoped), I am not dead, nor have I quit this website. Things have been a little more busy than usual for the past couple of months, and I’ve put off doing anything art- or blog-related for far too long. I know that I dust off that excuse quite regularly on this site, and I can assure you that mentioning being lazy and/or busy will probably turn up more search results that anything about art or drawing. I can’t help it; I’m a midwest slacker at heart, and I don’t think there’s anything that can change that.

The Life

My life has been turned upside down lately, thanks in part to my new daughter, Emerson Blue. Laura and I signed for our little bundle of joy on April 10th and it’s been amazing ever since. I could ramble on for pages about how this little girl has changed, improved and given meaning to my life, but it would just be the same things you hear from any parent; but it’s true! You’re sad when they cry, happy when they’re happy and relieved when they sleep for more than an hour. I can’t wait until she’s old enough to walk and talk, and ruin my shit.

Besides that, things have been pretty normal. We’ve stayed home more often and spent less money than we used to, which is definitely a good thing. Plus it’s really fun to learn to be parents together. Laura’s first Mother’s Day has come and gone — with an awesome custom-emboidered card from our friend at Lady Bear Crafts (go to her site and buy something!), my mom and dad enjoy being grandparents for the first time, and even Gordie is maturing into a fine young dog.

Photo via www.ladybearcrafts.com

The Career

I started my new job at the beginning of March and I can now say that I’ve never had a better job. I was hired to work on mostly web design, but I’ve also found myself doing a lot of print work as well. So far I’ve designed some t-shirts, a mailer and I’ve even gotten to go to a real printing to see how these things are really made. I’ve learned so much about the industry in this very short amount of time and I can feel my design skills and creativity are improving exponentially. Now if I could just stop watching Lost and get my lazy ass off the couch to do some artwork!

The Projects

There are always projects in the pipeline, and I’m sure there is always going to be something I want to do (see: may never finish). I’m so much better at starting things than I am at finishing them. If I could keep the creative train moving throughout the whole project, I might actually be able to make something cool. Luckily, I’m starting on something now that is being driven by someone else (kind of a client) and maybe the extra push from an external source will be good for my completion percentage. Right now, I’m looking like the JaMarcus Russell of comics.

The Website

Killer Robot has been updated to 3.1 recently. Hopefully you can see the minor aesthetic changes (see: cleaner) but there are a couple of other things I’ve added or modified as well.

Changes for Killer Robot 3.1:

• Tweaked layout for better readability, especially on mobile devices. At some point I do hope to release a mobile version.
• Added “Related Posts” to the bottom of post pages. When you read a post, the five most recent, and related, posts will be listed.
• Added Comment Subscriptions to posts. Under the “Submit” button on the comments form there is now a checkbox you can mark to be notified by email when someone posts a comment after yours. A verification email is sent as a double-check and it’s very easy to opt-out at any time. It’s also post specific, so you can subscribe to a certain post, but not all if you don’t want to.

A lot has happened in my life in the past few months that is going to change my life forever and for the better. Check back soon as I hope these changes will help me do some really creative things, and get some content on that Projects page.

Welcome to Killer Robot Comics, Design and Illustration Version 3.0! I’ve spent quite a bit of time creating this, and I hope you enjoy visiting and reading through it as I did making it. For the past 8 months, I’ve been fine-tuning my WordPress ninja skills and this site is the fruit of that labor.

Let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve made here. This site is the home of my personal and art blog, my portfolio and soon to be the hub of all my projects and creations. The entire site is hard-coded from scratch by me, using the most basic possible WordPress framework as a starting point. It was made using a truckload of CSS, PHP and whatever help I could find in order to make my creation come to life.

With a little help from DOMTab for some Java in the sidebar, and IconDock for the free social icons, I have made what I think is the perfect home for Killer Robot. I know there are some things I want to add and change already — things that came up during production that I moved to 3.1 — but I think this is a cool starting point to show a lot of what I can do.

So please take a look around, try things out, comment on posts, and let me know if you think of anything you’d like to see added for ease of use, or if you see something that is borked pretty bad. Also, for the three of you that have subscribed to my RSS feed, you might need to update it.

And for everyone’s sake, please ignore the CSS behind the curtain. The file is a little messy and something to be cleaned up in a future update.

Thanks for reading!

Finally my home page is actually accurate! I really am working on a new website design. Currently, it’s in the early development stages (i.e. moving things around in Photoshop) but now that I have a plan and a timeline, I hope to have something new up around the first of the year.

Until this is done, I won’t really be posting anything new here — even though it’s been quite a while since my last post anyway — but once the new theme and site are live, I plan on coming back with more posts, more updates and more artwork to share with you guys.

While I’m working on the site, you can follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates and thoughts, and even if my new site can’t throw knives into heaven or dip ladies’ hands into acid, like George Washington, the new website is coming.

To leave you with something opinionated — it is a blog after all — here are some micro reviews of things I would normally post about:

Bionic Commando (Xbox 360): An incredibly fun and enjoyable rental even if the story is about as captivating as an empty trash can.

Iron Man (Netflix): One of the better comic book movies. The writers got the characters right, the designs right and the story was solid. The only thing missing was a more convincing bad guy.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: As I’m trying to talk myself into X-Men Movie-verse Deadpool, I can’t help but be bothered by the fact that there was a complete lack of blood in this movie. A group of mutants killing people with claws, swords, guns and everything else, and no blood to be found.

Well it’s been far too long since my last post. Even though I’ve been very busy — with art and non-art projects — I haven’t really done anything worth posting here. I started a personal blog where I can share a little more about my life and interests that aren’t related to art, and I seem to update that page more often than this one. That shows me that I’ve neglected my artwork for far too long. And that needs to change. Now.

At my current job, I’m in the process of learning how to develop websites in the WordPress environment (Hey, this site was made in WordPress!), as well as dabbling in some PHP programming. I learned a little C++ in college and I’ve taught myself quite a bit of ActionScript, so the PHP thing has been a lot of fun to learn. I even ordered a book to teach myself some more of it in the form of a catalog project.

What does this mean for Killer Robot? Well, since I’ve already learned a buttload about WordPress in just my first couple of weeks, it means a new website design is coming. I’ve learned a lot about manipulating template files and source code, so I want to take a stab at creating a WordPress template from scratch. It’s going to be a lot of work — which will include a new logo, color scheme and branding as well. I’ve only had this site for a little over a year and it’s incredible the amount of knowledge you can absorb in such a short amount of time.

On top of the new website, I’ve been honing my sketching technique, as well as fine-tuning my process of going from sketch to final product. With these things in place, I’m starting over on the Zabka comic — even though there has only been one page so far — and looking to begin my Human Element story as a webcomic that will be integrated into this site. I also have a few side projects in the works, including but not limited to:

• Logo and website for my wife Laura’s business
• Logo character for a friend’s website
• A birthday card design for my grandfather’s 80th birthday
• A new self-portrait
• Something involving the otter holding the Idol from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (see above)

There’s a lot to be done in the coming months, and I feel like I’ve spent too much time dawdling in laziness and excuses. It’s time to get focused, and hopefully because I wrote it here for others to read, I’ll get serious about it. I want to make a schedule with due dates to keep everything on track, and I hope to share all this with you. Here’s to an eventful eight months of 2009!