Grabbed this from *LunaticStar's journal.

I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to unleash widespread misery across the world, but never could quite come up with a plan. But now, thanks to the Ronco Evil Plan Maker, [link] I now know exactly what to do. And now, my evil plan:



Evil Plan (tm)!

Your objective is simple: Widespread Misery.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Hatred for all mankind

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first traumatize a wealthy heiress. This will cause the world to wipe the sleep from their eyes, stunned by your arrival. Who is this criminal mastermind? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good in classic black?

Stage Two

Next, you must smash the white house. This will all be done from an underground secret headquarters of doom, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will spontaneously combust, as countless hordes of ninjas hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must unleash your plague of doom, bringing about pain, suffering, and the usual. Your name shall become synonymous with all that is wrong with the world, and no man will ever again dare sabotage your music career. Everyone will bow before your cunning intelligence, and the world will have no choice but to restore your credit rating.

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Anyways, for those two or three of you following along. The new Pineapple Street characters look great now that they are updated. I'll ink a few and toss 'em up here this weekend. Also, I "officially" started the mix/mastering process for the CD. I have until the end of the year to finish this project! Wish me luck, this is the hardest part.

And thanks for watching. Yes you.

Wait, what about gnus? Okay, so I popped up three of the six-year old Pineapple Street strips here the other day. I clicked the old "critique requested" button so I could get opinions from the dA faithful. Apparently the button really means "RUN AWAY!" I think that button just scares people away, I'm not really looking for a long-winded critique so much as a good old fashioned, "Yeah, this isn't working for me, have you considered ______?" Or maybe the strips were just so painfully bad and people are too nice to say, "Yo Dave, that's friggin' awful." I dunno. I do know it needs some work, and normally dA is a good source for inspirations and opinions.

No worries, though. I tore the music studio down this past weekend (all my parts are done (yay!), but there's been an unfortunate setback that I'll happily wait out to get everything sounding just right) and put the art room together in its place. I'm just waiting for my new art-creating-toys from Dick Blick to arrive. I've already been sketching away hard at work revamping these guys, the art style, and the general direction of the strip. I also picked up an old Bloom County book at the used book store for two bucks. That's been great inspiration, that stuff was golden. Also Zits and Peanuts are still epic in my opinion, so those three have been sort of been a framework. I'd like to keep it a bit more story oriented than most daily strips with a certain amount of continuity.

So, while on the subject of inspiration, I ran a deviant art search earlier to see what other deviants are doing and trying. I was shocked to find that virtually no one is doing traditional strip work. I did run into some vertically oriented manga-styled stuff, but not even as much of that as I was expecting. Crazy, I figured there'd be an abundance of people giving the old syndication deal a try, especially when looking over the newspaper comics page and seeing so many really bad art styles among the newer crop of cartoon strips coming out. The trick of course is to be funny every single day.

No progress on the Ann vs. Eva battle. Those two are really going at it. Kicking, trash talking, scratching, and hair pulling. I should charge admission to that fight.

Yeah, that's all I got. As you were.

So I took a little break from creative endeavors after a summer of cramming to complete that CD and then slamming that right into the college experience, plus all the various dramas and explosions that have occurred. So I beat a couple of video games, Arkham Asylum and Marvel Ultimate Alliance II, watched quite a few movies and finished all the Angel seasons. The break did me good as I was able to solve a few problems with the fresh insight. So I can see the end of the light with the music project. Thank goodness.



That means I can get back to doing art, but I have a dilemma. Ann. Ann isn't happy being just a book. (She's told me, while kicking me relentlessly as I continue to not tell her story.) Ann told me that it is pointless to write her story as a book because no one in their right mind would read or buy a book from me. Why? Because there are a million writer's that are better than me. Because I'm an unknown. Because I suck at life. Ann wants to be a star, and my book writing skills (or rather lack therefore of) just won't allow for that to happen. But a comic book. Yeah, I might have a few skills in that department (she's afraid I might get a big head, obviously). "That's the direction you should take me in, like you originally promised way back when." Yes Ann, I hear you. Would you quit kicking me now?



See, Ann is mad because I'm cheating on her with that "other character" Eva. Eva Sorrows. None of you really know her because I can't really talk about her story much. The basic concept is sort of original and I really don't want anyone ripping it off. Eva's story will allow me to "go nuts" artistically and that's really appealing because a lot of comics just wind up being pages and pages of just talking heads. It also has a really cool ending!

Ann's story is more clearly defined, and so is Ann (plus she also kicks REALLY hard). Ann's story will be mostly set in Las Vegas, have me drawing buildings and ordinary backgrounds and (mostly) ordinary people, I'm afraid it wouldn't be as visually appealing as Eva's story, but it also has a really cool ending!

The reality is that I'm going to have to pick one story to work on because of time constraints. I'll be in college for any number of years and either story would probably be a lifetime commitment. And for the life of me, I just can't pick which one to work on.

Can you? Anyone?