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Designer and Comic Illustrator (and music lover!)

LP 2 – Chewing Pine

LP 2 – Chewing Pine published on No Comments on LP 2 – Chewing Pine

lp2

Monkey Money

The Scarlatti Rip-Off

So after the first LP Monday being about a record that has so much nostalgia for me, let’s dive into some uncharted territory.

Chewing Pine (1975) by Leo Kottke. Amusingly released the exact same year as An Evening with John Denver. I had never heard of Kottke, well not until I picked up one of his albums at a record store last week. I literally knew nothing about this guy or what his music sounded like (other than he was an acoustic guitar player) prior to throwing him on the turntable. When I saw it in the store for 50 cents it caused me to pause and give it another look. Maybe it was something about the cover design that caught my designer’s attention, or the fact that I enjoy just the sound of the guitar, or that I had no knowledge of this guy, or that I generally enjoy the music from the 70s, or maybe it was just the cheap price tag. Whatever the case was, Leo Kottke wiggled his way into my vinyl collection and I’m rather pleased I didn’t overlook Chewing Pine.

Not having a lot of experience with Kottke, there ain’t a lot more I can mention here about him. I found out that the guitar wasn’t his first instrument, and he is known for a rather unique picking style. He often played on a 12-string guitar and probably his most famous song, Vaseline Machine Gun, was from his debut album.

Side note: I’ll try to keep LP Mondays to just two songs from each album (give or take a few exceptions).

Chapter 5

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And I have returned!!

Honestly considering another day to update rather than Thursday…

Expect some interesting changes to come this chapter. Obviously already spicing things up with some ink shaded segments on this cover page, but I want to push myself extensively with this chapter. Kinda like how I pushed myself with chapter 2, but 5 won’t drag out as long (thank goodness!)

LP 1 – An Evening with John Denver

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The Music is You
&
Farewell Andromeda (Welcome to My Morning)

So I thought long and hard about what LP to choose from my collection to put up here for the first Monday LP. I wanted it to be special and memorable. While I did think very seriously about it for the past week, I knew pretty early it was going to be a John Denver album though.

An Evening with John Denver (1975), John Denver’s first live album recorded in University City, California. Denver was at the height of his musical career in the 70s. While often heavily criticized by music critics for being a lightweight, his music is still fairly popular all across the world. One of my favorite quotes from him came from a interview with Rolling Stone Magazine:

“All right, I’m not Bob Dylan. I don’t write songs like that. But I think 25 years from now people will be singing my songs even if they don’t remember who wrote them. Can you remember that Duke Ellington wrote ‘Mood Indigo’?”

So why is this album important to me. Well, this is the vinyl I remember be told at a very young age how to use a record player. I remember slowly lowering the needle to hear this beginning quite vividly. My surprise at being told I could flip the record over and hear something different was only surpassed by me discovering there was a second LP in its case (since it was a four-sided album). So yeah, lots of memories with this one. That actual vinyl I listened to is still back at my parents’ home, but this is just another copy I bought for myself somewhere along the line.

Work, work, work…

Work, work, work… published on No Comments on Work, work, work…

Trying to get everything MitM transferred over to this site right now.

I just got done reposting all of my author’s comments on all the pages from Chapter 1 and I plan to tackle the rest in stages. Also getting the first entry in Monday LPs finalized and ready for tomorrow.

As for even more exciting news, I plan to finish the Chapter 5 header for this Thursday. I want to make it out to be something of a Thanksgiving gift to the few readers who have been bearing with me over this break ^^

Alright, back to work for me…

We’re LIVE!!!

We’re LIVE!!! published on No Comments on We’re LIVE!!!

Whoo!! The website is live, the blog is up and running, and there are only a few bugs/unfinished segments left! (yeah, please ignore the cast segment on the main site for now…)

This has been a long process and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Anyways hang in there everybody, Mutt in the Middle is almost completely back 😀

Page 110

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That’s it. The end. No more. One hundred and ten pages is a good stopping point 😛

…Well, at least for a chapter. Next chapter (Chapter 5!) will bring us back to Dayton and his adventures. But, sadly we are all gonna have to wait longer than just another week to find out what the next part of MitM brings to the story.

I will be briefly putting Mutt in the Middle on hold. Why? There are several reasons that factor into my decision, but the biggest for me is the MitM website. It is in DESPERATE need of updating. While the front end is……feasible…the back end is currently a mess and needs reworking. Fittingly the domain name for my website is set to expire next week (which I will renew), so it’s like a perfect reminder/sign to get some work done on the site.

I will sorely miss working on MitM weekly, so I may get restless with the website rework and start chapter 5 before the website is finished ^^;

Page 108

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The middle three word bubbles I rewrote several times. I really wanted them to capture my thoughts on the topic of blindness, while also be relatable to other situations. Whenever I think about things like this I always remind myself that life’s simple qualities truly are gifts and we should never take them for granted.

Also I guess I should say something about how this page is important for revealing that Joel is blind, but I don’t really know what else to say…

Page 107

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So trying out some new ideas. I’ve had some critique (on multiple occasions actually) about the characters becoming hard to distinguish from more complicated backgrounds. While on this page I decided to simplify the backgrounds, later I hope to work with only harder (or lighter) pencils and try to keep the characters darker. Now all that’s left is to put it into practice…

Almost made this page completely symmetrical by the way. For awhile I considered stretching the middle three panels full page length and making the top two the same size as the bottom two and have them overlap the same way. In the end I decided it was a bad idea and went with this solution. I had the characters pop out of panel 5 to help balance the page, but I doubt anyone really cares to know that silly bit of info…

Look at that first panel. Look at that hand. That. That is the essence of laziness. I could have given some effort and actually drawn a hand, but nope, I just drew this little stub o_o (I’ve even drawn a similar pose before!)

Also I went through several dialogue options before landing with this one. Several of them featured cringe-worthy jokes that I tossed out the window. Eventually I decided to run with Joel’s first line on this page because it accurately summarized my feelings after I went back and read the previous couple pages. Why the heck did I have them walk here??? Maybe time will reveal what is currently hidden to me >.<

Page 106

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MitM returns after its one week break! (even if today’s update was a little late…)

Really pleased with how this page came out honestly. I’ve been wanting to do a panel that stretches from the top of the page all the way to the bottom, but I’ve never found a place to use it.

Fun fact: I haven’t used a five-panel layout since page 36. I really strive to make my pages different and stand out from one another, but I noticed that recently I had stuck pretty close to using roughly 8 or 9 panels. Most of the time I think somewhere around that number gives a nice balance of information per a page (obviously there are exceptions), but I was itching to use less panels and add some more detail and practice drawing some new perspectives and objects.