Archive for September, 2009
9 items.
The best thing about this topic is that it is real. There are, indeed, adventure colleges in the world and they often bill themselves as liberal arts colleges with a focus on environmental sustainability. The reality is that they are training you to sleep with bears. If you can sleep with bears, why continue on in society? Why not, say, find yourself a comfortable cave, a furry new friend, and avoid all that messy loan-repayment?
An adventure program is a fairly interesting idea but one that I would not have the stamina for, personally. I love the outdoors but I am much more laid back in my appreciation for it. My idea of a good time outside generally involves draping myself over things in the sun as opposed to quietly practicing my peculiar obsession in the relative safety of my own home.
The only reason I heard about these schools was because of my brother who is my opposite number in many respects. The idea of hiking trails and leading people on adventure tours appeals to him and I have to respect that.
If I did not, he would probably beat me up.
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Look below the surface and you can often find some pretty surprising facts about people or even witches.
Well, maybe not that surprising.
I feel like I’m finally getting back into the swing of things here, which is good. There are a great deal of things to do for animation courses, but the work is satisfying. I am glad that I am keeping up with the comic, at least.
I am also glad to receive such awesome support from everyone. Thank you, as always <3
If astrology were any cooler, it would be an ice cube. Woo!
Not a lot of news right now, I’m getting into the swing of schoolwork right now and working hard to keep up with the strip on top of all the animating and storyboarding. We’re still working on getting the print shop together, but I think William will have completed that sometime this week. The sketch blog has been updated and will be updated again with more interesting things soon. I think we will be putting up some full storyboards we put together for our junior animation projects. They are very cool looking.
Just when you thought the story was over…it returned with a vengeance. In all honesty, the mini story was meant to be 3 strips that would allow me to tell a few funny jokes (only two of which featured owls) over the course of settling into my new routine here in Boston. Just after finishing the second and before the third was due, I rewrote the last two into what you can only assume are funnier strips.
Rest assured, it is now quite over. I don’t think my roommate Jessica would allow this continue, anyway.
This strip marks a milestone in the comic. It is the first time I have been able to draw the sketch on paper! Thanks to my other roommate, Matt, I now have a scanner and am able to consistently scan in any sketches I’ve done. Doing things this way makes life so much easier as sketching is far more natural on paper rather than on the computer. That also means our sketch blog will be coming to life again, I think. I want to get some animation up there as I said before, and hopefully that will happen soon.
Until then, enjoy this strip about owls. It is the last for a while, I think.
Oh yeah, William and I have completed a fantastic poster for 10Km! We are lpanning to remove a disgusting Antz poster from the animation basement at school and replace it with our own creation. We will have it available for viewing once it is entirely done and it will be in the print shop once we get that set up. We are figuring out pricing right now and debating on how we want to handle the store itself. It should be all done soon.
Don’t ever leave home.
You may be replaced by an owl-doppelganger.
School is devouring much of my time now, but I am doing well at keeping up with the comic. I am also drawing a ton in my sketchbook, something I usually don’t do. We, here at 10km, have a sketch blog that we rarely update, but we’re planning to start scanning and posting animations there soon. When that happens, I will let everyone know so you can check it out if you wish.
This comic is fast degenerating into a vehicle for my peculiar owl obsession. For some reason, I find these animals fascinating and entirely ridiculous. There is a plaque that was in my brother’s workshop for some time that featured a preposterous photo of an owl glazed onto it. When I moved into my new apartment, he delivered it to me as a house-warming gift, albeit with some modifications. I think this story starts to hit upon my particular illness.
I believe this particular strip truly illustrates the life and times of today’s owl population. I see them up there, sitting, watching, lurking. Why do they not, as the saying goes, get a job?
A valid question and one I will be sure to investigate next time I see an owl.
Anyway, Tuesday will be the last part of this mini story, then back to our regularly scheduled weirdness.
This is a strip about life, about moving up and moving on. It is about leaving the metaphorical nest to live in a literal one. With owls.
I’ve moved into my apartment here in Brighton with Sweet William and our friends Matt and Jessica. It is a nice place and only moderately expensive. To help pay for the place, William and I are going to be offering prints and other things soon, perhaps buttons. We’ve also begun to plan our convention schedule for next year! How exciting!
Our studio will finally be a lot easier to manage now that we’re in the same building, which is wonderful. I have to say, I’m really looking forward to the year ahead.
I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who has donated money. You don’t have to do it and that’s why it makes it even more awesome that you have. I’ve been putting the money toward some advertising and saving some for printing costs later on. Just wanted to say that I really appreciate it! Thanks as always to everyone commenting and telling friends!
To thank you all, I have done some extra work and created this fun little wallpaper for your of Lil K and his monstrous companions!
September is birthday month around these parts. Most of my close friends and some of my family have birthdays in September. My girlfriend’s birthday is today and this strip is about her and her love of Katamari Damacy. Happy Birthday, Liz! 
This is also the first strip about a video game I have done! I do not plan to make it a habit, but Katamari is pretty incredible and widely known, so I did not feel too bad about it. Typically, I have tried to avoid using video games as material for Happle Tea. There are too many of those on the internet already.
Anyway, for those unfamiliar with The Prince and his antics, I direct you to this delightful article about the game. If you have a PS2 or know someone who has one, you should check it out immediately. It is adorable and fun.
This is something of a recycled strip from the days before the website was up. I know some of you have seen it and I apologize for that. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to write a new top-quality strip with all the things going on before I move tomorrow. Instead of not creating a strip, I decided to take the script from a strip I really loved that I couldn’t include on the site due to poor formatting and create some new art and fix the pacing.
There are web comics that will post and print the first ideas that come to their heads and use the first run through on the art and you can, typically, tell which ones those are. I try very hard to create comics that just about anyone can understand, that are funny, and that often have some kind of deeper meaning if you look hard enough. Writing strips by yourself can be a nerve-wracking and soul-destroying process at times, but I never use the first ideas I have or the first sketches I do for a panel.
That said, I felt the formatting and art on the original version was very weird overall and that the pacing felt wrong. I have redone it so that it can be posted here on the website and printed in the first issue Happle Tea book next year. I hope that you like it if you have not seen it before, and that you enjoy the new pacing and art if you already have.
Have I mentioned that I am completely obsessed with owls?
Also: Thanks to everyone telling friends about the comic, I have had over twice as many visitors this month as last which is incredible. As always I appreciate the emails, promotions, and word of mouth advertising <3 You are all magnificent!