Ladies and Gentlemen. You wanted it. You asked for it. You got it.

I give you, a brand new edition of The Shallow End.

I drew this while I was in Bama. I finished it a few hours ago.

Enjoy :)

-P.

Hey ed_dirt Congrats, man!!!! I just saw the news in my inbox, hahah.

Matt turned me on to a language learning service called Bitesized Languages. You sign up and they send you a little daily blurb in a language of your choice to help you brush up on it. Apparently they had a cartoon contest with a prize and he won. I just saw the announcement in an email they sent out.

Matt has some experience in these matters. You should click that link, and read, because it's awesome. Though not necessarily safe for work.

-P.

PS - I should not help drink three bottles of wine and two beers, and stay up till nearly 2am on a night before I have to work, even if the three women I'm hanging out with are awesome.

Your mom. SFW.

-P.

But this still made me laugh:



xkcd is the best webcomic EVAR.

-P.

My friend Joshwolf_boomer sent me this comic last night. A Life With Death. Seriously awesome comic. Only 24 pages, check it out.

I tried out three colour viscosity printing last night. OMGHOLYCRAP THAT'S AWESOME! It's one of those techniques you read about and think, "no frigging way that works," then you roll that third colour across the plate and see it only stick to certain areas. It's like magic! And three colours rolled onto my plate gave me 5 or 6 in the print. I need to do a lot more of this.

Been having another one of those feelings that I've mulled over for a while and been able to put a name to. It's a certain flavour of insecurity. Not sure what to do about it yet, though. At least I know what's going on. I'm really glad that I've grown so good at self analysis. Thank you to Natalie and Heather for being cool.

Also, I have finally deleted my myspace account. That's been a long time coming, heh.

Anyway, now to tackle some more things on my todo list.

-P.

http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20061023.html

-P.

So, yeah, that last post probably didn't make ANY sense. But that's because I'm a slacker when it comes to posting news about life.

So, on the ground floor of the old art building, there was a gallery space. The Teaching and Learning Center has moved into that space now, but they want to keep using part of the space as a gallery to show artwork. So, I stepped up to get those shows organized. It's pretty cool, I'll get a tonne of experience, plus 2 hours of class credit; it counts as ART393 (internship).

So anyway, I thought it would be pretty cool to do a comic and illustration exhibit for the first show; it's something you don't normally see in a gallery (something considered--by some, not me--to be below gallery art), and I hope it'll get people interested in coming through that space.

So, to that end, if you make comics or illustrative artwork and would like to put some up for display, leave a comment or send me an email, let's get it up on the walls.

More later,
-P.

So, at this point, I'm probably posting enough to piss people off, but this one will be short and sweet.

Penny Arcade is, IMNHSO, one of the funniest fucking comics on the net right now, and EVAR. A lot of you probably already read it, but I don't know how many of you read the accompanying news posts as well. I do, because Tycho usually cracks me the hell up even whilst informing me. This post, from February 20th is no exception.

"I was incensed by the announcement that Halo 2 would be arriving exclusively for Windows Vista - and not because I have any antipathy for the imminent Microsoft platform. Indeed, if you were wondering who would go to Gamespot and read their article series on Vista, you have found him. I visit Channel 9 religiously and drink deep of their largely unfiltered insider information conduit. But when the messaging that accompanies that announcement claims I need Vista because Halo 2 simply wouldn't be possible on Windows XP, I'm not being dealt with in good faith. My PCI-E 800XT isn't the newest card available, but I'll be God Damned if the original Xbox knows some trick it doesn't."

God. Damned. Right. Not that I'd buy Halo 2 for the pc anyway (or, likely Windows Vista either), but it was a pretty fun game.

-P.

Hehehehehehehehehehehehe.... So, there's this comic I catch up on periodically called Rob & Elliot.

This strip just cracked me the fuck up for about five minutes. Enjoy.

-P.

The Man Who Prayed Too Much

-P.

So, The Shallow End is back up. Sorry for the downtime. I recently moved TSE off FuitadNET (good fucking riddance) to LunarPages. When I transferred my files over, my CUSP installation naturally died. It was a simple fix. It just took me two weeks to get around to it.


Speaking of comics, What The Hell Con 2006 is THIS WEEKEND! (Nothing like a little notice, eh?) For those of you who don't know, What The Hell Con is a little all-purpose nerd convention thrown by the scifi/fantasy/general geek club at Guilford College. They're awesome people and last year's convention was a hell of a lot of fun. Represented will be some very talented comic folk such as Jennie Breedenjenniebreeden of The Devil's Panties, Matt Woodvictor_von of Likely Stories and Phillip Wrightxodin of Furmentation. The convention promises to be a lot of fun, so come on out and see us. The convention is at Guilford college, and begins Friday at 6pm. The webcomics panel is from 7-9pm. Here are directions.



On a personal note: when I've been to conventions in the past. I've felt really awkward and out of place. That's because I didn't really know why I was there. I don't expect that problem this year. I'm 'officially' a webcomics guest, but that's not really appropriate since I haven't made a comic in three months. I plan to go representing myself as a local artist. I'll have some framed works to show, as well as some other prints and comics. People can buy or not, I don't really give a fuck. I don't anticipate selling anything. I just want people to see what I'm doing and like it. I will, however, probably be bent over a very large sheet of plywood putting down a drawing for my first woodcut project. I did the preliminary drawing last night. Holy fuck it looks AWESOME.

Rock out with your cock out.
-P.

"Yes, Merch?"

-P.

Hehe, so I haven't managed to keep up with my webcomic diet since... umm, mid-october. So tonight I've been getting caught up (why does Randy have to be so fucking verbose!? Jesus!).

Mel|takhisis and James|flemco, you guys fucking SLAY me. Actually, the two weeks leading up to that one were pretty damned funny, too. Oh, and Mel and J? this is for you.

-P.

Rob and Elliot bring the funny (sfw).

-P.

I am slain.

-P.

New Shallow End up

Check the news post. There's a free wallpaper.

-P.

( The comics I've been reading lately, and my thoughts on them. )

-P.

This post won't need its own positive thought, because the entire post is one big one:

This morning, I went to talk to Chris Thomas about taking his Independent Study class next semester. I wanted to confirm that I could do The Shallow End in it. (If I couldn't do TSE in his class, I'd need to pitch the idea to another instructor. Registration is coming up soon, and I didn't want to have to get the idea approved at the last minute.) Chris gave me a very bright green light :) He even said he looked forward to having me in there because I'm so inquisitive (hey, I want to learn).

What this means:
HAHAHAHA, next semester I'll have dedicated time in which to do TSE, a class full of people to get feedback from, and course credit for it! Hehehehehehehehe, this is a very good thing. Chris said that if people ask, he can even go over how to put together a CV, artist statement, present oneself to a gallery, etc.

Next semester I'll be producing at least one comic per week, which will I'm sure do WONDERS for my self esteem, skill level and readership. At the end of the semester, we're to give a presentation to the class about the work we've done up to that point. I'm actually thinking that the best presentation for my work would be a small printed book to pass around. Oooooh my god this is going to kick ass!!!!

-P.