[dc]T[/dc]oday on the Friday Six: Alan Moore writing advice, Wampa Rug, keeping a journal, business of cartooning, cats, and The Avenue Cafe.

Quick Update: my host had a server problem most of the day, hopefully it is fixed now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Quick Update II: Looks like everything is back to normal now! ::fingers crossed::

friday six clattertron

And seven is RIGHT OUT

[ ] Geek Thing of The Week: This Star Wars Wampa Rug. Because. Well. BECAUSE.

star wars wampa rug thinkgeek

That IS the rug I was looking for. Is it on sale? Image via ThinkGeek.

I may have to run this by Stephanie first, but I think it would make a great addition to our living room [No – Ed.]. Metal bikini not included because you can’t get everything you want, SHEESH. If’n I could get everything I want, I woulda had a working real-live Akira motorcycle yesterday.¹

BONUS FRIES: ThinkGeek has a sale going on right now (until 8/5)–up to 25% off a purchase.

[ ] Alan Moore (writer of Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and other classic comics) giving advice to unpublished authors.


[video link]

[ ] An article on Webcomic Alliance I totally agree with: In Praise of Journals. I keep meaning to write a post on this topic, but I started carrying around a 4×6 field sketchbook in June², and it is one of the best ideas I ever had (I used to carry small notebooks, but they weren’t useful for sketching).

Until my full post, here’s a taste. I started practicing lettering strokes.

comic lettering exercise

PRACTICE. Photo by me.

Woo. I really need to do this on a page with lines, but you get the idea. A lot of lettering, and drawing in general, is muscle memory.

[ ] Jim Keefe’s (Sally Forth artist) ever-growing The Business of Cartooning post. A great list of resources for all kinds of artists (where I found the link to the Alan Moore video above). Keefe’s site led to the site the writer for Sally Forth:

[ ] Francesco Marciuliano’s (Sally Forth writer) Cats Confiding in Stuffed Animals. The name says it all. Warning: cute.

[ ] Lansing area beer and pinball fans: I finally made it to The Avenue Cafe (formerly Gone Wired Cafe) and it gets a double thumbs up. There’s three pinball games (Lord of the Rings was my favorite), AND they have a NAMCO Class of ’81 Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machine. Plus, Michigan beer. It is probably the nearest thing Lansing has to a Barcade at the moment, so pay it a visit (and there is wi-fi, allowing me to finish up this post).

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¹. Not that I would actually ride my working Akira motorcycle, but it is the principle of the thing.
². Like the KUM bronze wedge pencil sharpener I mentioned in last week’s post, I got my field sketchbook at Grand Art Supply in downtown Lansing.