Favorite comics of '09

Was thinking about what I liked most this year, and since I'm bad with remembering when things come out, I had to look through my shelves and boxes. Here's a list of no set length of things I really liked that came out this year.



Beasts of Burden

This is currently only a mini series, but I think that there are plans for future minis or an ongoing depending on the sales of this one. I could be wrong. This is about a group of dogs and cats that use magic to hunt ghosts and spooky things like this. There are also 4 more short stories featuring these characters in the Dark Horse Book of... series.



King City

While not technically "new" in '09, this is a new size and new rerelease of this previously unfinished series. It will now finally get an ending too. So far it's only 3 issues in, but it's wonderfully drawn and full of unique story ideas and characters and world building stuff. Check it out.



Em and Gwen in: Magic Spell

This is a 2-part story that would take a little bit of leg work to get and read. Part 1 is free on the MySpace Dark Horse site, or in the MDHP Volume 4 which collects a lot of the MySpace content. Part 2 is printed in Bird Hurdler which costs $0.01 plus shipping. New Farel stuff. Magic in a real world setting. Talking birds. That's all you need.



Mouse Guard: Winter 1152

Technically only 2 issues of this series came out in '09, but the collected edition was also released, so I think that counts. Mouse Guard is a world where mice have little tiny swords and axes and go on adventures where they battle snakes, owls, and the weather itself. The world they live in is very interesting and I can't wait for more.



The Eternal Smile

I loved Same Difference and Other Stories. I loved American Born Chinese. Take the artist from one and the writer from the other, and you get this. Another great comic. Sorry I don't have a lot to say about all of these, but I loved them, and would tell everyone to check them out. This one contains a story that features swords. There might be a theme going in this list.



Wonton Soup Vol. 2: Hyper Wonton Soup 2 TwoTon Soup: The Quickening 2…Soup

The insane-o title for this one can barely prepare you for the insane-o story and art inside. The writer/artist on this one, James Stokoe, has a new Image series starting soon that features...you guessed it – Swords. And Orcs. Can't wait.



Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka

Pluto is a re-imagining/re-telling/re-whatever of an Astro Boy story, The Greatest Robot in the World. They have translated/released 6 volumes so far this year, with 2 or 3 more coming in 2010. It's about robots that think they are human, or learn to feel like humans feel. It's about emotions and if robots are people or not. Kind of like BSG, but prettier and with a way better story. 100% less spaceships tho. Oh well.

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Of the things I have read this year, those are my favorites. Here on my desk I still have a couple I have yet to finish that I think could be added to this list. Beast, The Marquis: Inferno, and The Mourning Star volume 2. I'll just edit them into the list if needed. If so, this'll be 10 comics... So, get reading.

Science Preview 2

Science Preview 2, originally uploaded by wburkert.

Some more work, some more panels. 25% of full-size. 1/2 of the panels.

3 more photos and I'll need a pro flickr account... xmas present, anyone?

Dec 1, 1:29 am

Finishing up comic stuff for the night.

Science Preview

Science Preview, originally uploaded by wburkert.

not 100% finished panel from upcoming 1-page silent science comic.

currently untitled science comic preview.

this is the final linework for a big (10x15) 1-page black and white comic i've been drawing. i had done a sketch awhile back of a person talking but the word balloon was cut off by the bounding box of the comic panel. i thought it would be a funny way to do a silent comic. i have a whole script of dialog for this one, but i left it out so it would be a little more open ended. recently i've been thinking that i don't want it to be too open ended, so I think it'll get a title that is revealing.



this file is huge, but this is just a screenshot. full-sized and finished coming soon.

Without About

Been thinking about minor changes to my site, withoutbones. Last night, I thought up this for the "About" section.



Which made me think a lot about family trees.

Water is not only tasty but also nuts.

Tao te Ching, chapter 47

Without stirring abroad
One can know the whole world;
Without looking out of the window
One can see the way of Heaven.

The further one goes
The less one knows.

Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,
Identifies without having to see,
Accomplishes without having to act.

From the D.C. Lau translation

Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.

From the S. Mitchell translation.

I like the first one better.

Pad thai

Pad Thai experiments 001

Washington heights

Roger Roger

New phone; test email post...

Lorna visits

Lorna came to town this week. We ate a lot of food and walked all around Brooklyn. One night, we ate hand pulled noodles in soup and a pile of dumplings. Then we walked to Brooklyn Heights, and looked out at the city.

Love What You Do: Slide 4

Love What You Do: Slide 4, originally uploaded by frank-chimero.

mach workup

working file, with some discarded marks and symbols and things. skulls are pretty common on these patches, but i couldn't make one that i liked so i stopped thinking about them. oh well.

mach-ers marks comp

mach-ers marks comp, originally uploaded by wburkert.

this is an entry for the shirt.woot "flight" competition.

i like drawing little badges and insignia and such, so i made a couple for fake flight jackets. the bat one on the left is for a fighter jet squad called "the combats". other names, written on the paper next to me include "high five", "high plane drifter", "red six", and "flipped birds" which would be a blue-angels type group that flew upside down only.

vote on it here:

http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=36839

still life w/ cheese

still life w/ cheese, originally uploaded by barnapkins.

saw this today, and forgot that i had seen it before. loved it then, love it now.

If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

No curtains at my place anymore, so woke up at like 8:30. Making up flight jacket patches and listening to David Dondero. The sun shining in my window makes it hard to see the monitor. That's trouble.

pfs_gnome powered armor

pfs_gnome powered armor, originally uploaded by wburkert.

in the fantasy worlds that i am pulling from for inspiration, gnomes are very clockwork/technology based. in PFS, i want to have hints of this technology, but not to the point where they have mastered it. I think that it should either be very very new, or so ancient that most of it is lost/broken/forgotten.

the pieces of remaining power armor are given to those in positions of defense. with the powered helms, the gnomes are free to communicate to each other. like walkie talkies. the lenses in these helms may also be of an advanced nature, but I haven't decided yet.

this guy is a gate keeper type guy.

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i couldn't do an inked thing every day of october due to real life, so i stopped. but i like the format, and will keep exploring the PFS world in this way for now.

pfs_elf mage

pfs_elf mage, originally uploaded by wburkert.

this is an elvish mage/wizard/caster of some sort. he is standing in the rubble/wreckage of an elvish building.

gnomes live underground, and in the past young elves would stumble upon entryways to the gnomish dwellings. the young adventuring elves would think these were dungeons and would enter them with hopes of treasure. the elves ended up killing many unsuspecting gnomes this way and the gnomes have never gotten over it.

gnomish strike teams sack elf homes/towns/caravans/anything to the point where it looks like obsession and fun.

Tumblr

The other day I remembered that I had set up a tumblr awhile back. It was collecting the RSS feeds of my blog, twitter, and flickr. I deleted it last night, then regretted that, and set it back up. As I remember other things I've set up around the internet (like an internet Walter Bishop: Where did I store those files...), I'll make the feeds pull in to it as well. Think of it as a 1-stop what-am-i-doing kind of thing. If you are in to that.

withoutbones tumblr

I also set up a "swipe file" tumblr, where I'll be collecting images from around the internet/my hard drive. These are images where I like the shapes, symbols, compositions...anything. Inspiration stuff. I've got at least 30 gigs of this HD full of unknown things, and I don't even want to think about what's on my back-up HD. I am a pack rat in general, but when it's a digital file and I don't have to see it unless I go looking for it... well, in those cases I horde things faster and more often.

withoutbones swipe file

The Marker Mystery

I was watching the most recent episode of Californication this morning (S03E05: Slow Happy Boys), in which Hank Moody's pal comes to visit from New Jersey. I just got done catching up on Fringe, and it is the same guy that works at the bowling alley in Fringe. Anyways, that doesn't matter. Near the end of the episode, Hank takes his friend to the airport. While saying his good-byes, something caught my eye. I really wanted them to touch on the subject, but they never did:

Why does his friend have an unopened 3-pack of sharpies in his bag?

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

(by Chris Ware)

You can make more money than your grandparents did. You can also drive really fast, and you can change your sex. You can find friends without having to go to church, and you can see movies in your own house. You can get pictures of naked people almost anywhere, and you can curse out loud freely. You can buy dinner in a box and not have to wash anything after you eat it. You can fly to any city you want and meet a sexual partner, or you can talk to them on the phone. You can have bright light twenty-four hours a day without having to clean soot off the walls, and you can listen to any music you want anytime, anywhere. You can find people everywhere who like exactly the same things you do, and you can print your own books. You can buy vegetables from the other side of the earth, and you can build a house in a day. You can be perfectly warm or cool at every moment, and you can stay in school all your life. You can have sex fourteen thousand times and not have a baby. You can write with pens that don't dry out, or leak, or have to be plucked from a bird, and you can hear about people being hacked to death thousands of miles away. You can see pictures through telescopes almost to the end of space and from the beginning of time, and you can keep milk fresher longer than ever before. You can shit in a bowl and then whisk it away, and you can visit caged wild animals in the middle of a city. You can buy things to make you see and hear better, and you can live anywhere you want. You can get your face stretched tight like when it was new, and you can be sick and not die for a really really long time. You can even wash your clothes in a machine so why can't you figure out a way to be happy all the time?

saw this on the blog of johnny dale, a fella i used to work with. title is snagged from oscar wilde

Read today...

A quick snippet of interesting things I read today (with links):

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Re-re-re-re-reading The Invisibles right now. This morning I read issues 3-6 of volume 2, collected in Bloody Hell in America and Counting to None. There's a really interesting thing in here about "White Flame Meditation", which I can't currently find any links about... Anyways, in this particular scene we see Jolly Roger and King Mob (among others) being trained in this form of meditation. Jolly Roger's dialogue is in italics, and is only there to make the rest of the explanation make sense (since this is a conversation happening).

..."I am an optimist," we say. Or "I am unlucky." Or perhaps "I am an American,""I am a Jew,""I am a homosexual,""I am heterosexual." We call the following the white flame meditation.

There. Can anyone tell me exactly what this object is?

It's a chair.

Is that all? Does that describe the entirety of this object?

It's an object with four legs and a thing to hold up your ass so you don't have to sit down in the dirt like the rest of us dickheads. Chair.

Yes, a partial description. But if you were an antiques dealer you could also describe this object's agreed worth – somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million dollars.

If you were a specialist, you could describe the intricacies of the craftsmanship in detailed jargon.

If you were Van Gogh, you might attempt to describe its soul.

But where in all of this description is the essential chair? Have we yet come even close to a full description of it?

Ded we even mention that several hundred years ago, it wasn't a chair but a tree? Where is it now? Here? Or in memory.

We cannot even fully describe a chair and yet we say "I am." "I am...".

Understand. There is no "I am." Nothing "is."

Try to describe all that you are. Simultaneously discern the logical flaw in what I've just said. Now! Feel the white flame.

–

Currently reading through this slide show about time and this really interesting post about Lost.

–

Also, check out this map of a planned layout for London. I'd love to live there.

Walmart

Today I was informed that some of the work I did for Walmart is live.

This one is on the MSNBC site, if you scroll down a little bit, it's on the right.It starts with a close-up of some candy. You can see it here: http://bit.ly/34AywQ.



The other is a landing page on the actual Walmart site, here.



On both of these, all the graphics were made by me, with type & animation done by R/GA.

inktober 12 of 31

inktober 12 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

this guy doesn't look happy at all. wanted to see if hatching used up less ink than fills. i'm still not sure. not my best protest.

inktober 11 of 31

inktober 11 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

john locke from lost, stalking in the woods.

inktober 10 of 31

inktober 10 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

flying fish for an upcoming story on nameyourtale

inktober 09 of 31

inktober 09 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

holy relics

inktober 08 of 31

inktober 08 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

2 more PFS gnomes. Fuffwin on the left and an unnamed guy on the right.

and a movie.

_MG_4626, originally uploaded by PoliFolio.

by lex.

dear mom, i was messing with a toothpick, not biting my fingernails.

dinner

_MG_4477, originally uploaded by PoliFolio.

by lex.

inktober 07 of 31

inktober 07 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

illustration for an upcoming story on www.nameyourtale.com/

cheated by using some digital halftone to make it a little more finished.

inktober 06 of 31

inktober 06 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

illustration for an upcoming story on www.nameyourtale.com/

cheated with some digital halftone and a little graphite. I think thats ok tho -- still no cheating with the computer.

inktober 05 of 31

inktober 05 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

i really wanted to move some of the type around in photoshop, but trying to make it right on paper, without the computer.

protest everything.

inktober 04 of 31

inktober 04 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

here's a thing that has been doodled and thought about a bit, but i was worried to try it out. while i couldn't sleep tonight, i thought it would be nice to experiment.

one of many shadowbox/curio cabinet/shelf thingies that i can't figure out the actual name of.

(that's a floating cupcake in the lower left rock's negative space/spear hole)

inktober 03 of 31

inktober 03 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

undead warrior elf king, out for tonight's head.

as long as I only use the brush pen for filling in areas, I don't mind inking.

now I need to figure out/master getting rid of my underdrawing/sketch without dulling the ink so much. hm.

inktober 02 of 31

inktober 02 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

couldn't sleep, so i caught up on the inking I missed while I was gone for a couple days.

tonight, the gnome wizard and some sort of crystal thing he found.

The Invisible Man

I'll get to inktober stuff in a bit, but check out this guy:



http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man

inktober 01 of 31

inktober 01 of 31, originally uploaded by wburkert.

I hate inking. Perhaps this is the month to try and get better at it.

your blood.

This is my favorite bit...



...of this video...



...by Ray Kurzweil, the singularitarian guy.

I can't wait.

I was talking with my roommate the other day about Netflix's instant queue. When they have all their discs on this service, it will be amazing. You can grab any movie you want off of "the cloud" and never have to own a DVD/BluRay/Whatever ever again. That just freed up a whole wall in your house if you are a big movie buyer. Did you really need that wall of DVDs anyways? When was the last time you watched half of those? They are just there.

Books are being scanned and I see a lot of Kindles on the subway. Comics are dabbling in digital releases. Movies can be grabbed from your xbox or computer. The PSP software is all downloads in their upcoming PSPGO. If the future of physical objects is that they will all be digital and you can access them anytime you want, then I can't wait. It's not like we sit down and go through old floppy discs to find things we are keeping as mementos.

If you have 100% less books/movies/magazines/objects, you can live in a smaller house. Or at least one that doesn't have an attic and garage and shed and spare room filled with stuff. You can no longer need massive malls or super stores. Everything you ever liked is in your pocket on a device that can also contact others. Or in your blood. With you forever.

my room, from bed (odosketch)

heard about odopod/odosketch via sam rhodes' blog the other day and doodled a bit. this morning i noticed it would save a timelapse of your drawing. very cool. i saw this one by tom gauld which was really clever and awesome.

so, i drew my bed room as seen from bed. it's really only a small portion because i started with the fan and i guess i made it too big. i drew all of this with the built in touch pad thingie of my macbook pro. my thumb and pointer finger are a little tired/sore right now. no erasing, just me making mistakes and keeping them (a skill i am trying to learn).



i bet if you click that or something, it'll go full screen. i dunno.

view from my bedroom

bkview_092809, originally uploaded by wburkert.

view of brooklyn from my desk/windows. the clouds are slightly exaggerated. and i put in the date from tomorrow on accident.

Work, still going.

Took tomorrow off of work, so I may finally unpack all these boxes.

Here's the title track from my favorite Beatles album performed by my favorite 23-person band from Texas.

BuckyBalls

All I can really say is that these are really, really cool. And that I want a set.



Buy a set for yourself.

A Life Well Wasted

Been neglecting my blogging duties. I hate when people that keep blogs start a post like that, and then promise to be better. They never do. I won't promise you that. As time allows, I'll do stuff.

Been listening to this podcast about gaming while working. I like episode 2, about collecting/hording games (not for value, but personal obsessions) and pinball.

http://alifewellwasted.com/podcast/

Check it out. Great posters/ads for each episode as well.

Wild things comparison, in case you haven't seen the real poster...

Where the Wild Things Aren't

Where the Wild Things Aren't, originally uploaded by wburkert.

Just something I made for fun.

This would have been great when I lived in the dorms

shelfoverflow

shelfoverflow, originally uploaded by wburkert.

my bookshelf has run out of room. i need to get a bigger one. much bigger.

becoming

glad to see they still play this live. it's only 13 years old.

movies and moving

Walked over to Bam last night and watched Suspicion. I forgot the blurb I read claimed that it has one of the most ambiguous cliffhanger endings ever. So, the whole time I was trying to predict what would happen in the end...and instead I'll never know.



They had posters up for Inglorious Basterds, so hopefully they are playing that there too. Maybe they'll also play Ponyo and District 9...

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So, I am looking for apartments with a room to rent on craigslist. 80% of the ones in the neighborhood/price range I want are female only. No one likes boys anymore.

experimenting, 01

If I am working during the day, I am mostly thinking about getting out of work and doing something else, or about going back to sleep. For some reason, at night time that changes, and instead I think of other things... ideas for images, etc. I jot them down and sometimes I do them. Even if I don't, I just got paid to have that idea, sort of.

Tonight while working I had an idea for a series of 2 images. I started experimenting with it before putting time into the real thing. Here's a glimpse, 5 minutes in.

our hero, the elf skeleton, with loot.

pfs_treasure, originally uploaded by wburkert.

august 4th

sometimes, even though you have a light table that is bigger than half of your desk, you still want to kick back and relax while you work. luckily, mine is pretty light.