This is a pretty exciting time for me. I’ll be attending Heroescon in a little over a week from now. And yesterday, I was hired for a job at a local print shop.

I have no intention of letting my comic be a casualty of the circumstances of life. I truely enjoy creating and drawing my comic and I am not about to let it go. That being said, I am not sure how having a full time job will effect Filtered Fuzz, especially considering I am low on my comic buffer. I don’t start my new job until after I get back from Heroescon. I’ll spend much of the next week scrambling to draw more comics and build up some kind of buffer.

It may be difficult, but I want to put 110% into my job as well as my comic.

Whatever happens, rest assured that this is not the end of Filtered Fuzz.

For anyone who is going to HeroesCon next month, or for anyone else, really, would you be interested in buying original Filtered Fuzz comic pages?

The pages are large, drawn 10 x 15 inches. The finished product is sometimes quite different from the pencils/inks, as I sometimes do edit in Photoshop. There are a couple of cases in which a panel is actually missing (Such as panel one of page four) There are some pages that have heavy use of correction fluid, and I do not usually erase the blue pencil underdrawings. I am not saying this to belittle the artwork, but I do not believe in fooling my audience. If you are interested in buying the original art, I can and will scan and upload the original, pre-edited version.

As for now, I am not opening an online shop or selling the pages online, though I will bring them to HeroesCon if anyone is interested.

My order of postcards and business cards came in today and I am pretty happy with how they turned out. The business card also has two sides, but it’s the same picture as the postcard with some text. The thumbnail is cropped, so click to see a fullview. 

My next project will be to print out some color flyers with a sample of comic pages. If you have any particular favorite pages that you think I should feature or pages that you simply think would be eyecatching to someone who has never read the comic, I’d like to hear from you.

I have an announcement to make. If all goes as planned, I will be sharing a booth at HeroesCon with my friend, former classmate, and all around awesome artist, Shazzbaa

HeroesCon is a convention in Charlotte, NC which will be running from June 19-21, 2009. I attended last year as a visitor, and while it’s a rather large con to be my first, I think it will be a great opportunity to expand my audience and to say hello to those of you who already read and enjoy Filtered Fuzz. Currently, I am still trying to decide what to bring to my first con. Of course, I am more focused on the promotional aspects and will bring lots of fliers, but there are other things I am considering. If you take a look at the header/banner at the top of the page, I’m sure you have noticed the felt cutouts. I would like to make these into clip on pins or maybe even hairbows if there were a market for that. I also want to make bookmarks, perhaps as an alternative to fliers, as bookmarks may be more practical and less likely to be thrown away. I also hope to print a few mini comics, perhaps with exclusive materiel. And maybe, I’ll bring along some of my original pencils/inks as well, though table space will be limited and I draw big (10×15).

Of couse, and as always, I would appreciate any reader feedback on the subject. Is there anything in particular you would be interested in buying or that you may think will be a good seller? Any ideas will be appreciated.

As thanks for putting up with my absence over the past few days and not tearing up the place while I was gone, here’s a picture of a gorilla with a bowl on it’s head.

I am back from my vacation. I had a nice time, but I’m burnt out. I came back with a cold. I have quite a bit to do in the next few weeks and I won’t let a cold stop me.

I have to say, it was nice to get away from the computer and the comic, but after a few days, my nerves started acting up. It’s unsettling for me to leave behind what I’m doing. The good news is that I do have fresh, new ideas swimming in my head. I think stepping back has helped to clear my mind. Though at the same time, I need to get back in touch with my characters and get back into drawing mode, which shouldn’t be too hard to do.

I am a fan of family entertainment. I don’t think it’s possible that I’ll ever “outgrow” it. I grew up with the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon back in the days they actually showed interesting cartoons and programs. I’m not saying everything is bad on TV today, but everything seems to be pushing kids to grow up faster and faster. There really isn’t much of anything between the preschool shows that really talk down to kids and the live action shows directed at young teenagers. What happened to Peter Pan and Neverland and growing up being the furthest thing from kids’ minds? Is it a sign of the different times we live in? Is being a kid and truly enjoying it a thing of the past? Being a kid no longer seems to have that appeal that it used to. Now kids seem to be focused on growing up and being as “mature” as they can be. To any kids that may be reading this: Don’t fall for it. Being a kid is a time for amazing opportunity and fun. And you shouldn’t let anyone, the twelve year olds wearing makeup on TV or your friends force you to grow up. Take your time and take it all in. You only live once, and you will have plenty of time later to worry about joining “the real world”.

I’ve been reflecting on recent animated movies and upcoming movies that have interested me. I must say, Wall-E was truly the best film I had seen in 2008. I adore the minimal dialogue. Sometimes, less really is more. Wall-E and Eve are both appealing characters and really connected real human emotion without being depicted as cartoony robots. The nod to classic musicals, namely Hello Dolly! was amazingly done, I believe. All to often, animated movies tend to throw in random classic rock or older music to appeal to the parents in the audience without any significant relevance to the plot.  This was not the case for Wall-E. Believe it or not, I actually had chills running down my spine to see the images of space coupled with Put On Your Sunday Clothes. I don’t consider myself a fan of romance, but that was the heart of this movie and it was incredibly done. Wall-E is indeed one of those rare movies that I could literally watch over and over, but it’s also something that needs to be seen to be appreciated. Just reading a review about it doesn’t give it justice. So if you haven’t seen Wall-E, I recommend it.

The other animated movie I saw this year was Bolt. I admit, I still have hard feelings over the fact that Chris Sanders (writer/director of Lilo and Stitch) was taken off this project and I wish I could see the movie he had planned. Bolt wasn’t a bad movie, and I wound up liking the characters more than I thought I would. (Rhino, the hamster and his fanboy ways irked me from the commercial.) But there were some snarky elements that really took me out of the film. I wanted to enjoy it, and for the most part, I did… But the way the agent acted and how the mom put up with it throughout most of the film, I just wanted to yell at the screen! I’m not a mother, but if that were my child, I would have stuck up for the kid from page one! But she just sort of… stood there. Anyway, it was a sweet little movie and I do recommend it. But not with the same enthusiasm as I recommend Wall-E.

Currently, I am really looking forward to seeing Pixar’s Up and Disney’s latest traditionally animated film, The Princess and the Frog.

Sometimes in life, things happen. Sad things. Let it be known that I am not here to be depressing. Far from it, I want this Web-comic, blog,  and entire experience to be a celebration, even if times are rough. Freckles, my first cat and best friend for fifteen years passed on yesterday. Here’s a picture of her from last year when I was experimenting with FilteredFuzz (Then called Two For the Show) in a comic strip format. I think she was nearly blind by that time, but she looked like she enjoyed it! If there’s one thing I could ask you to take away from this blog post, it would be this:

Life is short. But that’s no reason it can’t be great.

I was blessed to have Freckles for so many wonderful years. And I believe that yesterday, an angel just recieved the best cat ever.

The more I think about it, the more going back to the two days a week updates really doesn’t appeal to me. In fact, I think I’d really regret it if I did that at this point. That being said, I am not going to stop the Saturday updates now. I’m trying to increase my productivity and keep things running as professionally as possible. And I’d like to get the word out about the comic and really start promoting Filtered Fuzz. It would really be several steps back to limit myself to two days a week updates at this point.

However, I will be taking off around the week of the 19th. Don’t worry though. There will hopefully be some sort of new, interesting content up.

I updated the cast page today. WordPress gave me a problem, but I basically solved it in a roundabout way.

Looking at the cast page I realize this comic has an overwhelming female to male ratio, Jared being the only male. Though I suppose I draw him enough to make up for the gender gap. It’s a little strange. Usually my male characters vastly outnumber my female characters. And I may have a skewed opinion since I am so close to the comic, but I don’t really think it comes off as being too girly or something that boys wouldn’t like because “There are too many girls! Cooties!”

What do you think?

I feel like I’m in a sort of transitional phase in my life and I’ve been contimplating how I should go on with the comic. To make a long story short, I plan on going back to the Monday and Thursday updates starting at the beignning of the year.

I’ve become attached to updating three times a week, and you can believe me when I say I want to continue doing so. That being said, I don’t want to miss updates and I want to keep the comic as professional as possible. I hope that I will be able to update more when I am able.

So, starting Mondayy, January 5th, Filtered Fuzz will be updating on Mondays and Thursdays.