I got stuck yesterday working on the daily comic strip. No matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get a pose right. I sketch, erased, sketched, erased. It was proving to be a bit of a challenge.

During all this, I was talking with Kris on video chat over Skype. Kris, as you may or may not know, is already up in Seattle. He moved up a couple weeks ago and is settling in. Yesterday he happened to be up at the Penny-Arcade offices and so I had this video conduit in my soon-to-be new office. Technology, you see, is very bad ass these days.

Mike Krahulik walked by and started to chat with me as well. I pushed my desktop through Skype so they both could see what I was working on and soon I had enlisted Mike and Kris in helping me figure out this tricky pose. Finally I asked him to demanded he just draw what he was trying to explain and email it to me. So he did.

Now I saw what he was talking about. ReTweet should already have followed through with his swing. I suddenly realized that Mike’s had more time observing little kids in various poses because he has a son running around the house. Observation is the cartoonists GREATEST asset.

Well, it didn’t take long to drop Mike’ sketch into my panel, drop the opacity and draw Retweet on top of it.

In a couple months, I’ll be working out of the Penny-Arcade offices and more than anything it’s this kind of interaction that I’m so hungry for. Not only that but during the same exchange, Mike was complimenting me on the improvement I’ve made to drawing hands and mentioned how he was pushed to draw better hands now because of it.

I want to encourage all of you out there interested in cartooning to find a peer group whose opinion and feedback you value. Push each other to do better. Even if you can’t be in the same city, use Skype, Camtwist and Ustream to share your process and build virtual studios. The technology is here to use.

And, to make this very self-serving, let me also recommend that you check out Webcomics.com. Since the relaunch of that site in January, we’ve built quite a great little community of serious cartoonists dedicated to this sort of thing. It’s a great place to find that peer group.

It’s been a while since I posted, so let’s catch up.

What happened in Santa Rosa?
I know I still owe you a recap of my amazing trip to California and my visits at both the Cartoon Art Museum and the Charles M. Schulz museum. My time was so amazing I’m actually auditing which parts I should keep to myself for fear that sharing everything with you might lessen the importance of the experience. Expect something soon on that front.

Upcoming Appearances
We’re not even two weeks away from my setting up shop inside the safe and familiar walls of the Emerald City Comicon. Seattle will be my official home in about two months. I had really hoped 2010 would be the year ECCC was local for me. It’ll be half-local. It’s also happening really close to my birthday (Beware the Ides of March), so I’m expecting to have a lot of fun on this trip.

Two weeks later, you’re going to find me and Kris Straub at the inaugural Pax East. Yes, we’ll be selling stuff there. But more importantly, we’ll be making a Blamimation live during a panel and we’ll want your help. More details on that as we get closer. But be safe and mark your calendar for that weekend. You don’t want to miss it.

Study the work of those before you
King Aroo is a collection of Jack Kent’s comic strip that started in 1950. It’s good. Really good. Like, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it. Reading it makes me wish that I could have experienced that time when cartoonists all worked in suits and smoked pipes and nobody had done anything yet. It was all open. And everyone was so proficient with the brush and lines were thick and fluid and amazing. Pick up this book. It’s history. Learn from it.

Productivity.
I’ll do bigger write-ups on these over at Webcomics.com, but if you work in any kind of creative endeavor, and you use a mac (and especially if you use a mac and an iphone), here are some applications that have been total game changers for my productivity and work flow.

Simplenote, Justnotes and the Simplenote website: Take notes anywhere and have them all sync to one place. Free
Things: $49 but a great task management app. Tags sync with your calendar. Has sister iphone app for $9.99
BusyCal: $49 bucks but better than ical, syncs both ways with google calendar and over the lan. they offer family packs.
Tripit.com (forward your travel confirmation emails and it’ll build an itinerary for you. Syncs to a sister iphone app. all free.

Hey, I was interviewed on the Comics Coast to Coast podcast.

One of the show hosts, Justin Thompson was instrumental in hooking me up with my visit to the Charles Schulz museum. In return, everyone should check out his awesome comic strip Mythtickle. He has a new book out, btw.

Anyway, check out my episode of Comics Coast to Coast here

Thanks for having me on the show, guys.