I’m the kind of person that drools over infomercials about the most awesome invention to be sold for six easy payments of $19.95 plus shipping and handling.  I am in my mid thirties and still get a little giddy when I see an awesome new toy commercial while watching Spongebob with Kira.  I want.  It’s a sickness and I don’t think it’s curable.

So… I have no idea what set me off this time but I want to sculpt.  Yeah yeah I know, I have enough things that I could be doing and using up my time.  Writing, drawing, playing on my XBox 360, playing on my PC, finishing that Linux box that is pissing me off, learning how to use the storage server that I just had to have.  Tons of stuff.  But no… I want to sculpt.

I have never done it before.  I have no idea how to do it.  However, I feel that I am really good at it.  I intend to find out if I am right.  Or not.

I mentioned to Michelle a few weeks ago – out of the blue – that I thought I wanted to learn how to sculpt.  She asked me what I wanted to sculpt and offered up wood, clay and a few other things.  I wasn’t fully listening.  My mind was filled with classics in Italian marble.  When she finished listing off the mundane I responded, “I was thinking marble.”

“Of course you were.” she said as if she should have known.

Now I realize that it is neither reasonable or financially feasible for me to get a giant block of marble and a few hand-tools and chip out the next Venus de Milo.  I could probably work the broken off arms but that would probably be it.  That idea has BAD IDEA written all over it.  *Le sigh*

Last week I found something more fascinating.  The world of designer toys.

O M G – toys?  Designer toys?  Sculpted and produced in small boutique quantities.  Very cool.  THEY COST HOW MUCH???

Yeah.  I can do that.  No problem.

After a bit of lunch-time research, it seems my medium of choice should be polymer clays.  It seems that if I make what I want with those then maybe I can get them made in a small factory in China and sell them.  Sounds like a plan, right?  Right.

So… does anyone know anything about these clays?  I did a bit of research online and it seems like for what I want I probably want something less soft like Super Sculpey or Fimo Classic but I’m not sure what would be best or even where to get them without getting price-gouged.

Suggestions?

Here’s the quick summary: a man who is a prolific collector of Japanese manga (comics) was found guilty of child pornography because of artwork in a series of manga that he was importing depicting depraved sex acts with children.  According to the article, this is a man who collected ALL types of manga and not just this style which puts him in the realm of what should have been considered an art collector.  He faces up to 15 years in jail.

So here’s the problem – this is a victimless crime.  There is no one who has been hurt… no one who has been wronged…  no one to be compensated.  These are drawings of fictional characters.  And the law has been left purposely vague (although less vague than the first iteration) so that it can cover things it was never meant to cover.  So now a comic collector is being put in jail and resources that could have been used to catch and prosecute real child pornographers has been wasted.

Welcome to the new world that allows for an idea to be illegal.  The most common anology to this is that if we play a video game that has us kill a virtual person are we then considered a murderer?  Sounds far-fetched doesn’t it? Now think about every school shooting over the past few years and how many times video games were blamed as influencers of the mentally flawed people who commited these crimes.

So where does the line get drawn?  Do we need to burn every copy of Lolita?  Should fans of Dakota Fanning get thrown in jail for watching Hounddog?  I guess we can’t make any more gang movies… ya know, unless no one dies of unnatural causes in them.  Slumdog Millionaire should have been X-rated based on this kind of thinking (oh wait, everyone loved it and it won awards).

What’s your opinion? (please read the article or be familiar with the case before venting)

The number of comics available to each customer is determined by each store but every person is guaranteed at least one free comic.

If anyone could make some suggestions, please leave a comment on this post or send me an e-mail at:

If someone suggests a good printer that I end up using, I guarantee that I will send that person a free t-shirt.  How’s that for incentive?

Click for larger version

Yes this is a little late but what do you want?  I had to post the pig joke yesterday.  But today I catch up.

Here’s a little pictographic treat for everyone.  A bit of inspiration based on the now complete NCAA basketball hoopla known as March Madness and of course the bizarre day known as 420 that is almost famous as Hitler’s birthday.  Yeah… my mind is a strange place.

So what did the term March Madness mean 70 years ago in the year 1939?  Something quite a bit different than it does now I’d wager.

You have to hand it to the Nazis.  They may have been the scum of the universe but they sure could march.  My apologies to the websites that I snagged these pictures from.

The first is that the last week of October will feature three comics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to celebrate Halloween.  This is not going to be the new schedule for ALS but it is something I’ve been wanting to try to see if I can update on a more demanding schedule.  I think I can but with moving into a new house and our first baby due to be born around that same time I don’t want to make any commitments I can’t honor.

The second goal is a bit trickier.  ALS has, for the most part, been a pretty tame comic and I want to keep it that way.  There’ve been some bizarre or gross things from time to time because that’s just the kind of person I am.  I have never felt like I was above a fart or poop joke or anything like that.  I relish in the fact that the characters are who I want them to be and they have no shame in that.  And this brings me to that second goal.  The final comic of October will be posted on Halloween and it will be the most disturbing comic yet.  It’s bad enough that it may polarize my meager audience and I may lose a few readers over it.  I hope not, but with how people are nowadays you have to assume that someone will be offended.  I’m hoping people will be shocked but enjoy it for what it is.  I won’t say anything more about it than that.  Even if I lose every single reader over the comic it will have been worth it.  Because I think it’s funny and I am not ashamed of that.

That being said, make sure you tune in to A Little Scary today because I think today’s comic is particularly funny.  And if you are worried about your delicate sensibilities… well… maybe you should just skip the comic on Halloween.  You have been warned.

I need to thank Yoshi from Hello! Yoshi for giving me the idea for today’s comic.  I never would have thought of that if it hadn’t been suggested by him.  Ever. Never-ever.  Thanks Yoshi.

Now if I can just make it to the 100 mark I’ll be all set.  Eventually, I’d like to go to a three days a week update schedule as well but I’ll need more time to dedicate to that to ever achieve it.  And with a baby on the way, I just don’t see that happening any time soon.

Here’s something I made while just having some fun with Adobe Illustrator.  Nothing fancy, I was just playing around and thought I’d share the results.

There’s still alot of things that I prefer Photoshop for but Illustrator is really growing on me.  If only I could merge my favorite features of both applications….

Meh.

But the odd thing is that the results are not consistent. I created a new AI file and drug the same character PSD into it twice from a Windows Explorer window (just like I normally would). Then I ALT+Clicked and drug each one to make a copy of each. So essentially four identical items all in one Layer in one brand new file. I exported it to PSD format for Photoshop CS2 (just like I normally would) and then opened it up in Photoshop. Two of the four were blurry and the other two were perfectly normal.

As you can see in this sample pic though, it’s not consistent as to which one is blurry.  At the top, the original is fine and the copy is blurry.  At the bottom of this same file, the original is blurry and the copy is fine.  I also tried just adding four different characters to a new Illustrator file and exporting that.  All but one of the characters was fuzzy even though they were all added the same way and all of these characters have been created in the exact same way.

If anyone has any ideas about this, please let me know.  It’s driving me crazy.