$5,000 Problem

This, of course, will be touched in the comic:

My brother decided that he wanted to get a better fuel efficient car than his old truck. We agreed to help him with this endeavor. Having purchased three cars since getting married (two of them used) we have a lot more knowledge than my brother on the subject.

While I was at work and my husband was working with my father to get the title to the truck, my brother sneaked off with a bill of sale and traded his truck for a car...which promptly broke down within five miles of the previous owner's house.


Since the events were not under the control of my husband or myself, we were unable to get the previous owner to trade back.

Truck's value: ~$7,000 (parents bought for $12,000)
Car's value: ~$7,000 asking price, <$4,000 Kelly Blue Book Value

So, from the offset, my brother lost $3,000 from the get go on that since he traded vehicle for vehicle.

The car he got not only broke, but was spewing out black smoke and the tires were worn down to the treads. Despite this, a mechanic buddy of brother offered to buy off the car quickly. The offered price was $2,500.

So, for a $7,000 truck, my brother is getting $2,500. A loss of $4,500. Someone is going to be taking to bus to school.

From Life to Comic

When I was originally planning on drawing And Brother Makes Three by myself, I was going to use my own drawing style. I don't draw too much, but I tend to specialize in anthropomorphic characters. Since it was going to include a more fantastical look to it, I was going to rename the characters as well. My character would have gone by the old fallback, Niccea. Ryan would be Ice. And my brother would be called Octane or Auto (because he is a car enthusiast).

When my husband came on to the project, he wanted to base the comic characters closer in reality. I hope that this won't cause too much confusion as Danny and Michelle from Ice Pick have their designs based on us. I will try to change up my husband's look a little bit when we get to the comic to make him distinct from Danny. My counterpart in the comic won't look too much like Michelle as I have an entirely different style from her.

Of course, with the new character designs, the names would have to be more reality grounded as well. It lead to quite the argument with my husband as it was hard to think of a name for my character that wasn't my usual fall back. We ended up choosing Elaine for my character's name and Billy for my husband's character. My brother we were going to call Mikey (but keep Auto as a nickname). Later, I made the argument to not change our names as it is a slice-of-life comic. I will use the Niccea, Ice, and Auto names in my scripting as my sort of Blue Harvest.

Starting A New Project

While things are slow with Ice Pick, Ryan and I are going to be working on And Brother Makes Three. As I stated previously, my brother has given us plenty of material both real and exaggerated. Right now, I estimate that we have seven and a half months worth of material.

The hardest part of the new project was division of labor. With Ice Pick we have my husband write the story and provide mock ups for each page. RPGgrenade drew out the pages in the final style with pencils. Then, I would take the sketches and turn them into the final product of the pages. This is what lead to the breakdown with the comic. (We haven't gotten new sketches in a while.)

I was originally intending to do the pages for this new comic from front to back on my own. However, Ryan wanted to participate in the project as well. Since this comic will be in strip style, it doesn't require the level of detail that Ice Pick does, so we can do the work just ourselves. The running plan for this comic is form my husband and I to keep a working list of scenarios that we want to include in the comic. My husband will draw the comic using both the list and some improv pages that he comes with. (He claims that he draws better and is funnier than me). Then, I will have my usually role of putting the finished pages together.

And Brother Makes Three

My brother has moved in with us and had provided enough material for a new webcomic. Details coming soon.

Drunk Duck Awards 2013 - FYC: The Announcement

Hey guys! The Duck is not letting us post up new pages, so I decided to get this up on my  blog for now.

This page was created by JustNoPoint. It of the first of the For Your Consideration pages. Anyone is welcome to send out a page for this early part of the Drunk Duck Awards. What we want however for it to show your characters helping out with the awards by raising funds or even letting the Duck and Quail work in your comics. This is supposed to be a fun way of gearing up for the awards.

According to JustNoPoint:

"Duck and Quail have to try to get money and promote the DD awards or Wowio won't let it take place.
 
So the FYC pages need to follow this story. In it your characters/comic will do something to help the awards. Have a rich character? He can give a large donation. Maybe your characters will run around your comic (or other people's comics) trying to promote the awards. Maybe your characters work extra jobs to help get money for the awards.
 
The purpose of this is to not have stale ads taking up room at the start. They will be actual pages meant to aid the over all enjoyment of the Awards/story and be a FYC at the same time. So yes, promote your comics that you wish to be nominated in it too! Perhaps that rich character donating is a rich villain trying to bribe the Awards into voting for said comic.
 
Get creative and have fun with it!"

Submissions for the FYC can be sent to 2013awards (at) justnopoint.com. Also stay tuned for the quackcast on Wednesday. I got to clown around with Oz.

For my regular Ice Pick readers, I am almost done with the next page. I have been busy with some other stuff.

Moving Slow

The next page of Ice Pick is still delayed. Ironically, I feel like an icicle right now. The A/C was broken at my class. I am thawing out now.

Once again, life is interfering with the comic. Just so busy in class. I hope to work at breakneck pace after next week. Thank you for hanging in there with me. We are also spending a lot of time at our house and marking the progress.

I hope to have more pictures soon. Have a good week.

Life: Chugging Along

Still trying to get the new page out. Between school, work, constructing a house, and keeping the apartment, there are not enough hours in the day. I got almost all the line are finished, so the rest should be faster. I enjoy coloring a lot more than working the line art and it doesn't take as much precision.

One other thing that will be a distracter soon will be going full blown into Drunk Duck Awards mode. I am pretty sure that Ice Pick is not ready to be nominated yet. I am ok with that for now. BUt I want to be nominated next year.

I am hosting discussion planning for the Drunk Duck Awards right now. So it this is something that interests you, please join in. These awarrds recognize comic excellence within the Duck Webcomics Community. The awards are not just about winning, but is about celebrating comics. It is about getting a comic out there and getting it some readers. I find it all very entertaining.

So, I'm going to be very busy, but I still intend to have fun.

2013 Drunk Duck Awards

Life: Housing Adventure

Our house is going up very quickly. We are staying reserved though we are still a couple of months out. We are spending almost every Saturday in our new area. Not only are we checking out the house but we are exploring into resturants and other such places. My one complaint right now is that the Kroges near our neighborhood does not have almond milk...yet.

In comic news, I am working on the next page of Ice Pick inbetween work (going well) and being forced to watch Star Trek: Voyager by my husband (not bad but I keep figuring out the plot in advance).

As far as the Drunk Duck Awards for this year go, we are working on hammering out the catergories for this year. There are a couple of ones that may be going away if a strong enough case is built up. I will be getting up links, banners and advertsejent up soon for it.

Life: Gearing Up

There have not been a lot of updates recently, because we are all busy and I made the decision to just update as we go and not rush things. I know that can make us pale in comparison to other comics as far as updates, but I hope the qualitity makes up for for it. We just got some new drafts in so the comic should update soon.

Also, I am starting to gear up for The  Drunk Duck Awards for this year. So there shall be more posts about that as well.

Finally, the are pouring the foundation for our house now. Ryan and I are so excited to own our home.

Life: Niccea's Hall of Randomness

I made a new comic on The Duck. It has most of my discontinued comics in it. But it will also have art samples. Other than the dead comics that head up the comic, there will not be any specific order for the comics. Come look at my Hall of Things I Could Have Done Other Than Ice Pick. Maybe I can get a sucker to line art one of these as well...

Check out the Randomness.

Also, I have finished going through and editing the old archive for Ice Pick. So the changes will actually show up here on the blog. 

Life: Going Backwards

Since we have a little gap in between pages right now. I decided to finally go back and spruce up a few of the older pages. I am not making major change, but I am smoothing out the line work in early pages in some of the rough areas. I also made sure that all the text was in the same size. Though these small changes really are not discernible, but I think they help out the comic a little bit.

Life: 3 Point Awesome

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not given to rants often. That being said, something happened yesterday that really ticked me off. I really don’t talk about this very much, but up until December 2011, I was studying to be an Occupational Therapist.  But because of several factors, I couldn’t cut it and was kicked out. I am coming to a self realization that even though I was good at some skills that Occupational Therapists do, I could never be a great OT. Even before leaving the school, I was seriously talking of only being an OT for a bit while I was raising money to get an MBA. Some of this realization was already there, but some of it came to me after spending a week of reading Good to Great by Jim Collins. I have been using the concepts in the book to look back and do some self reflection.

Anyway, after being kicked out of school, I managed to get into the School of Management before the failing grades were posted.  When the director of the school found out what was going on, we got to sit down and have a chat. It was rather straight forward. I would be allowed to stay in the school if I raised my grade back to 3.0 as soon as feasible. At that time I had a 2.547. Doing the math,  I would have to take 9 of the 3 hour classes in the curriculum (3 semesters) and I could only make one B. Everything else had to be A’s. I did it. I got my grade to a 3.0 again. But when I called the Graduate School to release its hold on my account, so I could apply for graduation, the dean of the school got haughty with me. “I see you just got a 3.0.” She implied the “barely” in the sentence. That really ticked me off like nothing else. I worked my butt off to get 8 A’s in a field that is brand new to me and she downplays my achievement. She doesn’t know me and here she goes giving me trouble about that all I have is a 3.0. If you just look at my GPA related to my MBA only, I have a 3.89, and I think that is pretty damn good.

In other news, I now have a new computer, work on the comic is chugging along again.

Life: Secret Santa

This Secret Santa picture came to us from bjc of The Duck Webcomics. Also, I will be getting my new computer within the next couple of days, so once everything is situated, the comic will begin updating again.

Life: Merry Something-mas

I worked really hard on chapter two page two last weekend, but when I turned my laptop on Christmas evening, it didn't work. After going to Best Buy yesterday, I found out that the power button was broken and my harddrive is getting ready to commit suicide. In short, I am waiting for the new laptop I ordered to get in before I can get any comic related work done. The good news is that I am not spending near as much time online and getting a lot of reading done. At least school doesn't start for another two weeks. I will be making a Christmas post for Ice Pick before the year is done. I promise that much.

Life: I Have a Blog?

I am just kidding. I remembered that this blog exists. It has just been a rough couple of months, so I couldn't get anything going. After Christmas things will be much better for me. Since Ryan and I have the same job, we have the same busy time of the year which significantly slowed down comic creation. But, on the positive side, we just signed a contract for our new house.

Life: Distracted

Ryan and I got Assassin's Creed III in the midnight release. I have been spending most of my time with the game so I have not even looked at the comic since the last update. In short, things are being a bit delayed. However, I am halfway through with the game, so I am trying to spend more time with the comic again. That is the only excuse for the delay that I have.

Life: My Friend, Ming, Catches Things

This is a little bit more random, but my friend, Ming, put up this picture on Facebook this morning.

So, someone said they wish they had photoshop skills to put something in Ming's hands. Said person with photoshop skills being me, I made this after the suggestion that Ming be catching a goose.

 Of course, being the overboard person that I am, a simple goose catching wasn't enough for me, so I decided to get a little festive:

Then I got a list from Ming saying what he would like to be catching.

"Items I would love to catch:
1. A tardis
2. Selma Hayek
3. A Pokemon
4. A furby
5. An ewok"

I went with the two items that were easiest to find a usable picture for. I had found a reasonable picture of Selma Hayek, but her feet were not show so it would have been a bit more work for realism. Also, I loved the amazed looks on the two women's faces for whatever it is that Ming is catching.

So that is all the things that Ming has caught so far...Might still see if I can make the Selma Hayek picture work later on. It would be very amusing.

Life: Full Time Everything

I would like to apologize for the delays in the comic. This is mainly because of scheduling issues. Right now I am a full time employee and student. I am also a full time wife. I cannot possibly do so many things at once. Right now I am in two classes with three papers to write along with the usual class assignments. At work, the Annual Enrollment Period has gotten geared up so I am constantly on the phone and coming home exhausted. Of course, my husband and I are trying to enjoy time together. (And he was in an car accident.)  We have decided that for now that we will not be stressing over an update schedule right now. Pages will be going up when they get done until things start to calm down. It is just one thing I cannot keep up with while trying to live life. So. As a bonus, here is the uncolored version of page 1. I am further along than this. Do not worry. Page one is ready for coloring and page two is half way inked.

Life: A Note About the Cover Page

I thought I would mention it now since the entire first chapter is now on The Duck. This was also supposed to be a single panel page that ends the fight scene *SPOILER* We went with a different ending. *SPOILER* However, I kept Danny's opponent looking as close to the poor guy on the cover as much as possible. The icing effect was real difficult so we decided to delay that and go in a different direction. I also made a different version of Danny for this cover. He looked like this:

As you can see, Danny's hair and shirt used to be different colors than they are now. I also didn't give his eyes color for these because I want to emphasis the injuries. Going back, the injuries really are not shown in the fight scene. The pages that I put up may be changed at any time. The changes will usually be reflected more on The Duck because it contains the main archive. But, I will put up notice if I make any changes to page posted here. These changes will not affect the reader experience (except for the possibility of added realism).

The Awards Are Done But...

Alright, I have had some scheduling issues arise.  I am finished with the presentation of the Awards. Now all that I have to do is make a credit page. I have a class that keeps changing the due dates on the paper. So I am trying to get it done now before the professor changes her mind again. It is a relatively easy paper, considering, but it does take time to write these things and get them done right. The good news is, if my math is correct, I would have to fail the paper to get less than an A in the class. There is a 1% chance that I am wrong with this math, so I am not concerned. I just have to do the paper and do it to the best of my ability and do it right. As long as I don’t flub up my spelling and grammar, the paper should be adequate. I will be done with the paper by Wednesday.

But I know you are reading this blog and want to hear more about “Ice Pick” and less about “Life.” Good news there. The cover for chapter 2 is already done. In fact, it is already on the comic as the background. It was provided by Call Me Tom during the Summer Art Exchange.  Jamie did his own version of the cover, and it will be shown, but we will be moving it to chapter 3. Page 1 of chapter 2 is already inked and just needs its color. So, I am aiming to start releasing the chapter in a week. Simultaneously with this event, I will start mirroring the comic on the blog. There will be no difference between the pages, so if you are a Duck, don’t worry about it. This is just to make the comic more available to non-Ducks.

Until then, enjoy this picture of our cat taunting the dog by choosing her crate as his napping spot.