So Christine and I are building a new house this year, or at least we’re trying to! I’ll be posting stuff as it progresses. Here’s the basic floor plan that will get converted to proper engineered drawings.
You can click to see a higher res version…
In the better late than never department, here’s a quick photo report from the Winnipeg Comic Con.
The highlight was all the costumes, you go Winnipeg! Very impressed with the effort shown. Also met some cool artists, and got to hear Michael Golden speak. I’ll post more about the artists I met in upcoming days, but for now here’s some of the costumes I saw:
The Red Queen! Amazing costume.
Boy Zombie. Excellent costume, AND he got in character!
Excellent body painting, AND she's a Hab's fan! Crowbar would be pleased.
I wasn't the only one interested in photographing the girl dressed in body paint.
Guy has kinda gone to seed...
One of best zombie costumes I saw, and there were some great ones. If she's looking for brains, though, she's eating the wrong book
Maybe the only costume that made me laugh out loud, the good Doctor! I don't think the guy had ever read any Thompson books, but still!
An excellent Catwoman costume.
This was not only an excellent costume, it was her SECOND costume of the con! And she's the author of Between Places, check it out!
Super nice girl from Morden, and do you think I can remember her name?
Fellow webcomicer Rod Salm from 'Death at your Door', looking awfully pleased to get the original of a guest comic I did for him!
I actually met 'Daphne' briefly at the Calgary Comic Con, which was pretty cool.
Another cool costume.
Talk about committing to your costume! Lest we think the comic con had only girls in costume...
I don't read enough anime to recognize the costumes, but lots of people did...
Hey, big news! The best strips from the first three years of Crowbar Benson are now available in book form! I’m really excited about this, I think the book turned out great thanks in no small part to the excellent work of Friesen’s Printing in Altona, who helped out a lot.
The book is 128 pages long, with almost 400 cartoons in it. In size and shape it’s kind of a standard 8 1/2 by 8 1/8 inch book, much like you see in stores. And in fact you can find it in a number of stores in Manitoba already, including McNally Robinson, Chapters, Comics America and others. And of course it’s available for purchase online (hint hint).
I’d love it if you’d order one, even if you’ve read the strips online it’s pretty cool to have the book. It also makes an excellent gift for the hockey fan in your life, you can buy it, read it, and then pass it on as a gift! Much like I do with all the webcomic books I get… 
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I’ll also be making a few appearances at different events to promote the book, if you happen to live in the area. I’ll be in Winnipeg for ‘Free Comics Day’ at Comics America on Academy Road, signing books and giving away drawings if you want to swing by and say hello. I’ll also be in the city on Monday, May 9th for the Official Launch Event at McNally Robinson Bookstore at 7:00. I’ll be giving a (short) talk, answering questions (no, I’m not at all like Crowbar Benson) and again, signing copies of the book. Hope you can make it out, I’d love to see you there!
I’ll also have a table at the South Central Regional Library Book Sale, the biggest book sale in southern Manitoba, and last but not least, I’ll be at the Calgary Expo in June. More on that as it gets closer…!
Again, the book is available online (just click the link below!). The price is $15.00 per copy, plus $5.00 for shipping. That includes a signed drawing in every book, and if you’d like it dedicated to someone in particular, just let me know during the checkout process, or just email me.
Thanks again, and if you’re inclined, please help spread the word!
Sandy
Product Details:
Paperback: 128 pages
Black and white, full colour cover
8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches
Printed by Friesens in Altona, Manitoba, it looks really slick!
All books come signed with an original drawing! If you’d like a specific dedication, be sure to include that information in the Paypal form.
Price: $15.00 plus $5.00 for Shipping
Pajszer Benson
Crowbar Benson is now available in Hungarian, thanks to the stellar efforts of Orosz Gergely! I find this really, really cool!
Gergely (which would translate to Gregory in English) has already translated the first year of Crowbar Benson strips, and is hard at work on year two. So if you know anyone who speaks Hungarian, or is learning, send them over to http://pajszerbenson.freeblog.hu/ to check it out.
I think one of the reasons I find this so cool is that I remember being in France for the first time when I was like 6 yrs old, and seeing a Bugs Bunny cartoon in French. It seemed so bizarre that Bugs Bunny could speak French, I was amazed (okay, it doesn’t take much to amaze a six year old, but still…) I get a bit of that feeling when I see Crowbar speaking Hungarian. That and I find it amazing that Gergely has put all that work into it!
Again, check it out! http://pajszerbenson.freeblog.hu/
(You may also notice that the drawings have improved a lot since those early strips.)
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Update
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I just got an e-mail from Gergely, and I had mixed up his surname and given name in the post (which is now corrected). My apologies! Here, I’ll let him explain:
“Hungary is one of the few countrys, where we use our names in reverse order. Like in Japan! So while my name is Orosz Gergely, Orosz is my surname, and Gergely is my first name. (Gergely means Gregory, by the way.)
My name would be Gregory Orosz in a foreign country. 
Altough my nickname, Ross, came from Orosz.”
As they say, you learn something every day…! Thanks again, Gergely!
I’m a bit late in posting this, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I did a guest comic over at Faraday the Blob a few weeks back (okay, more like a month. I’m slow to post news, sue me.)
Faraday the Blob
You know how some people draw kinda the way you wish you could draw? Faraday the Blob is like that for me… It’s extremely creative visually, and the longer you look at it, the more stuff you find in it. Excellent comic.
Here’s a link the the actual guest comic I did, wherein I tried my best to mimic Alan Ryan’s drawing style.
What? You’re not over at FMyLife.com? Oh, it’s open in another tab! That’s cool, then.
Well, as long as you’re checking it out, let me point out that I’ve illustrated an FML, and you can find it here. I must say, it was really fun to do, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Special thanks to Alice, who had some great advice about how best to approach illustrating an FML.
Check out the Illustrated FMLs!
Much to the shock of everyone who knows me, I chose to illustrate an FML that’s about hockey.
Robin and I have just spent the weekend at that Winnitron game jam, and it was a total blast. Nothing like being in room with so many smart, talented developers to get the creative juices going. Huge thanks to Alec Holowka of Infinite Ammo and everyone else involved for organizing the Jam, it was a crap-ton-o-fun.
For those not familiar with the Winnitron, it’s an actual video arcade machine, which will be housed at the Red River Community College, filled with games made by local developers. The beauty of this machine, though, is that it will be accessible by wireless network, so it’ll be really easy to update and add games to it. You can learn more here and here.
The Winnitron 1000
Title courtesy of Harrison Hnatiuk
Screen shot of game play
Again, thanks to Alec, Noel, and everyone else, it was really great to be involved!
Big news!
Our first XBox Indie game is now live and available for purchase! Hint hint! It’s available directly through your XBox, or through the Xbox Live Marketplace. We’d love for you to check it out, or even play the demo and let us know what you think.
Sleepwalker Box Art
The heart of this game was built over a weekend at the Winnipeg TigJam, with a bunch of tweaks and improvements added later. The reason we were able to build it so quickly was that we were using Robin’s SWFtoXNA tool, which allowed us to do a lot of the visual development in Flash, and then very easily port that over to the XNA development environment. (Here’s me, trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about, I just did the drawings. But it’s pretty cool how it works, and if you’re interested in all in making XBox Indie games, and you know Flash, you gotta check out the tool).
Again, the game is available on your XBox, just go to the Game Marketplace, Indie games, and find ‘Sleepwalker’. It sells for 80 Microsoft points, which is about a dollar, and you should get a good half hour of fun out of it. It’s designed to be REALLY simple to play, with only a single button for controls (suck on that, Wii controller!), but still challenging.
Stay posted for more games as they become available!
