Soaring

For Illustration Friday

Santabot Card II

Get 'em while they're hot!



Refer to the instructions here.

Sample gag for Santabot 3.3:

This is how Santa watches everyone sleep...     ...with infrared night-vision goggles

Santabot Card I

For those of you looking for a quick, quasi-handmade gift, I present the Santabot card.

If you click on this image and then right-click on the subsequent image and save it, you can then print your own Santabot Greeting Card.

(It should go without saying that the following information can be useful for making homemade cards even if they're not Santabots, sniff)

The full size of the image is 7x10 inches.   When folded in half length-wise, it fits snugly in a standard 5x7 inch greeting-card envelope.

I have never had a problem getting single sheets of standard-weight card stock through an inkjet printer, but not all printers are the same.  Mine is an HP DeskJet 3745.   I cannot speak for others.

To avoid wasting card stock, you might want to test the alignment with a sheet of printer paper first.   If the image cuts off, try reducing it or monkeying with the margins in the printer dialog box of whatever software you are using - Microsoft Image Viewer, Firefox, Ogg's Cave Painter 6.0, etc.

(My favorite software tools for image manipulation are the Gimp and Inkscape. Free and available even for hapless Windows users)

If you plan on making a lot of cards, think about finding a paper-cutter; cutting card stock precisely with scissors or a blade and a straight edge is time-consuming, frustrating and not a little dangerous.   I personally took my card stock to Office Max and hacked out a pile o' blanks.

Happy Hollandaise!

Following are some of the gags I wrote inside the Santabot 5.7 cards I sent out this season:

"No laser guided missiles for you. You'll take the doll and like it!"

"Santabot brought you a doll. Get over it, human!"

Robot Plan

Little Things

For IF, natch.

Emoticons

Credit Card Bots

Rated R

Shoe Lace Bots

Coup II

Robots have taken over the government!

Motor Mouth

Caught Out

Coup

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Check those leftovers carefully...

Drunk Again

Usher Bot

Pan Bot finds work.

Dental Bot

I like that the robot has a surgical mask.

Hacking Blogger

I've been hacking the heck out of the minima template trying to bend it to my evil desires, which are, namely, using Blogger as a free comics hosting service with deep bandwith and image storage capabilities.

So far, I've been somewhat successful, but I still need to restore the links and profile sections of the blog.

Please bear with me!   When I'm done, I will offer my edits as a webcomics template for others.


MjM

Amusement Bot

Pumpkin Bot

Guest robot by Emily. Sorry for the late update.

Planning Session

Wasn't Me

Robotic Lawless

Welcome Humans

Oh yeah, I know, my drawing is crude.   But compare the first panel of Penny Arcade to the most recent.   Or look at the first panel of Questionable Content and then look at the recent.   Look at the first panel of Over Compensating and then... well, never mind.

What I'm here to say is that I am going to get better.   And my drawing is going to improve, too!

On Line Safety

This is definitely more difficult than what I was doing before.   Before, I just drew.   Now, the drawings have to fit.   Before, I was all about fluid lines and imaginational excess.   But this is good.   I actually have to work at these drawings now, and, with any luck, my line work a year from now will be so much more elegant and rich.

To the future!

Pan Bot

Whiteboard Bot

Bunny Begat

Today, Botaday becomes a webcomic.   I have wanted to do a webcomic for some time, but I lacked both characters and a story line.   Thanks to the inspiration of Lem's remarkable Bunny I have solved that insufficiency.

I hope you will excuse me for borrowing Lem's secret for jump-starting a comic.   It involves powerful intergalatic forces, but is quite handy for those who wish to push their madness out into the world yet lack an agenda.

Let the comics begin!

Optex

Jumeed

Bultreen

Tinkor

Untitled_092407-01

Ruffnitz

Lennonaut

Nosenaut

Miga

Juggernaut

Cagoor

Chopper

Cogbot

By guest artist, Kagomarou

More Old Crap

Electric Teeth

More Shoebot

Historinicity

Egads, I've been doing this crap for a long time.  

These are from the early '70's.

Dramaton

Illus for Ellis

I'm posting this as further evidence of the passing similarities that seem to exist between my imagination and  Ellis Nadler's.

Please forgive the cross-hatching - I did this in the late '70's.

(I know I'm old.   Shut up...)

And yes, I know Ellis is phenomenal.   I am not trying to compare my skill to his, just the weird similarities in our imaginations and choice of media.

:)

(God, and the shadows so don't agree.   Sigh...)

Nikita

Jury Duty 9 - Suncha

Jury Duty 8 - Clacktraw

Jury Duty 7 - Bubblelicious

Jury Duty 6

I spent some time waiting around the courthouse last Monday on jury duty. This is what I scrawled in a notebook I had with a "roller-ball" pen.

(The horizontal lines are the lines from the notebook paper)