docsmachine

The Next Couple Of Weeks...

Trying to decide where to go in the next couple of weeks, so figured I'd offer up the first-ever poll to you ladies and gents. I was considering leading into another "date night", but we had one of those not that long ago, so here's your chance to chime in, let me know what you think!

Doc.

That book sketch, and an update!

I said earlier I'd post the cleaned-up book sketch I'd used as a line-art sample, so here it is! I was hoping to have gotten closer to finishing it, but as usual, free time is in very short supply these days.

I'd like to take a moment now and welcome the half dozen or so new patrons that just joined in the last few days, and thank them and those of you that bumped your patronage up a bit for getting us back up and over the final Milestone. :)

I've shot a bit of sample video, tryin...

Making comics the hard way!

Well, it's more of a sketch, but hey, I haven't posted any cheesecake in a while... and this sorta qualifies... :)

One of the many things keeping me occupied these days is setting up a laser engraver. Finally got it running, and tried several bits of artwork I had- mostly old sticker art and the like.

But the sticker art would only "raster" engrave, so I tried some line art so we could try to get it to "vector" engrave, which should be faster. Well, I'd just dumped my camera cards...

Additional Process posts will be added to Part 4...

In order to keep the total number of posts manageable- plus it lets the reader see it in more chronological order.

Doc.

The Process of TWB, Part 4:

The linework for Miki's second pose is dropped in, then cleaned up. Once that's done, it's then copy-pasted into the third panel, where I deleted her head and right arm, replacing those with the rest of the art seen in the initial drawing. Tawny's head too gets replaced and cleaned up to change her pose slightly as well.

I'm skipping a LOT of little details that will be in the eventual video. :)

10:06 PM

2019-01-28 07:06:43 +0000 UTC View Post

The Process of TWB, Part 3:

The inital linework has been cleaned up, maybe shifted a bit, then dropped into the panel template. The first panel was then copy-pasted into the other two panels. In those two, we have different poses for Miki, so she was deleted from those.

9:34 PM

The Process of TWB, Part 2:

The dirty scan, compressed to pure black and white (no greyscale) and the linework cleaned up. Just Tawny's head so far.

9:07pm

The Process of TWB, Part 1:

Here's a quick teaser for a (hopefully) upcoming and long-promised video on just exactly how the miracle that is TWB is made!

We start here on what will become Monday's strip (freshly drawn, by the way, this will be more or less in real-time.) The medium is simply a rough-pencilled set of panels, sketched on basically scratch paper. (You can see a few lines printed on the other side, in the first panel.) :)

I just sketch it in with a cheap mechanical pencil- I'm not a writing impl...

Beer Glasses are Back in Stock!

I was asked by enough people who missed out on the Holiday run of glasses that I went ahead and had another run done! I will admit, however, that the tipping point was that I had to have some other cargo shipped up anyway, and I thought I'd try adding an order of these to the shipment, to see if there'd be a fair savings over the previous run, which was sent up via UPS.

While there was a slight savings, it was only slight, and took over six weeks to get here- and presumed I was...

A Quick Test Video!

For those that have been following the goings-on over on the Tinker's Guild, I recently finally got my CNC lathe conversion running, and figured out how to set it just enough to run a test program- in this case, it's cutting a pawn chesspiece.

For those that haven't been following the guild, or are here more for the comic than the machine shop, I modified one of my machine tools to work automatically, with a computer doing all those motions. And I'm rather happy with it, because it's be...

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Kwanzaa, Joyeaux Saturnalia, Happy Festivus, whatever cranks your handle! :)

May all your gifts not explode unless and until you want them to,  may all your visiting relatives come bearing tools, money, food,  giftcards or booze- if not all of the above- and may your  long-holiday-weekend shop projects run smoothly, work properly, and only  fire and/or detonate on command. :D

Speaking personally, I had a prett...

We're finally moving TWB!

Thanks to my total lack of a dedicated IT staff and some other  projects going on, I really wasn't able to sit down with the new host  'til the past couple of days and get the move sorted out. I do  apologize, but this kind of thing is not my forte', and both myself and  the hosting company have been a little busy this holiday season.

Anyway,  the plan is to finally redirect TWB at some point Thursday the 20th.  The new IP should propogate, or whatever the ...

Thursday's Comic!

Sorry about that, ladies and gents. I've been a little tied up in the  shop and elsewhere, and apparently rather stupidly fell back to the old  habit of letting the updater do it's job. And, of course, i'm locked  out of the server for the time being, so...

Continued apologies, all. We're working on it.

Doc.

Sigh... here we go again.

 [long string of expletives, colorful as they were, deleted]

Sorry,  ladies and gents, looks like this is going to keep happening 'til we  finally switch over. I'll do what I can, please, er, bear with us.

Doc.

Yep, I know, I know...

Here's Monday's comic. I have no idea why they only load halfway, but at the moment I'm locked out again too... I'm workin' on it.

Doc.

Friday's Comic!

Sorry about that people, I don't know what happened, and I am at the moment unable to connect to my host to fix it.

I also just sat through another 7.2 earthquake and am currently under a tsunami warning, but that's normal. :)

(Edit: The Warning's been lifted, as expected.)

(Edit, Part II: Was finally able to access the site, full strip's uploaded and should be fixed now. Sorry about the wait.)

Doc.

So it seems I'll be needing that new hosting offer after all...

I just got a call from MTA, the people that host both TWB and Doc's  Machine, and they laid a nice Christmas present on me: as of December  31st, they will be discontinuing any and all of their public web  hosting. They've always been a data farm for local heavy industry- that  is, the oil field- and apparently will continue to be, but they're  getting rid of their how level public-facing sites like mine.

So,  I have a month to migrate TWB and Doc's over to an all...

A little belated...

It's a touch late, but I'd still like to say I'm very thankful for all of your support, whether you're a top-tier donor or just a regular reader.

Your collective- and individual- generosity has been a huge help to my struggling little business, and it's fair to say there's no way I could have brought the books back, among other things, without your assistance.

You ladies and gentlemen have also helped fuel much-needed upgrades to my shop, and helped spur other f...

Just for the Patrons...

Okay, earlier this week I got the very last of the way-overdue orders shipped out, and had to spend the rest of the week catching up on other customer work that had lagged a bit while I was doing all that. :)

I hate to say it, but I basically lost money on the beer glasses, mainly through shipping overseas. My own fault, I hadn't set the store properly to handle the considerably heavier packages, nor did I realize that some of those boxes heading to places like Germany and Australia were going...

Quick book/glass update/warning!

Just a quick update on the Big Book Sale! All orders as of this  morning have been shipped, and I have received zero notifications that  any glasses were found broken on arrival! :)

However,  I still have a few overseas orders that have been hangin' fire for  altogether too long. A few I'm waiting to hear back from customers on  one or two minor issues, and another half dozen or so I'll be contacting  later this evening for an update.

But, a...

Caught Up! (Almost...)

Caught up! As of 10:52 PM on Wednesday, I have all the US orders  completed! The last dozen (as of this posting) are sitting by my front  door and will be shipped first thing in the morning.

I do still have a fair handful of Canadian and Overseas orders,  that I'm filling and shipping as fast as I can- as with the previous  run, those I have to actually wait in line at the PO to send, so I only  do five or six at a time. (Though I've been making about two trips a d...

Boxin' & Shippin'!

The comic ain't lyin'- I've done nothing but print postage, box orders and take 'em to the Post Office, since about Sunday afternoon. I've received just over 100 orders so far, and thanks to the beer glasses, orders that include those take extra effort to pack, since I want them all to arrive intact.

Thanks for your patience with the comic. :)

It's worth noting, however, that the glasses illustrate yet another stunning display of my business acumen: If a customer orders a single beer gla...

Oh, right! That other thing...!

Holy crap, I forgot about that, but yes, Fanboy Sketches are definitely still available for any and all books. For just $10 each I'll deface the back of your book with the character of your choice, hand sketched and hand-inked by yours truly.

For those of you who have already placed an order, they won't be going out 'til Monday afternoon, so just let me know as soon as you can if you're interested, and I'll getcha' sketched up.

Thank you!

Doc.

Canadian and Overseas Patrons...

For you Canadian, British and other Patrons, go ahead and email your order directly to grumpy@the-whiteboard.com, any time you're ready, starting pretty much right now.

The store software can be kind of wonky calculating overseas shipping- last book run, most of the orders were mischarged (slightly under or over) for shipping. I've tried to fix it as best I can, and will have to keep tweaking it over the next couple of weeks, but if you want to place an order, feel free to just email me direct...

Early Release

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the next three TWB books are out!

Book 8, "Justifiable Carnage" (featuring the first zombie-attack arc) Book 9, "Paradox" (featuring Doc and Roger's experiments with the Wormhole Gun, the very start of the tournament arc, and Jinx and Kasi trick-or-treating) and Book 10, "Furiously Colored", which features the first tourney-practice storyline, and is the first-ever full-color TWB comic!

I'd hoped to let you Patrons have early access on Friday,...