docsmachine

Something just came in the mail...

Let's see... a couple weeks ago I got in a small 3D printer, and a very cheap hobby-type CNC mill as a sort of "trainer", plus some parts for my bandsaw...

So what could these be? The tags say "frah-gee-lay", which according to the internet means it's some kind of major award, so...?

:)

Doc.

Well, that was kind of nice of them...

Got a box in the mail, which was kind of a surprise. A 'surprise' because usually I know what's heading in, as it's something I've either already been talking to the customer and know it's on the way, or I'd ordered something and know about when it's due.

This came in, addressed to the shop, but from an atypical vendor.

Turns out it was a very nice gift basket from a local touristy type place called Alaska Wild Berry Products. Candies, smoked salmon, a summer sausage, some ground coffee,...

Welcome new Readers and new Patrons!

Wow, looks like were right at 99% of the way to the next milestone, finally. :) I might have to actually go out and buy a webcam and figure out how all this "make a video" thing actually works...

I wish I had some extra art or a neat sketch to show you, but all my time is taken up right now either in the shop or on a couple of TWB projects you'll get to see in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the Halloween storyline! :)

Doc.

And We're Back!

Finally, after more than a week, we're back! TWB is currently showing the strips from back when everything crashed, but I'll be updating the updater later this evening, and we should be back to being 100% caught up by Friday morning.

I'll probably have a note for Friday's update, explaining what happened for those readers who aren't Patrons, regular readers of the Guild or MCB, or otherwise knew what was going on.

For those who offered or suggested alternate hosting, thank you, and I'm d...

A teaser for the Patrons!

I quick behind-the-scenes peek at a bit of upcoming fun. Penciled line art, scanned and digitally "inked", wait'll you see it in full color. :)

Not sure what they're supposed to be doing, though... My guess is either a little light yard work, or they're gonna go clean out the garage.

And thank you for your patience while this server issue gets sorted out. I really do appreciate it.

Doc.

TWB, October 4th:

Well, as of late Wednesday evening, neither of my sites have returned as hoped for. I spoke again with the ISP earlier today, and the official line was, in effect, hopefully, but no promises.

Yeah, you might say I'm kinda pissed off about it...

Doc.

TWB October 3rd:

Hopefully the site will be back up sometime today... Fingers crossed!

Doc.

An update:

An update: I called again this morning- I was polite, I know the phone jockeys likely don't have any real say in what's going on :D - and got an update.

The story is, supposedly they found some malware on the system somewhere, and had to take part of it offline to clear it out. That also meant that all the backups had to be scanned or analyzed or whatever as well, and that took time.

Also, while all this was going on, it either caused or led to the discovery of apparently a pretty seriou...

October 2nd:

The continuing adventures of a webcomic without a webpage! (Where's the "rolleyes" emoji?)

I dunno about you ladies and gents, but I'm getting kind of tired of not having an actual damn webpage... Hopefully it won't be too much longer, please have patience.

Doc.

Let's get this party started!

Yep, as of late Sunday night, TWB is still down, and I'm still given no hard ETA on when it'll be back up. But, you ladies and gents still deserve your dose of TWB goodness, so for the first time since... geeze, 2013? We're gonna have a Halloween Party! :)

Taking costume and cameo suggestions too! :)

Doc.

And Friday's Comic!

Apparently they're still having issues with my servers, so again, in case the system doesn't come back up by Friday morning, here's the next strip!

Yes, I've called, and yes, they're working on it. Should be fixed shortly, please stand by.

Doc.

Thursday's Comic!

Looks like my servers are down again, so just in case they're still down in the morning, or just down long enough for the updater to miss it's cycle, here's Thursday's strip a bit early.

Doc.

Wednesday's Comic!

Sorry, my host is apparently having server problems, should be resolved soon. In the meantime, here's today's interrogation! :)

Doc.

Officially The First!

Officially the first fan-art of Miki, that is. :) By convoluted-comic-timeline-fetishist Al of Poisoned Minds.

He's also got a Swampy, a Doc and the world's only example of "bubblehead" fan art known to exist, if you want to throw a little support his way and have a look.

Doc.

Flowers, part 2:

Another book sketch. This is the kind of sketch that, if I were to turn this into a proper art piece, I'd be doing a LOT of tweaking. :)

I seem to have gotten worse at the actual drawing, ever since I got a tablet. Apparently too much reliance on "oh, well, we'll fix it in post". :)

Doc.

Flowers, part 1:

A recent set of book purchases came with a "Fanboy" sketch request that kind of "gamed the system" a bit. :) Usually you can only pick one character, and I try to discourage too much description of what's supposed to happen in the sketch, since in days gone by, I've gotten literal four-paragraph descriptions of what the reader wanted to see eight characters all doing, and all of a sudden, I'm spending three hours on a single book sketch. :)

In this case, the reader wanted several of the TWB gu...

The Lost "Button" Strip

Back when I was doing the "Do Not Push This Button" strips back in 2012, after one particularly long day in the shop, I whipped up a quick filler strip using some clipart of RJ from "Over The Hedge".

I knew I'd used him already, which is why Friday's strip has one of the Rackety Coon kids from "Pogo"- about the only other raccoon newspaper comic character I could think of. :D

But, when somebody posted all the "button" strips over on the Guild, that one was conspicuously missing. I knew I...

TWB T-Shirt Fire Sale!

Longtime readers may recall years ago when I produced a line of paintball and/or TWB-related T-shirts, and sold them along with the book preorders.

Well, I used to have them made to-order, locally, but for the last big sale we put together when my local print-shop guy ran a custom online storefront for me, we ordered a bunch of preprinted ones. It cost me a fortune, but the thinking was that instead of doing them up a batch at a time, once or twice a year, they'd be available off-the-shelf yea...

A quick guest strip!

Longtime readers might recall my old "Scraps" strips, where I had some 'clipart' of the characters, which I used to make quick filler strips when I was short on time, or my brain had malfunctioned and gone into reset mode. :)

Occasionally a reader will do up a custom version and send it along, and I figured this is a good place to show it off. :)

Blame him, not me. :)

Doc.

And finished!

Finally squeezed in a moment to finish this off. And considering it started as a quick book sketch, I don't think it turned out too bad.

As always, I just wish I had more time for this kind of thing...

Doc.

Step 4: Color!

Not much to show here, just a simple flood-fill of the basic colors.

Sorry, I was busy today! :)

Doc.

Step 3:

Step 3 is cleaning up the linework. This one took a bit longer than a comic strip would, since I blew it up considerably larger than a typical comic panel. (It's obviously shown reduced, here.)

So it wasn't just cleaning up points and such, it was also "trimming down" lines that were larger than necessary. And, of course, all sorts of minor tweaks: Miki's left ankle, redrawing her eye, tweaking the heck out of the coffepot, having to delete all the black shading, and so on.

Next up, colo...

Step 2:

The first step was taking the inked drawing and scanning it. For the comic I usually erase the pencil lines before scanning, so it's quicker to clean up the base linework. When I do the book sketches, I leave the pencil, which essentially becomes part of the artwork.

Step 2 is to take the scan and convert it to solid black-and-white, no greyscale. And at this stage, if the drawing needs it, I'll do gross corrections- here, you'll note, I raised the bottom edge of her shirt, and shortened her s...

Yeah, it's been a while...

I have to apologize for being so quiet lately, ladies and gentlemen, and I really wish I had some cool new art to show off. But as is usual for about this time of year, I'm extremely busy in the shop, both with customer work and the either Sisyphean or Quixotic (take your pick, they both fit) task of trying to catch up on some of my own waaaay-overdue projects.

If those of you who are mechanically inclined might be interested in seeing the progress on some of those projects, I have the top one...

Can I keep 'im?

A reader asked that, since we're seeing some of the other background players, if we'd see Packrat again, and if so, would Pirta catch him properly this time. :)

Packy's not sure how he feels about this. On one hand, she's, you know, well padded, but on the other, breathing on occasion is nice, too. :)

Just a quick sketch, sorry I haven't been able to post more, but it's my busy season on the shop right now.

Doc.

Free Minicomics!

I have a bunch of these little promotional minicomics left over from the convention, and plan to keep them in stock for a while as, well, free promotional giveaways.

If you'd like one, please email a mailing address to grumpy (at) the-whiteboard.com and I'll get one heading your way. (I know a lot of you have a mailing address in your Patreon profile already, but it's actually kind of tricky to get individual addresses out without downloading the entire mess as a spreadsheet.)

Also, if y...

Arctic Comic Con 2018 Report:

The full report can be read over on the Tinker's Guild.

The image above was inked by professional illustrator Rudes Tamales- his table said "sketches for donations", so I whipped out my clipboard, sketched a rough and terrible "Doc" and asked him to ink it.

He did so quickly and expertly, as shown...

TWB Minicomic #2!

There's a comics convention going on up here on Saturday, so I took some spare time this past week and put these little giveaway comics together. I'd hoped to make an actual storyline comic, but I just didn't have the time to write a new one. 

So this comic is kind of an "introduction to TWB", showing some single panels that are funny enough on their own, but also intriguing enough to make you wonder what the context was. :) Each page has it's own sort-of-description, like "Follow along a...

Just one cup, please...

I'm trying to cut down.

:)

Doc.

Swamps Fantasizes

In the TWBUniverse, "suntan lotion" comes in varieties, one of which is used by white-furred types like polar bears and arctic foxes to help the sun bleach their fur even whiter and brighter.

In the universe inside Swampy's head, it's perfectly reasonable to expect a bikini-clad lady to walk into a random paintball store and ask whoever's behind the counter to help her apply suntan lotion to her fur.

Well, okay, he thinks it's perfectly reasonable to hope that h...