Hoarfrost

We're in the midst of your typical Winnipeg January cold snap, but that doesn't mean that there's not some beauty to be found in the frozen landscape! I woke up this morning to a world covered in hoarfrost! Hoar, of course, being an Olde English word meaning "grey or white with age". What a beautiful morning! Currently playing: Mike Macharyas - Donovan Currently colouring: Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 11! Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Go Moose Go!

I took my daughter to her second hockey game today*. It was an AHL tilt between the hometown Manitoba Moose and the Abbotsford Heat, farm teams of the NHL's Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames, respectively!

The game was televised on CBC, and Madelyn and I were on television FOUR TIMES! (Four and a half if you count a shot of my forehead!).

The quality is a little crummy, as it's a photo of my television, but here's us at the end of the game. The Moose won, and the arena got loud. While my daughter had an absolute blast at the game, that didn't mean she wasn't going to protect her eardrums!
*The first hockey game my daughter attended was in Ottawa! We saw the Senators beat the Phoenix Coyotes 6-3. She LOVED that game too, even though she was only 10 months old! She fell asleep during the entire third period!

Currently playing: Keith Richards - Make No Mistake
Currently colouring: Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers Volume 11!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

The circle is now complete: an unexpected Christmas present

Now that I'm a parent, I'm starting to live Christmas vicariously through the children around us, and see the wonder and anticipation in their eyes as they open their gifts.

I was a Star Wars nut as a child, and when I was six, I got one of my most favourite Christmas gifts ever. It was a Dewback, a toy that combined two of my favourite things from that era: Star Wars, and Dinosaurs. Sadly, almost three decades later, I actually had to google the name of the toy, as any encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe I may have posessed evaporated when I became a man. But I still recall with photographic detail the fun I had pulling the toy out of the box, getting bundled up to head outside, and making it crawl in the snow drifts off the side of the front steps of our Davidson Avenue house.

A few days ago, while scouring the toy aisles looking for last minute Christmas gifts for my daughter, I stumbled across this.
The toys themselves didn't really pique my interest, but the book packaged with these two action figures did! It's a copy of Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars Rebellion #3.

I helped colour that issue!

My good friend, Wil Glass, was the colourist for this series. And anyone who knows the workflow involved in producing a comic book will tell you that us colourists, being the last stage in the artistic process, frequently have to make up for the deadlines missed by the writers, pencilers and inkers that need to do their work before we get it. Most professional colourists today have someone assisting them during deadline pinches, and I was honoured to be asked by Wil to follow his lead and lend a hand.

Little did I imagine that almost a half decade after I worked on this comic, I'd be staring at the book's cover sitting behind two Star Wars action figures, packaged up and ready to be wrapped and opened on Christmas morning by some other 6 year old kid the same way I opened up my Dewback in 1981.

The circle is now complete.

I can imagine the smile I'd see on the face of the six-year-old Donovan if I could go back in time and tell him that one day he'd not only be getting paid to colour comic books, but that they would be packaged with Star Wars action figures and sold in toy stores across the continent.

It would probably be very similar to the smile that the thirty-five-year-old Donovan is wearing right now.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Currently playing: absolutely nothing...
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 21: Blood of the Titan and Other Stories
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

2010 Central Canada Comic Convention

I had a great time at the 2010 Central Canada Comic Convention on the weekend!

Comic books are really just the art of telling a story by skillfully combining words and artwork. It’s a medium I’ve been in love with for a long time. Not only was it great to have a weekend to celebrate it with friends, it was nice to meet a few artists and see this art form get the respect it deserves!

Okay, so some respect for comics was lost when I passed by the following boxes of books for sale. Sigh...
Big Boob Girl Comics?

Really?

After experiencing this low point in comics, my opinion of humanity was lifted after I got to meet Scott Kolins! Besides being a fantastic professional artist, he is also an incredibly nice guy! Before I left my job doing colour separations at Digital Chameleon I got to do some work on his fantastic Flash run for DC comics. His work is full of tiny little details which made it both exciting and maddening to colour! I love his style!

In the last year I’ve begun commissioning artists to do sketches on the inside covers of books they’ve been a part of! It’s easier to store a work of art in a book on a shelf rather than trying to frame and hang them. Plus, there’s only so many drawings of superheroes a grown man should really have hanging on their walls! ;)

Here’s a great sketch Scott did of Captain America taking on Baron Zemo in my Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes hardcover – a pivotal scene in the book!

Scott Kolins also went all out in this drawing for my Beyond! Hardcover of all the main characters caught in The Stranger’s grasp!

All in all, a fun weekend! It also gave me a bit of a kick in the rear to keep the ball rolling on a book I'm hoping to self publish next year - Spacepig Hamadeus and the Captive Planet!

And hey, be sure to "Like" the Spacepig Hamadeus Facebook page!

Currently playing: The Payola$ - Here's The World
Currently colouring: An upcoming book for Dark Horse Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Make your own Sad Keanu photo without transparency!

Keanu Reeves was photographed by paparazzi eating a sandwhich in a pensive moment a few months back. Since then, people have been wackily placing him into all sorts famous photos and movie scenes and posting them to http://sadkeanu.tumblr.com/

To make a simple Sad Keanu photo without a transparent Keanu or pds file, simply:

• download the plug in
• Select Filter > Keanu > Sad!
• Adjust sadness with slider.

Currently playing: The Office - Costume Contest
Currently colouring: An upcoming book for Dark Horse Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Here's a cheap Son of a Pen for you....

A lot of waiters would be pretty honoured to have the opportunity to serve a real life swan, should one walk into their restaurant.

Although if it was this swan, I wouldn't go over board serving him. He lets you know right away that gratuities aren't really his thing...

Currently playing: The Who - Baba O'Reilly
Currently colouring: A yet to be solicited Omnibus for Marvel Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Luke Geissbuhler: 2010 Father of the Year

Wow, Luke Geissbuhler wins the 2010 Father of the Year Award, 4,677,020 spots ahead of yours truly. How many dad's take the time out of their lives to devote this much time, energy, and intellect to their 7 year old sons?

Luke and his son Max attached an HD camera to a weather balloon, hit record, and let it float high enough into the atmosphere to make out the curvature of earth and see the blackness of space.

The results are breathtaking!

From the video:
In August 2010, we set out to send a camera to space.

The mission was to attach a HD video camera to a weather balloon and send it up into the upper stratosphere to film the blackness beyond our earth.

Eventually, the balloon will grow from lack of atmospheric pressure, burst, and begin to fall.

It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over 150 mpg, and the high risk of a water landing.

To retrieve the craft, it would need to deploy a parachute, descend through the clouds and transmit a GPS coordinate to a cell phone tower.

Then we have to find it.

Unbelievable! The fact that they got their camera high enough to make out the curvature of the earth is jaw droppingly mind blowing.

I love space exploration, and will admit to multitudinous mental deficiencies in regards to landing crafts on different planets, but I don't understand why NASA can't mount a camera like this on a Mars Lander.

How cool would it be to hear the winds of Mars? To see the descent to the planet from space the way the Geissbuhler family's experiment did?

For more info on the project, visit the Brooklyn Space Program website.

Currently playing: Asia - Don't Cry
Currently colouring: A yet to be solicited Omnibus for Marvel Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Spell check CAN make you hugenormousely smarter!

Some people stuck in the last century criticize things like spell check, claiming that they are preventing us from learning how spelling works through hard work and practice.

You know, the way us thirtysomethings did back during the Cold War!

Well today, it actually made me smarter! For years, I thought "ginormous" was a made up word, amalgamating "gigantic" and "enormous". Turns out it's been in the dictionary since 2007, nearly 60 years after it arose as a slang word by British Troops in World War II.

How would I have known that without spell check!

Now that it's been legitimized, I'll need to find a new amalgamation of synonyms with which to amuse myself with in it's place.

I think I'll start using 'hugenormous', although 'enormonstrous', or 'heftuge' are pretty good too...

Currently playing: Peter Gabriel - Big Time
Currently colouring: An upcoming book for Dark Horse Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Tying a Windsor Knot!

Tonight, I'm putting every instructional pamphlet, book, and VHS tape I've acquired in my decades long quest to learn to tie a Windsor Knot.

As I type this, I'm wearing a freshly knotted, gray tie! I did it myself (finally!), and I owe all the credit to the video below!

So if you were in the same boat I was a half hour ago (in other words, googling "Clip-on tie"), watch the video and bookmark this post for future reference!



Currently playing: Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 20: Night of the Wolf!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Tens of boxes to put my order into, and they had to choose THIS one...

Last week, I had my old friend Robin Kowal over to watch the season finale of LOST. To celebrate the occasion, we ordered Chinese food from what I consider to be the BEST Chinese Food restaurant in Winnipeg - Hong Hing Chinese Food Delivery on Ellice Avenue.

Not only do you get a lot of great tasting food for a great price, but it all comes packaged up in an inappropriately labelled box whose text you wish you'd never read!

Yeah, hi, Hong Hing? I'd like to order some Mushroom Fried Rice, Chicken Balls, and Stir Fried Veggies.

Oh, and hold the Bladder Control Pads, because.. uhh.. well, I can hold it.

Oh, and for the record? The LOST finale was AWESOME! I'm not sure what some people were expecting to see....

Currently playing: Men Without Hats - Living In China
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 20: Night of the Wolf!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

McDonald's Crispy Chicken Classic. Because I deserve the BEST!

Tonight, I had a Crispy Chicken Classic from McDonalds.

Here's the marketing messaging from the side of the box it came in...


It reads:
EXPERIENCE CHICKEN BLISS
For those who appreciate the finer things in life, we humbly offer the Crispy Chicken Classic. Bon appetit.

Wow.

It was good. But it wasn't THAT good!!!

I think a little perspective is in order, Ronald!

I don't see how ANYTHING I receive while sitting in my 1995 Pontiac Firebird at a drive-thru window can be put in the "finer things in life"`category, no mater how "humbly" the uniformed, 16 year old, talking pimple offers it to me!

It`s quite the exaggeration. I`d be willing to bet that the writer of that description probably had a previous career embellishing people`s personal ads!

Currently playing: Harlequin - Sweet Things in Life
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 20: Night of the Wolf!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

One chapter ends, and another begins...

Today, I said goodbye to an old friend.

For the last 9 years, I've been employed at a local software developer as a Multimedia Specialist. In addition to video and Flash projects, the bulk of my work was maintaining their websites and portals.

Today was my last day.

I start a new job on Monday.

I was able to see through an 8 month web revamp project, and posted the results last night. By 3 o'clock this afternoon, I'd done my last bit of tinkering. I posted the changes, and powered down my computer.

This is going to sound ridiculous, but I really did feel like I said goodbye to an old friend. For 9 years I was responsible for every change done to that website.

My duties have been passed on to an extremely competent co-worker (sorry,ex-coworker now!), and at the end of the day it felt like I was essentially talking to her about the site as if it were a family pet.

You can post the entire folder. That way, the pages with no changes don't feel left out.
He gets cranky if you don't put all the images in the same folder.
Use underscores in the file names. He doesn't like it when you use spaces...

Sigh. Ridiculous, I know.

In reality, I was at this job for nearly a decade. I met my wife there, and together we've started a family.

I owe where I am today to that company.

My last day was rough, and I'm not ashamed to admit that my eyes did get teary while saying my goodbyes. It's the people I'll miss the most. When I first met them, I was a fully follicled, pleather pant wearing young pup who spent his weekends playing in a rock band.

Nearly a decade later, my weekend is going to consist of going to the zoo with my wife and two year old daughter, and maybe some gardening.

To say that they've seen me grow up is an understatement.

I know I'll keep in touch with many of them. I'm just going to miss that daily interaction, and being a part of a fantastic team environment with them.

So long, old website. So long, old job. Thanks for a great 9 years. And from the bottom of my heart, thanks for the great friends, and lovely soul mate.

Now, to start prepping for my next adventure at a new job! What an exciting time!

Currently playing: Harlequin - Superstitious Feeling
Currently colouring: The Chronicles of Conan Volume 20: Night of the Wolf!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

Winnipeg to find out soon if Coyotes are coming back to town

The Doomsday Clock, established in 1947, symbolizes mankind's proximity to global disaster. Nuclear war. Climate change. Grey goo. You name it. The closer the minute hand is to midnight, the closer the end of the world.

Using that same analogy, the minute hand on the Jets Return Clock has got to be as far closer to midnight than it has ever been.

Just seeing the main story on this afternoon's TSN website sent chills down my spine...

Winnipeg to find out soon if Coyotes are coming back to town
Wow.

I never thought I would see the day where the realistic possibility of the Jets' return would be front page news. Sure, we've seen headlines and unsubstantiated rumours appear front and center, but this... the pieces just seem to be falling in to place to give Winnipeg it's best shot yet.

Fellow Winnipeggers, we can do this! We can have household name athletes like Alexander Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews, the Sedin Twins, and (ugh) Cindy Crosby playing in front of us.

We can be the feel good story in sports! We can be the city that loaned a desert it's beloved hockey team for a decade and a half, and then brought them back home!

I'm sick and tired of the attitude of some in this great city who want to put down every idea of progress and forward momentum. No Jets. No new arena. No Ikea. Nothing, until all the potholes are fixed.

I realize that Winnipeg rumours may be being used as bargaining chips by the NHL to threaten those few trying to keep the team in Phoenix to get a deal done. So be it.

But if we don't set our sights high, we're never going to move forward.

Strangely enough, I'm reminded of a sign I saw someone holding during one of the final Winnipeg Jets games back in '96 that simply read "Phoenix, take care of our boys". Contrary to what the average red-blooded beer swilling Canadian will tell you, there are real hockey fans down there.

I know what it's like to lose a beloved hockey team, and Phoenix, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. If they Jets return, my heart will go out to you.

Currently playing: Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes to Midnight
Currently colouring: a yet-to-be-solicited project from Dark Horse Comics!
Proudly in my fifth Cola free year!

U Can't Touch This (Phone)!

Some external circumstances have forced me to downgrade my cel phone. I'm now using a cameraless Motorola 120e, with a beautiful monochrome screen!

When I took it in to the MTS Store to get it set up, the woman helping me was giggling uncontrollably. I sheepishly admitted that I'd had the phone since around 2006, so it's pretty much an antique.

She raised an eyebrow in reply, and told me that she was laughing because this was the same model and her FIRST cel phone, which she got nearly a decade ago.

Great. So even when I THOUGHT I was hip and cool with my new cel phone in 2006, I was out of fashion!

Anyhow, the contacts in the phone's charger are a little loose, and getting it to charge is a bit of a hassle. Once charging, if you so much as tap the floor that the table with the charging phone sits on, it just stops charging.

Bummer.

To make sure that Cat didn't bump or move the phone when she got up the next morning, I enlisted the talents of everyone's favourite rapper, MC Hammer, to make sure she got the message.


The Motorola 120e was probably around when U Can't Touch This was first popular!

In hindsight, I think Hammer was still wearing Steve Urkel glasses at this point in his career, so I goofed a bit giving him sunglasses.

Currently playing: Jay Z - 99 Problems
Currently colouring: a yet-to-be-solicited project from Dark Horse Comics!
Proudly in my fourth Cola free year!