Henry Rollins – Frequent Flyer Tour stops by Auckland
April 30th, 2010 | by MarcMonday night and I find myself heading over to Auckland’s North Shore instead of my familiar trip home which is the opposite direction from my place of work. Tonight Henry Rollins was in town bringing in his particular brand of insightfulness, humour and reflection. Knowing I would have some time to kill I made sure to stop into Burgerfuel Takapuna and help myself to a decent sized burger and a coke to help wash away some of the pre show time. Burger wasn’t bad, but I found that particular franchise branch not as good as my local one. Just not as friendly or something? Nonetheless the burger did its job and I was hungry no more!
After a short stroll around Takapuna I made my way to the Bruce Mason Centre. Rollins hit stage at 8pm. True to past times I have seen the man speak it was basically on from the moment he hit the stage. Just a marathon of observations seen through the eyes of an American who likes to live life to its fullest. There were no breaks. No pauses for sips of water. There was plenty of anecdotal stories shared though. Thoughts that covered the gamut of everything from acting in TV shows, through to Racism and homophobia being properly relegated to a thing of everything that came before the 21st Century.
Henry Rollins has a beautiful way with words. Many a laugh was had with the observations he has gained from being in the unique position of living on the outer edge of media and pop culture. One of the funnier ones was his recollection of the shame that went with being a travelling American while George Bush was now in office. A man who butchered the English language on a daily basis. He explained that he loved the fact that the USA now has a President whose middle name is Hussein. Who is intellectually capable and then some of handling the job. A guy who has memorised the Webster’s dictionary and speaks in perfect 12 point Helvetica.
Delivery is everything. Henry always has the audience in the palm of his hands. Even if you have no idea on what the mans history was, you would walk away impressed with his ability to string words together for just under three hours and hold your attention. As he remarked. The audience at his shows are his social media. He doesn’t need Facebook, as long as he has an audience waiting and a city to travel to. It truly make you feel like you aren’t living life to its fullest potential when you hear about what this guy does, just so he isn’t caught in the position of doing nothing.
It was an awesome night. Henry was on stage for such a long time, that my eyes were fried from the over head lights by the time he was ready to call it a night. He thanked us for our patience with his ramblings and then in his own words he “gave us our asses back”. With that he was off the stage and no doubt readying himself to leave and conquer another city on one of his excruciatingly long world tours.
Thanks Henry. It was impressive, earnest, fun and educational as always.
Thanks for reading
Marc
There you go, a second page for the week. How nice. Hope you enjoyed!
It’ll probably be back to one page next week, as this weekend my drawing time will be reduced as i am doing a quick trip away on Sunday. Also Iron Man 2 is out this week, so I will be heading out to see that. Should be good.
See you next week!
Thanks for reading,
Marc
The page is up early?
Yes. The other surprise is, there will be another page in two days.
See you then!
Thanks for reading
Marc
Making the webcomic – development of a comic page
April 22nd, 2010 | by MarcUsually when I am preparing a page I’ll just keep going on it until it is done. However, without being sure how awesome this new format would be I saved a few steps of the comic to check and see if I was happy with how it was progressing. Being that the comic is now smaller, some of the things I took into consideration were, does the text size and art size still hold for readability? Will I be able to successfully condense my storytelling so that it can convey the same message without the same amount of space? How would the page look on the site?
One of the issues I had with the traditional page format was, you always had to scroll down to read the comic. For those people that might just want to have a quick browse and then carry on with their day, I thought, maybe I could make this more efficient. The other thought of reducing to this size was the aim of getting more updates out a week. If I could draw smarter it would hopefully be beneficial for me in that people could now get one extra update a week. Which also helps me add to my archive faster.
The challenge is of course. Having never drawn in this format before, that I need to be smarter with my page layouts, and get my point across quickly. I like a challenge though. With any luck, no one will even notice the format change and people will be happy that they’ll be getting an extra update every week. I’ll let you know soon when I’ll make the jump to twice a week.
Thanks for reading!
Marc
Welcome to the new story arc!
As you can see I have changed format of the page, the idea behind this is that ultimately I should be able to draw more. Expect two pages a week of ActionMan Adam soon.
Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this next arc.
See you soon,
Thanks for reading!
Marc
Hello again!
If you’re a returning visitor, then you’ll notice the site is going through some cosmetic changes. I am going to try and iron out some technical issues with the help of my homie. Hopefully pretty soon we’ll be able to get the site looking nice (with a brand new design) and working great soon. That doesn’t stop the comics from coming however!
This is the last page in this introduction to the flat arc. I had a lot of fun setting up the flat. Hope you enjoyed!
See you again next week!
Marc
Everyone have a good holiday weekend?
I spent mine painting the interior walls of my house. Watching paint dry is exhilarating! Just thought I would share that with you. Other than that I’m re-tooling some things around here.
Hope all is well.
Thanks for reading
Marc
Managing your time to make a comic – the art of having no life
April 6th, 2010 | by MarcHow does one go about making a comic – while still maintaining some sort of semblance of a social life?
It’s a question I have had to ask myself a few times lately. One would think that making your own webcomic would be a rock star life style. Shouldn’t I have made a successful creation and sold out a million times over so that I can drive a Lamborghini, live in the Hollywood Hills and then lose my fortune on a debaucherous trip to Vegas?
Okay, maybe I wouldn’t go that far.
In actuality I am finding that keeping the regular webcomic updates and still trying to have a normal life is a balancing act that I have yet to master. I’m treating the “making a comic” process, like a second job. Trying to do a minimum of set hours per night on it after the day job. Usually a good chunk of the weekend is allocated to it too. It leaves me little wriggle room to just have some lazy down time. Thankfully with the help of a friend or two, and the support of my wife, it hasn’t been too terrible.
Isn’t it hard enough that I have to manage my twitter account? Meeting up with friends on social outings means I have to put on an SPF 1500 sunblock, just so my pasty white skin can take a little UV exposure after countless hours of being locked away beside a computer. My attire is usually a failure for said outing as well. I really didn’t think through the choice to put on a white tee shirt and then go out to meet people for Ramen.
There is no easy answer I guess. The webcomic is important for me to do, so letting go things like seeing movies often and reading comics get put on the back burner until I can find some time to get around to it. Going out and shooting the shit with friends is important though. It reminds me that I allowed to go out and do stuff every now and again, and it keeps the wife happy. That makes life easier in the long run!
The juggling act will continue. What should I do? Are there any decent iphone apps or proceedures I should be using to better plan my life? I’m open to suggestions!
Meanwhile. The iPad came out this weekend. It’s not yet available here in New Zealand, and i am really curious to see one in action. The Marvel app looks amazing, it’s just a shame that at this point Marvel only wants to dip their toes in the water and not offer everything they can. People should be able to download books that are on the stands right now! Otherwise it seems like wasted potential. I’ve had the app running on my iPhone, and it works very nicely.
Thanks for reading
Marc