Training Wheels

#trainingwheels #bike #kidsbike #learningtoride #bicycles #balancebike #ParentingFail #DrawnAndCoded #comic

Logistics

Calling it a "cup" is probably the worst decision in the history of naming things. At best it could be some sort of headgear. At worse, you're just confusing young boys as to what the heck it's actually for, much less where it goes. — Calling it a “cup” is probably the worst decision in the history of naming things. At best it could be some sort of headgear. At worse, you’re just confusing young boys as to what the heck it’s actually for, much less where it goes.

If there’s one thing COVID taught me, it’s how important it is to get up and move. Being confined to a desk for work is bad enough, but being confined to my house is something else entirely. After dealing with lower back pain for a months I tried some things.

First, at the recommendation of my friend and neighbor, Missy, I bought a standing desk. It’s a relatively affordable tabletop model from Vari, just big enough to fit a single 27″ monitor. Unfortunately, my monitor was 32″, just big enough to hang over the sides of the platform and bulky enough to max out its’ hydraulic lifting mechanism. After cannibalizing a smaller monitor from my kids’ gaming setup, my back pain was better, but persisted.

Next, at the recommendation of my wife, Jodie, I started following an online Yoga Instructor, Adrienne. Adrienne’s video, Yoga For Lower Back Pain, is short, concise, and effective. I’ve been doing some variation of her routine nightly before bed ever since, effectively serenading my wife with a cacophony of cracking, popping, grunting, and ( yes ) occasionally farting noises as she drifts off to sleep. Again, it helped a little, but the back pain persisted.

Next, I submitted myself to a chiropractor, specifically Cooke Chiropractic in Rancho Bernardo. I survived 47 years without ever seeing a chiropractor and only did so at the recommendation of my wife. First off, Ian Cooke is awesome. He showed me massaging techniques with a racquetball, various stretches, and encouragingly told me that I would, in fact, be back up and running in no time. Near the conclusion of our first session he positioned me on a small massage table, gently placed his hands on a couple of spots on my back and hip, and rearranged every single vertebrae in my back with a violent jerk. This resulted in a loud audible crack, an even louder shriek from me, and hysterical laughter from my wife. It helped a little, but the back pain persisted.

Finally, I bought a Fitbit and started tracking my steps. I never gave the 10,000 steps-a-day thing much thought until I realized how little, in fact, I was actually moving throughout the day. Sure, I’ve made a habit of regularly lifting weights, prefaced by a short warm-up on a stationary bike. I’ve even been a devotee of Shawn T’s T-25 workout for several years ( basically, Insanity for the less-inclined ). But, I was averaging only 3,000 steps-a-day. Cranking it up to 10,000, with the help of Adrienne, a standing desk, and a few sessions at Cooke Chiropractic finally did the trick. My back pain is gone and I am even running a few days a week, too.

At this point you’re probably wondering what in the hell this long winded monologue has to do with an illustration of a misplaced athletic cup. Well, 10,000 steps is roughly 4-5 miles and can take a couple of hours. It’s a lonely plod without someone to talk to, so I often walk with my family and friends. On these walks I’ve realized that walking not only loosens up ones back, but ones mouth, too.

To my friend, Missy, thank you for sharing your story. And to her son, Allan, I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire.

To everyone else, keep moving.

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life.

-Scott

#varidesk #standingdesk #10000StepsADay #ShawnT #T25 #AdrienneYoga #YogaByAdrienne #CookeChiropratic #Chiropractor #FitBit #KeepMoving #Baseball #AthleticCup #ProtectiveGear #LittleLeague #ParentingFail #DrawnAndCoded #BackPainCure

Click!

Photos tell a story.

But when I’m old and gray.

The only photos I’ll care about.

Are of my family in disarray.

Staged photos may seem more appealing.

But really they’re really just a lie.

Because the most memorable family photos.

Are the ones that go awry.

Bunny ears.

Funny sneers.

Jabs. Slaps.

Piggybacks.

Their personalities all come out.

My family’s perfectly imperfect.

But still, I have to shout.

“Hold still, damnit!”

Click.

#FamilyPicture #Photographer #FamilyPhoto #FamilyPhotographer #PhotoBomb #ParentingFail #DrawnAndCoded #Comic #BadDadPoetry #Poetry

A force to be reckoned with ….

Happy Mother's Day — Happy Mother’s Day to the best wife and Mom a family of misfits could hope for. We promise we’ll clean our rooms if you lay off that wicked backswing of yours.

Mother’s Day crept up on me this year. I almost ran out of time to draw my wife, Jodie, a Mother’s Day Card, something I’ve been trying to do every year since I started dabbling in comics and illustrations six years ago. Jodie has been really ( and I mean really ) into Paddleball this last year, so this particular theme seemed appropriate. And no – I don’t dare go up her against her on the court less I have my ass handed to me. I’ll stick to drawing her instead.

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life.

-Scott

#HappyMothersDay #Paddleball #Raquetball #PaddleSports #MothersDay #Mom #Comic #DrawnAndCoded

Illuminating

Last year Jodie bought me a diffuser for my office. It did an amazing job of masking the funk of two dogs and, well, me, until it didn’t. Turns out, just like milk, essential oils can “turn” if left in a diffuser for too long. Jodie started buying me candles shortly after that revelation. Thing is? Candles don’t last that long. Now instead of a smell problem, I have a jar problem.

“Jodie! I’m accumulating jars from all of the burned out candles you have been bringing me.”, I announced from my office.

I looked back at my desk. My lamp stooped over the carcasses of empty jars cluttered around it, its light reftacting off of the colored glass.

“It looks …. kinda sad”, I thought to myself.

“Can you use them as planters?”, Jodie called back from downstairs, interrupting my thought.

“Good idea!”, I called back to her.

But first I have a better idea…”, I thought to myself.

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life.

-Scott

#candles #lamps #scentsy #essentialoils #candlelight #officedesk #friends #comic #drawnandcoded

The Easter Egg Hunt

Yes, rabbits can lay eggs, but only bedazzled pastel ones – and only once a year.

And, that obese man who wears a red velvet suit? The one who is ferried about in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and squeezes down chimneys to give you free gifts? He’s real, too.

It’s no wonder our kids want to be so independent. After all the lies we tell them they just want to figure it out on their own.

This particular comic idea has been lurking in my head for years. It spawned from the Easter Egg Hunts that my cousins, Tony and Michelle, would invite my family and I to every year. The invitations ceased, like many things, during COVID. As luck would have it we received an invitation again for this year, inspiring me to finally put stylus to tablet and draw.

Happy Easter, everyone!

-Scott

Rough Sketch of "The Easter Egg Hunt" — Rough Sketch of “The Easter Egg Hunt”

#egghunt #easter #happyeaster #easteregghun #happyeaster #easterbunny #drawnandcoded #parentingfail #familycomic

Heel!

Art has been my outlet for a long time. It helped me survive three years of cancer treatments by poking fun at my situation ( and myself ). Recently, I started a new job and I’m finding that it’s helping me cope there as well. Some days are good, some days are … well, the comic speaks for itself here I think.

I have a lot more work related comics in the pipe, too, but given the circumstances – mainly not wanting to have an uncomfortable conversation with human resources ( or get fired for that matter ), I’m not sure when these ideas will see the light of day. It’s a shame, too, because I’m really happy with this one, not only because it cracks me up, but because it’s the first one I’ve created using a new process.

You might have noticed that I haven’t posted a lot lately. Well, that’s because I’ve spent the last few weeks rebooting my process for drawing comics.

First, I pruned. I have a whole backlog of ideas, some so old they’re not really relevant anymore. I tossed those. Wanting only the best, I axed the mediocre ideas, too.

Second, I started putting more effort into design. Now, rather than trying to churn stuff out comics as quickly as possible, I spend more time upfront on character and background design – even if I had drawn the stuff before. I draw the designs using pencil and paper, too. Seven years into this and I’m beginning to realize drawing digitally has as many cons as pros. While being able to erase and redraw to ad nauseum made me sloppy, the ability to zoom in to a pixel made me obsessive compulsive. Go figure.

Third, I now try to stick to 2-layers. Basically, a gesture and rough sketch to hammer out the shapes, followed by a “finished” pencil sketch.

Lastly, no ink. I used to spend hours inking over pencil lines and was never really happy with the outcome. Pencil is way more forgiving and, unlike ink, the lines can be tidied up much easier. The best part? After I colored everything the difference was negligible. Disney used a similar process in the development of “101 Dalmatians” way back in 1961. They took the hand drawn pencil sketches created by their cartoonists, ran them through a Xerox machine to copy ( and darken ) the lines onto a clear transparency, and sent the sheets to their paint department for finishing. In prior movies the lines were all painstakingly painted by hand. The Xerox process supposedly saved the studio by making it much cheaper to produce feature length animations. Hey, it it’s good enough for Disney, it’s good enough for me.

Here are the designs that I created for the above comic. I’m planning on following the same process for future drawings. Hopefully you’ll even be able to see the next one.

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life …

-Scott

#characterdesign #clipstudiopaint #workcomic #comic #badboss

Muzak

Yes, it’s been a while since my last post. Between the holidays, a busy work schedule, a particularly nasty bout with the flu ( and pneumonia ), and taking some artistic license with this particular comic, it took ….a while.

Normally, I draw using pencil and paper, or with a stylus on a tablet. This time I wanted to try something a little different – vector graphics. With vector graphics you use a mouse to drag, drop, and manipulate shapes and curves to create art. Honestly, it’s a little funky until you try it. The best analogy I can think of is “arts and crafts” in elementary school, where you are given sheets of colored construction paper to cut out and paste together a picture. It’s kind of’ like that – expect without the scissors and paste, at least physical ones. The weird thing is that vector graphics are all math. I converted the image above to a .PNG, but if you were to open the original .SVG file ( that’s short for “Scaleable Vector Graphics” ), you’d see a bunch of numbers. The numbers declare the points and line thicknesses of the shapes that make up the image.

Moving forward I plan on doing a lot more illustrations and comics using vector graphics. It takes longer, but I am getting faster with experience. My reasons are twofold : First, I like the clean crisp lines and colors and simplified designs that vector graphics lends itself to. Second, vector graphics are big in graphic design, illustration, and user interface design ( UXD ), all areas that I am interested in.

So, please be patient with me as I ramp up my skills to accommodate this new style. I have a bunch of ideas – they might just take a while to manifest here as I stumble along.

Lastly, if you are interested in learning how to draw using vector graphics, I use a free application called Inkscape. Adobe offers a competing product called Illustrator, but it is subscription-based and quite pricey for an amateur hobbyist such as myself. Fair warning – Inkscape is not intuitive. If you want to give it a shot I highly recommend taking a course. I have had a lot of luck with these courses on Udemy :

Learn Inkscape now – create vector graphics for free!

Cartoon Character Design for Animation

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life.

-Scott

#inkscape #illustrator #comic #learnvectorgraphics #svg #vectorgraphics #svgcomic #drawnandcoded #digitalart #illustration

Cheer Dad

I come to the games.

But root for my girl.

As she rallies the crowd.

With a kick and a twirl.

I know all of her cheers.

And a few of her moves.

But whenever I show her.

She looks terrified. Bemused.

On weekends without games.

She enters competitions.

Frilly tents dot the landscape.

A bedazzled exposition.

I look on in amusement.

Bewildered at the display.

Should I offer to help?

Or stay the heck out of the way.

At home there are footprints.

On the walls, windows, and ceilings.

The result of handstands and roundoffs.

And endless cartwheeling.

I’m amazed at her determination.

Her skill and her grace.

I look forward to seeing her.

Cheering.

With a smile on her face.

#CheerDad #CheerMom #Cheer #Cheerleading #Cheerleader #CheerLife #CheerCompetition #Jam #RanchoBernardoBroncos #BadPoetry #Comic #ParentingFail #PopWarner #PopWarnerCheer

Dungeons, Dragons, and Daughters

Dungeons and Dragons wasn’t always cool. Back in the 90’s, it was a game played by pimply, greasy, pubescent boys on shag brown carpet under dim incandescent lights with Led Zeppelin rocking in the background. I know because I was one of those boys. Back then I think my friends and I spent more time trying to make each others’ characters miserable, and by extension ourselves, by throwing sadistic, borderline hilarious plot devices at one another.

I had forgotten all about my own experiences until my daughter, Ashley, bought a Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set for her and her friends to play. At first I was astounded that she wanted to play. I mean, Dungeons and Dragons is ( was ) for nerds, right? I was comfortable with it when I was her age, but Ashley? However, after gauging her enthusiasm my attitude quickly morphed into encouragement and finally, well, rejection…

Take care. Stay healthy. Live life.

-Scott

#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #comic #parentingfail #drawnandcoded #e #rpg #ttrpg #fantasy #d #dice #tabletopgames #art #dungeonmaster #criticalrole #dndcharacter #tabletop #dndart #tabletoprpg #pathfinder #digitalart #fantasyart #dnddice #dndmemes #dungeonsanddragonsart #tabletopgaming #warhammer #roleplay #miniatures #diceporn #cosplay #illustration #polyhedraldice