Random Assembly started as a public exercise in Learning to Draw Comics. While the art and writing skills improved over time, the beginning, much like all beginnings, was kind of terrible. I would totally understand if you skipped straight ahead to When I Grew Up & Finally Bought A Tablet.

If you like, you may start at the beginning. If that is not your cup of tea, here are some summaries of how it all went down each year from my perspective. Each link goes to the first comic post of that year. Please view the Archives to see a list of each comic by year.

2002

First attempt at drawing comics, second year in college. Rollerball pens and graphite. Beginning to learn Photoshop.

2003

Moving on to Micron pens and non-photo blue pencils. Slightly better grasp of anatomy. Trying out different paneling and coloring methods.

2004

Attempting brush pens/brush and ink method on heavier paper stock.

2005

Biscuit Press, guest comics, graduation, cast begins to change.

2006

Experimenting with greyscale tones and modified photo backgrounds.

2007

Newspaper format, graphics tablet, Assembly Required journal comics.

2008

Additional practicing with both digital and traditional inking methods.

2009

Scooters, marriage, homeownership.

2010

Digital ziptones, computer failure, and the end of an eight year project. One straggler comic in 2011.

So anyway, I haven’t done a comic in months and months and months because… I haven’t. I had a comic all worked up about not doing comics any more, but every time I started to work on it I got super depressed and the pity points for that ran out a looong time ago. So here’s the new deal.

THE NEW DEAL

Random Assembly as a webcomic is essentially dead. It’s dead. Dead, I say. There will be no regular updates. There may be a comic from time to time, and if there ever is one, it will be announced in my twitter feed. I don’t tweet-vom very often, so if you miss it, you won’t have missed it by much.

THE NEW DEAL SUCKS WHAT THE HELL

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting to Tumblr a lot more often. If you’re dying to see the myriad of doodles and things I work on or updates on my new project, you may want to keep your eye on that. It’s a hell of a lot more useful than checking this non-updating site constantly.

WAIT WHAT NEW PROJECT COME ON DON’T HOLD OUT ON ME HERE

The main reason I’ve stopped the comic was, other than being burnt out on it, that I’ve started a new project. You may have noticed an increase in food-tweets in the past few months… this is because I have been writing, cooking, and tweaking recipes. You heard me. Recipes.

WHAAAAT

Yes, that’s right. I’m in the process of writing a cook book. The Husband™ is helping me along in various ways. The plan is to be illustrated and hilarious, so you can see that there is little time for screwing around.

WHAAAAT DUDE WHAAAAT

Oh shut up. Anyway, Twitter. Tumblr. Follow them. I’ll let you know. Capiche?

I’ve been sick for a week. I used the time between fevers to catch up on my reading. I re-read The Cheese Monkeys by Chipp Kidd, then read The Learners, which is also by Chipp Kidd. Go on and give ‘em a read if you like art kid books. They’re wonderful.

I think this is the funniest thing I have ever written. The only reason it is as funny as it is can be summed up in two words: Dinosaur Comics

If you haven’t read Dinosaur Comics before, you’re probably a sad person that does not like happy things. If this is the kind of person you are, why are you reading comics anyway? I can only assume that you’re trying to remedy your terrible condition with smiles. Good on you. Read some Dinosaur Comics and have some smiles.

Needless to say, I took a long weekend here and there. In fact, I’m taking a long weekend right now. I am continuing to take a long weekend. It’s kind of nice. I am currently chilling my shit at The Farm™, where my Mom built and art studio for the two of us in the basement. It’s got nearly everything for ceramics, painting, and metalsmithing, so I’d say it’s pretty useful. Occasionally I head out here to paint, and that’s just what I’m doing now. Well, not right now. If I were painting right now, this computer would be a mess and covered in paint. I painted earlier.

It turns out that MAB was also out here this weekend working on a new album. Yesss. New album!

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Did I forget to mention that The Farm™ is also the home of Big Walnut Studios? It’s pretty great. If you need to record something in Indiana, you should give them a call. Yes.
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Anyway…

I don’t know if I’ve blogged about it much, but I love coming out here. It’s the kind of place that’s so isolated that it takes half of an hour just to get to the nearest town to get groceries or gasoline or what have you. Imagine being thirty minutes away from the nearest McDonalds. In turn, you’d be thirty minutes away from insane traffic and obnoxious youths with loud speakers (or whatever it is obnoxious youths are carrying with them these days). It’s pretty great if you like to actually relax when you’re trying to relax.

This is just one of my many vacations I’m taking for the second half of two oh one ten. The next big run-away-from-work-and-still-get-paid time is in November. What is in November, you ask? Why, the Up! Fair.

The Husband™ and I will be going to Up! Fair with a few members of IWG. It should be pretty great. I’m working on some neat and extra special prints for Up! Fair, and I may even do an ashcan to hand out to really cool people. (If you’re not cool, you may not get an ashcan. Dude, you’d better be cool if you want an ashcan.) If for any reason you already are or will happen to be in Lexington, Kentucky, then you should stop by the Up! Fair and see what everything is about.

To sum it up: The Farm™ is awesome; come to the Up! Fair in November!

Squirrel Dan comes in to town to see it all go down, and I hadn’t seen him in a while, so I decided to acquire him as a guide to GenCon. Seasoned Pro and all that. We got a one day pass and I think it was pretty neat. Keep in mind that this is coming from a Very Boring Person™.

Aaaanyway, links to stuff as described in the GenCon Report:

The Tall Leprechaun was pretty creepy.
Geeky Clean is the best soap. Seriously. Go buy it now, bitches.
Jennie Breeden, previously met at Wizard World, continues to be the nicest lady ever.
Video Games Live is a great show, and I recommend it to everyone that has a chance to see it.

I have no link for Fat Magneto because we could not find him. I suppose you can Google him yourself if you’re really that curious.

It’s like friggin’ 2 in the morning. I had a big great post with links and a flying trapeze or whatever planned out for this thing, but what with Photoshop being an uppity bitch, I just want to go to bed.

Awesome post in the regular blog about all this shiz at a more reasonable hour!

Edit: A reasonable hour has come! News Post is here!