Today I came into my studio. Artie (one of the cats) was asleep in the middle of the floor, splayed on her back with her belly up. I sat down at the desk.

Out of the corner of my eye, quite clearly, I saw her get up and walk towards the door. But when I got up to see if she wanted the door open so she could go out, she was still lying on the floor. Hadn’t moved at all.

Did I hallucinate this? Did I slip halfway into a parallel reality for a moment? While I was seeing her leave, I realized afterwards, I heard a sort of droning noise. Was this my nervous system glitching the fuck out or was it me tuning in to a different celestial harmony than usual?

I was, I must note, kind of stoned when this happened. I don’t think that really makes any of those possibilities more or less likely.

Anyway. Glitch in the Matrix day, I guess. Watching the cat take Schroedinger’s Nap.

‘Ren & Stimpy’ Artist and Spümcø Co-founder Jim Smith Has Died, Age 70

RIP Jim Smith.

He could draw rings around the entire rest of the studio with half of his brain tied behind his back. He was probably a better artist than 99% of the entire rest of the world and yet I never felt like the slightest bit of his ego was tied up in that.

One day he brought some shitty teenage art into the studio for some reason. Looking at it realizing that it was shitty in exactly the same way my teenage art was shitty, and that his early pro-level art was just as fucked up as what I was doing at the time, was the moment I realized I could master any kind of art skill if I just dedicated a while to practicing it; since that day, I have never looked at someone else’s work and said “I wish I was that good”, and getting better became a lot easier.

Thanks for that moment, Jim.

Also he was super cool about my transition when it was in that insanely awkward phase of “hormones are making my tits too big to hide in baggy shirts but I still have to shave and have no idea how to present myself as a woman”, despite being from Texas. Really he was just an all-around super chill guy, I’m sure you could piss him off but I never saw it.

Best of luck in the next life.

Get up. Take a shower. Stare in the morning and try to convince the universe you are beautiful, powerful, and successful. And also a super-horny human-taur with giant titties because that’s a good way to put a little passion into that desire, I guess? Why not. Aim for the stars and

Just a thumbnail because this is pretty NSFW. Full image under the cut. Continue reading →

What did I do this year?

I watched parts of my professional life that were working stop working.

Patreon used to be a pretty good system for me to make comics, but they killed off the funding model I was using. It worked great as an incentive for me to crank out art when I got paid based on how many things I posted per month but when they forced everyone to switch to “your supporters just pay a fixed cost every month regardless of what you do” then my finances got reset to a place where spending the month doing comics is not paying enough for me to make ends meet, period, unless I double the amount of people supporting me. And on top of that the comics project I was working on started developing technical issues, my files have gotten huge and unwieldy and super slow to work with. Which is a recurring issue, this was part of what killed the last project, it has been a decade since I had a book-sized thing and this sucks.

I had a side gig doing paid avatars for Reddit that was real nice for a year and a half but they rapidly expanded the market for it and now it’s not worth anywhere near the time it takes to draw these things.

I keep on thinking I need to stop using Illustrator for a bunch of reasons and I just cannot make myself exert the energy to try and make sense of alternatives. Plus doing commissions with it is what pays my bills now. Spending a while being absolutely shit at art because I’m still figuring out a new tool is the exact opposite of appealing.

Also I got married.

I am out of shape and I can’t seem to get myself to return to being a person who gets up and exercises. I could be in much worse physical shape, keeping my main transportation as bicycling means I’m not slowly turning into a sphere, but I’ve sure been in much better shape.

Maybe making an art retrospective image will make me feel better and show me how much amazing stuff I did this year that I’ve forgotten?

hahaha no, I took an entire year to get about 3/4 of the way through the prologue and first chapter of the new comic, which I am feeling very low ebb about overall. I flailed uselessly at animation tools a couple of times. I spent a couple months on Reddit avatars that sold increasingly poorly – the ones I released in October took a month to make and only made me like $370; I’m not sure I even made minimum wage off of those. I think that’s definitely done. It was a nice paycheck at first, the ones from 2023 covered my rent for most of a year. I should really write something about the whole story of that thing sometime, I did it under another name because they involved NFTs when people still had opinions about those.

There’s far too many unfinished things in my folder for this past year. Way too many half-assed porn doodles that got finished enough to wank to but not finished enough to post. Half-finished portfolios and cover letters I haven’t done anything with. Aborted attempts at getting the hang of new art tools. There’s some obvious ideas for new year’s resolutions here, aren’t there. Maybe I’ll make some.

I wonder how the version of me who moved to Los Angeles back in 2019 instead of New Orleans is doing. Is she happy? Is she getting work? Did she get married to her version of Nick? Have any cats wandered into her life?

Anyway it looks like I am signing up for a tour at the co-working space at the Contemporary Arts Center and seriously considering signing up for at least a month of working there. Also I have decided today is a good day to dye my hair. Right now it’s covered in bleach; it’s been way too long since I had my hair bright red. I just lost the habit after moving.

Oh also if you read this far and have money to burn, my patreon still exists.