Hello, Happy Friday. I didn’t make any posts this week – I took the week off from scheduling for various reasons, none of them important. I am trying to figure out a few things regarding shameless self promotion for the site, but that’s also not important. I think the biggest thing I worked on was researching zipatone/screentone/halftones, for integrating into some RwC art, whether they be strips or doodles. One part of that research is going through the comic book Scud: The Disposable Assassin, which in a recent re-read I noticed used zipatone (whatever you call it) to great effect. Like it represented not just shades in backgrounds or shadows on characters, but represented things like buildings or mesas or glasses, without any linework to surround it. It works on nearly every page. I’m actually going back and procuring single issues (some straight from the creator, Rob Schrab, selling them on ebay at good prices for a not-all-that-easy-to-find comic) so I can scan and have references when I try this out myself. There’s a strip in a somewhat month + distance that will show one of my attempts. This is SUCH a not-issue and who cares, but it’s one of the things I’ve spent time on, instead of being on the computer to create posts for the site. (I also scanned some more Mort Inkingbot strips, some of which were larger than the usual 2 panel gags, and took a little more time cleaning up digitally.)

The other thing is, see the headline. I/Robots With Coffee was mentioned on Newsweek dot com last year, and I had no idea. Here’s the link – though Newsweek has a paywall in some cases, so I don’t know if you want to read a list of free coloring books to peruse if you’re bored during the pandemic. It references my twitter posts where I share the images from the free 8 pager I shared here last year. And you can still download it, btw. So that’s cool. I’m glad they chose me, so thanks Newsweek!

So that’s something. Anyway, see you next week, I’ll have at least two comic strips and maybe some reviews, but likely doodles. Woo!