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My top secret (well, not so top-secret, I guess) project is keeping me hella busy. I’m under the gun to get it finished before June 11th, so publishing comics here will be shaky this week and next week. Thanks for your patience.
Or we could run guest-strips. (Hint. Hint.) ;)
-Krishna
P.S. I tweaked panel 4. Below is the original:
And here’s the revised version:
I feel that having Pam point her gun directly at Maude makes the scene stronger.
Sometimes, it’s nice to shake up routine. For the past 14 years, I have been manually uploading my comics to my FTP server. This procedure involved three steps:
As is the case with my comics, every time I make a revision (and in some cases I’ve revised a strip 20 times over the course of a day), I’d have to repeat the above steps each and every time.
So…
…given all the whiz-bang computing power we have at our disposal in 2012, shouldn’t there be a better way?
Thankfully there is, and it’s called automation. To automate the steps above, I used two applications: Hazel and Automator.
Hazel ($24.99) is an incredibly powerful program that automates filing, organizing and cleaning files and folders that live on your computer. Automator is an app bundled with Mac OS X that bills itself as a “personal automation assistant” using drag-and-drop workflows.
To preface this discussion: there are many ways to skin this cat. This is what worked for me.
First, I’ve created a rule within Hazel called “Latest Toons”. This rule will examine the date of the file and checks to see if it was created within the current week. If that condition is true, two actions will be performed.
I use Panic’s Transmit ($24.99) for all my FTP tasks. Transmit comes with an Upload action that is accessible from within Automator.
In Automator, I selected the Upload action and moved it into the workflow area. Next, I configured the Upload action to use one of my Transmit “Favorites” (a bookmark of sorts that contains all my FTP login info, including the correct path to open on the server). After configuring the action, I saved the workflow for Hazel to access.
Now, whenever a new comic file is saved in my pcw_toons folder, Hazel automatically uploads the file into the appropriate folder on my server. Translation: I’ll never have to manually upload a comic to my FTP server EVER again!
To sum it up: Automation is a powerful method of saving time on repetitive tasks. It lets your computer handle the mundane, routine activities while freeing you up to focus on the real tasks at hand. And with tools like Hazel and Automator on the Mac, it’s never been easier!
-Krishna
One big advantage of owning a display like the HP ZR24w is that it supports both landscape and portrait modes. While I’ve been using my display almost exclusively in landscape mode since I first purchased it, curiosity about the idea of “going vertical” got the best of me, so I went ahead and flipped the display over to portrait mode.
Portrait mode is fantastic for making comic pages. Instead of only seeing a portion of the full image, I can see the entire comic page in one go. To fully use the display for illustration in this mode, I had to adjust my Wacom tablet driver settings to match the orientation of my new display. No biggie. Once the settings were adjusted, my tablet worked like a charm!
Having used this setup all weekend, I’m starting to prefer portrait mode over landscape. I’m curious to know if other digital artists work with portrait mode, and what they think of using a display in this fashion. Share your thoughts in the comments below.
-Krishna
I love desktop wallpapers, but the problem I have with most backgrounds is that they make it more difficult to see folders and files that I have on my desktop. Take the image below:
It’s a great image – full of contrast and color – but the crisp detail of the photograph has a nasty side-effect: it makes the text underneath the hard drive icons more difficult to read.
What’s my work around?
Simply take the image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) and add a Gaussian blur to it.
You’ll still have all the wonderful color and contrast that makes the image so appealing, but now it’ll be much easier to discern the icons from the background. Give it a try. You might actually like it.
-Krishna
If you’ve ever been in the process of moving your files and realized midstream that you need to open a folder on your hard drive, you’ll come to appreciate the power and simplicity of DragonDrop.
DragonDrop is an elegant and useful Mac app that lets you set down what you are dragging without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down. It works great with files, folders, text snippets, etc. and has already improved my productivity ten-fold. It sells for $4.99 at the Mac App Store, and is easily worth its asking price.
Drag a file or set of files and shake your mouse cursor back and forth. A transparent DragonDrop window appears. Stuff your contents in the window and retrieve them when you’re ready to move them into their proper location. That’s it!
If you’re not a “mover and shaker”, you can use DragonDrop’s Menu Bar icon instead. DragonDrop’s prefs (shown below) are simple and self-explanatory.
In the snapshot below, I’ve selected three files and shaken my mouse cursor. The DragonDrop window (or portal, as I like to think of it) appears.
Drop your files into the portal until you are ready to retrieve your files.
DragonDrop is one of those little apps that quickly makes itself indispensable. I can’t imagine using any Mac without it. DragonDrop has eliminated the need for me to use a dual-paned window (a la Forklift or PathFinder) to move files because I can invoke it at a whim.
I’ve tested DragonDrop version 1.1.5 for about a day now and I’ve already given it a hefty workout. I haven’t run into any snags or bugs in my usage, but I’ll update this review if I run into any problems.
If you move files on a regular basis (and who doesn’t, really?), DragonDrop is easily the best $5 you’ll spend and earns a mighty 5 Bob Weiners. Highly Recommended.
-Krishna
DIG DUG, one of the celebrated 80′s coin-op arcade classics, is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a webcomics collaboration project. Below is a snippet of the official press blurb, which contains the list of cartoonists who have been asked to contribute to the project:
Dig Dug is one of those iconic games that means a lot to retro gamers, especially those of us who grew up constantly trying to inflate many a Fygar, so we wanted to do something very special for the webcomic,” said Rob Pereyda, Producer & Editor-in-Chief of ShiftyLook for NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. “And I think we just might have the comics team-up of the summer and a must read for video games and webcomics fans alike.”
Each creative team will craft self-contained Dig Dug stories, with a different angle brought each time. A partial list of talent is as follows (additional talent to be announced):
- Raynato Castro (Buttersafe)
- Jeff “Chamba” Cruz (ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)
- Javier Charro (Soul & Sword)
- Brian Clevinger (Atomic Robo)
- Mike Costa (Smoke and Mirrors)
- Alex Culang (Buttersafe)
- Omar Dogan (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
- Joey Esposito (Footprints)
- Greg Fisher (Vivian)
- Dax “D-Gee” Gordine (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
- Dean Haspiel (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
- Marko Head (Vivian)
- Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade)
- JJ Kirby (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
- Mike Krahulik (Penny Arcade)
- Erik Ko (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
- Scott Kurtz (PVP)
- Nick Langley (Rocket Llama)
- David Maliki (Wondermark)
- Ben McCool (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
- Matt Melvin (Cyanide & Happiness)
- R. K. Milholland (Something Positive)
- Matt Moylan (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
- Hoang Nguyen (Carbon Grey)
- Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)
- Robert “Robaato” Porter (Title to be announced Summer 2012)

- Krishna Sadasivam (PC Weenies)
- Elliott Serrano (Geek to Me)
- Edmund Shern (ShiftyLook’s Scar)
- Kris Staub (chainsawsuit)
- J. Torres (Power Lunch)
- Zach Weiner (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
- J. N. Wiedle (Helvetica)
- Marv Wolfman (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
- Jim Zub (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo, ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)
It was an honor to be invited to participate, and I hope you guys will check back on their site to see my contribution. You can visit NAMCO BANDAI’s ShiftyLook website for more info, and make sure to listen to their inaugural podcast while you’re at it.
-Krishna
