Weekly Art Experiment: God Told Me To.

There's a weird routine that I go through every week to guarantee that I end up painting something that I wouldn't ordinarily paint. After my weekly update, I vow to paint or draw the next thing or two that I hear or read someone request. This includes contests and guest strips. It actually keeps me not only busy with new stuff but routinely meeting new people online. It's a fun practice and it's introduced me to a lot of people I wouldn't ordinarily have a conversation with online. Sometimes the person likes it (like the art for the Webcomic Telethon), sometimes they don't (like my Guest comic for 8-bit Theater) . Lately I've been kind of lucky. Last week it was art for a band called Tin Soldier Empire and guest art for PCweenies, and this week it was a comic for Monkey Day and a guest comic for a small manga webcomic called Angel Reaper. I don't read Angel Reaper (or any Manga come to think of it), but when I googled "Comic Contest", that site showed up on the first page. So I took it as a sign.

Btw the band Tin Soldier Empire (a Nintendo Gloom group, that's my term for it) has already been fooling around with making flyer with my design. Here it is, if you're curious:

This afternoon I sat down to do a guest comic for the Angel Reaper project. I've been meaning to start experimenting with more "narrative" comics. While I like sticking to single frames, I'd like to pretend I can branch out from time to time. Angel Reaper actually had two contests going on. One was for a Guest Comic. I spent a few hours this evening and ended up creating this. While I don't think it's my best, maybe it'll bring you joy:

http://www.headinjurytheater.com/guestangelreaper.htm

The other contest was a "color the Lineart" contest. So I turned This:

Into this (by printing it out and painting it by hand):

Like I already said: It's fun to experiment, even if it is for someone or something you don't really know.

At any given time there are at least two dozen people/sites looking for guest art/comics or just out there making weird artistic requests. By diving into the first one or two I see, I'm sure to meet people. It doesn't matter if their site is popular or not. Hell, it doesn't even matter if I LIKE whatever it is they usually do. As long as I don't have to draw naughty bits, I'm wiling to paint whatever the Fates toss into my path. It also introduces me to new realms of the Internet that I wouldn't normally dive into. It's the closest I get to promoting this website, and it's less about promoting than it is making people happy and trying out new stuff. God that makes me sound like a huge hippy. Damn it. Nevermind.

Before I forget, you can find Tin Soldier Empire here: http://www.myspace.com/tinsoldierempire

and you can find the original Angel Reaper site here: http://comic.angelreaper.com/.

Until later, enjoy yourselves.

-jared

"who hopes he hasn't offended anyone with this Blog post"