Thursday, June 30, 2011

double whammy!

Okay, so I feel super bad about not having a comic up the past two weeks. I was swamped with things to do two weeks ago, and then last week my scanner broke. Everything is fixed now though, and to make it up to you, I made 2 comics this week!

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I will post 2 next week as well so that I am all caught up. The week after I will be away on a speaking engagement at a summer camp for the week, so I'll have to figure out whether they will let me post from camp, or whether I entrust someone here with my comic while I'm gone. Maybe I'll pull a penny-arcade and bring in a guest artist, who knows.

Once again, these strips are almost too close to reality. It wasn't the doctor who was shouting "Get Mad!" it was a feisty 4 foot nothin Philippino nurse. The advice didn't really help. All the nurses and doctors kept telling Sarah where to push (is there generally confusion about that? I don't know.) The way Sarah tells it, it wasn't that she didn't know where to push, or even when to push, it was the fact that she was flat on her back that gave her so much trouble. "Let gravity do it's thing!" she said afterward. And I agree.

It's really difficult to advocate for yourself and your medical options when your in the heat of things. One thing I will say, having kids gave me a spine (It's also slowly destroying my spine, but in a more physical, less symbolic way than I was implying previously.) All of a sudden I had the courage to tell off anyone who was getting all up in my families bid-ness. Maybe I should have had kids earlier. I wouldn't have been such a push over with my bell bill :P ha ha.

Apparently the doctor was talking to me while I was texting everyone we knew. I don't really remember, and if she was I'm sure I paid attention to her AND my cell phone.

It's funny, I think I was almost as excited for my comic strip babies to be borne than I was for my real life babies to be borne. I just have so many great moments that will lend themselves well to a comic strip, so now I have the oportunity to tell all of our stories. Should be some fun :)

Anywho, I think that's all from me. It's almost 1:30 am, and I should sleep before thing 1 and thing 2 wake up for food. See you next week.

-Jb

Friday, June 24, 2011

A Scanner Broken



My scanner broke. Comics will come. Just not this week. Sorry folks. In the meantime, here is a video of me playing guitar :) It's my acoustic version of "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Delayed

Sorry no comic today! I had to much to do this week. I will post one by the end of the day tomorrow though.

Jb

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Medical Science



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This doctor was dead set on Sarah having a C-section. She kept trying to talk us into it, and even after Sarah delivered Eli naturally, she wanted to do a C-section with Caleb (cause what woman wouldn't want to recover from both birth and surgery at the same time while trying to parent twins?) I think the strangest thing about Dr. "Levi" (name changed) was that she didn't do anything during the birth. Another doctor did all of the work while Dr. Levi stood by and watched. Afterward, Sarah was wheeled out to recovery and I was left to take off my scrubs with the doctors. The doctor who did all the work says

"Excellent work Dr. Levi!"

and Dr. Levi says "Thank you." and walks away. Not "thank you, you as well." not "Thank you, but you did most of the work" not even "well we should all be proud. I was a team effort." Just "thank you." I wanted to slap her.

Overall that hospital was a terrible experience and we won't be going back there for any future births.

I feel like I'm getting better at posting comics, this might be the third or fourth week that I've actually gotten it up on time. As for my other posts (the monday/wednesday post) I blame the twins for that. Who has time to write anything? I'm going to keep trying. I actually have things I want to post those days, it's just a matter of getting around to it.

Well. That's all I got tonight. Time for bed. sweet dreams.

Jb

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Be Careful What You Wish For...



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This really happened. It didn't happen exactly like this, but this is more or less how it went down. To be fair, I said things like this pretty much everyday for the last month of her pregnancy.

"I don't want to work today. Can you go eat some Indian food and shovel the walk so that you go into labour and I can leave early?"

"Rent is due. How about going into labour and getting us an extension?"

"It's Tuesday today. Labour anyone?"

Call me a bad husband. I call it hilarious. I think the stupidest thing that happened that day (and there was a lot...) was that I beat the ambulance to the hospital by 15 minutes. AND they left 15 minutes before me. AND they forgot to call in that they were coming. So I'm waiting at the hospital for 15 minutes yelling at nurses and doctors saying "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE A SARAH BAKER HERE? SHE'S HAVING TWINS! I'M MISSING THE BIRTHS OF MY SONS!" The next few weeks will be hilariously chronicling one of the most difficult times in our lives. I hope you enjoy our discomfort :)

Vector Imaging
You know how I was saying I haven't yet got the hang of my new program? here's what I mean:
It's not terrible, and I feel like I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with Inkscape, but as you can see the edging is much thicker, and the definition in the drawing is more crude and unrefined. colouring is another issue, I don't mean the different colours in the different pictures, but I mean adding colour in general. Inkscape doesn't want to fill in the lines, it just wants to make a rough vector shape of the colour I want inside the lines, but not touching the lines. I got them to touch in this picture through some kind of old world voodoo involving a chicken and Al Roker... or I expanded the barrier of colourization or something. If anyone has any pointers I welcome them!

Honourable Mention
This is Joel. He and his wife Lynn were supposed to be in an earlier issue where Joel tries to get Sarah to go into labour simply so that he has an interesting evening by being present. That actually happened too. We were all out for sushi and Joel kept mentioning how he hoped it happened that night so that he'd have an interesting story for Monday or something. Out of spite Sarah waited until the next day. I didn't ever end up making that strip because I couldn't make it as funny as I wanted it to be. I haven't drawn Lynn yet either. I'm okay making Joel look like crap, but I'd feel bad if that happened to Lynn, so I'm taking more time on hers. They should be making cameos in future strips.

This particular post is making me realize how Canadian I am. All the "U's" in words like "colour" and "labour" are coming out as spelling errors on this spell check. ha ha, oh well.

That's all I have for now. I will try and remember to blog something on Monday. Ciao!

Jb

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Art



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When you have twins all the days run together. I can never keep track of what day it is, which is the only explanation for why I keep realizing I'm supposed to be blogging right as I'm going to bed on the days that my blog is "due" (I say "due" because they are days I've imposed on myself). I do plan on having a new comic up on Friday, and yes, the rumours are true: Sarah will be going into labour! (in the comic. babies have been here for a while in real life). I realized I have so much more post-pregnancy material than I do pre-pregnancy material. And even most of the pre-pregnancy material I have works post-pregnancy too. so here they come!

I'm still getting the hang of my new vector graphics program. It still is not perfected so for now I'm still using illustrator. I'll post a comparison later today so you can see the difference between what I'm able to do currently with each program. I assume I can do most of the same stuff with inkscape (that's the new program) I'm just having issues with the tracing option. Illustrator's "live trace" and "live paint" options give the artist god-like drawing capabilities. whereas inkscapes potrace option is more limiting at the moment. Inkscape is definitely better for free design though. I am making a poster today for a coffee house we are doing at church, and I'm going to use inkscape over illustrator.

That's all I got for now.

SAMMICH!

jb