It's a whole new world, sorta

Ah, the new site design is up and it looks like it's working well. Uh, well you can't see it here on this blog, it's over at my main site. I will be updating the blog pages to match, eventually, but that's not a huge priority at the moment. I need to redo the art portfolio site first!

That site work has taken a large part of the last 2 months... I bought some fancy store software, set up a forum, and gutted and reworked the whole site. I had to learn CSS and PHP on the fly while I did it, which was actually fun once I understood them. They make websites easy - once you lay the groundwork, which is time-consuming. Well, enough about that, you can go poke around the site at your leisure.

This weekend TGF and I are heading up north for her brother's wedding. That should be lots of fun, he's a class-A rocker dude and his fiancee is awesome. I'm sure TGF and I will get some nudging from The Parents about when it's going to be our turn... that's how these things work. We'll just smile and say "we'll see..." hehehehe. But it should be a nice weekend, I really like going up to visit her family, they are really wonderful people.

I got Van Halen tickets! For a show on my birthday! It's kind of weird to say that I bought VH tix, because the last time I did that was in January 1984, for a show in April at Madison Square Garden. I never saw VH with Sammy, because I just... well I couldn't stand most of their songs. A couple good ones, but they just didn't do it for me. I always thought, and still do, that Sammy is a great singer with a great voice, but I don't like his lyrics much, and I thought VH went soft with him in the band. Listen to OU812 and then listen to Fair Warning, you'll see. Anyway, I'm actually feeling positive about this new/old lineup; Dave seems to have finally reigned in the ringmaster act, at least enough to be humble and cool and merely calmly confident about the band and how they've been rehearsing and training for the tour. I hope it's not a front, and that they're really having a good time and getting along, and that the show will be really great.

That's it for now, I guess... back to work...

Where The Hell Have I Been??

Seriously, I haven't blogged here since the end of MAY?? WTF is wrong with me?

Sigh.

I've been a busy boy, as always, and haven't really been in the blogging sort of mood much. Right now I'm at Wumpskate and I don't have any caricatures to do, so why not type a bit, and put up some brief news and updates.

Well... where to start? What's been going on since May?

I already talked about the games we released earlier this year. I guess they sold all right, but they were pretty much thoroughly slagged by the critics, and not without reason. I think they were less fair than they might have been, but I had friends over to play the games and quite a bit of what the reviewers were unhappy with was true. Ah well... happens a lot with franchise games. There's almost never enough time in the schedule to make them better than "average."

This year's trip to San Diego Comic Con was at a much smaller scale than the last few times. I only went down by myself for Saturday and Sunday, did not set up for selling or caricatures (though I was at the Bloodfire booth for a good bit of both days), didn't get myself a hotel room (crashed with my buddy Sonny), and thus I saved myself roughly $1,200. Yeah, doing SD the way I'd been doing it was very expensive, and I don't have enough of a name or enough of my own merch to make a profit there at this point. So I had fun, didn't feel all stressed, and was still able to do some decent schmoozing and enjoyable events.

Since I saved all that money, I can afford to go to Wizard World Texas, which was so successful for me 3 years ago - it's the only "major" comic con that has been nicely profitable for me (Bats Day is great that way, but not a comic con - more about it later). To be fair, a lot of the reason it works well financially is that I can stay with Sonny, who lives near Dallas, thus saving me the cost of a hotel and rental car - but these sorts of conveniences are what comics careers are built upon! :)

Once again Sonny and I will be sharing a table in the Artist's Alley section, where I'll be doing caricatures and selling various comics and merchandise (more below on that too), while Sonny will be selling copies of his new TokyoPop manga graphic novel, "We Shadows," which is awesome!! You should buy it.

I'm in the process of redesigning the jeffzugale.com site - and it's about time. There will be a new layout, better navigation, lots more interesting things to look at, and I'll be opening a fully-functional online store, chock full of my stuff for sale. There will of course be comics, Kindergoth and Mystic For Hire as well as my Just A Bit Off... webcomic ashcans, and I'll finally be able to properly catalog and display the dozens of original comic pages and other bits of original art that I'd like to offer you.

I'll also have some new stuff: I've got a T-shirt now, which I sort of sneak previewed at the Bats Day Black Market; it's based on an upcoming comic which should debut the same day I open the store, which should be Sept. 20th. I have lots of ideas for t-shirts, so you can be sure I'll be making more of them - soon you will be able to clothe yourself almost exclusively from my store! Hehehe... nah just kidding. I probably won't have pants or underwear any time soon.

I'm also going to have sketch cards for sale. I've got a set of custom cards from Bloodfire, some of which I'll be able to sell from my site, plus I'm going to get some of my own custom cards printed up. I should be able to do a couple of them per month to put up for sale, plus I will have a way you can order them as commissioned pieces, unique art just for you. :)

Woops, Blogger is gonna go down at 11pm, so I'd better stop typing and post this.

I'll be back posting more news, I promise.