Focused
Pen & Ink on Bristol, colored in Photoshop
2010

And yes, I really do rest my chin on my left arm like that when I'm drawing at my table, it helps reduce neck-strain when I hunch over my paper.

What exactly IS this thing?

Steve Jobs started his pitch by describing the two current prongs of their mobile initiative: phones and laptops. These are two extremes, with more differences than similarities. They run different operating systems, have different developer kits. One is a true computer, the other is a very ambitious telephone. The laptops have a powerful, flexible OS, integrated keyboards, wi-fi, massive hard drives, massive processors, and massive power needs. The phones, on the other end, have a concentrated OS, with the focus on minimal interfaces, and limited but targeted functionality: apps on the iPhone don't usually do very much, but they do it well and efficiently. Laptop applications, especially ones that have been around for a while (I'm looking at you, Adobe Creative Suite) have terrible legacy-bloat and memory management, gobbling up RAM and hard drive space like Junior Mints at a double-feature.

This promise of a new product channel, fitting somewhere between these two, bridging this gap between hardware-enabled bloat and a limited but focused micro-machine, is something I'd been looking forward to. Sadly, what we got was simply a souped-up iPod Touch.

Yes, it's basically an iPod Touch, but with a bigger screen

Ebook readers have been the rage among the uber-nerdy tech users for years now, but the Amazon Kindle really lit a fire under this nacent market. And since its release, tech prognosticators have been seeing the imminent release of a challenger from Apple. Longtime Apple users like myself, however, have been hoping for a tablet-computing solution from Apple ever since we saw the ModBook debut at MacWorld 2007. With its Wacom-enabled screen, this after-market iBook modification had some serious drool-factor, and it remains the only authorized tablet form-factor featuring Mac OS X. The Modbook compromises none of the functionality of the iBook (and now MacBook) hardware that it's built on, except the loss of the integrated keyboard, but that was no matter to me since I've been using an external keyboard with my laptop for years now anyway. This is essentially the hardware I was personally hoping for from today's event - a superportable laptop with pressure-sensitive stylus input (as well as the multi-touch technology that is so handy), and the ability to double as a second monitor for another computer, a widescreen video and dvd player, and since it could run any of the great eBook and comics reading applications currently available for the Mac (including the Kindle's own software, someday), it would automatically be the best eBook reader on the market.

The device revealed by Apple this morning has many shortcomings when compared with other tablets on the market. But the biggest fault, in my opinion, is that it's been tied to the iPhone OS. This smaller, sleeker OS was designed for the limited storage and processing power available on the portable phones. It wasn't designed for larger applications. The operating system alone is enough to push this device closer to the iPhone than the laptop on the spectrum of portable devices - sleek and speedy, but with limited flexibility of function.

The design of the iPad, it seems to me, is practically an acknowledgment from Apple that the iPhone and iPod Touch are simply not good enough for doing a lot of what people are doing with them. Watching TV and video from the iTunes store, reading the news feeds, even browsing basic websites - the iPhone is so bad at doing these things that Apple felt they needed to introduce a new device just for them. Because at its core, that's exactly what the iPad is: a device for doing the things that are too cumbersome to do on your phone. It's certainly not powerful enough to do any heavy computing. And based on the screen specs, with its 1024x768 pixel resolution, I feel the closest laptop comparison that could be made would be with a mid-2000's iBook (and even then, the iPad would be found lacking).

Some friends of mine were arguing today that the beauty of the iPad is not what it's capable of today, but what it'll be capable of in five, ten years. Sadly, though, I fear that as long as it's saddled with this operating system, it's never really going to be capable of much more than it already is. One of my problems with this is that I feel like the technology exists to make the iPad so much better than it is, why does it feel like we just took a giant step backward? Excepting the iPhone OS and the multitouch interface, I don't see anything about the iPad that couldn't have been rolled out four or five years ago.

I'm not only complaining about the iPad, though. For what it is, and for the apps that were shown off today, it looks phenomenal. I do believe that Apple can do, with their iBooks app and store, for books and magazines what they've managed to do for music and movies with their iTunes store. I fully intend to develop a digital version of Ellie Connelly for this device, once I'm able to pick one up. My disappointment lies completely in the fact that the iPad is not the Tablet Computer for which some of us have been hoping for the last several years, but rather an iPod Touch, a device that merely aspires to be better than my phone. And at that it only succeeds because of its larger screen.

If you disagree with me, and want to prove me wrong, feel free to send me an iPad! I'll gladly check it out and see in what ways it's as good as (if not better than) my MacBook.

I'm excited to announce that my piece, 'A Visit With Hades' has been selected as one of only 48 to appear as part of the Monsters & Dames benefit book being released at this year's Emerald City Comicon! This beautiful hardcover volume is a follow-up to last year's successful book, and will be limited to only 850 copies. Proceeds from sales of the book go to benefit the Seattle Children's Hospital, and I believe some of the original artwork from the book will also be available at auction during the Comicon. I'm happy to be able to be part of this great book with so many other excellent cartoonists and illustrators. And I hope to see you come up to ECCC so I can sign your copy!

The full details of the book and all the contributing artists (along with some preview images!) can be found right here!

The second in my Muppet Mikado series, Miss Piggy as Yum-Yum, a vain little Japanese schoolgirl and romantic object of both Nanki-Poo and KoKo. Drawn completely in Photoshop, I finished coloring this image in a live Artcast on Ustream.

It's my birthday, so I'm celebrating by starting the Lunarbistro.com holiday sale! Between now and the end of 2009, you can get 20% off your entire purchase, and if you order by December 14th it should even arrive in time for Christmas (domestic shipments only). No new merchandise has been added, unfortunately, but if there's something in the store that you've had your eye on, now's a good time to pick it up, for yourself or a friend!

Someday I'll find a better way to announce these things than just posting it in the 'art blog'.

OMG PWN!ES
Sequential Art Gallery
Portland, OR
Dec. 3rd 2009, 6PM-10PM

This month my friends Kaebel, Merrick and I put together a Modified My Little Pony group show at Sequential Art Gallery here in Portland! Come by if you're in the neighborhood on this thursday night for the opening reception from 6-10! A bunch of the artists will be in attendance, and you can check out modified My Little Ponies by myself, Erika Moen, Lucy Knisley, Star St. Germain, Nubby Twiglet, and dozens of other artists! All ponies are priced for the holidays, and would make great gifts WINK WINK.

Here's an illustration I did for the Emerald City Comicon's annual Monsters & Dames benefit book which raises money for the Seattle Children's Hospital. I don't know yet whether my page will make it into this year's book or not, but I'm hopeful. If nothing else, I'll happily make a print out of this image at some point. Until then, enjoy this preview! Click on the image for a larger view.

This piece was created for a reader, Charles Raymond, in thanks for his helping spread the word about my webcomic, The Adventures of Ellie Connelly.

Because everybody knows, when you're an asparagus, you can never be too skinny.

I decided to use this as an excuse to try a different style of digital illo, playing around with some of the basic Photoshop brushes. Also, this is my beginning at an attempt at NaNoDrawMo! Wish me luck, I'm already several days behind.

A commission sketchcard for a good, old friend of mine. Hope he likes it!

I just posted this newly-completed Wallpaper image over at ellieconnelly.com, and thought I'd share it here as well. Well, the preview, anyway. The full image is available as an incentive when a reader votes for Ellie on the TopWebComics.com site.

I designed the image initially to be used in a new round of banner ads to promote the comic, and it occurred to me that the full image would work well as a desktop as well, and so here we are. You can see in the image below how the focal point was chosen based on some basic web-banner proportions. The two main characters, the arm holding the sword...

Frankly the image works better when you can see the whole thing, but I'm hoping it will still make for some dynamic banners.

So, my plan is to take a tip from the Jeff Fisher episode of Escape from Illustration Island, and turn my blog here at lunarbistro.com into more of a 'blog-folio'. I'll be posting work-in-progress, finished artwork (largely ancillary art for my webcomic, The Adventures of Ellie Connelly), sketches and studies for upcoming designs, and commission information for potential clients.

I will, however, need to pretty much scrap all of the current entries here at the blog. I'll try to be careful and find a way to move them all into a 'legacy' category, so nothing gets lost. And if the entry featured artwork or sketches, well, that'll just be moved into the appropriate category.

So, basically, look for some changes to take place here, and I'll try to make it as painless as possible!