D.J. Coffman – Sequential Artist, Thinker

Long time no speak! – As always if you’re looking for regular updates on my life, follow me on twitter. http://twitter.com/djcoffman

I have a lot going on and a lot on my mind. Here we go!….

CROSSROADS: This year feels like a giant crossroads in my life, both personal and professional. On the professional side, I’ve sort of divorced myself from the comic book industry a bit. Maybe we will remarry some day, or get together for lunch, but the events of last year leading into a really bad winter for me left me kinda disillusioned about the whole process. Sure, there are the “shoulda, woulda, coulda” crowd who email me (and thanks for your words), but I guess the truth is, I spent a good amount of time pouring my soul and LOVE of comics into a thing (Hero By Night) which is now pretty much locked away in corporate land. Over time, that feeling has really taken the wind out of my sails and I’ve felt a bit defeated and depressed.- But yes, that whole ordeal really took my “love” of comics away. For a long time, this made me sad, but I’m over it.

I nearly lost EVERYTHING.

I still have the desire and love to draw comics. I just don’t want to play “the game” right now.

My work for the Flobots has been… well, amazing. If I laid out the sheer amount of work I’ve done (web design, graphics, layout, new media planning, etc) I can’t believe it’s just ME doing it. And in the time I’m doing it in as well! I don’t stop to think about it often, but it is pretty darn amazing. And I can’t say enough how REFRESHING it is for my soul to know such GOOD people who want to change the world… and are doing so in the process. I think just knowing them and learning from their messages and purpose, I’ve actually transformed myself for the better. Little by little, whatever had poisoned my soul, has been sucked out.

FAMILY. Last but definitely not least… my family! Watching kids grow is amazing. It can be sad too sometimes.  This past six months has been a real transforming era for my inner circle, my wife and children. My wife has had her own crazy awesome transformation with Roller Derby, and watching that and supporting that has been lots of fun. I’m always a bit shocked to hear that other spouses don’t support the other gals as well. I’m fascinated by the things that I hear come out of my children’s mouths, or how fast they can pick up on things and learn. My one son watches youtube and crafts crazy origami and even has learned to play a little guitar. He’s a natural talent engine. My oldest boy is a walking history almanac, AND a walking Star Wars almanac as well.  The youngest son is CRAZY. Not sure where he’s going to land yet, but I have a feeling he’s going to be a real ladies man and charmer. He’s also a real spitfire of temper…. flaming red hair. But don’t call it “red” , he will exclaim “IT’S NOT RED, IT’S ORANGE!!!!” – I think all of my authority problems entered into him, so that’s going to be fun to deal with as he grows. At least he has ME to guide him.

VACATION! – From July 12th-July19th I’ll be on my first REAL adult vacation with the family. We’re headed down to Myrtle Beach. Gonna soak up some sun, meaning my pale cartoonist/hermit skin will likely be baked to a crisp! – But I’m REALLY looking forward to recharging my batteries and figuring out HOW to relax for a week. My wife assures me that she will show me how. I know a big part of it consists of NO WORK, and no internet. But I will be twittering from the iphone and sending photos to my Facebook profile. — This is not only the first REAL family vacation, but it’s nice that it was actually planned well in advance when there was still snow on the ground… we decided to pinch our pennies and make this happen. It’s been fun watching the boys save their money as well. My youngest son can’t believe he has 61 dollars in cash, not to mention the “credit” line they’ve been building. We’re also going to stop on the way back to spend time with some family in Raleigh, NC too. I’m looking forward to the road trip. It’s about a 10.5 hour drive. Never looked forward to one of those before. A good start!

Random things on a Sunday.

LIFE: Last night my wife and I headed down to the Steel City Derby Demons matchup against the Ohio Roller Girls. The first bout with Pittsburgh’s B-UNIT team was a close one, but the girls rallied in the last 7 seconds on a jam to beat Team Gangrene from Ohio. A classic Pittsburgh style upset that was AWESOME to experience. This was a much more physical game than the last bouts we went to, on both sides.  The big STEEL HURTIN team took on the Ohio Roller Girls, and it was a much closer match as well and way more physical. The refs didn’t seem to be “on” much and missing a TON of elbows and illegal hand moves by #23 of the Ohio Girls. I still don’t know a TON about Roller Derby rules, but just watching that shit it was pretty apparent that chick was playing dirty. It was good to see our team being professionals though and not just retaliating, and when they did it was with LEGAL moves, like a hard ass block by Betty Bonecrusher, or Damage Dahl stopping people with her ass. Highly entertaining. — My wife has two weeks until the tryouts, and she’s stoked. I can totally see her out there doing it up, she has amazing endurance and balance. I can’t wait! From what I’ve heard it’s not some easy process either, you can’t just show up, skate and be on a team, there’s a long process of tests and training which sorts out the women from the girls I would imagine. My wife is fully dedicated to doing whatever it is she has to do, for however long, but I know she just wanted to pop on some skates last night and go lay the smackdown on that #23. God help whoever her hips collide with.

FOOD: … my diet has been weird lately. I think my tastebuds have just changed up overnight without even realizing. I’ve heard this happens at different times in our lives, and this was the first time it happened and I realized it plain as day. I’m a meat eater and love the thought of an awesome steak or chargrilled whatever…. but suddenly I had a burger or something and it had a bad aftertaste to me. I thought it was a fluke, and the next time I had roast beef or something, and SAME THING. The aftertaste I can’t describe, but it was sort of akin to DEATH. Like if you’ve ever smelled that death smell and it sort of really gets in your nose and taste buds? Almost strong enough to make me a little nauseous and sick. So I’ve been avoiding red meat. LAst night we went to Denny’s after the bout and I had a SLAM Burger, because I was completely retarded and when it showed up, I felt like I was going to puke. I ate the meat and the egg, and same thing… bad aftertaste. Nauseous. I sat thinking about Morgan Spurlock in the Super Size me movie explaining how he felt after eating the meat… — And on the flip side? I’ve been eating Shrimp, which I would NEVER do before. I really really hated seafood. I didn’t like the texture of shrimp before, and now I don’t mind it. I also haven’t had a tuna fish sandwich in probably 20 years. I make it for the kids and I’m usually repulsed by Tuna, but today I figured, what the hell, and tried some on wheat toast and it was awesome.

I guess I’m just sort of listening to my own body and not just my brain. My brain ordered that sloppy ass burger, and my body was like DUDE, HELL NO!

Another crazy thing. I’ve cut down my coffee intake. Yeah, unbelievable, I know. If you know me, you know coffee is like my FUEL. I always have a big 16oz or 20oz mug full of the black stuff nearby. But lately, i’ve been using the Senseo one cup maker, and I use to even make 2 CUPS at a time to fill a big mug, but now I’m using this cool glass double insulated mug, that LOOKS big, but it’s actually 80zs. I’m drinking less, and saving money actually getting one cup per pod, instead of 2 pods per big ass cup. The funny thing is, I didn’t plan any of this, it just kinda happened. I’ve been regulating my intake of food to smaller portions and just feeling satisfied when my body says “Yo, we’re all good!”– Same thing with avoiding sodas and crap, very rarely if at all will I drink a soda unless. And same goes for candy and chocolate. Shit, I even bought fat free icecream for the family about 2 weeks ago, and it still EXISTS in my fridge. So, I guess I’m pretty happy with all of this. I’m finally listening to my body and it’s rewarding me in many ways.

Workwise: I’m coming out of my “fuck it” mode when it comes to work stuff. You see, as I wrote before, I’d become a complete workaholic filling all my time with projects, probably so I wouldn’t have to THINK about things that were bugging me. Not the answer. Had I stayed on that path, I probably would have ruined everything that was REALLY important to me, my family. So I’ve been spending a lot more time with my wife while she’s been off of work, and it really feels like I’ve been missing that. We’ve had family dinners almost every night, something we didn’t do for years. But I am aware I owe some people some art, tons of 2 dollar drawings (which you can get a refund on if you want!) And I’m just going to do my best on my end to get as much done as I can without destroying my real life. Putting in work hours instead of ALL HOURS.  I will get all the Will Draws done in the order they came in though with time.

My main focus workwise will be with the Flobots, who have above all else, really changed my life and don’t even really know it. (well, maybe they do) – But I’ve woken up, activated, transformed, and now doing my best to step up.  I’m very proud to be working with such great people, and being able to call them friends. Their music, and the personal conversations have really led me into deep thoughts about a lot of things missing in my life. We can’t change the world if we can’t change ourselves first. And you might not have to go change the world or run a big revolution– it might be as simple as writing letter to your brother. Helping  neighbor. Making your kids do chores. — ANYWAYS… expect much more Flobot stuff coming from me. The comic will update this week, either in black and white or with a new colorist. I’m no longer going to try to kill myself doing things I’m not happy doing, and coloring isn’t one of my strong suits. I can do it, but my colors are always pretty “poppy” and vibrant, and it’s not what I envision for this series. I’ve talked with my old friend Jason Embury who colored HBN, and while I can’t afford to pay him a page rate to help out, we’re aiming on a trade of services where I’ll help him produce and develop his own creations in exchange for my services. I look forward to being able to focus on just my black and white linework and trying to make myself a better sequential artist.

I had something else come up this week. A phonecall out of the blue, which I can’t talk about right now in detail, but it was AWESOME. It’s funny when someone’s work you admire, I mean, you REALLY admire, calls you up to compliment you–  I guess the only hint I could give of how crazy mind-melted I am is that this will be both FLOBOT related and in a round about sort of way, related to Pearl Jam, my #1 favorite band and music EVER. The universe completely melted my mind the other day,  and I had to lay down and NAP it out after my brain would not shut off about the possibilities for cool stuff.

I’m helping out some new friends with their comic project and I was asked to critique and give feedback, or pointers on using the Cintiq screen and Photoshop to draw comics. Instead of typing up a tutorial, I sat down this morning and filmed this 25 minute video which includes tips, techniques and a look at how I approach a comic book page. There is no guidebook on how to use this new tool, so over the past three years of creating comics on it, I’ve sort of come up with my own approach, and I hope it inspires others. The Wacom Cintiq people should pay me a commission for the amount of these things I’ve sold for them and they have no idea! That or send me some free swag, Wacom! hah! (call me!)

Drawing Comics with Cintiq from D.J. Coffman on Vimeo.

I made this 4 minute video showing the different steps of how a custom card gets made, and also showing you the band member’s cards which were given to them last summer. You can also check out a gallery of finished bot cards which have some not seen in this video.

I’ll be producing these original art cards over at http://flobots.net/tales – They will be available for order to the public on Monday-ish in two levels. Regular, and Custom. Regular cards are randomly assigned numbers and designs and will cost $50. Custom cards you can choose your own Flobot number (above 102 and up if available) and also choose your own characteristics to go with your bot character, perhaps your Flobot is a busdriver in the future, a soldier, or likes snowboarding or riding a bike with no handlebars? If you know the “model” type you’d like as well, you can select what model style you’d want.  The custom cards will run $100. Proceeds will go toward supporting the comic AND raising money for the non-profit FightWithTools.org which is building up street teams around the country committed to making change in their communities- I like to think of them as little bands of heroes doing good all over the place, finding a need and meeting it. – These also are not just regular old sketchcards, your Flobot Number will be important in the future for neat things the band or I dream up–trust me, there are tons of ideas floating around.  –

If you’d like to pre-order cards from now until it launches to the public, you can paypal me your order along with any details at djcoffman@gmail.com- For custom cards, please input 3 of your your favorite numbers starting at 102 and up in the order you’d like it assigned if the number is not available. Thanks.

You can also check out a gallery of finished bot cards which have some not seen in this video.

I’m proud to announce that the first “issue” of the new Flobots story is now complete and ready to read online. LINK. - I’m taking a week off of the update schedule (mon-wed-fri) in order to get a TINY buffer to the colorist, Brandon J. Carr, AND to work out details on the custom Flobot sketchcards that will tie directly into the story, give people their own Flobot number, and some other neat things. I’m super excited about this next step, as it’s what I envisioned happening back in July, and now I’m finally seeing it come together.

So that’s that. Go read it. Tell your friends, etc etc.

Over in my personal life…

My Derby Wife…. It looks like my wife is going to attempt to join the Steel City Derby Demons (Roller Derby)– She wanted to last fall, but I wasn’t very supportive of the idea, fearing that, well, she’d fall and break something. But it’s something that has nagged her and she’s wanted to try out, AND the universe has a weird way of serving up what you really want, even if you try to avoid it. Case in point… About a week ago, I got an email about a completely unrelated issue, that ended up with me landing at the Derby Demons site and the announcement that tryouts were very soon and I brought this up to my wife. THEN, my wife went to Pittsburgh for a Lasik surgery consultation exam, and she had put on her application that she’d like to try Roller Derby as a contact sport… turns out, the friggin eye doctor is a member of the Demons…. Get out of here! — So, fate is calling my wife to be a Derby Demon. While I’m still worried that she’ll fall and get hurt, there is also something a bit alluring to me about my wife on rollerskates and a mini-skirt, knocking other girls on their asses. I’m sure she’ll be a natural at it.

Tonight we’re going to a roller rink as a family… which, uh… I haven’t been on skates since I was 10 years old, and I wasn’t very good at it then. I’ll give it a try. Do they even let 33 year old fat guys ON rollerskates these days? — I am mentally prepared to fall and break my hip like an old man.

Say what you will about my family. I guess we’re a bit eclectic. Oh the stories we’ll be able to tell when we’re 90 years old. Grandma was a Derby Demon and Grandpa drew robots!

Indeed.

My wife and I are back from the trip to Denver. I must first say that Denver Colorado might be one of the friendliest places I’ve ever been. I guess it also helps to have awesome friends there already, but every new person we met was wonderful. There were a couple times I felt like I might be “crashing” someone’s party because I wasn’t officially invited, but my wife and i were welcomed with open arms and hugs.

We were staying with Andy Guerrero and his wife Annie. Yeah, Andy is the awesome guitarist of the Flobots, but I’d like to inform those who may not know that he is just a very energetic, gracious, humble and postive person. Like the other members of the Flobots, he gets really jazzed knowing that they’re actually doing something positive with their music and beyond the music with their non-profit organization and the conference being held out there last week. Tons of people came in from all over the country for the official meetings and planning for 2009. Andy and I hashed out a lot of business plans and goals which are going to ROCK and my brain won’t stop thinking about. — But my wife and i also got to relax a good bit…

Keep in mind, my wife and i have never really been on a vacation of any kind. She’s never been on a plane before (she did well! although she still dislikes it!) – . So this trip was a little bit of business and pleasure, and it was just good to relax, (we’re pretty easy to entertain) and know that we didn’t have to be anywhere, and it’s the first time we’ve ever had our kids away from us for a week too. While we missed them for sure, it was just nice to sit down and take a deep breathe and have good laughs and conversations. My wife and I have been on what seems like a non-stop journey these past 12 years, working hard and raising kids and building our core family here. Anyways, I couldn’t have asked for nicer hosts than Annie and Andy. I have to echo the previous statement that I sure wish we lived closer to everyone because it would be great to grab dinner with them or have movie nights or xbox live nights more often and just… CHILL.

I got to witness some hilarious “celebrity” moments hanging out with Andy, which he assures me doesn’t happen all the time, but he’s very humble about it. Without going into details I can tell you that they often went like this. Someone would ask our plans for New Years, and they’d say “Are you going to see the Flobots” — and Andy would kind of just shake his head like “kinda?” — because he really can’t go to watch himself when he’s actually playing in the band, ha!- But then it would come up usually by someone else that he’s the guitarist and then said person would turn super red in embarrasment… then they would of course ask for tickets to the show. I’d just shake my head in wonder watching these things happen. – I will brag that I got my iphone hooked up with “bullet proofing” coating, and I was willing to pay for it too, but Andy knew the guy at the shop who did his phones, so when I came back to pick it up my phone not only had the coating but a nice new hardcase as well– when I went to reach for my wallet the guy says “no charge” — So that was my one ENTOURAGE moment I guess, (I felt like TURTLE getting the designer shoes.) – Seriously, that was cool as hell. I’m getting that guy a sketchcard or some art for sure!

Onto business though… While I didn’t get to hang out at the actual Fight With Tools conference every day I was there for the technology conference. It was great meeting a lot of the Street Teamers from around the country, and Seth and Shannon (board members of the non-profit) organized this conference really well. My side of things is more of getting the actual tools to work for everyone on the tech side. I’ll be making FightWithTools.org a little better functionality wise and content wise. Up until this point I’ve really only been involved with the websites for the band and the main non-profit site, not the FWT community site. I’m all about saving the organization money, there really is no need to spend a ton of money developing a new network from scratch when we can tweek up the one we’re using. It’s a NING community site, so I’ve been studying up on the developers network for NING and doing some homework and making notes here this morning on ways to make the site much more functional, easier ways to group people for activities…  while most people would likely find these things tedious, I actually find them kinda fun. It’s like technical problem solving.

The 30th and the 31st we went to the actual Flobots concerts at the Gothic Theatre. At just about every Flobots show I’ve been to, I like to sit back and absorb the crowd energy and soak it in. For one, it’s a bit surreal to look out at a crowd wearing the bandannas or shirts I designed. I’m being introduced to people who have heard of me, but they ask exactly what it is I do, and they’re wearing a shirt I drew while asking me. “Well, I drew the shirt you’re wearing!” — ha! — But I look out at these Street Team people at the shows, and sitting in groups and classes at the conference, I see that fire and passion they have for going out and making real change. I see them as little groups of “heroes” — like the Flobot lyric goes “We need heroes, build them…” — And the Flobots have done a damn good job of building up these heroes. — I sort of like being the “WATCHER” like character, and being able to give help on the technical side, give them those kind of tools to communicate and organize. And now there are some cool plans to possibly give individual groups their own poster or designs for their own fundraising efforts in their areas. So much stuff planned that I don’t want to talk about yet…. I just have to get to doing it, and I’m sort of taking the ball myself and just going to make these things happen. I couldn’t think of a better place to be on midnight than with my wife at a Flobots show, and then surrounded by some of the most gracious people on the planet. Denver rocks.

So here we are…. 2009. I laughed this morning in bed thinking… what was I doing 10 years ago? 1999? Zombieopolis and Yirmumah. I miss doing those. I realized I’ve been himhawing around for 10 years while I did “other things” and Z has been on the backburner. Yirmumah always is and always will be it seems. I had a funny Yirmumah moment at a get-together party in Denver. One of Andy’s old friends was big into comics and reads webcomics. So I asked him what his favorite webcomic was… he said ATLAND, which I then said I’ve known Nate Piekos forever and fully endorse his fonts. This impressed said person, so I said, yeah, I was even in a group called “PV COMICS” with him, and this guy remembered that! He asked what comic I did… I sort of squirmed a little bit and said… Uh, Yirmumah… — and the guy lit up and laughed, stood back and sort of took me in like he couldn’t believe I was the guy. And he said “Suddenly I’m standing here thinking about spitting cobras and llamas and…” — That was surreal. It made my night and it made me miss Yirmumah a good bit too.

I guess if I had to choose on other thing to do in 2009, it would be Yirmumah or Zombieopolis. I’m taking polls of my friends. So far the votes seem to be split. Zombieopolis is more of a tongue in cheek B-Movie thing, which does feature “Drew, Bob, Calypso” but only in crazy exagerated ways. And Yirmumah is always great, but it always seems to get me in trouble, like a bad split personality or tourettes syndrome. Maybe Yirmumah would be a fun balance since I’m already doing some serious stuff with the Flobots comics…. It’s fun to think about these things in early January. A new year always seems like a fresh start…. this year especially.

Happy New Years to everyone….

Looking back on 2008….

The scariest thing that happened to me in 2008 was that I nearly lost everything I had built since 2006. My job, my work, my house…. there was a big season of “not fun times.” But I found out who my true friends were during the tough times, and I’m lucky to have a great wife and family here that really helped to push me through some tough times. The full 4000 word blog is beyond the MORE tag…

Read more

I’ve been reading the likes of Hugh McLeod and Seth Godin for a long time. I think I like their thinking so much because I found people who think like I do.  In my bookmarks section I don’t have them listed as “bloggers”, just “thinkers” – -  Anyways… Hugh’s blog especially, and the journey he’s been on has been great. His pondering and coining of the phrase “social object” (at least I believe he coined that?) – has been a really fascinating conversation to watch unfold over the years. I’ve made it sort of a game to ask myself what do I have going that is a true “social object” – You know, the COMICS themselves or running a regular comic page isn’t enough. It’s not REALLY an object. And a printed comic book, sure, that COULD be a social object, but how many conversations does it start? Not many, and it’s only within a select group of people (comic book effeciandos) — so no, comics aren’t enough…

This brings me to the FLOBOTS, who I’ve been working with on a variety of things (comics, merchandise, websites, whatever they need) – Now, for me personally, it was the message in their music that brought me in. My “social journey” with the band began when I heard the song “Handlebars” on Sirius Satelite radio, before it “blew up” – it mentioned “comic books” and lead me to check out their full album…. which their full album just totally BLEW ME AWAY. Before even seeing the album cover and the American Flag bandanas they were sporting, I was already hooked on the message in the music. It was a total bonus to see provacative type imagery on the posters for their May 20th release of “Fight With Tools” you had lead Emcee Jonny 5 wearing his bandana in front of a microphone stand, pointing to the future… calling back to the lyrics “I can lead a nation with a microphone”

I’ll fast forward through the “social journey” part of working with the Flobots. That story is pretty amazing in and of itself and worthy of further discusssion at a later date. I’m coining that phrase right now though! “Social Journey” — , But the point of this entry is the BANDANA as a social object study.

Why is it a social object? Well it sparks conversations… tons of them! Both good and bad. We’ve heard from all types of people… old and young… military and civilian. Conversations sparked on the webcomic site about if wearing the flag was a “desecration” of it… some people asked “why are you hiding your faces!” — and many great conversations sparked from it at as well. And beyond talking, people found them on their own, and put them on and it motivated them to do good, wearing them at voter registration drives put on by Flobots.org Street Teams and other events. Hundreds marched with them on during the DNC, and in support of the Iraqi War Veterans…. all along I kept thinking about what a powerful social obect they had, and it wasn’t because THEY chose it to be this way on purpose… the people chose it.

The band was very busy touring all over the place. They had a couple shirts at their merchandise table, but no bandanas for sell. The demand for these bandanas was THROUGH THE ROOF. We got more email and myspace comments about “how do I get a bandana” than just about anything else. At the shows, Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit explain to you what the wearing of the flag means to them… that it is not the flag of the past, it’s the flag of the future. I’ve even heard them say how they kind of wanted to “reclaim” the flag and make it stand for something good. I took that as meaning in part, that you can’t just go buy a little car flag sticker or window cling and slap it on your car and call yourself a patriot because you took part in the consumer experience. For me personally, I’d got a little sick of the weird patriotism that lead us into wars. People with American Flag Stickers with slogans that say “These colors don’t run!” or tough guy phrases.

Again, the demand for these bandanas was pretty high. The band themselves didn’t want to just put out a bandana and sell it for a profit, they could have probably pretty easily sold out and had branded “Flobots” bandanas at MALL kiosks this holiday season (as we speak!) — They wanted it to be special or do good if they did do it. They featured the bandanas again in the video for RISE, at the AmericaWillBe.org website. They had a ton of leftover bandanas from the RISE video shoot that they would give out personally to fans at the shows. Even off of their own chests or back pockets. Little did they know this only made the demand grow for these things. Starting MORE conversations about “how do I get one!” — Jonny 5 loved this, and we had a discussion about how cool it was that if you got one, you got it directly from them at a show.

They didn’t want to just put these bandanas at their merchandise tables at shows without them being special. So how could we make these social objects that were in high demand SPECIAL….

Screenprint something on them to make them branded as “official” Flobots Bandanas. But not just the logo…something else. This brought up questions again if it was even right to print anything on top of a flag. But this wasn’t a FLAG, it was a bandana. And one side was actually sort of whitish and not printed on. So it was decided to print something on the back… but what?

#1 – I designed a slogan, based in part by the call to action at their shows when they describe the flags to people… On the back of the flag, oh the 12th Stripe and under the spread out letters of F-L-O-B-O-T-S it reads..

“THIS FLAG IS FROM THE FUTURE. IT IS THE FLAG OF THE AMERICA THAT WILL BE. IT BEGINS WITH YOU. YOU MUST BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD. JOIN US @ FightWithTools.org”

And to make it even more mysteriously cool, I encoded a secret phrase within the message, that you can only see if you own the actual bandana. This was insprired by what the first American revolutionary heroes would do when sending encoded messages to each other.

#2 - This bandana would only be available at Flobots shows, and all the proceeds would benefit their non-profit groupl, Flobots.org.

#3 - This idea was expanded to giving them out as a donation incentive on the Flobots.org website which we just re-launched last week. Now Flobots fans who are serious about owning one of these can get one and know that their donation is going to go to a worthy cause. If you’re interested, here’s the Flobots.org Donation INcentive page.

Now, the Flobots FAN side of me already has a bandana that was used in the RISE video, given to me by Andy in Washington D.C. – it’s tied to the light on my drawing table. But I couldn’t wait to get one of the screenprinted flags so I placed one of the first donation orders for one (just because!) — My OFFICIAL bandana arrived today…

I posted it up on the way out of my office, and realized the unintended signifigance of being printed on the OTHER side of the bandana. And how certain things just fall together if you are a Flobots fan…. “In between the lines…” you’ll find this call to action. Are you receiving???

Even though I have created thousands of comics over the years, this feels like the first real “social object” I’ve been involved with, and it’s just fascinating. Unlike others might speculate, I don’t think true social objects can be created or manufactured to work in a market. They just take hold and grow all on their own.

On the artist’s end (musician or otherwise) you just have to keep creating meaningful work. But it is a very powerful thing to know and study “social objects” and how they work.

Personally after writing this, I can’t get the words “social journey” out of my mind. I think that might be more important than anything else in the “social object” conversation. Just last night I was i-chatting with Andy Rok and we were digitally high fiving each other about awesome things that are going on… and he said: …I can’t believe this friendship and working relationship all came out of a single email

I can’t believe it either. I’d say it’s pretty darn REMARKABLE.

You want a sneak peek of what “FLOBOTS” will look like in the upcoming comic? (Dec 15th!) Well, watch this video… (if you’re in a hurry, you can move to the 2 minute mark…)

This was a 4 part video Jonny 5 and Andy Rok recently did. The full video interview is over at flobots.com -

Time for me to go to my recharging station and power back up for tomorrow. Peace!

Funny, it’s after 1am here, my iphone alarm just went off as I was buried in work and losing track of time, as usual. It’s funny that I have to set an alarm reminding myself that I should be sleeping before I’m back up at 6am to start all over again. My brain has been running non-stop since election night it seems. I feel energized.

Had to make up time today, beyond being sick with this weird flu crap, my video card in the computer decided to finally die. Friends here might recall that I’ve been having problems off an on with it. It ate up most of my morning and afternoon running around to get it fixed up. Local yocal computer guys are a waste of friggin time. I figured I’d give them the business…

Let’s talk about how you lose my business when I’m in need… get this… first place I call, I’m told the “guy” isn’t in and I leave a message for him to call me “right back”– Instead the same lady calls me back, and “the guy” is in the room now, but too busy to talk to me one on one, so she’s conveying the information to him. They tell me it will be a FAST thing to fix which I already knew, and I tell them that I’d like to get it done ASAP, and they say, well BRING IT ON DOWN!– but when I say that I will literally BE RIGHT DOWN in a minute, they change their story… suddenly it’s LUNCHTIME and their “table is full” and if i can only bring it back sometime later in the afternoon then….. EERRRRRRRRRNNNNT! — Wrong answer. I politely leave that option open though and call the next local smaller place.

Place #2 has no idea what’s going on because their “tech” isn’t in. Keep in mind, this service is called something similar to “911-GEEKS”, and thank god they aren’t real “911″ or I’d be dead. They have me call another location to see if they have a video card in stock to fit my computer… after about 10 minutes on the phone with the lady crunching numbers on model, etc… I just kept thinking…. THIS IS BULLSHIT! I think I know more about actually getting a video card and putting it in myself then having someone else put one in reliably. The only reason I didn’t do this was, well, there was some stuff in the way I didn’t want to risk effing up… So place #2 tells me that at some point a “tech” guy will call me back about it…. I didn’t hold my breathe…

I called up GeekSquad at Best Buy and the dude on the phone just tells me to bring the computer in and I can pick out the card I want and they can pop it in in 15 minutes or so. DEAL. I drive 25 minutes or so and get that hookup, and actually an upgrade now so I can do the two monitor thing instead of just using my Cintiq as the main monitor all the time.

The rest of my afternoon was spent setting things back up and on the phone with my ISP trying to figure out why in the hell I was still seeing the old Flobots.com site when I see the new one on every other service provider and proxy I tried…. I guess the DNS was sticking on their end, but after a thorough flushing, BOOM! I was up and running…. and that leads me to….

the new Flobots.com is up and running now. I still have some organizing to do for catergories and the like, but the goal was to make it into more of a destination for fans and give them a site that serves them much better and we can expand upon with some other upcoming things, as well as keep a running archive of cool things… Anyways, yeah, that’s ONE thing I’ve been busy with behind the scenes…

Ulp! My snooze Alarm just went off on the iphone telling me it’s time for bed for real this time… for really real….

ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……