DRACULA is a RACIST is a book written by Matt Melvin, with cover and a bunch of interior spot illustrations drawn by yours truly. About a year ago Matt approached me to do some spot illustrations for this book and I gladly obliged. If you don’t know who Matt is, simply put, he’s one of the funniest writers alive. Anyways, I think I did about 50 or so illustrations for this book, some of which are amazingly hilarious (thanks to Matt’s writings) Here’s a peak at a couple I have on hand.

To read a hilarious excerpt from the book GO HERE. The book can also be ordered now at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books a Million and IndieBound.

Artic Battle Priest!

Seriously… this book is amazingly funny. Go own it before it owns you.

I haven’t been creating “comics” all that much, and it’s something I intend to correct heavily. The bug has bitten me again. Let’s see where it takes me this time.

Here’s a look at the newly launched Flobots.org website. Flobots.org is the non-profit group created by the band Flobots to highlight the change work they are involved with. You can’t change the world without first making change in your own backyard! (your community) – Nobody exemplifies this better than the Flobots and the work they’ve done around Denver, CO.

About the design…

The design for the new Flobots.org was initially conceptualized by Denver visual artist Brandon Roth. I was able to take his initial homepage layout and convert it into multiple page layouts to showcase the organization and their programs.

I created over 18 individual pages for the new site.

The recipe

Since each page was meant to have it’s own look and feel, and possibly have menus changing and background collages, each individual page had to first be laid out in Photoshop and sliced into html. The next step is taking the sliced files into Dreamweaver and adding dynamic content and navigation. For this project we utilized Jquery drop down menus, and built the template so they could house any video player embed codes from Youtube, Vimeo, etc by simply adding them into the sliced table location.

The “toolbox” section of their site is meant to house “skillsharing” pdfs and documents. Originally the plan was to just link to downloads of the forms, but I decided to utilize the ISSUU service to make the documents readable and navigable online. New skill shares and documents can simply be added to the ISSUU account and will automatically show up on the Flobots.org virtual bookshelf.

For more about Flobots.org, visit… Flobots.org!

Before they were signed to “Atlantic Records”, I FIGHT DRAGONS approached me about designing a new website that emulated the feel of their 8-bit style music! They wanted something simple that looked kind of like the opening screen of  an old nintendo game, but still highlighted their music, merch and tour. Behold, ifightdragons.com

Overheard in the ATLANTIC RECORDS offices…. “Their music is amazing, but CHECK OUT THIS BAD ASS WEBSITE! Let’s sign them!” —– okay, I lied. The website had nothing to do with them being signed to a major label, but it did help them look pretty hardcore!

As a bonus, I also created a couple of their t-shirt designs for their Fall 2009 tour. Check em out:

“Heads up Hearts Down” – Based on their song.

“Nerd is the new black” – because that’s the truth.

What a great and refreshing band! It was a pleasure working on this for them. For all things IFD check out www.ifightdragons.com

I think 2009 may have been one of the GREATEST years of my life. Not because of career achievements, fame, money or that sort of thing. Kind of like a big ice cold bucket of water to the face to remind you what’s REALLY important in your life, and you end up doing a ton of growing because of it. It really was a transformational year for just about everything for me.

DERBYLAND:

I’ve also watched my wife transform into an honest to goodness badass Roller Derby Mama, playing for the Steel City Derby Demons. I’ve very proud of her, and I’m glad roller derby came into our lives, mostly for HER, but I definitley found another sport that I enjoy watching, and not just because of the tough gals in fishnets. I’m a bit mesmerized at the athleticism involved and just how much punishment they can take, and wear their bruises with pride. I love the “take no shit” attitude that emanates from that world. I want to see all of them succeed. And HEY, check out WFTDA.org to see if you have a cool derby team in your area to go check out. It’s family friendly stuff, and it’s not fake like the old 70s and 80s tv stuff. It might not be for everyone, but it was a perfect fit for us. Thank you Derby gods.

Comic Drawing Land:

I’d say this was the year I’ve actually drawn the LEAST amount of comics in my life. I guess I came to a big realization there too of the amount of time and work I’ve put into things, and re-evaluating what I’ve accomplished, and what the better use of my time would be this year. I’ve mostly been doing web design and new media work to keep food on the table and bills paid. I know I’ve dropped the ball on a lot of creative projects over the past year… you probably know the ones. When I get asked “what about this project…” or “why did this stop updating” — my answer is a couple sentences ago. I chalk it up to being a hyper-creative. I just have too many ideas that I’m itching to do, and I just don’t manage them well. A good example of a situation that would come up would be… I’m working hard on an update for a webcomic that runs for free online and I don’t get paid for, while paid commissions back up. Sometimes it feels like if only 100 people are reading a comic online that you’re putting out for free, and then also people bitching about the content… you kinda feel like what’s the use? That maybe your time would be better spent using the drawing and technical skills you have to make money. Now that I think about it…. I’m going to diagnose this as Creative Depression. There are no magical pills or therapy to cure that sort of depression and unhappiness. Writers would probably relate very well to that diagnosis as well. The only temporary cure is creation itself, which then leads you to more disappointment. The only way to curb the feeling is to engulf yourself in the act of “creation” which can really lead to bad things…. like neglecting your health, your family, etc. This is why many “artists” go batshit crazy over time. I’m sure of it.

It’s the first time in my “career” that it’s ever happened to me and hit me hard enough for me to realize it. It’s even very harder to admit, as I’ve JUST realized this by really analyzing my thoughts as I write this blog and internally ask myself “what the heck is your problem?” or “why did you quit doing this or that?”

Time heals all things though, this is true. And while the creative itch has never left, I’ve resisted scratching it many times this year. Another contributing factor to my Creative Depression are the folks who still look up to me or are fans of my previous works. I guess I feel like I’ve let them down in a weird way, and yet they still say great things about me like I’m a prolific creator or have achieved great success, when, at least as far as comics are involved, I feel like an abysmal failure.

At least that’s how I use to feel. Not so much anymore. Using a lot of skills I’ve picked up over the past year, I feel like everything happens for a reason, and perhaps my brain needed the time to rest and reorganize, plot and plan.

Future Projects for 2010: 2 big things lined up on the creative side…

Yirmumah: A few weeks ago I had decided to relaunch Yirmumah (my old indy comic) online, pretty much for the “fun” of it. I’ve also re-united with my old pal Bob McDeavitt on it. The “Coffman & McDeavitt” name was mediocrely known for works such as our Gravity Daily Comic strip that ran in about 50 newspapers and was AWESOME but ultimately failed miserably. Our follow up to that was Zombieopolis, which also fell on it’s face, but was completely awesome. The longest running Coffman & McDeavitt project was Yirmumah. And nowadays, we’re not so worried about failing, just the FUN of it. Instead of running it on a standard “archive” setup site, i decided to attempt something new in launching it’s own Social Network around the comic for a few reasons that I detail over there. If you’re interested, check out http://yirmumah.ning.com and become a member. It’s free.

Will Draw Anything: Another project I totally mismanaged but I’m looking to correct,  Will Draws started off as a goof to keep me busy, drawing 2 dollar mini-commissions. After a few very big links from big places and A List bloggers, I found myself with well over 1000 drawing orders or more. ACK! I drew up to 644 and stalled out. HOWEVER… I’m looking to relaunch this project, draw the missing orders (about 400) and start an all new service online that will include some really fun things and surprises.

The Computer Meltdown of 2009

Well… it finally happened. After over a decade on my PC graphics setup, I had a complete meltdown on the PC setup. Now… keep in mind, my PC setup was BADASS. But low and behold, I somehow was infected with a virus… even running multiple virus catchers, it wasn’t enough. Whatever the nasty thing was, it uninstalled my Panda Cloud anti virus completely, and then corrupted the system.exe file in some way so that it maxed out the computers CPU process to 97-100% – For the non-nerd readers, this basically means the machine was SO slow you could barely open a window on it. If you try to do too much like select files for backup, the whole thing locks up for an hour! – I exhausted my own PC knowhow and finally gave up and took it in to a repair shop. 911 Nerds in Greensburg to be exact. That’s a whole other story I’m not thrilled with. I called telling them I needed to correct this CPU problem, they said no problem bring it in, it was likely a virus. So it takes… no kidding… a WEEK to run all the scans just to tell me that they can’t fix the CPU problem… BUT, they wanted to charge me $90 for virus/spyware removal! Bwhat???! I started flipping out in their store, and the lady there assured me they removed 73 viruses from my system, but when I asked which ones, they didn’t have a list or a clue! I’m like, how do I even know they were in there!? I mean, I spent many hours running my own scans using the SAME programs they used and nothing came up. They wrote it off as the OS needing to be reinstalled… but were still gonna charge me $90 bucks. After I started wigging out a bit, the lady gave me 50% off the bill. I was not pleased.

GOING MAC…never going back.

After witnessing my PC nightmares all week, my awesome wife went out and bought me a 27inch iMac for Xmas. I’ve been spending some time getting use to it and gathering the software I need (primarily Adobe stuff), but in only a few days I’m pretty much back on the saddle and I have SO many more options available to me now and not having to worry about little things that my PC would muck up. Examples? My Cintiq screen (the drawing monitor) sometimes on a PC when you’d load Photoshop the pressure sensitivity would go out and you’d have to close photoshop and reopen. Sometimes I’d get the message I’d have to reinstall the tablet drivers. UGh. AND I couldn’t turn the Cintiq completely off, I had to have it on standby mode, but basically ON all day. If you turned it off using the power button the Cintiq, then it wouldn’t come back on unless you shut the whole PC down, unplugged the Cintiq and then did a complete restart. I had gotten use to all of the little crappy things on the PC, that when I was running the Mac, just pushing the power button OFF on the Cintiq and having it rest and knowing it will turn right back on feels very good.

AndyRok from Flobots showed me how to do ScreenShare via the iChat, this is AWESOME for webmasters showing clients how to do stuff. I know something similar is available on PCs but with Mac it’s built right in.

I was a little bummed because the 27 inch iMac screen was flickering a little randomly through the day… but I called Apple Support and they did a few things, it stopped for 2 days, then came back today. I just noticed they released a graphics update on apple.com for anyone experiencing a similar problem. I installed the patch, and POOF, no more flicky screen (so far! fingers crossed, knock on wood!) I’m less than a week in of my Mac experience and I can say I’m beyond pleased. I wish I would have done this sooner. Just hoping everything stays smooth.

Holiday Cheer

Well my mind dump is over. That felt great. If you read through all of that I salute you. You must REALLY want to know about my life and thinking capabilities. I’d like to wish everyone out there a safe and happy holiday and a great new year to come.

(NEW: See samples of some completed cards in this offer)

Each card will be on trading card sized bristol board, colored with Prismacolor markers. I will ship all cards on Saturday morning December 19th, so get your orders in now. Use the paypal checkout below. Send any questions to djcoffman@gmail.com.

ArtCard includes shipping to:

USA $10.00 WorldWide $20.00

Comic Character You Want:

Daily comic strips are no stranger to me… back in 1999 we self syndicated a strip called GRAVITY that we got into 50 papers… when we (McDeavitt and I) realized it was too much work for too little money at the time, we shit-canned the Gravity strip and moved on to do freelance comic book illustration stuff and TONS OF WEBCOMICS!

But something about producing a daily comic strip never leaves you. Your mind is always looking at the world in a certain way that I can’t quite describe. I’ve had this idea for a comic strip up on the shelve, The premise was very simple… it was Generation X parents all grown up, raising a new generation of kids.  Something we know a good bit about here in the Coffman household—-

Here was my master plan.  I’d enter under a pen name, which YIRMUMAH fans might recognize. I’d be silent and just see how far I could on the strip alone. Best case scenario, I’d be picked in the top ten, rip off my rubber mask and yell SURPRISE, IT’S ME AGAIN! when public voting time came. Pretty much ALL for shits and giggles and shenanigans like in the old days, because frankly, the pay wasn’t all that great. I could MAYBE get a foot in the door at syndicates and save their friggin hydes with my genius plans! I wasn’t even sure if I’d be willing to sign an actual contract this time. Maybe I’d just bow out gracefully if the deal sucked and kickstart the feature as webcomic on my own. I was basically figuring “what the hell.”

The strips came out pretty well for only having one week (from the time I decided) to get 10 daily comics done and 2 full color sunday strips. I am pretty proud of myself for accomplishing that workload especially with other “pay the bills” things going on at the time. It was sort of one of those moments in life where you step back and say… “I still got it!” I can still do this.

WORSE case scenario, it wouldn’t cut the mustard and I’d have something interesting to write about (failed attempt at shenanigans!) and a whole bunch of comics to post all at once for friends and fans. Who knows, maybe they totally suck? I know I enjoyed creating them and could totally produce a strip like that with my eyes closed thanks to the wealth of material I have in my real life.

What happened… I entered the contest and forgot that I had even entered. I was reminded a few weeks ago when I got an email saying I had progressed to the top 250 strips of 5000 submissions.  Holy crap… it just might work! BUT ALAS… this week the new top 50 list was put out and XYZs wasn’t on it. For whatever reason , the editors at Universal passed on it.

Now I can show the strips to YOU. I don’t know if I’ll pursue this project further unless there was huge support for the concept or maybe a better offer sent my way. Maybe it’s complete garbage? I do know I had a lot of fun kicking the “daily” machine tires again though. It fueled the desire to possibly do SOMETHING daily again.

(You will need to click these thumbnails to open them up full size to read)

CLICK TO OPEN SAMPLE SHEET 2 BELOW

Click to enlarge strips below

CLICK TO ENLARGE

1.  Sign up at Dreamhost- Don’t ask questions, just sign up. I’m on the 9.99 a month plan, and i pay once a year, $119 bucks. This gives you MORE than you’ll need for hosting your comics. I host SEVERAL sites on my one account, including the Yirmumah comics, and a bunch of sites for the Flobots! — 9.99 a month is only about $2.50 a friggin week, anyone should be able to afford that, especially someone serious about publishing comics in any regard. So sign the heck up. — And if that’s not enough if you type in the coupon code DRAMA when you’re signing up, you’ll get 50 bucks off compliments OF ME.

2. Once you’re signed up with Dreamhost, you login to your control panel, and notice a section called GOODIES, and then ONE CLICK INSTALLS: (click image for larger image)

From there you can install a BUNCH of things with one click, including forums, shopping carts, but for this step-by-step, you want to select WORDPRESS blog and guide it through where to host it on your account. IMPORTANT NOTE! – Don’t click the “easy” method of  auto install, it won’t allow you to upload themes to your folder. Do the advanced complete install option and you should be good to go!

3. You’ll need FTP program (basically that means file transfering protocal, you’ll be uploading files to your space on the web from your computer) which will allow you to transfer files by dragging them and dropping them from your desktop onto your webspace. I use SmartFtp, but you can also use free FTP like Filezilla. You will use the password and username that Dreamhost emails to you after signing up for “FTP ACCESS” to your site. ANOTHER GREAT FREE FTP tip, if you’re using the Firefox Internet Browser, there is a free extenstion called FireFTP that once installed turns your browser into a FTP program where you can drag and drop files from. I’m currently using FireFtp for all my transfering needs! Download it here.

4. Go download the free COMICPRESS theme for wordpress it’s a powerful wordpress theme by cartoonist Tyler Martin which is being used by many of the top webcomics around (including PVP) – You’ll unzip the download so its a folder that will say “comicpress”– While you are on that download page, also download the PLUGIN called “Comicpress Manager” and unzip that file as well.

5. Open your FTP program and login to your site. Look for the folder called “wp-content”, open it and inside you will see a folder called “themes” – you want to drag and drop the “comicpress” theme folder into that “themes” folder and let it upload. — Also, go back to the “wp-content” folder and put the Comicpress Manager plugin you downloaded into the “plugins” folder. Here’s a look at what my FTP folder looks like when open. Notice the folders I’m talking about… (click for larger image)

6. Login to to your Wordpress admin page, and go to the DESIGN tab. Switch on the “Comicpress theme” there. Also, go over to th PLUGINS tab and swith on the “comicpress manager” plugin as well.

7. Using the Comicpress manager, which will say COMICPRESS in your main Wordpress menu (see above image)  if you have the plugin turned on, you can now upload comic pages or strips right from your desktop. It’s a BREEZE. All you do is name them by date like “2009-09-12-title-of-comic.jpg”, you can even upload them in Zipped file batches all at once too. Here’s what a general screenshot of that Comicpress tab opened looks like…

There are detailed tutorials and tweeks for Comicpress and how to enhance your site’s look and feel over on the Comicpress forum.

8. Kick the tires of everything and look around in your Dreamhost account, and in your installed Wordpress dashboard. There are several awesome plugins out there for wordpress that you simply drag and drop into the plugins folder, and turn on. And you can edit the entire website through the Design panel in wordpress without much fuss.

This is by no means a thorough tutorial on running a webcomic or totally tweeking out your themes in wordpress, and you don’t have to use dreamhost if you can install wordpress on your other hosting you might already have. I mention them because that’s what I use, and they have that nifty one-click install stuff which is great for people just starting out who want to get away from freehosting. Wordpress is just a very powerful tool for getting the word out there too, with tagging and keywords that are going to instantly beam your comics and topics out into the blogosphere and send good search engine traffic your way.

Here are some of the sites I’m running right now on Dreamhost or with Wordpress engines:

• yirmumah.com
• americawillbe.org
• flobots.org
• flobots.net
• djcoffman.com (this very blog!)

And there are many more too. Another sample I’d point to is the quick ACTIONWEBCOMICS.COM website that Jason Embury and myself put up in ONE DAY, as a submission for DC Comic’s editors. Jason is hosting that I do believe on Dreamhost and that’s a very simple Wordpress with Comicpress template there that we only added the header graphic to and changed background colors in the CSS stylesheet.

Hope that helps put some of my friends on the right path. Don’t feel intimidated by the software or technical sounding terms (like CSS STYLSHEET) if you can point and click and type, you can do all this. I often tell friends, it’s sort of like trial and error or flying the Millenium Falcon. Sometimes the hyperdrive goes bad, you just have to get in and tweek it around or hit with a wrench and you’re good to go. Take it slowly and learn just a little bit each day, it’s totally worth it!

Funny how that is. For years I built and built, using every tool imaginable to push and push. Worked hard to be connected and ON line. But now I have an appetite to be OFF line. Maybe I’m a little overwhelmed by all the Facebooking and Twittering and social media madness. I can’t really tweet anything without it being picked apart by strangers who follow me as “friends” … and that’s another thing… nowadays, more than ever, you don’t know who your “friends” are. It’s not just a LIST. And I’ve found that I only have a FEW authentic, honest to goodness, old fashioned FRIENDS.

There may be no harder thing for a man to do than to watch dreams die or fade away. Let alone admit that. I kind of feel like that about my career in the comics. I’ve made good money at times, had a lot of fun, but peeked behind the curtain maybe a bit too long and found myself burned and jaded again. I still love to draw comics, of course, but I’m feeling tired and a bit underwhelmed. I look around and I don’t see anyone changing anything. An industry dying out, barely breathing, and Hollywood vampires living off the lifeblood of what’s left. Ironically, feels like that’s the only thing keeping it alive.

I can’t afford therapy, so there will be a lot of drawing and writing and self reflection. I guess if I had to envision how I’d like to come back to public life, I’d say I’ll return a little thinner and fitter, and a better artist and human being.

Looking forward to my next chapter…

Myrtle Beach was fun and relaxing. We stayed at the Sandy Beach Resort and pretty much just chilled every day. Visited the Ripley’s Aquarium, and then the Ripley’s Museum too. Visiting the Ripley’s museum made me wish I had submitted for that cartoonist job they had for the “Believe it or Not” feature years ago when i had a chance.  That would have been really fun stuff to draw! Most people don’t even know that Ripley was a cartoonist, and he sort of accidently stumbled on the “Believe it or not” as a happy accident when he hurridly renamed a one shot comic he was doing… and it took off from there. I visited the Ripley’s museum in Florida when I was 12 and left if an impression on me that the world was full of crazy and mysterious and creepy things. Which is very cool when you’re 12.

But I digress…. Vacation was fun to chill with the family. We stopped in Raleigh on the way home to visit my wife’s Aunt, Unlce and cousins there. All good people to the core. My wife has been saying she wants to move to North Carolina now, and I can’t blame her… heck I’d do it if the circumstances are right. Something about a fresh start in a  new location is appealing to me. This area has really grown on my nerves for some reason.

While in Raleigh, we stopped by a tattoo place in Wake Forest called Eternal Ink, my wife got another one… her “Atomic Bombino” symbol for Derby, which consists of  a skate wheel with the atomic symbol around it. Pretty sweet. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks what I want my next tattoo to be, all I can say is that it will be big, probably like an entire sleeve of my arm, and it will be Wally Wood related.

An update on the OLD HOUSE situation which I was hoping to sell. The days before we went on vacation and I was over cleaning it out and some of the neighbors came over and convinced my wife to do a rent-to-own with their daughter. This time we’re doing a full on contract– but these folks were gungho to get in there– they cleaned up the yard, painted some inside while we were away, it was like a whole different place outside when we showed up Monday to check things out. However… the old tenants… the people who were supposed to be our “family” left TONS of fleas inside. We’d bombed the place twice, and then the new people bombed it… and then they called an exterminator as well, and there are STILL fleas. There are no carpets in the place, just hard wood floors, but the old flea eggs keep the baby fleas protected, so they’ll keep hatching for weeks. I feel bad about this, so I may go over and shopvac… there is also some weird problem with the electric in the kitchen– Im starting to believe they really did a number on screwing with the place, maybe clipped a wire to be dicks? I can’t believe they lived there with all those fleas either… it’s RIDICULOUS! That makes me wonder if there isn’t a way to sabotage a house with flea eggs or something??? Sigh. The new tenants are young– but I think it may work out this time. They seem to see the opportunity we are giving them and i offered a deal of a lifetime to them i they can come up with a certain amount by December, they can own the entire place now. I really want it off of my hands.

I’m also loving what I call “conspiracy rap” lately. Some of it seems a bit far-fetched, but the messages of expanding your mind being the only way to really be free is important.

“CHILDREN OF DA MATRIX”