I had an epiphany yesterday morning. I’ve been struggling for a while with what my role is, given my knowledge and means. I’ve also been reading some Emma Goldman and Henry Thoreau, which despite getting me really excited about living by my own means, kinda marginalized my feelings of myself as an artist. Then there’s the guilt, in the, “How can you spend four thousand dollars on a laptop and tablet when there are people dying of exposure on the streets of Vancouver?” vein.

But as I walked through the neighborhood right at sunset, my first day home after three weeks straight of graveyard shifts, my sheer joy at the glory of the morning was tainted by the knowledge that it would dissipate before I could run back home for my camera. Wandering through my familiar woods, I thought of the uncountable moments that are lost daily. Returning home, I decided that was my responsibility. Robin Gibson: Moment Capturer.

So I went home, smeared some pastel on canvas paper, made a painting that was fairly awesome, then completely ruined it in an experiment involving a laminator. So I salvaged it into a comic strip ala “A Softer World”

On that note, I’m working on a comic project that’s a little more down to earth than my others. (Also a little easier to draw) I’m not going to start posting it until I have a significant backlog, at which point I’ll be putting out one a week.

So I had this idea for my next batch of business cards; something to make them a little unique, give them a bit more value, and encourage people to look at them more than twice.

Basically, on the front of each card there will be a character and some stats, while on the back, along with my contact info, will be the (very brief) rules for the game.
The line art I did in ink with my favorite Hunt bowl-pointed nib,  at about twice the printed size, then scanned the drawings and vectorized them in Inkscape.
My original intent for the art style was to emulate Victorian children’s card games, this is where I got my colour palate. Then I stumbled across some old bubblegum trading cards, and adopted some ideas there. I used the pencil tool to rather haphazardly trace out areas of colour, then I shifted them a little, to emulate cheap colour separation when done by a chainsmoking little old lady during the 1930s.

I’ve only got three coloured now. the rest I’ll colour eventually, as well as adding a few more characters. The old paper texture is just for effect. The final print image will be printed on antique style cardstock.

For the record, these characters BASICALLY have no relation to any of my current storylines. Most of them are just random people (things) that’ve popped into my head over the past few years, except the Cait Gypsie, from a dead storyline; the wandering Mad Scientist, an ancestor of another of my characters; The Metal Snail, my mascot; and the Aer Pyrate, who is so painfully genaric it makes my head hurt. Yes they all look pretty threatening, and maybe that is undesirable on a business card, but this is to be a combat-based card game. So, yeah

Once I’m done I’ll put all the cards here for download, along with some alternate rules, (I’m keeping the stats nice and ambiguous) full size SVGS of the lineart, and blank card templates. Because of my current kick, the whole thing will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, meaning: do with it whatever you want as long as what you want doesn’t include making money or removing my name and website. You can even use this image if you want, but the full size SVGs might be more use…

Something I made last summer about this time. It was for the studio tour, but never made it in…

NOTE: This isn’t actually on a T-shirt yet…

Ok, just fyi, this is a full sheet of bristol board; thus, it wouldn’t have fit on my scanner bed even if the thing was working… My computer’s still on the blink; currently I’m using a cardboard box with an old Gravis game pad plugged in the back.

Yes, yet annother storyline… I do have annother Rocketbelt Princess page done, I just need to scan the colour and line-art pages, then superimpose them, and my computerbox doesn’t have the processing power to do that yet.

For those of you that forgot, Kideo were the greatest children’s entertainers of all time next to Mr Dressup. They came up in conversation this weekend, so I drew a picture…

Yay! I got some creative time in today… I’m probably the world’s slowest comic artist; It took me a whole 8-hour workday to finish this ONE PANEL! *Sigh*

Here’s some character shots for two of RP’s main cast, not quite to scale:

Okay, so this is my new comic project. it is told in a series of moments, seemingly (and sometimes legitimately) non-sequitir. There is a plot to be had, I’m just asking a little more in the closure department than cartoonists usually do. This Issue is mostly setting and character introductions.