MPK Adventures

The Visitor

Sat, 31 Dec 2016 19:03:23 -0700

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Part three of an ongoing story line.

As we switch over to the new year, I want to give a quick thank you to YOU for reading my little webcomic.  I wanted to get back to drawing comics slowly to ease myself back into it after taking a long hiatus.  Here are some things I've learned this past year:

1) Scanning the comic in color and at 600dpi gives me the most flexibility.
2) The part that surprisingly takes the most time is the post-scan clean up.  Using Layers and Magic Wand tools in Photoshop makes this process way quicker.
3) Another technique that I discovered (and this probably won't apply to most people) is that it's actually easier to see the dirty parts of the scan by tilting the screen of the laptop at an extreme angle.  I am aware that this is weird.

I guess this is what I get for insisting on drawing the comic in pen and paper.  I am considering other options after finishing this current story, so stay tuned for that.

Here's to turning big dreams into goals!  Happy New Year everybody!

Attributions:  looks like Martijn vdS's pictures have made a second appearance.  And to newcomers Shawn Henning, Natalie Greco, and Kevin Dooley - thank you!

-George Ryan

Come and knock on my door

Sun, 23 Oct 2016 23:42:33 -0700

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Part two of a series of comics I've written a while ago and which I've only gotten back to drawing recently again. But it's not like I've been slacking; once I complete this series, it'll all start to make sense. All's I can say for now is...oops?!?

Attributions: To Tom Merton, Kolin Toney, and Martijn vdS from flickr, thanks for letting me use your stuff and for being tacitly kinda ok with it!

-George Ryan

One morning in late July

Wed, 03 Aug 2016 00:05:02 -0700

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First, thanks to everyone who came out to the Artwalk Gainesville this past Friday; it's always nice to see familiar faces in familiar places.

This comic is part one in a miniseries of comics I've written for a summer class at The Sequential Artists Workshop.  We had to do like an 8-page comic for the final project which I'm still revising here and there.  I've never split this webcomic into multiple parts before and I figured it was a good challenge for the class.  Anyway, I'm trying something new over here, so I guess hold on to your butts?!

Overall, I had a positive experience in the class.  Big thanks to Ellie who invited me and all of us classmates to her studio for the artwalk!

Hey speaking of art walks, I'm going over to Astor Geek Fest this Saturday, Aug 6 from 10am to 4pm in Astor, Fla. to promote this here webcomic and to give away some things!  This is also a $FREE event, so come and say hola, why doncha?  Here's the facebook event with the address and stuff.

Attributions:  Kudos to Michael Dorausch, edward musiak, and c avery from flickr.  The background pics in panels 1 and 3 came from the same picture and I finally learned how to use the 3D option in Photoshop to achieve the effect.

-George Ryan

Lyrics Comics

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 12:12:35 -0700

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The comic con in Leesburg seems like eons ago, but the experience yielded a few new skills regarding preparation and planning, i.e., what to bring and what to expect while tabling.  All in all, meeting people was enjoyable (to my introverted surprise).  Thank you for stopping by, saying hi, and buying things, etc.; y'all are some nice people!

I lifted the shirt design from tricot since their new Kabuku EP just came out.  I like it.

Speaking of nice people, here are some of them from flickr:  Rachel Kramer, Fan D, Beatrice Murch, and Newtown grafitti.

-George Ryan

B90X

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 00:58:30 -0700

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Well, hello again!

I haven't posted a comic for a mega-long time, so as a show of good faith, I'm going to table at the 2nd Annual Leesburg Comic-Con!  Me and a bunch of other webcomic artists including my friend Amanda (of DANGER BIRD fame) will be selling some merch new and old, and I may bring some classic comic prints too.  There's all sorts of activities planned all day, and apparently there's live music as well.  I hope to see you there?!

Also:  it's $FREE!!  :0 :0

It will be on Saturday, April 9 from 10am to 4pm in Leesburg, Fla.  Here's the facebook event with the address and everything.  And here's the flyer:

Come say hi!

Last year I started listening to Mates of State's You're Going to Make It EP, and I'm still enjoying it; it's really good.

Attributions: newcomers Matt Janicki, darkday, and Gavin St. Ours adorn their flickr talents in this, a free/sharable webcomic on the internet.

-George Ryan

An afternoon lunch

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:56:22 -0700

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Today is Valentine's Day.  Guys!  Here's what wikipedia says about this holiday in Asia:  "Thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, Valentine's Day has emerged in China, Japan and Korea as a day on which women, and less commonly men, give chocolate or flowers."

...

OK, so I could get in trouble for saying that.  Whatevs, I am willing to take the risk.

So, ho-kay, some news:  so I've started broadcasting in the live webcast on a weeknight basis?  Sometimes I broadcast a mini light show, sometimes I broadcast myself practicing music, and most of the times it's pretty mundane.  But other times -- like last night -- I broadcast the creation of a new comic by screencasting my desktop as I'm editing it.  As before, I used ustream for the live streaming, but for the screen capture, I used VH Screen Capture Driver.  Both were free to use, but admittedly the latter took me a couple of tries to set up (although once it was correctly configured, it was pretty reliable).

The other news is that we're looking for a new drummer since Chris (of the Monistats) is leaving pretty soon. (Thanks for playing with us and good luck!)  If you are interested in playing pretty fast (but not too fast) punk music, please do let me know!

Attributions:  the romantic background pic in all panels was taken by Jasper of flickr.

-George Ryan

The TODO list

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:12:57 -0700

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So, ho-kay, if you haven't already heard, we are playing a show tomorrow (Jan 30th) at 1982 Bar, hooray!  We -- that's me, Will (from The Factor), Chris (from Forward), and Chris (from The Monistats) -- have been practicing together for about a couple of months now, and quite honestly, if it weren't for this show, we wouldn't have been practicing so hard and frequent.  But I think we're ready.

Whether or not I am ready -- given the live webcast and the impromptu light show that I plan on putting on -- remains to be seen.

Speaking of the live webcast, I do plan on broadcasting all 4 bands, so please stay for Hoyt & The Hotheads, then us, then The Monistats, and then Padded Cell.  And since the show at 1982 isn't exactly a public event, I can't broadcast anyone willy-nilly; the latest episode of TWiT actually made me realize the potential liability issues.  But ANYWAY, fans:  feel free to dance real silly!

Crap!  All this ranting and I still haven't talked about the comic!  OK, so Will has on a The Ergs! t-shirt because he's been trying to get me into the band despite of my insistence that I could never ever like any band where drummer/singer Mikey Erg was involved in more than Dirt Bike Annie.  In fact, if you go to the live show, you'll see the influence DBA has had on me.  I guess all I'm saying is that I'll try not to hold DBA against them anymore, k?

Attributions:  the background pics in panels 1 and 4 were taken by Rob Pongsajapan and emdot of flickr, respectively.  Background pics in panels 2 and 3 were taken by me during the shooting of the video promo for the show, the result of which can be ~~seen here~~.  [EDIT:  the video has since been removed by the owners.]

Thanks sterlo for filtering out all of my awkward, nervous answers!

-George Ryan

In the dark of my apartment

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:41:50 -0700

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Ever since daylight saving time, I've been bothered by how dark my apartment is when I enter it.  Yep, I have issues.

Attributions:  the wall background pic was taken by OiMax, and the hallway background pic was taken by elle_rigby.  I've used pics from these two excellent flickrers before in this and that comic, respectively.  Thanks again guys!  Lastly, the floor background pic was taken by newcomer MrsBinParis.

On a recent flight to Seattle, I was listening to a lot of explosions in the sky.  Explosions.  In the sky.  Plane ride.

-George Ryan

Select Start tryout

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:58:37 -0700

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Other lines I've considered:  I don't need no meat products, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!  I don't need no sex, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!  Wait.

Attributions:  all the background pics were taken by me this time, and thanks to Select Start for letting me use their images in the comic without all of their permissions.  (Permission? I don't need no permission, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!)  I've been mentioning those guys so much lately, this is probably the last time in a long time I'll do that again; unless, of course, they ever let me try out for them.  I'm thinking I could sing or play guitar/piano, but then I thought maybe I could be a conductor!  That would be either super duper cool or super duper dumb 64.

Guys!  Speaking of video game music, check out this awesome video game halftime show put on by the Cal band, aka. my new favorite school band:

-George Ryan

Where I've been (hiding)

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:30:21 -0700

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I actually haven't been playing Guitar Hero, which makes today's comic a four-panel lie-a-thon. What this comic really is is a way into telling you about the recent backend upgrade to this website. This is about to turn extremely geeky (if it weren't already), but summarily, this site has now been upgraded from MS Access to MS SQL Server 2005. And not only that, it's using GoDaddy's SQL Server backend.

I certainly haven't seen any guides on the Internets on how to do this, so I'm hoping that people doing a search would benefit from my experience. Here are some of the things that I've done to do this:

1) Downloaded a local copy of SQL Server 2005 Express and converted my MS Access database to SQL Server automatically.

It's always a good idea to test locally, so I wanted to convert my DB into a local instance of SQL Server. This article (link was taken down as article no longer exists) helped me tremendously. The author even put out a Word document which tells step-by-step how to migrate an MS Access DB into SQL Server. Pretty cool! Essentially, after this step, I was able to update my connection string to point to my local instance of SQL Server.

Also, I had to re-check my code once I've migrated to SQL Server. I've had some issues regarding the datetime type that I had to fix.

2) Exported my local instance of SQL Server into a CSV file.

There are many ways of deploying a SQL Server instance, but unfortunately GoDaddy stipulated that I can only import my DB via a CSV file. Lame! So this meant that I had to find out how to first export my DB into a comma-separated text file, and then use GoDaddy's importer to deploy my database.

I think the easiest way of exporting a SQL Server instance into a CSV file is via SSIS, but I haven't been able to do that because what I had was SQL Server Express. Doubly lame! I felt pretty stuck for a while until I found several shareware apps online that would do it automatically. The one that I downloaded was pretty crappy as it would only export half the rows in a table at a time, so I don't recommend it. But I'm pretty sure that you can find one that's better.

3) Created tables in GoDaddy's SQL Server and then imported my CSV files into GoDaddy.

This is pretty straightforward: while creating tables in GoDaddy's SQL Server, I made sure that I had my local instance open so that I knew which type to give to each column. There's one BIG gotcha that I had to call customer service for: in order to set a column as nvarchar(MAX) in GoDaddy, I had to set the column as nvarchar with length of -1. THIS IS A BUG THAT GODADDY'S CUSTOMER SERVICE SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE HAD TO ADDRESS. I initially felt angry at the support guy since he totally did not know what I was talking about, but then I felt really bad for him later on because this is essentially a programmer error. What's worse is that this is an easy fix. ANYWAY. Once I imported my tables into GoDaddy, all I had to do was...

4) Update my connection strings to point to GoDaddy, upload my files with the updated connection strings, and then did a small victory dance.

This is easy because GoDaddy provided me with the proper connection strings.

So far, I've tested the backend by putting out a Project Wonderful campaign for a short period of time, and it hasn't gone down since.

Attributions: the background pics in panel 1 were taken by David Barrie and Yeah Im Kenny. The background pics in panel 2 were taken by Dominic Alves and irina slutsky. The background pics in panels 3 and 4 were taken by Karen and ricardo.martins, respectively. I've been listening to a lot of Select Start, so I made them a shirt that exists only in my mind. Also, Dirt Bike Annie still exists in my mind, so I used a shirt of theirs as well.

-George Ryan