This woman is So clever.

Lady: "These books that were on your shelf here and here " *gesturing to the sketchbooks - some colours are 50% off, others are regular price* "I'm going to take them off your hands for 5$ each" (car Salesman tone)

I looked at the shelf noting the MAJORITY of her pile is the colour that is NOT clearance, and thus is actually $12 each, and only about 7 of the ones she had were actually clearance priced

Me: "no, sorry, that's just not going to happen"

Lady "yes, i know how it works, i know about the mark up you have *wink*, so you can give them to me for $5 each"

Me: "...No sorry, I cant. They're already discounted 50% for those ones, and I'm not able to have it go any lower."

lady: *wink wink* "you don't want me to take these all off your hand, so you can get more stock *wink* for 5$ each?"

Me: "No, we wont have trouble clearing our stock. No one here is going to put that price any lower for you. It's already 50% off, it's not going any lower"

Lady: "I'm an accountant, I know how it works. *wink* You can do it for me."

Me: "No I really cant"

Lady: "are you the owner here?"

me: "No I'm the leader in charge today"

Lady: "Oh leader in charge, I like that *wink* it's a good answer"

me: "..."

Lady: "I'd like a call from the owner"

me: "no, it's her day off. That's why I'm here"

Lady: "okay then, Well i guess we wont take them then"

Me:"okay, bye"

Then she told her friend they were going to try across the street.

They bought tape.
They don't sell those books across the street. 

Guess what? No, thats not helpful

Recently I've had several people innocently try to lead me down a path of what they would preceive as a successful route for my carreer.

Let me clarify something to you non artists out there.
Every artist has a style, theme, niche whatever, that they are good at, enjoy doing, and excell at. That goes for every person on the planet - some people do well in some areas while other do well in other areas. Sometimes these areas are similar, that doesn't make them interchangeable.

Example: Bob is great at fixing bikes. he can make a bike from scratch if he can find all the parts. Bob is a mechanically minded person, can add electric motors onto the bikes and make tons of crazy stuff with bikes. There is no doubt Bob is an amazing technical guy.
Do you ask Bob to repair your car?
I should think not! Yes it's a technical thing, yes they're both a form of locomotion and yes, they both go on the road.
(Side note: Dear firefox, or Blogger: when I hit Enter, go DOWN a line, Not up)

So, as an artist, the same sort of analogy will apply.
I'm a Comic artist and Animator. Why would you expect me to do landscapes and be confortable doing that for a carreer? Why do you think this is a logical solution to the struggled of being an artist? you don't think the landscape artist didn't struggle too, before they started selling work?

What a ridiculous suggestion. I know people mean well, but do they realize how FUCKING INSULTING it is to tell me what I am doing will never make it? That what EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING will make me successful? You can't possibly.
I guess it's the people who took the "easy" road that are the ones that suggest this. Of the people who actually suggest this route for me the only one I can think of that actually likes her job is my Mum. So should I be taking the advice of 6 people who hate thier day to day job?
I think NOT!
It is fully possible to be happy in your carreer! It takes as much work as any other job, no matter what you do.

You are given ONE LIFE to live and there is no fucking reason you can't be happy and prosperous in your carreer except your own self doubt and lack of ambition.

I WILL be successful, and I WILL be happy in my carreer, whether you believe in me or NOT!

My Desk - Copic Cases

Don't doubt my nerdiness.

I just spent ...oh, about an hour with tape, and rubber making a Copic display case, LOL.

What I did was tape the 2 72piece hard cases together, then using Amazing mold putty rubber, I made a foot on the front of it, to be places right behind the grove where the lid sits. This makes it lean back on an angle so the markers don't tumble out.

The Various refills are 2 bins taped together but the foot isn't rubber and isn't permanent because I can't easily pull them out of there. It's not a real refill case, just a sketch marker cases. Snug.

anyway, sharing is caring.

Bummed!

Lame! my class I was going to take, The graphic memoir at Emily Carr was cancelled because not enough people enrolled.
Lame, I was looking forward to it. Well, that jsut means I'll be going full steam on hello, Albertosaurus.
Going to go make a tutorial. COPICS!

OH YA!
I Love that X-press it blending card so much, but the shipping on icopic.com is insane for Canadian orders so I sure wont be ordering through there! I tried a special order through Opus and it's the same price as the "special" price on icopic! I ordered a ream of it! I'm just stoked about that! I've already got more paper than I could shake a cat at, but I love that stuff.
I have 5 reams of Aquabee paper already and several packs of Copic Illustration paper...lol

anyway, now my Canadian friends know they can get it within Canada and if you're near an Opus location, no shipping either :)

Another day, another fire alarm

I think if we worked out an average, there would be around 1 false alarm in our building a week. That fire alarm goes off so often. No one in our building goes outside. The odd time I've gone down there are maybe 4 people down there, and most look like they're just coming home and were forced to stay outside.

Really, it's plain ridiculous.

At any rate, 2 people have stopped following my other blog MarkerGuru. I wonder why...
 It's hard to get support for these types of things.  Well I guess I can't please everyone. Trying to slap up a little tutorial here.. having some issues getting good photos. Tomorrow I'm getting a lamp and daylight lightbulb so then I can do nice tutorials with well lit photos, hooray! maybe I'll hold off on the tutorials until then....
hmm...I'll colour my Copic Challenge image which is rather cute, if I do say so myself :P

Something I enjoyed today

So At work, we put our bathroom out of order permanently due to 5 or so massive blockages in the toilet causing overflow. So either customers are abusing our good nature, or the plumbing is failing. Either way, we can't spend our days pulling customers shit out of the toilet every day - as a result it's out of order.

There's the back story. It's relevant.

A customer comes in today, and asks for the wash-room key. I said "sorry, it's actually out of order just now." The woman gets all fluffed up and is like "I spend so much money here, I'm a good customer blah blah blah, the world owes me a living" I said, I'm sorry, there was a Waves (coffee Shop) on the corner if she needed one, I knew they had a bathroom. Then she goes all fluffy again about "I'm a regular customers I shouldn't be sent across the street to go to the bathroom, I spend lots of money here.. blah blah blah I don't mean to take it personally but I think this is terrible... blah blah blah" and I said "We actually aren't required to have a public bathroom here, but it's just out of order for now" and she goes off huffing and puffing. She says she's got some paint on hold so I pull it for her and then she wants to go fart around in the aisle some more. whatever.
 Already irritated by the woman I head off and start ringing in the next customer. The bathroom woman lines up behind the woman I'm helping and says "Must have been a theft issue, or something for you to put it out of order" (she interrupted the customer I was helping to say). I was getting annoyed and said "actually it's the plumbing or something...." and continued helping the person in line. Bathroom woman is like "OH... well you should get that fixed I mean, I know you can't do anything about it, but you should pass it along so it gets looked at" and I said "They're already on it...." (Like, Fucking DUH!!!) and she says "oh that's good" and carries on about how horribly inconvenienced she is. I said "Look, It's not a malicious thing, we didn't go in there and mess up the plumbing just so you couldn't use it, It's beyond our control, It's just OUT of ORDER for now, and hopefully it will get fixed."  Super irritated by now. Then she starts in on "Do you know when it will be back up?" and I said no, I didn't know if it would EVER be back up. She rambled on as she wandered away, and luckily I was able to escape at that point.

What on EARTH makes a person act like that?
Why the fuck do people think that the people who had to shove their arm elbow deep into their shit to try to repair the toilet, should give a flying FUCK that they have to cross the street to take a piss?

Before you run and bitch out someone in an art store for not having a public bathroom remember this - By law, we are not required to have a public bathroom; only food service places have to. The bathroom Opus locations provide for you is a bonus! a COMPLETE bonus! Consider yourself lucky that people are willing to deal with public bathrooms at all so you have a place to go to.

PS: She doesn't spend much money at Opus, I didn't recognize her at all - The woman she interrupted however was a very good customer.

Productive day

Been Fairly Productive today.

I cleaned out the area that could possibly considered my bedroom if I had one. Then I rearranged and cleared my desk off so that I could use it as an art table as well as a computer desk.

So now I've moved my speakers to the side, took some of the boxes off the back that were making a raised shelf, and pushed my monitor alllll the way back, put my lamp in a useable space, and now all i have to do is put my Tablet in my knitted cosy, and put my keyboard on the floor to do art up here :)

Kinda messy. Has some of my Copic stuff on there because I just finished a drawing and didn't clear off my desk. Water dish, Spica pen, Copic Opaque white, and my nightmare before Christmas lamp and little Jack skellingtons all over the place. HAHA! I'm happy happy happy with it. now I just need a good daylight lamp to clip to it and I'm golden!

I also finished a contest entry for my work Christmas card. Turned out rather cute I think ;)

Working out some things with Ericas logo's I'm doing and things are going well. I'm actually doing things on my to do list!

Next weekend is thanksgiving here in Canada, and Kitty and I managed to both have the Monday off so we're going to go to mums and make delicious things. Perhaps all the root vegetables I left at mum's will still be good and we can include them in our delightful feast.

Somewhere along to way while I was cleaning today, I lost my keroppi garbage can. Now I hunt him.

It's one room. cant have gone far.... 

Sleeeepy

So tired D: I've got a nasty cold I'm trying to ignore. I'm doing a lot of life replanning.
Conflagration for one, has taken a back burner for a while while I rethink it. Given the lack of good help from people, and the grisly failure of getting help from the few who do volunteer I am not going to be able to make Conflagration into a film. I'll never be able to make a proper go of it in as a film. I've got high expectations of this project and I desperately want it to turn out extravagantly no matter what medium it's in.

I plan on the trailer still happening and possibly some short animations now and then but I'm leaning towards the full project taking main form in the shape of a comic.

I'm going to slog through Hello, Albertosaurus before I go finalize that thought though. Just so I can see what it's going to entail for a large scale project.
In addition to that, I believe Conflagration would be either trade paperback's or Graphic Novels, possibly multiple issues, and not available online to view.

Frankly, despite poll results saying people want to support artists, the plain and simple fact is people will not buy in print what they can get for free. Daqueran has been a good experiment for us. It's got a pretty decent on-line reader base, many people are passionate about it, but the sales don't reflect the number of readers at all. I know most people can't afford to purchase them, that's understandable, but every reader can't be so poor.

Both Conflagration and Hello, Albertosaurus will be print only with most likely a 1 chapter preview, or something like that. I wouldn't be able to put the amount of work Kitty puts into Daqueran just to give it away like that. I'll come up with supplemental comics to give away for free on-line, but big projects we can't afford to make a loss on every single one. So enjoy (and support) Daqueran while it lasts.

As we make more convention appearances with more comics, hopefully this will increase reader bases of all our comics and improve this.
Anyway, none of this is official announcements on the status of things with GK studios, just me rambling on and on.

My Digi stamps are going well so far I think!
I've made a few sales, and my blogs getting to be popular (not compared to other blogs, but comparing to the last few days of growth). I'm pretty pleased with that. Give me reason to break out the drawings more often!

I've updated the layouts on most of the blogs - gurukitty studios & marker guru most notably.
eventually I'll tackle this ugly one too.

bed time... realz.