Navigator

I have a terrible sense of direction. If you spun me around twice and pulled a sweater over my head, I’d be lost for days. Fortunately our space age world has provided all sorts of gadgets to help me find my way around. But what if I end up on some distant planet with spotty cell phone reception? The image above was based on the idea of having GPS bots who help map out new planets for all those directionally challenged space explorers. He’ll be making an appearance in the next Atmosphere strip (yeah, I fell off the wagon after one episode – how sad is that?? Thanks tax season.)

In other news, NC got a large helping of sleet and snow this weekend. I have to tell you, there’s nothing funnier than watching your wife slide down the yard riding a large Rubbermaid storage lid. Ahhh, winter!

Nuts and Bolts

I’m not much of a handy man…and it’s all my fault. My dad has been involved with hardware and remodeling his entire life. He never ceases to amaze me with his work and his attention to detail. He mixes cases of paint by eye, constructed a 20×20 barn without using a single nail and has rejuvenated countless homes. Yet when I was growing up my head was buried in cartoons and comics.

I was reminded of this yet again as my wife and I battled a bathroom cabinet for 5 1/2 hours this weekend. In my defense, there was a bow in the drywall which didn’t want to play nice with metal rails. Somehow we found a way to laugh about it as we were entangled around the toilet all afternoon. It’s all about the adventure right?

I figured the best way to cap off the weekend was with a drooling grumpy robot. You can’t ever have enough of those in your life.

Atmosphere: Episode 1

I would love to say the strip above flowed effortlessly from my fingertips. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as I found myself fighting for every pixel. There was an abundance of hair pulling, a collapse of confidence, and some swearing tossed in for good measure. I even considered throwing in the towel all together but I knew Greg would never let me live it down.

Drawing cartoons for a living can be a bizarre journey. Some days are smooth sailing while others feel like you’ve never sharpened a pencil in your life. And yet clarity can crawl out from the strangest of places. In my case, after hours and hours, I found solace in a single shade of purple (panel two, inside the helmet). That one silly hue turned into the smallest grain of confidence to get through the image. I guess the moral of the story is there’s always a solution buried somewhere if we’re willing to torture ourselves enough to find it! Ha!

Atmosphere collects several ideas Greg and I have talked about for awhile. We’ve been asked about [echoes] and we promise it has a place in the lineup. In many respects, Atmosphere provides a bit of backstory for the larger adventure. We plan to keep the comics updated every Wednesday or so, as long as life permits. Here’s to hoping the next strip goes a bit easier! Onward!

Villians

Weeeeeeee’re back!! Hope you guys like the fresh coat of paint! Wow, I’ve never seen weeks go by so quickly. The time spent with the family was a blast and my wife and I even had a chance to visit Washington D.C. That’s one heck of a town filled with amazing art. I only got tazed once while trying to jump the White House fence.

The days were certainly busy but fortunately we’ve been able to get plenty done during our time away. Aside from the website redesign (which you can read more about here) Greg and I have been planning out some new content. We have some designs and webcomics in the works which you’ll see updated regularly. It seems as though we can’t stop giving ourselves things to do. I blame Greg.

We’re excited to be back and hope you all had an awesome holiday. I guess we should get started on 2010. Onward!

CreatureBox 2.0

We began CreatureBox two and a half years ago almost as a dare. Could a couple dudes with stupidly busy lives pull off an art blog on a regular basis? We really didn’t have a clue but foolishly jumped into the deep end anyway. Thankfully for you guys, we’re still swimming.

Over the last year we knew the site needed a significant makeover. The previous design was getting more claustrophobic and the creatures didn’t have much room to bounce around and stretch their tentacles. Ultimately we felt a hybrid magazine layout would do the trick so we checked out some themes and began down the looong path of rebuilding the ‘Box.

Creature Features

The new digs provide us with an opportunity to group and post different types of content side by side for three times the creatures, all up in your face. The major sections include our illustrations (with the newest being “featured”), articles (like what you’re reading now), and comics. We also plan to explore new ideas that would have been tough to pull off with the old site.

In addition to layout adjustments, we’ve added a few more bells and whistles. The comments now support Gravitars and are “threaded” which allows everyone to respond more directly to the comments made around the site. We’ve also incorporated nesting pages which allows for more growth including gallery divisions and video. Finally, on the mobile side of the fence, we’ve installed WP-Touch to provide a simpler version of the site for CreatureBox’ers on the go.

As far as content, there’s plenty hidden throughout the site. So take a look around and see what might be lurking in the other pages.

Browsers

We did our best to support as many browsers as possible. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE8 all run great. IE7 runs well for the most part yet due to a lackluster javascript engine, the initial page load may take some time. For the record, IE6 is not supported – thank goodness.

At the end of the day, our goal continues to be focused on fending off hordes of intergalactic zombie squads, dismantling rogue robot battalions and providing the best experience possible. We’ll be working around the clock on new content, including new designs, articles, FAQs, and comics in the coming weeks so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. If you have any comments on the site (including bugs), please let us know, we’d love to hear them!

Ok, enough code babble. Time to dust off the drawing table.

That Time of Year

It’s tough to believe, but December is right around the corner yet again. For the last couple years, Greg and I have made a point to take a break from the site to spend some quality time with our families. This certainly doesn’t mean we’re disappearing – this is merely our “Summer Break”. However the good news is we have some big plans for the site.

Over the next several weeks we’ll be putting the finishing touches on CreatureBox 2.0. We’ve been meaning to refresh the site for quite a while but life has a way of filling up quickly. The new site will allow us to stretch our legs a bit and offer a clean way of displaying a range of content. We hope you’ll all join us for the launch at the start of next year.

In the meantime we’ll be updating our progress via Twitter so if you have an account, we’d love to have you on board. Also, now would be a great time to subscribe to the RSS feed to get all the latest happenings with the ‘Box. We’ll also still be checking email so feel free to drop us a line anytime with the Contact Form.

This has been a wild year and Greg and I can’t thank you guys enough for the support. The sketchbooks were a huge success (all sold out!) and we look forward to making ground on the 2010 book during the break. We hope you all have a wonderful holiday – keep it safe, and we’ll see you in 2010!

*Update*
For those who are still interested in the 2009 sketchbooks, head over to our friends at Stuart Ng Books (in the U.S.) and The Labyrinth (in Canada). They should have some copies. Thanks!