This week, an eco-friendly dream by award-winning writer Vince Groyon, with art by guest artist Isha Pimentel. After all, the world is nothing but dogs and monkeys, pulling each others' eyeballs out.

This way to the weekly dream webcomic IDLIP.

In this installment of the weekly dream webcomic, IDLIP:

Two recurring dreams by contributors!

"Gears" : dream by Tobie Abad, art by Lionel Valdellon.

"Teeth" : dream by Mark Cham, art by Tobie Abad.





Go to IDLIPCOMIC for the never-ending thrills and horrors!

Updated every Tuesday!

Hurry now while supplies last!






...And get a free nightmare.

Go now to IDLIPCOMIC, or face the wrath of Khan.

So sometime 6 months ago, a bunch of people on LJ and el;sewhere on the internets, started drawing different interpretations of Green Lantern, which quickly mutated into a Green Lantern meme (which Wikipedia defines as a self-propagating unit of cutural evolution).... Lo and behold, a massive list of 25+ GL interpretations was born from a single idea posted by LJer KYLE (a.k.a. alazybear), some drawings fun and spunky, others seriously cool.

Well, here's mine: TOMAR RE, the fin-headed, parrot-beaked green lantern of the planet Xudar, on a rampage!

Cheers!

Some favorites from the list:
cartoony GL by Dean Trippe
mystical GL by Jason Turner
hippie GL by Chuckwheel

This week in my dream webcomic IDLIP : telepathic aliens and a tidal wave that plunges the world underwater!

Excerpt: The wave breaks and only a few of us reach the top of the world, yes, the top of the world. I know this because there are latitude and longitude lines on the ground. I have a huge garden implement, a hoe or rake, and an alien ship hovers above me...

GO see the surreality at IDLIP now!

Today, June 10th, is our 6th wedding anniversary.
Agnes and I have been married 6 years, and have been a couple for 12. And even if that sounds like a long time to many people, to us, it seems like an instant. Of the 6 years of marriage, we've been together for half of that time, the rest has been spent apart geographically, while petition papers and citizenship issues have been dealt with.

Four days ago, on the superstitious date of 06/06/06, I finally got a letter in the mail which tells me that this period of exile from the one person who matters most to me, will soon end. The final immigration process begins and I am glad. If all goes well, I might be celebrating Christmas with Agnes in California, finally.

So, happy anniversary Agnes! See you soon!

I believe it takes more than gasoline and electricity to keep a city going. Cheers.
Tools used: Wacom Graphire tablet. Expression 3.3. Photoshop 6.0 for optimization.

Some people have been asking what tools I use for the webcomics I draw. And I tell them: EXPRESSION. And I follow it up with: it's not a common software. I actually got my copy with my WACOM Graphire pen tablet.

The beautiful thing about EXPRESSION is it's a hybrid between a straight-up traditional painting program (which Corel Painter is great for and which Photoshop can do as well), and a vector program such as Illustrator and Coreldraw. What you do is you paint freehand and EVERY STROKE is transformed into an editable path. (They call it skeletal strokes in Expression.)

Why this program isn't more common to graphic designers and webcomic artists I have no idea because it GREATLY affects the speed with which you produce art. And I am all for speed. i don't want to sit down at my computer and be bogged down with menus and bezier curves, I want to DRAW quickly, dammit!



I found out last night that Creature House, the original company that made EXPRESSION, was bought by Microsoft, who are using the Expression engine to power their new set of design tools: Microsoft Expression. You may wanna try their 120+MB beta previews here. But be warned, early users have been complaining on the message boards about the bloatedness of these beta versions, and how they hog memory. Well what do you expect from a 120MB installer file?


BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

More importantly, they have also released EXPRESSION version 3.3 (the last version that Creature House made before being absorbed into MS) as a MAGNIFICENT FREE DOWNLOAD. No more excuses, MMA people who are reading this. If you like painting on your computer, you MUST have this program. You will not regret the 59 MB download. So far as I can see, there are no limitations to this version. (And I sound like a home TV shopping host.)

I downloaded this last night (since my old version was 2.0) and am learning all the new improvements to it right now. And I am drooling with painterly delight. This makes it so hard to hate Microsoft.

DOWNLOAD EXPRESSION 3.3 ! (both Win and Mac versions!)

Other relevant links:
Expression 3 yahoogroup here.
Free brushstrokes for Expression 3 here.
And my dream webcomic IDLIP, made with copious amounts of Expression, here.

5th installment in my dream webcomic, IDLIP.

This one is about a dream I had a few days ago, where all around our house, a moat appeared, deep enough to swim in… and the strangest thing was, all my friends were there, having fun in it. Summer vacation frustrations probably, as the only body of water I’ve seen all summer has been my toilet bowl. Sad sad me.

LINK

Well, aside from slaving over music and sound design projects this summer, I've taken to illustrating dreams and putting them up as a collaborative webcomic with fellow comics creator Tobie Abad..

Come visit IDLIP at idlipcomic.livejournal.com and tell me what you think.

Cheers all. And sweet dreams.

I've always loved Salvador Dali's art. From the moment that his The Persistence Of Memory was etched onto my youthful brain, I've eagerly sought out his works in books and museums (and actually got to see some of them up close in the U.S.).

It's probably the surrealist in me. The dream-loving artist in me. The illogical and the macabre part of me. Whatever it is, his art has moved me and inspired me in more ways than I can imagine. Probably because he was able to put onto canvas the landscapes of a dreamworld which we all visit.

Here are two recent works on Wacom tablet and using my favorite painting program Expression2 (which turns brushstrokes into paths), which have been directly inspired by Dali.

                           

Agnes Red Portrait         October 2005                 [wacom tablet + Expression2]                 click for full size	Violet Self Portrait         October 2005                 [wacom tablet + Expression2]                 click for full size