These are the sort of things that come out of the late night bullshit sessions with Jamie Karnik and Andy  Kline.  Greased Scotsman!  Kind of a rip-off of the great khaaan.com (turn down your speakers for this one if you’re at work pretending to work), but just imagine a world without this combination. “Greased Scotsman!” also works well as a home page for the unsuspecting and as a replacement for “good bye” or “see you later”.

Greased Scotsman!

Cayleigh says this is the happiest comic about suicide she’s ever read. It was intended as an experiment in print, a simple story that could be read in different ways depending on how you held it to the light.

I’m not sure why suicide was the topic but I knew I wanted to flip the mood so I started with something depressing. I wanted the reader to lift the page and have the light reveal the underlying story, turning the tragedy into something more lighthearted.

Many comics have pages that create interesting, unintentional patterns and framing in that moment when the page is turned so I thought I’d try to use the effect in an intentional way here. It’s probably been done before but I can’t think of any examples.

I’ve made a pdf file so you can print it out yourself if you like, just print double sided.

• PDF – The (Awesome) Ghost of Bailey Jones

The web version is in Flash and it took a ridiculously long time for such a simple project. I think my brain is turning into mush in all this heat we’ve been having.

• Comic – The (Awesome) Ghost of Bailey Jones

Thanks to Tara Greenwood who inspired the unicorn comic with her contribution to the office quote bucket.

• Comic – The Last Unicorn

It’s been a while since I’ve seen The Last Unicorn and I forgot how much I liked the backgrounds and illustrations from the film. I wanted to learn more about the animation and fell down an interesting rabbit hole.

The animation for The Last Unicorn was done by Topcraft, the same studio which animated The Hobbit. After completing The Last Unicorn they animated Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind for Hayao Miyazaki. With the success of Nausicaä, several Topcraft crew members went on to form the core of Studio Ghibli, the studio responsible for Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and many of the best animated films of our time.

Other members of the Topcraft crew went on to work for Pacific Animation Corporation, the studio behind the Thundercats, a connection I think Aaron will appreciate.

• Topcraft / Studio Ghibli – Complete History

I thought that was all terribly interesting, maybe I’ll be inspired to make an animated film for the summer JUMP Festival.

We’re moving to a new server. Hopefully things won’t get too bumpy.

The urinal at the Alaskan Bar is full of small change. I’m not sure when it started accumulating or exactly how much is in there but it makes for a fun guessing game.

First, how much change is in the urinal? It’s a little bit different than the elementary school game where we had to guess how many jellybeans were in a jar because the coins come in several denominations. It’s a graduated challenge for a more adult audience.

The next, and more interesting, part of the puzzle is trying to determine exactly how much change it will take before before some drunk guy decides it’s a good idea to scoop it all out of the urinal and buy his buddies a round of drinks.

This becomes a more difficult puzzle because the amount of alcohol involved will affect the judgment of the coin grabber, reducing the aversion to diving for coins in a dirty urinal and at the same time interfering with the ability to accurately solve the first problem — determining how much money is actually in the urinal.

In the end, I imagine consideration of the scattered spectrum of answers will reveal the most likely outcome and with a bit more consideration I think this could evolve into a problem for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling.

I’ve been writing a story this past week and I’m starting to make some solid headway. The process has been agonizing, like trying to thread a needle with a rubber band, but it’s been an equally wonderful sense of accomplishment to actually begin putting the thoughts in order.

This TED talk by author Elizabeth Gilbert is a fantastic journey through the creative process and an appropriate redefinition of genius. Many great artists and storytellers recognize that genius is a matter of being moved by something greater than yourself and I love this idea of little creatures flitting about in the walls and stories that will run away to the next author if you’re too busy to sew them down with a pencil.

Many thanks to the StumbleUpon users who have been checking out our comics and films. We’ve been getting giant traffic spikes from the site and it completely crushed our server on Friday.

We’re working on developing better page caching to keep up with the traffic and we’ll probably upgrade our hardware and software before too long. In the meantime, apologies for any database implosions and thanks, this is one of those good problems.

I’m not deeply involved in the StumbleUpon community but I am an occasional stumbler and use the toolbar in Firefox. If anyone wants to friend me, here’s my profile page-doodle thingy.

Comet Lulin was at it’s brightest Wednesday night and it was a rare clear and moonless sky.  The comet was hard to see so I brought out the camera  after being inspired by some nice Lulin photos.   Can you see it?  It’s that green blob.  I thought it would look more impressive than this.

What are people searching for when they find themselves at Alaska Robotics?

5. fetish comic
9. humons
20. sarah palin is awesome
70. nipple
115. brainworms
137. knuckle hair
143. snarfl
145. thousandaire
245. in the pooper
343. what if i was a robot
395. comics, wholesome
423. monkey hand
550. animated unicorns that you can copy on a web site
566. palin working it animation
589. hobo season
620. aliens examining humans anal probe
742. my kittens are staggering like drunk?
802. sno-bo
915. how to draw a graffiti turtle
927. how long can you freeze a scorpion for

As an added bonus, we are the first result in Google Image Search for knuckle hair.

I’ve been time warped again. The holidays ate up a week and a half, a week was downed by the Conference of Young Alaskans, and then I caught my ass-kicking cold and sniffled away one more week. Now here I am in the future. Rudderless.

To get myself back on track I’ve decided I need to rebuild my schedule and this time around I’m using fictional college courses as a template. Here’s my 18 credit course load.. I think I’ll try it out through February and see if it works for me.

Olin Robot 101
3 credits
Students will work to craft a series of animated robo-shorts.

AK Robotics 201: Short Films
3 credits
Students will create short films – animated, sketch comedy, and documentary.

AK Robotics 202: Comics
3 credits
Students will create a weekly comic,

Screenwriting 101: Write a Damn Script
3 credits
Students will work on developing feature and short form screenplays.

Lost Ocean 101: Script and Characters
3 credits
Students will create character sketches and learn to develop a story outline into a solid foundation for a graphic novel.

Small Business 201: Business Management & Website Maintenance
3 Credits
Students will complete small business paperwork and develop improved systems for business management. Students will identify problems and make improvements to the LRCD online store and Alaska Robotics website.