Life was good for the RCC at this weekend’s Stumptown Comics Fest. We sold quite a few comics and other goodies as well as doing a lot to get our name and work out around town. The picture above is our table right before door time on Saturday morning. Seen in the photo are RCC members, Brybox, Matt Grigsby, and Andrew Keller. A visual record of our experience can be seen on our LiveJournal community.

Personal moments of greatness (or great purchasing):

• -The Life & Times of Baby Otto Zeplin being nominated in the “Outstanding Publication Design” category in the first annual Stumptown Trophy Awards. I didn’t win, but, how do they say, it’s an honor just to be nominated.
• -Peter Bagge buying a copy of Baby Otto.
• -Brenna Zedan’s Octo-ship figurines.
• Mike Bertino’s Pinwheel; same dialogue, two completely different comics.
• -The paintings and prints of Ben Walker.
• -Being able to meet people whose work I had only known via the internet, and re-meeting those people who I might not have seen since last year’s Stumptown, and making some new friends in the process.
• -Trades galore and not a single one I regretted afterwards.
• -Picking up books like Black Metal and Incredible Change-Bots that I have been meaning to buy for a long time, but have kept putting off.
• -Feeling very proud at seeing multiple friends live through (and succeed) at their first ever convention tabling experience.
• -Meeting someone who knew about Otto Zeplin, not first from my comic, but from also being interested in his grave after spotting it from the street a decade ago!
• -A short conversation with Laura Allred about my moustache and the details of where to find moustache wax in the 21st century.
• -And many more!

“Business Casual” and all other new RCC books and merch will be available for sale online by the end of the week.

The above picture contains the first 40 (out of 100) copies of “Business Casual,” complete with special tri-fold cover, which will debut this Saturday at the Stumptown Comics Fest, and next to them is a stack of 140 small screenprints/business cards for radrobot.org that I can give away at the show.

Speaking of Stumptown, The Life & Times of Baby Otto Zeplin: Volume 1 is nominated in the “Outstanding Design” category in the first Stumptown Trophy Awards! Winners will be selected by a ballot filled out on the first day of the con and announced at an after-party that night. I’m up against some tough competition, so if you happen to be headed to Stumptown this weekend, maybe you should vote for me, just sayin’.

The Robopocalypse Comics Collective just finished a new anthology, Creature Feature, which will debut at this weekend’s Stumptown Comics Fest. It contains work from 11 different artists; each created a two-page (pretty challenging) comic having to do with a monster or creature of some kind. Mine, of course, deals with the lovable Loch Ness Monster.

The book is 24 pages long and has a three-color screen-printed cover on super glossy black paper. It will be up for sale in the RCC Store, along with about seven new solo books, at some point in the first week of October.

This is the final of the first assignment for my Intermediate Illustration class. It’s Woody Guthrie finding his inspiration for “This Land Is Your Land.” Ink linework, watercolor, and some digital manipulation.

That’s it, folks! I hope you’ve enjoyed some of these pages. I’m doing a two-color screen print on chipboard for the covers and then they will be ready to debut at Stumptown this coming weekend. They’ll be for sale on www.robopocalypse.com in October.

Just in case you missed out on any of the story, read it from the beginning.

Final page tomorrow!

Only four more pages until the thrilling conclusion of “Business Casual,” but until then, I’ve got a bunch of other crazy crap to show you today.

I started a new school semester a few weeks ago, so the first few starter projects are filtering back to me now. On the first day of my Intermediate Illustration class, we were given an hour to whip up some sort of self portrait. This is the first self portrait I’ve done since my new look has taken shape. As you can see, after nearly two years of growing, I chopped off my beautiful mane of hair. It was getting too hot and heavy and felt like it was dragging me down a bit, so off it went!

In my Painting for Illustrators (watercolor/gouache) class, the assignment was to illustrate a random haiku we were given. Mine turned into a butterfly eating a sandwich; probably the greatest thing I have ever created in watercolor (so far).

Last night, while procrastinating about finishing up some homework, I drew this robot on the peel off paper from another robot sticker.

Lastly, because it’s just too awesome, I decided to liven up a normally dreary Monday by creating the elusive “Double Handlebar”! No, thank YOU, mustache wax!

Twelve days until Stumptown, five pages of “Business Casual” left.