Been wanting to give Willow’s Grove a bit of visual pop and I just haven’t been able to come up with it. I went searching on the interwebs hoping to find some tutorials as I know Photoshop, but not inside and out. I did this doodle, playing with settings and layer masks and layer gradients featuring the Starblazer as the main character in the composition.

The tutorial I used as an example can be found over at www.abduzeedo.com/tutorials, which has a nice set of tutorials for lighting effects in Photoshop.

Hello my fellow Grovers! I am very happy to see a growing community of you out there. I look forward to seeing the comments you leave and really dig how you are really into the story as it is presenting itself as well as making guesses as to where the story is going. It really makes my day to see this…just thought I’d let you know and express my gratitude to you loyal readers. Things are in the works for the first volume of Willow’s Grove to be published, as you can see by my mock up for the cover design in an earlier blog entry. The status right now on it is this: I am prepping the pages to size for a 7.5″ x 5″ book as well as looking at my options for a printer. Once all the pages are prepped, I will work on penciling, inking and lettering the cover pages for all the chapters involved (30 chapters for the combined work of Volume 1 & Volume 2), then produce a brief history of Willow’s Grove for folks who have not ever read it before its current story as well as a character guide. This will probably bring the page count to over 200 pages (even more if I throw in the Halloween Special for 2009). All of this in between producing the remainder of Volume 5 and jumping into Volume 6 (which is planned to be an interlude without chapters) and writing volumes 7 through 12! Whew! Lots of work ahead for Willow’s Grove! When all is said and done for the current storyline (and there is still a lot of this tale to be told), I will have enough stuff for a total of 6 books! Whew! (I think I said that already)…

That being said, I need your help. While I am producing and planning this, I also need to spread the word and build the readership of Willow’s Grove, get the word out and grow the community. That’s where you can come in and be an enormous help to me and the strip. Spread the word, tell a friend or two, or three, or ten. Become one of my minions and with a grassroots movement, spread the insanity. If they like it, let them know, if they are on Facebook, that there is a fan page…okay, like page that they can join to get updates of the comic placed on their wall. I am planning on putting on the FB page a flyer that you can print out and put in your favorite coffee shop, college bulletin boards (not on car windshields as if people are like me, I just grumble and ball those things up and throw them away), local comic book shops, where ever you can think. I will be doing the same with them, to spread the word in my community, so together, we can build our Grover Minion Army and let people know about us and this strip you come to read every Monday through Friday. To show my gratitude to you, if you should decide to take this task request and run with it, I will produce for you a custom sketch of any character you want. Just let me know that you have joined the GMA by dropping me an email at karl@kwkproductions.com as well as what character you would like a custom sketch of, along with your contact information (name, address, etc) and I’ll send it to you as a thank you gift for helping build the Grover community.

Thank you so very much for reading and leaving your comments!!

Karl, out!

I don’t know about the women reading Willow’s Grove, but I think I can speak for the majority of the guys when I say that farts are funny. Whether we do it in a crowded elevator, in the public toilet while standing at the urinal, performing the dutch oven or trying to light them with our buddies. I often wonder how long after cavemen discovered fire that they discovered farts were flammable? I can picture after the hunt, the cavemen were gathered around the fire telling stories when one stood up and said, “Hey guys, check this out!”, farting into the flames and setting his mammoth coat on fire from the blue torch shooting our of his butt.
There are times when I crack myself up when I fart in the car while on family outings, holding them hostage to the aroma of my flatulence. This goes along with George Carlin saying, “D’ja ever notice your own farts smell okay?” That is true…for the most part. There are times when you let one rip and you just have to wonder what it is you ate that made such a horrible stench rise up from your bowels. It is as if your bowels were saying, “Hell no! You stink, even for us! Get thee out of here!” (as if your bowels spoke like Shakespearean actors).
This leads me to the reason for today’s entry: farts sometimes do not smell “okay” to yourself. While traveling home today from my usual Thursday morning breakfast meeting, I felt a rumbling and let one go. Hey, I was alone, all by myself. What was the harm? Famous last words. Oh, the stench, the agony! Thank jebus for electronic windows and bless the person who decided to put all four window controls on the driver’s side so I didn’t have to stop the car or attempt to roll down the passenger side window with the crank while driving. Sweet relief, or so I thought. I decided to make a stop at a gas station to buy a soda. Upon reentering the car, I had to look in the back seat to see if someone may have snuck into my car and deposited a turd. I also thought, “did I just soil myself?” Nope, it was the lingering stench from my expulsion of a few minutes prior. Maybe some of it was lurking in the seat cushion, and when I sat down, ready to drive, the force of my said sitting caused it to escape. It could have been a good theft deterrent, though, as anyone who would have attempted to steal my car would have immediately been rendered unconscious.
So remember Grovers: Farts are funny, until you shit your pants!