Blarrrg! Braaaains! ARRGGH!

It's hard to keep a hungry man down!*

Hiya Folks! I'm back from the dead to show you all that I haven't given up the ghost!

Over these past couple of months I've been taking on more than the usual amount of studio work which is making me really, really really, really busy. Making me too dead tired to work on Evangeline. While I would love to do nothing but work on Evangeline, I've got to keep the day job to help pay for yummy snacks.

So what do I really do for a living???

Yes, folks,
~
I'm Judith Hunt's studio lackey
*gasp*

humble, lowly me.

My duties consist of;

-Taking digital photos of artwork-
-Scanning artwork-
-Organizing & backing up digital copies of artwork-
-Doing minor IT work-
-Taking the studio pug out for walks-
-Updating her websites' portfolios-
-Working on her personal website-
-Making the artist her tea-
-Uploading artwork to client ftp sites-
-Downloading client spec files-
-Fetching audio books for the artist to listen to-
-Preparing artwork for printing-
-Making snacks for the artist-
-Working on her artwork in Photoshop-
-Creating digital effects using Photoshop-
- doing the pre-press design for childrens book-
-Goofing off-

BEFORE:
Jules Verne's 2,000 Leagues Under The Sea by © Judith Hunt

This is Judith Hunt's artwork. The client that she was working for really liked this piece a lot. Buuuut they wanted (at the last minute) a more dramatic scene. And while Judith certainly could have made it more dramatic, the deadline turnaround for this and several other pieces were extremely tight. I mean like, next day.

This where my job begins:

AFTER:
Jules Verne's 2,000 Leagues Under The Sea by © Judith Hunt. Digital work by Ben Dixon

I worked over the whole piece with layers of textures, filters, lighting effects. Three hours later the remixed dramatic version was uploaded to the client. Deadline met and everyone was happy!

Mostly, I do essential but minor digital work such as scanning or photography of illustrations, touch up, merge layers, change files to CMYK, resize to printing specs, label unmerged key layers, put the image file into a compressed zip file and send it off on it's merry way through FTP.

While being a studio lackey isn't exactly a tough job to do, it is a meticulous job.

There have been times, that after I've finished a week long string of major jobs, I'll wake up in middle of the night and have to go to the studio's computer just to triple check I had done the bleed line correctly on file Capt_Ahab's_Birthday_Surprise_Page12.

Excuses aside, I do admit I've been a dead beat about updating, so here follows my next grand scheme of what's going to happen to Evangeline.

The present road block that is preventing me from releasing the new issue is Dinosaur Farm.

Each page of Dinosaur Farm needs a lot of work. The colorist on this book changed from Judith Hunt to a colorist unable to keep paint within the lines and out of the balloons, nor keep colors consistent or appropriate. For example, on each page (even from panel to panel on the same page), Evangeline's eye color has ranged from bright green to dark blue.

At the rate that I'm going at, I'm going to be deceased before I get to the next issue.

But...all of that is going to change now.

By the end of today I'm going to start uploading scanned pages of Dinosaur Farm. The only changes that I've done is fix all the color changing problems and placed the black background. Otherwise, these pages are going to look raw, unimproved, and dull colored.

However, the pages will not be permanent fixtures on the Evangeline site. I'll replace each raw page with a finished version. I just figured it was about time to get you through the story.

Start looking for the return of Evangeline with the new fourth issue this May. Also new stuff will be coming to The Store soon!

Well, got to go! The boss is letting me take my lunch break! I'm famished...

OM, NOM, NOM, NOM, NOM!*

*Note: I have already received several concerned emails asking as to why are there scary photos of me dressed as a zombie. The photos were part of an application process for applying to be a zombie extra on a zombie themed quiz show.

So you can all stop boarding up your houses now.