Search and Research

Search and Research #155

2011-07-12T08:36:00.001-05:00

Man, this is only the fifth strip I've posted this year. I can't believe that I still have viewers who are interested in what's happening over here. I'm super grateful to you all though! Thanks so much for sticking with the strip!

This one took a while because we kept changing the script for it. Sometimes the writing for this thing comes easily, and sometimes it requires a lot of rewriting and revising before we're really happy with it. We hope you enjoy!

- eli

*edit*
In retrospect, now that I've posted it up, I should have added some color to Marc's shirt, because I chose to fully color Elsie's dress. He looks like he's wearing a white shirt....oh well.

Search and Research #154

2011-05-23T01:16:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the strip everybody! I appreciate you all hanging in there with me. This particular idea stems from me being heavily into Star Trek: The Next Generation, and really not being able to get into Star Trek: Voyager all that much. My co-writer, Jason, would appreciate me saying that these opinions are my own, and do not reflect the opinions he personally holds. We'll be happy to host a spirited Star Trek discussion in the comments, if anyone should care to weigh in. Enjoy!

Search and Research #153

2011-04-28T14:15:00.000-05:00

I'm back! Hooray for a new strip! My goodness, it has been a while, but I've been super busy with art commissions, and doing other art related stuff. It has been great! In the meantime, the blog has been getting crazy numbers of views per week, for which I'm grateful but also sort of curious as to why that's happening all of a sudden. I'm all for it!

Hopefully our next strip will be up sooner, since my friend and co-writer Jason seems to be having a little bit more free time to help write scripts. He's really the one who is able to take my ideas and actually turn them into fully fleshed-out scripts, and I'm always very hesitant to just write this strip by myself. It almost always suffers without his input, so I've been waiting until he had time. Until the next one, enjoy!

- Eli

Search and Research #152

2011-03-14T22:08:00.001-05:00

Ah...yes. It's nice to get back to the blog. Everything is just as I left it. Well, again, it's been a while since I drew a strip, but this time it's been because I've been busy with commissioned work. That is a good problem for me to have, as doing artwork full time is a goal I'm trying to work towards, but I do miss these characters and I'm glad when I have these breaks where I can get back to the strip. No promises about the next one either...we'll just have to see what happens. In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of the more recent work (and some older work as well), here's a link to a gallery: http://kindgentleman.deviantart.com/gallery/. Enjoy!

Search and Research #151

2011-01-21T19:56:00.000-06:00

Well my friends, I'm back with a new strip! Between holiday art commissions (I love actually getting paid to draw!!), the American holidays, and the onset of electronic reserve requests at work (my primary library job) I haven't had the time or energy to draw another strip until now. It felt good to get back to these characters again. I had to reteach myself how to draw them and how I lay out my comic strips and stuff after such a long absence. I mean, I haven't actually drawn them since last September! Anyway, thanks to those of you who have stuck with this comic strip through the long absences between content. Enjoy!

Search and Research #150

2010-11-29T10:39:00.001-06:00

Whew! It's nice to finally get this up! My co-writer Jason and I wrote this whole story arc out back in April, but this final part of the story fell during the busiest time of my entire year...beginning of the fall semester at the college at which I work. That lasted about a month an a half, at which point I had penciled about half of this "super-sized" strip. I finally got myself together and finished penciling and inking this strip. Then I started getting other artwork commissions which demanded my free time, which left me sort of scrambling to do what coloring I could during my lunch break at work. There is so much work that goes into coloring that bits and pieces just doesn't really allow you to make much progress on the overall piece. Anyway...I'm finally done with this one, and it's my great pleasure to show it to you, not only because I think that it's one of the better jobs I've ever done drawing and coloring, but because it's the epic conclusion of the "Evil Copier Saga!!" The image above is sort of bigger than usual for the strip because I want you to have to opportunity to see the coloring details. Below, I'm posting a smaller resolution image in case the one above is really too big to comfortably view on your phone or whatever. Enjoy!

Smaller version:

Almost done!!!

2010-11-26T10:49:00.002-06:00

I'm almost done coloring Strip #150!!! In celebration of this momentous event, I have a couple of preview images to tease and tantalize you:

I'm also going to repost all the strips that have led up to this strip, in case you want to review the story. I realize that 4 months is kind of a long time to try to keep a story in your memory. I'm planning on posting #150 on Monday. Until then, enjoy! Strips start below with #141 and move down the page in order.

Introducing...Wai Fai

2010-11-24T16:41:00.001-06:00

At one point 4 years ago or so I doodled a picture in a staff meeting of an asian lady with sort of a funky haircut who was carrying a samurai sword. I should pause and a say that ever since watching the first Highlander movie, samurai swords have been my favorite style of sword (although the super awesome sword Inigo Montoya wields in The Princess Bride is a close second!!) and samurai swords and people holding them have been a staple of my doodling for many years now. When I started drawing this strip, I remembered that doodle and thought that it would be super cool to have an "ITS-chick" who used a samurai sword as one of her tools. Thus Wai Fai (which I pronounce as Wi-Fi...get it?) was born. She first showed up in Strip #83 and had made frequent appearances ever since.

I initially designed her hair to sort of look like samurai swords, but after the first few times i drew her, i decided that hairstyle only really worked when viewed from the front...other angles were too hard to draw, so I've been sort of experimenting with other styles for her subsequent appearances. I think I've sort of settled on the style she has in the image below. Marc has been sort of enamored with Wai Fai since meeting her, and Wai Fai shows concern for Marc when he's in trouble, but neither of them seems to be willing to discuss their feelings.

Introducing...SCOM

2010-11-15T10:24:00.001-06:00

SCOM is possibly my favorite character in this comic strip. He started out in strip #10 as a cantankerous Self Check Out Machine (which is where the abreviation SCOM comes from) who was a bit grumpy and had a penchant for destroying books, but he has become, in my opinion, the central character of the strip. Much like Opus in Bloom County, he was initially a background character who has evolved into a lovable, naive, interesting character through which we can explore the library with new eyes.

By the way, if you have never read Bloom County, please make every effort to do so. Sometimes the references to political and world events from the early 80s might be a little obscure these days, but the characters and art are great and the stories are funny and interesting. Berkeley Breathed, the creator of Bloom County, is a cartoonist hero of mine, along with Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), Gary Larson (The Far Side) and Bill Amend (Foxtrot).

Anyway, back to SCOM, we soon discovered that he could walk, that he'd been specially made by the CIA to work in the Library of Congress, and that he had a theft prevention system which included twin duel machine-guns and a missile. I sort of started thinking of him as a mix between R2-D2 and Mary Popopins' purse, in that he could contain almost any electronic device within him, and it would sort of be believable. Remember how Mary Poppins fit a whole coat rack into her purse? Remember how R2-D2 had, like, 576 different tools in the Star Wars movies? That's what I'm talking about. Here is a list of things we've seen SCOM equipped with:
- Legs
- Guns
- Missile
- Satellite Dish for missile tracking and TV reception
- Spotlight
- Electric Zapper
- A webcam
- A karaoke system including speakers and a microphone
- A toaster

At one point we had SCOM's guns replaced with a salad shooter and a caulking gun, and his missile replaced with a telescope, which really cracked me up. I drew the image of SCOM below during that period of time, so even though he now has his guns back, please enjoy SCOM trying to look cool with his replacement attachments.

Introducing...Randall

2010-11-08T14:56:00.000-06:00

Randall was introduced back in strip #12 to essentially set up a gag wherein we reveal that SCOM has legs and can walk around. I gave him my father's middle name, and my propensity toward messiness. At the time I was drawing this, I'm pretty sure I had the messiest office in our library. I'm doing better, but things do tend to pile up on and around my desk. I hadn't really planned on him sticking around, but it turned out that having a sort of messy, grumpy male librarian can be useful for stories. I'm not entirely sure what prompted me to give him a "mustachio" type mustache, or the weird-looking goatee, but they seemed to go together in my mind. I've move away from curling his goatee the way I drew it in strip #12, but have not removed it entirely.

Introducing...Opal

2010-11-05T14:31:00.002-05:00

Opal is the second staff character I created for this strip, showing up in strip #3. She was based on a cataloger with whom my wife was working at the time (she has since changed jobs) who was very cranky, refused to use a computer for almost anything and seemed to despise change of any kind. She is certainly not my idea of all catalogers, and I don't personally know any catalogers with that kind of mindset, but I suppose that the cranky old woman is a little bit of a librarian stereotype. Oh well...I think that her personality is an asset to this strip. I made Boük a cataloger to sort of keep the strip from seeming biased against catalogers. Opal has been working at the library since she was a student there, so she has seen a lot of change. If I ever have her show up in a color strip, I will make the center of her broach a large opal. I'm not sure why I named her the way I did other than it just sounds like a name for an older woman. I love the animosity between Opal and SCOM and try to put them together in situations as much as possible. I enjoy thinking about where else we can put her! Enjoy!

Introducing...Marc Record

2010-11-03T11:57:00.001-05:00

Well, now we come to Marc. The first character I created for the strip. I believe that it was my wife who suggested the name, but I can't completely remember. She deals with marc records more than I do (although if you've ever dealt with one, you're ahead of me) and I thought it was a great name. It started my penchant for naming characters based on what they do (with the exception of Opal and Randall) in an effort to appear clever. He's also the only character who has an established last name. Marc works at the service desk, and I see him sort of as a library assistant. I'm not sure if he has an office or not; we haven't seen it if he does, but I haven't really made up my mind about that. He is basically an outlet for the things I think in my head during interactions in the library. I've given him some of my personal interests, such as being a fan of sci-fi and action movies and tv, and his preference for corduroy pants and collared, short-sleeve shirts. That's my typical winter work wardrobe. In color, I typically color his shirt as maroon, which is the color of my favorite shirt. My co-writer Jason has done a very nice job of expanding his personality, and making his snarky humor funny instead of mean sounding. I have to give him a lot of credit for helping me get a good grasp on what his character should be. I've really enjoyed developing his relationship with SCOM, and at this point I think of them as a team, and their relationship as sort of the heart of the strip, as it should be with any librarian and their technology.

Introducing...The Gnome

2010-11-01T15:03:00.001-05:00

The library gnome is the character in one of my favorite extended story arcs. I had been noticing that when I would go to shelve the new periodicals after I'd finished processing them, the issues out on the shelves would sometimes be so mixed around that it felt as if someone were purposefully doing the rearranging, and that is what got me thinking about a library gnome for the strip. He first appeared in strip #71 and although he hasn't had much to do since that story arc, I think of him as a recurring character and hope to use him much more. I drew him without a beard and mustache, and with large glasses, in order to sort of separate him from our usual image of lawn gnomes. I retained his pointy hat to at least make him seem a little gnomish. Initially I had drawn him with pointy, clog-type shoes, but abandoned them as they were not easy to draw at all angles. I think he's a good foil/foe for SCOM, since the gnome uses magic and SCOM can't necessarily overcome him only with technology. I think I'll have to make a point to use the gnome more often.

Introducing...Elsie

2010-10-25T09:18:00.003-05:00

Continuing my effort to have some stuff on this blog while I work on strip #150, allow me to present Elsie! Elsie was the third character I created for this strip, and she was introduced in Strip #8. At the time, my friend Bryan was really encouraging me to start drawing a strip as a way to do something with all these funny ideas we had based on our library experiences, and he was the stacks manager, so that seemed like a position we needed filled in our imaginary library. I wanted to add some racial diversity to the strip, and so Elsie was born. I think that most American research libraries catalog their books using the Library of Congress system, abbreviated LC, and when spelled phonetically it becomes Elsie! As stacks manager, it seemed an appropriate name for her. It has taken a while for me to get a handle on drawing her the way I see her in my head. It's also taken a while for me to find a good way to represent her skin tone. At this point I'm pretty settled in on using markers...they are wonderful! I think of Clair Huxtable from The Cosby Show when I draw her hair. I write her as a sassy, no-nonsense character whom I like pairing with both Marc and SCOM because of how ridiculous they can both be. In looking at this sketch, I must have run out of room at the bottom of the paper on which I drew her, so she doesn't have feet. I hope that doesn't prevent you from enjoying this drawing!

Introducing...Boük

2010-10-22T08:30:00.003-05:00

What can I say about the character Boük? He was initially created as a counterbalance to Opal; another cataloger who, instead of loathing technology, was the master of technology. I thought it would be funny to have someone who could control technology with his mind, so I designed him with an unusually large head. We haven't explained what exactly Boük can and can't do in regards to controlling technology mentally, or how he does it...we just hope that people will overlook that due to his large brain. I mean, there's room for 3-4 extra lobes up there! As someone who could control technology, he was a good counter for SCOM, who up to that point seemed uncontrollable. Boük first showed up in strip #42, but was first mentioned in strip #41. I always see him as a snappy dresser, and I don't think I've drawn him without his sunglasses yet. He has the same kind of weak eyes that Bono has. Since he's a cataloger, I thought that Book would be an appropriate name, but the name was a little obvious for me, so I decided to make him Northern European. I did some searches on the word "boük" to see if it was a bad word and as far as I could tell it was okay. I'm not totally sure if it means anything though, so if any of our Northern European viewers want to chime in, please feel free.Ok, I guess that's about it for Boük. Enjoy the image!

Introducing...Ayvee

2010-10-20T13:34:00.003-05:00

In an effort to keep this blog from becoming a dry, abandoned husk of a blog while I work on finishing strip #150, I'm going to start posting images of some of the characters who inhabit the Harlansdale College Library. I drew these images of them and colored them with grayscale markers a while ago. I had something else in mind for them, but decided that now is the best time to put them up. First is Ayvee, who first showed up in Strip #96 but has only appeared in a couple of strips since then. We envisioned here a spunky, 20-something librarian who is in charge of Electronic Resources (get it? Ayvee...A/V!) I'm not sure why we haven't used her more...maybe because she's still kind of new. Anyway, here she is having fun. Enjoy!

Teaser #2...

2010-10-15T23:36:00.002-05:00

Greeting dear readers of Search and Research. My heartfelt thanks to you for sticking with this strip through the ups and downs of my weird, yearly schedule. Hopefully the rewards are worth the long, dry spells. Here is another teaser image from the upcoming strip #150. Enjoy!

Search and...um...hmmm...

2010-10-15T00:55:00.002-05:00

Wow! Three months. I feel like I should blow some virtual dust off of this thing or something. Three months is really too long to not post something, but I've been busy and this big color strip has been pretty complicated to draw and ink and stuff. I've been kind of snatching an hour or two here and there trying to work on it, but it's really slow going that way.

However, I have finished inking this strip! Finally! I still need to color this, and the paper I drew it on won't stand up to physical coloring so I'm going to color it digitally, like the last one. That will take a bit more time, so I'm not sure when it's going to be ready. In the meantime, here is a teaser from strip! Enjoy!

Search and Research #149

2010-07-19T13:46:00.002-05:00

Here we go! This is the penultimate chapter in the "Evil Copier Saga" and it feels good to post it, having written it around 3 months ago or more. I'm still in the midst of other art projects and general business, and the next strip, aside from being #150, is also a color strip, and a big one at that, with lots of stuff happening, which is all to say that I'm not sure when it will be finished. But, hopefully it will be worth any wait that you, my dear readers, will have to endure. I'll try to post progress teasers here on the blog, as well as other interesting sketches, in the meantime to keep things interesting. Thanks for stopping by!

Updates...

2010-07-12T17:30:00.002-05:00

Ugh...I really did not want to drag this story out, especially considering the enormity of the ending, but I have gotten very busy, and haven't seemed to find the time and creative energy to do the next strip. I have been doing some artwork though for a series of tutorials on Literature Reviews, and thought I would post some of that artwork.A few years ago I helped to create a tutorial about the differences between scholarly and popular periodicals. You can view it here.
I decided to reuse these characters for the new tutorial, and I've been enjoying updating them in little ways and trying to make the drawings look nicer.
So, this is part of what I've been working on, and although it's not a new comic, I hope perhaps it will tide us over until I'm able to finish up this epic story arc we're currently in.
Thanks very much for stopping by!
Enjoy!

- Eli

Search and Research #148

2010-06-28T02:04:00.004-05:00

Ever gotten about halfway done drawing a comic strip and realized that you wrote too much stuff to fit into a normal sized strip, and you didn't want to have to redraw it all on a bigger paper? Me too! As a result, I really had to choose my angles and shots carefully to show the stuff that was important, which took me a lot of time...I had to sort of leave it for a while and come back with (hopefully) fresh eyes every now and then. I decided to sort of darken in the background when showing Marc and the copier so that the other elements of the panels would stand out. I hope this strip makes sense visually...I really felt more cramped than usual. I draw these (with the exception of the big color ones) on normal 8.5x11" paper, and sometimes that's just doesn't feel like enough room. Ok, well, enough of me rambling. Enjoy!

Search and Research #147

2010-06-14T10:54:00.003-05:00

This is a day of celebration! No, not just because there is a new strip, despite some humidity related delays. On this day, my friend, and co-writer, Jason Watts has welcomed his son Tobin Joshua into the world at 8:03 this morning. Tobin is Jason's third child, and first son. Let's all congratulate Jason, and celebrate with him! Also, please enjoy this continuation of "The Evil Copier Saga".

Search and Research #146

2010-06-06T14:56:00.005-05:00

So I made myself a deal. In order to get this story going again, I cannot play Starcraft today until I got done with this strip. This will be the weekly policy until the end of this story. Thank you.

I really enjoyed giving SCOM his guns back, and drawing a companion shot to Strip #92 where SCOM discovers his guns have been removed. I hope you enjoy it as well!

Search and Research #145

2010-06-01T10:34:00.004-05:00

Well, I really did not intend to take two and a half weeks to get this strip done, but I suppose that's life. Regular viewers will be aware that summers are usually much busier for me than the school year, and we're now in that summer phase. I'm going to pretend that being distracted to an extreme degree by the upcoming release of Starcraft 2 by Blizzard, and a resulting increase in desire to play Starcraft is just part of that summer busyness. :0) I LOVE STARCRAFT!!! Ok, I feel better now. Anyone else out there like Starcraft?

It's obvious now to me now that I was much more concerned about drawing the figures here than making nice word bubbles. I do think my figure work has been getting better; proportions are more consistent, I'm making myself draw hands more, I'm trying to work on expressions. But...I can't neglect the speech bubbles side of things either. I'll have to keep that in mind. Enjoy!

Search and Research #144

2010-05-13T09:33:00.005-05:00

Hello! Welcome back! So, here in Nashville, Tennessee we've had some flooding recently along with a lot of other damage, including damage to the power lines behind the house, keeping me out of power for several days last week. It also affected our internet access. That, and a recently hectic schedule have sort of prevented me from posting this strip until now. Things are slowly getting back to normal now though.

Alright! It feels good to get this up. Where in the world is this story going? Keep coming back to find out!

Search and Research #143

2010-04-25T22:27:00.003-05:00

We now bring you the next chapter in the blockbuster "Evil Copier" saga. I suppose it's pretty short for a chapter, but I don't want to rewrite the beginning, so we'll just have to go with that. I'm particularly pleased with the shot of SCOM running here. I always have a sort of difficult time drawing him at angles (despite the fact that he's essentially a box) but I really pushed myself to make this work. Enjoy!

Search and Research #142

2010-04-18T23:23:00.004-05:00

As the saying goes, "Beware the copier which has leverage!" Enjoy!

Search and Research #141 Update

2010-04-16T09:47:00.003-05:00

I just couldn't stand it...that copy machine was driving me crazy!!! I just HAD to fix the coloring on that thing, so I've updated the coloring on the machine to the way I wish I had colored it. I left the previous version up for the purposes of comparison. After all, this strip is still an outlet for my ongoing artistic development, and is the record of that development. Thank you all for reading, leaving comments, and (if you enjoy it) telling your friends.

eli

Search and Research #141

2010-04-12T00:13:00.002-05:00

It's always nice to get another one of these done and up after an extended absence. I'm going to admit up front that having finished it, I do not like the way I colored this copier. I hope nobody will be upset when that coloring changes in future strips. Enjoy!

Warm up sketch...

2010-04-09T18:44:00.003-05:00

As you may have noticed, it's been a while since I've done any strips. Part of this is because I sort of ran out of ideas for a while, and I wanted to take a break from the little "one off" kinds of strips and try to tell a story. Since I'm a better artist than I am a writer, I need help from Jason to try to make these longer story arcs fit together, but as he wrote in the previous post, he's been super busy. The other part is that I was doing a lot of other art projects, mostly for work related stuff.

Anyway, this post is to let you know that we've written scripts for the next 10 strips, and I've started working on the first one. I hope to have it up on Sunday night or Monday. Because it has been a while since I've drawn the characters, I'm presenting for your viewing pleasure a warm up sketch I did of Elsie to remember how to draw her.

See you in a few!

Is it' a new strip!?! Oh. Never mind. False alarm.

2010-03-23T13:25:00.000-05:00

La dee daaaa da dee... Oh! Hey there. I didn't see you there... What's that you say? New strip? Well, Eli and I are staying pretty busy right now. He's got at least one commissioned project going on right now that's consuming his free time. I also am pretty busy. We've been chatting a bit about trying to get another multi-strip story arc going, possibly culminating at or before the next color one (#150). So as soon as we can "sit down" and get to writing, we'll get some more strips coming your way! Thanks for poppin' in.
-Jason

Search and Research #140

2010-03-08T09:44:00.002-06:00

I have very nice handwriting these days, but as recently as my time in highschool it wasn't as nice. My handwriting was something that I had developed for my own use, and it wasn't really intended for others to have to read. I used to work at a pizza place run by a Turkish man who was very big on clear handwriting. It seemed like every couple days he and I would have a little meeting about my handwriting and he would show me the parts of my handwriting that were hard to read, and then threaten to make me fold boxes all day the next day if it wasn't corrected. I have also worked with people who could use a handwriting intervention but I have never been inclined to give one. Enjoy!

Search and Research #139

2010-02-28T23:37:00.004-06:00

Another one that is inspired by my real life. Something happened to the water pressure on my street, and I couldn't shower before work, and the only hat I had was a stocking cap kind of hat. I wore that thing all day, feeling super self-conscious and hoping my boss didn't see me. When I took it off at the end of the day, my hair looked like Marc's. I had fun drawing that hair. Enjoy!

Search and Research #138

2010-02-21T22:39:00.004-06:00

I have found pens in our laptop bags upon their return to the desk. I have found keys. Once I found $11. I think it must be the pockets...people are trained to put things in pockets, no matter which pockets they are. Usually the pockets around us belong to us, and when we check out a laptop and a bag to a person, it feels like that bag is now theirs, which includes the pockets by default. I dunno, just thinking out loud here. Anyone else found weird stuff in laptop bags when they're returned?

Search and Research #137

2010-02-14T22:38:00.004-06:00

We actually did get a request from a guy who accidentally "mailed" a letter in our book drop. Anybody else get weird stuff in the book drop accidentally? Also, I'm pretty proud of these word balloons...they're less misshapen then usual. Enjoy!

Search and Research #136

2010-02-09T00:18:00.003-06:00

This strip was completely written by my buddy Jason. That is a rare occurrence because he is a computer programmer and doesn't spend much time in libraries. He'd like to spend more, but the library in his town had the roof collapse over the summer, rendering the town library-less. True story. Due to the fact that I work in a library, I usually come up with scripts about library situations and then shoot them over to Jason who adds a zing to the dialogue that I don't naturally possess.

That's when the movie Avatar came on the scene (heh heh...scene...bad joke. And...cut!) and blew both of us away with the awesomeness of the 3-D and the general sophistication of the computer animation. If you have not seen Avatar yet, please make plans to do so with all haste. Avatar succeeded in inspiring Jason in a way that library's never have, and the result was quite enjoyable. Thanks for reading!!

Search and Research #135

2010-02-04T17:10:00.006-06:00

Ok! Here it is! Thanks again to everyone for waiting patiently while I worked this one out. I really stretched myself in coloring this, and I'll go ahead and admit that I'm very pleased with the result. I've done some photoshop coloring of individual pictures, but never tried to tie multiple panels together with similar colors and other stuff. I don't think I could have achieved these results with my markers, so I'm glad I went with the computer coloring route. I do like the process of coloring by hand though, so I will probably revert back to hand coloring with the next color strip unless I just really come up with something that would be better on the computer.

A couple things that may be of interest to the nerds/film buffs out there. I shamelessly stole the design of the "machine" from The Princess Bride, particularly the little headgear thing, but we'll call it a 'homage'. I also colored the "Facebook Angel" in the facebook colors on purpose, although she is very blue looking because I wanted to add some shading to her body, so there isn't much white on her. The "M" on Monotonoy's shirt is there on purpose, and his costume is colored in gray tones on purpose as well to accentuate his character. I presumed that Monotony would have stolen Super Marc's cape, so it doesn't make an appearance here.

As I mentioned before, I'm already done with the next strip, so be on the look-out for it next week. Because the image above is really, really large, I'm including a smaller resolution image for anyone viewing this on a phone or something. Enjoy!

More teasers...

2010-02-01T13:13:00.003-06:00

Ok, so maybe the updates weren't as frequent as I had previously envisioned. Sorry about that. Every time that I thought about posting something I got nervous, as if any of the inked images would give too much away about the strip or something. It seems sort of silly now. So, just to prove that I am actually making progress on this strip, I'm posting a panel that I've finished coloring. I've removed the text, but clearly this is one of the characters that appeared in my previous post, now appearing in his inked, and colored final form.

This strip is really too large to color with markers, as I have done in the past, so I'm venturing into the arena of computer coloring. I think that so far it's looking okay. I'm not sure when I'll have it ready to post. Ironically, I've got a couple more strips that are already inked and ready to go after I get done with this one. It seems that inking the regular strip is far less intimidating to me than a super large one. I say that because this color strip sat on my desk, penciled and un-inked, for about a month while holiday visitors and the busyness of my library work kept me from finding the initiative to ink it.

Thanks to those of you who have been following along. Regular viewers are probably aware that my library work gets so busy at the beginning of each semester that I'm not able to find the mental energy to draw this strip once I get home, and thus there is a lag in January and August. I'm going to do my best to not let this lag extend too far into February.

- Eli

Teasers...

2009-12-28T13:24:00.006-06:00

Just to let you know that I haven't forgotten about this strip, and to whet you appetites a little bit, I'm posting a couple of teaser images related to the next color strip that I'm working on. Those of you who have been following for a while know that often these color strips take a bit more time than usual, and the fact that I've had art projects related to the Christmas holidays and got my hand bitten by a squirrel (yes, you're reading that right!) haven't helped at all. However, the question remains, what possible relationship could there be between this image: and this image?And, what could either of them have to do with a library? Keep mulling on that and I'll try to post more teasers as this color strip progresses!

eli

Wai Fai sketches...

2009-12-15T16:57:00.004-06:00

Well, I'm really really late in posting this, but here's my sketch of Wai Fai in her Trinity costume. I really like how this turned out, and yes, that's a tape gun in her hand. The Matrix had tons of guns in it, and so I initially thought it would be funny for her to have a tape gun, but I'm glad that didn't make it into the final strip. Below is that same sketch colorized with Photoshop.More sketches to come this week...keep your eyes peeled!

- eli

Search and Research #134

2009-12-06T23:36:00.004-06:00

Well, between preparations for the Thanksgiving holidays and then throwing my back out while raking the yard the day after Thanksgiving, I haven't had much time to draw the past couple weeks. It happens. At least, it happens to me. :0)

Today's strip is based on an actual interaction one of my co-workers had with a student. In real life, the student had spread all is stuff out on my friend's desk while she had stepped out. He was apparently pretty angry to be asked to move.

The more I try to put in background elements I seem to have to either make them very detailed and risk cluttering up the design and putting in hours carrying the details on through all the panels, or I put in general shapes to sort of seem like background elements and I never know what to do with them. The cross hatching on the background elements this time around was an experiment, and I have to say that it's not exactly what I had in mind, but I didn't know what else to do with it. Oh well. Enjoy!

*Edit - I decided that the cross-hatched background elements in panels 1 and 4 were too confusing and so I just edited them out, and re-uploaded the image. For those of you who are interesting in seeing the old version, here it is:

Search and Research #133

2009-11-16T00:04:00.002-06:00

Welcome back! I'm afraid that to fully appreciate this comic you will need to have seen Terminator, Terminator 2, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Terminator: Salvation, or The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If you've seen none of these, please go see T2 immediately. Thank you. Also, there is no www.smartlibrarymachines.scom, so please don't spend time looking. Enjoy!

Ayvee sketches...

2009-11-11T13:32:00.000-06:00

Here is my black and white sketch of Ayvee as Lisa Simpson as well as my colorized version. She was a lot of fun to draw in this costume. I think I made the mistake of trying to make her legs a little too muscular looking, or put a little too much detail in her knees or something, but overall I like how this design came out. The red dress with the triangle fringe, the pearls, and the spiky yellow hair were the details that I hoped would make this costume work. Doesn't she look like she's having fun? More sketches later this week. Enjoy!

Opal sketches

2009-11-09T14:50:00.001-06:00

Here is the sketch I did of Opal as an MiB agent. The first sketch is the version I did with gray markers. The second image is colored with Photoshop by selecting certain areas and then playing with the hue. This was in response to a request by frequent commenter Angie, who suggested she'd like to see Opal decked out as a secret agent a few months ago. Angie, these are for you. I had to do detailed research on the design of the "flashy thing". And yes, she is carrying the noisy cricket in her other hand. More character sketches to follow. Enjoy!

Comps and Costume sketches...

2009-11-04T10:24:00.001-06:00

My wife is in the last semester of her MLS and this means that she is taking her comps this Friday!!! Which means that we are going to Knoxville, TN for this weekend, and I'm not planning to have a new strip ready for this next week. I do however plan to post some interesting things on the blog that I have already drawn.

As many of you are aware we recently did a comic strip which featured the staff of the library dressed in their Halloween costumes. If you haven't seen it go check it out. Based on a post from an anonymous reader, I've confirmed the costume identities of 6 of the 8 characters, but there are still two characters for you to figure out!!! Who are they and who are they dressed as? Comment if you know or at least want to guess!

In the meantime, I'm going to start posting some of the sketches I did in preparation for this strip. I did these to figure out the costume and look for each character after Jason and I decided who each staff member would dress up as. I'm almost embarrassed to say that I think these design sketches look better than the renderings in the actual strip. Probably because I could draw these ones at a larger size. Oh well. First we have Elsie as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. This was pretty fun for me. I'm posting my inked lines and then my color version. I colored her with my gray markers and then changed some of the hues in Photoshop. As always, you can click on these pictures to see them at a higher resolution. Enjoy!

Search and Research #132

2009-11-02T10:35:00.001-06:00

Hey! We've got an oversized color strip this week thanks to my good friend and co-writer Jason Watts. We'd written a Halloween strip and Jason pushed me really hard to have it in color. I was hesitant to break the "every 15th strip" tradition that we have rigidly upheld for so long, but once I realized that there were some costumes that sort of depended on a visual cue, I caved and colored the whole thing. This is a super large strip, coming in at 8"x12.5", but for the sake of easier online viewing I've sized it down to about 9"x5.5". Still super large for this strip, although not as large as Optimus SCOM fighting the T-Rex, or Supermarc. So...who are all of our characters dressed up as? They represent a mixture of Jason and my interests, so some will be more difficult than others to figure out. Post 'em up! Let's see who can get them all correctly first. Enjoy!

Search and Research #131

2009-10-25T23:35:00.001-05:00

Today you are all getting a treat! At this point in my cartooning career I'm using three different warm gray markers for all the gray areas. When these warm grays are scanned in as grayscale, they show up as more of a cool gray. I'm usually happier with how they look in grayscale so I post them thus. However, today I was really proud of how my warm gray markers look and felt like the grayscale took something away from the look of the strip (particularly the woman)so I'm posting a color scan of my gray markers!!! Please try to contain your jubilation long enough to enjoy the humor of the strip itself. Thank you.

This idea came to me as I was walking out to the desk and thought, "I usually tell a person who has been waiting for a while that I'm sorry for the wait, but what if I were to say 'I'm sorry about your wait'...that could really be taken the wrong way!" At which point I immediately wrote out a strip about it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #130

2009-10-19T01:08:00.001-05:00

This, like many of the recent strips, is based on an actual interaction with a gentleman who took my "I'm not really a stats guy" to mean, "Please explain statistics to me for the next 15 minutes." I really enjoyed writing and drawing this strip. I hope you all enjoy it as well!

preparation sketch...

2009-10-15T15:16:00.001-05:00

This is a sketch done in preparation for the next strip. What role could he possibly play? Tune in on Monday to find out!

eli

Search and Research #129

2009-10-12T00:08:00.001-05:00

So, this is based on a recent interaction wherein a patron had a pencil in his mouth and was trying to talk to me at the desk. For some reason he refused to remove the pencil even though I had to ask him to repeat himself several times. When he gave me his card, it turned out that he was a faculty member which was doubly awful because I couldn't be snarky in talking to him. I wanted to say something like, "If you're hungry, there's a small cafe downstairs." But...I couldn't. I really wished that I could have been a grumpinator though. I mean, if anyone deserved to have a bad rest of the day, it's the guy who won't do you the courtesy of removing a pencil from his mouth before speaking, right? Is that wrong?

Hmmmm....

2009-10-07T10:21:00.001-05:00

Well, well, well...what could this be? This is a sketch I did in preparation for the next strip, but who is this guy? How will he play into the plot? Is it important that he has a pencil in his mouth? Let the speculation begin! And...tune in next week to find out the answers to all these questions!

3 Years Down, ??? To Go

2009-10-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

Well, Eli and I let it slip by us quietly, but Friday was Search and Research's 3 year anniversary. I have thoroughly enjoyed helping to create this strip. I probably enjoy reading these strips as much or more than any of our readers. I always get a kick out of seeing the characters interact, and I really appreciate Eli's ability to visually represent those interactions in a way that cracks me up everytime!

Thank you to all of our fans and readers!! We have appreciated your comments and sticking with us when we have long gaps between postings. If it was just for us, we probably would have stopped creating this strip a while ago, but for you guys we keep 'em coming!

Here's to more years of fun and laughter to come!

-Jason

Search and Research #128

2009-10-04T23:34:00.000-05:00

Ahh...the mystery is solved. This still doesn't help my real life situation in which there are never any pens at the desk, but it was fun. Hopefully this pen obsession is out of my system now. Enjoy!

Search and Research #127

2009-09-28T23:52:00.000-05:00

Apparently I'm still working through some "lack of pens" issues in the workplace, so here's another scenario that kinda gets on my nerves. These questions have come up when I only had 1 pen left, and I've had to decide whether or not to lend the pen. I have to admit that I usually don't lend out the pen, under the "My need at the desk is greater than your need at the computer" Act of 2002, but there are times that I wish I could demand unreasonable collateral. But that's why I have this strip!!! Enjoy!

Search and Research #126

2009-09-17T17:08:00.001-05:00

As many of you are aware, I like to address current issues in libraries in this strip; often times they are issues that are so current that they don't show up in library literature. Today is no exception...Where are all our pens going??!! Our library has bought literally thousands of pens in the time that I've been here, and we still have to go searching all over the place when we need to write out a call number for somebody! And it's not like we're buying really nice pens either...these are the cheapest writing implement we can find, so I can't imagine that there would be the "new pen" factor at work here among those taking them. Forget about Google books, the lack of pens is the thing that's going to take us down, in my opinion.

Ok, enough of that. I discovered that my faithful gray marker is almost out of ink, so I had to do some computer colors for the service desk today. I hope I'm not letting anyone down by doing that...if it's any consolation, I had to spend a lot of time talking myself into that course of action. I really want to do this strip by hand all the time. Also, Marc refers to a previous incident involving an ink-bomb. That can be seen in strip #33. Enjoy!

Search and Research #125

2009-09-09T13:01:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well...look at this. A new strip! Whoa! As many of you faithful readers are aware, my life becomes extremely busy around the start of a new semester, and August and part of September are usually too busy for me to find time to draw strips, and this year was no exception. My July was also unusually busy, so yes...it has been a while. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you all back to Search and Research!

I had mentioned in previous posts that my younger brother Christopher would be doing a guest strip for me, but it turned out that drawing a strip was a bit daunting for him, so I'm still trying to talk him into finishing it, but I'm not sure when that might happen.

Does anybody else get a lot of books coming in with these little sticky tabs in them? I seem to find them on a fairly regular basis, and I'm always surprised that someone would consider that an acceptable condition in which to return a book to a library. I just don't understand that...

Thanks very much to all of you for sticking with this strip! Enjoy!

eli

Search and Research #124

2009-07-02T10:27:00.000-05:00

Hey! I did in fact get a strip up before my summer got really crazy. I go through this thought process a lot when I'm at the desk, but they don't all turn out to be professors...let me tell you! Anyway, I'm going to say that it'll be several weeks before I can post another strip, but my brother Christopher has kindly offered to create a guest strip for me while I'm busy, so be on the lookout for that! I hope you are all having a great summer! Enjoy!

- Eli

more sketches...

2009-06-23T12:54:00.001-05:00

Sometimes story ideas come to me when I draw the characters in funny ways, such as adding a hat, putting them in a different costume, etc. An example is strip #106 where I drew Marc with long hair, and the picture was very funny to me and sort of spawned this strip. Above is an example of a couple of ways I recently tried drawing Marc, first in a hoodie, and secondly as a secret agent of some kind. The second was also a chance to see what he'd look like with longer sideburns. He certainly looks...different. I'm not sure if I like them longer. Anybody got any other costumes or "looks" they'd like to see on Marc?

It's a little sketchy...

2009-06-19T11:24:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking for a while that SCOM needs a technological nemesis. The gnome was a pretty good nemesis, but being magical puts him in a sort of different world than SCOM. A technological nemesis seems to present more options for SCOM to bust out his CIA training (recall that he was programmed by the CIA), and so an evil copier seemed the natural option. Here are my first and second attempts at an evil copier (Second attempt is beneath the body of the message.) Notice that they're similar, but I took the first design and improved the evilness for the second.

In other news, I have so much going on in the next 3-4 weeks that the strip will be irregular at best. It's possible that my brother, Chris, a recent graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design, may do a guest strip or two. Chris is not a librarian, although he's spent time studying in libraries, so that could be interesting. I may have time to squeeze 1 or 2 strips into my schedule before mid-July, but we'll just have to see. Anybody got any crazy copier stories?

- eli

More sketches...

2009-06-17T15:51:00.000-05:00

Back a while ago, April of 2007 actually, I introduced the character of Marc's Library Director, seen here. At that time I wasn't really happy with the design or look of her character, so she has never shown up again. I've recently had some ideas for strips involving her, so I decided I needed to update her design. Here is one example that I'm considering. You'll notice that her facial features are similar to the original drawing, but her hair and mode of dress are different. This character is still evolving.

- Eli

Head sketches...

2009-06-11T12:34:00.001-05:00

In a lot of ways I like Marc's swoopey hair because it makes him visually distinctive, even in silhouette, but it does present some weird challenges when drawing him from certain angles...particularly from the side. I also have trouble giving him good expressions from the side 'cause the arm of his glasses seems like it always covers up his eyes. I decided that I really did need to figure some of those angles out though, so I did a few little head sketches in preparation for the most recent strip, which I am presenting for your enjoyment today. I'm not sure that any of them really work all that well...this is sort of an ongoing challenge I'm working on solving.

- eli

Sketches...

2009-06-10T11:01:00.001-05:00

Well, due to my extended absence, I'm trying to drum up more interest in our blog here by adding content with more frequency, so I'm going to be posting some sketches that I did to sort of get me back into the mood to draw this strip. To start with, it had been a LONG time since I'd drawn Elsie, our stacks manager, so I had to go look at past strips and then I did this sketch. I think it turned out pretty nice, but I didn't go for too much detail, such as her hands. The toughest thing to get right on my characters here are the faces, so when I'm warming up I draw the face first, and then if I'm feeling particularly good I'll draw a body as well.

Ok, that's it for today, but check back tomorrow for a new sketch!!!

Search and Research #123

2009-06-08T21:31:00.000-05:00

Hey! We're back online here at the Search and Research Corporate Headquarters, and coming at you with a brand new strip! Thanks for putting up with my extended absence...I felt like I was moving for about 2 straight weeks, and in fact, I was. Phew...I'm glad it's over. It's weird how 3-4 weeks without drawing sort of gets me out of practice, but when I was inking this I just felt like I was swerving all over the place. The word balloons aren't crisp, Marc looks sort of weird, my gray tones aren't as well placed as I'd like...but I don't want to redraw it. :0)

Tell your friends, spread the word, and enjoy!

quick update...

2009-05-12T00:38:00.000-05:00

Hey gang, I thought that I'd better fill you all in due to the absence of a new strip for the past two weeks. I was sure I'd have a new one up by now, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen for a little while because...my wife and I are moving! Not far...just a few doors down, but it does mean that there's a lot of packing, sorting, hauling, dismantling, remantling (that's the opposite of dismantling right?) cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing, aching, baking (Hey! I just put it in there for the rhyme, ok!) to be done and I just can't get myself in an artistic mood in the midst of all that. So...I'm shooting for a June debut for a new strip. It's already written, it's just a matter of finding time to draw it. Anyway, I hope every one of you is doing well and gearing up for summer in style. Anyone have big summer plans?

Until next time,

- Eli

Search and Research #122

2009-04-20T00:18:00.000-05:00

You know, I wish I could make strips like this all the time. This punchline is based on the ending of an actual conversation I had with my buddy Jason (who is a real life computer programmer) one day, whereupon I immediately wrote it down for future use. I was trying to figure out how to work that line into a strip tonight, and suddenly realized that Boük reminded me of Max Headroom, who at one time had a tv show but who I remember from the ads for New Coke back in the 80's, so that kind of turned into a second joke for people who remember obscure tv characters. Anybody else remember Max Headroom?

Search and Research #121

2009-04-14T21:17:00.000-05:00

Delivered, as promised. I love it when these strips write themselves, and this is pretty much a verbatim transcript of an interchange I had with a girl at the desk. I've sometimes seen people at a restaurant say "Surprise me!" to a waiter when they can't decide what they want to eat, but it somehow loses its charm at the service desk. Enjoy!

Quick update....

2009-04-14T00:26:00.000-05:00

I just want to send out a quick update here...I was hoping to get a strip up this past Sunday, but between the Easter holiday and a surprise visit from the in-laws tonight I just wasn't able to finish it. Strip #121 is penciled and partially inked so I'll have it up on Tuesday night. Mark your calendars!!!

- Eli

Search and Research #120

2009-03-30T01:21:00.001-05:00

...And we're back. Thanks to you all who hung in there, patiently waiting for me to get my head around this concept. As a "thank you" I've created an oversized color strip. This takes up the majority of a 8"x19" piece of matte board that my sister-in-law graciously gave to me. I tried coloring this with markers only, and for the most part it worked. There were some things here and there that I sort of wished I could take back, but the main image that this strip started from, Super Marc punching out a virus, turned out pretty well I think. Enjoy!

A quick update...

2009-03-09T13:17:00.000-05:00

As some of you who faithfully follow this strip may be aware, the next strip will be #120, which will be a color strip. These color strips take me longer than usual to do, and this particular one coincides with a trip that my wife and I are preparing for, so it is unlikely that I'll have the strip finished in the next couple of weeks, due to the preparations and then the actual trip. I will do my best to have it up by the end of March.

- Eli

Update 3-10-09 by Jason

Despite our frequent collaboration, Eli and I rarely have the opportunity to get together and hang out (I haven't been able to convince my wife that the 24hr round trip drive from TX to TN would work for a weekend trip). It's been about 3 1/2 years since we went up to Nashville, but now Eli and his wife are coming to East Texas. And (in my best Texan accent) we're lookin' forward to seein' ya'll!

-Jason

Search and Research #119

2009-03-02T19:17:00.000-06:00

I recently had to change my password and once again, as always seems to happen, I have a great idea for a password and think "Man I wish someone could appreciate this password other than me." Is it just me?

Search and Research #118

2009-02-25T00:09:00.001-06:00

Sorry this is up a little late. I had a bunch of art to do last week and this just didn't make the list. I have to admit that as a person who grew up learning the whole "check-in/check-out" terminology for dealing with library books, I was really thrown when I started working at a library and everything was suddenly "charge/discharge." Personally...I still like "check-in/check-out" better. Enjoy!

Search and Research #117

2009-02-16T00:52:00.001-06:00

A little wrap-up to our story arc. Enjoy!

Search and Research #116

2009-02-08T23:48:00.000-06:00

I have to admit that I think this is one of my better constructed strips so far. I really liked the way this looked in pencils and I just hoped that I wouldn't mess it up when I inked it. I'm not the greatest inker but even so, I think it turned out pretty good. I liked the sword moving out of the second panel, and into the panel where it finds its final resting place. I had a lot of stuff to try and convey in this strip, and I think it turned out pretty well.

We have one more strip to sort of wrap up the current story arc, and then we will be returning to the world of normal library stuff. Enjoy!

Search and Research #115

2009-02-01T23:15:00.000-06:00

Ok, this is the one. I have to admit that even though this story line is a little weird, and doesn't really have much to do with normal library business, I got really excited about drawing Future SCOM. Specifically the shot of him leaving his little flying ship dock and flying free. There is a lot more features that he has when he is docked (which makes it a necessary thing to draw) but who wants to be bogged down with all those accoutrements all the time?

In the interest of full disclosure, I did indeed base Future SCOM's flying base on an upside down Starship Enterprise. I spent a lot of time when I was younger drawing the Enterprise in various space battles. I even acquired many Star Trek model kits when I was younger specifically to check the accuracy of my drawings of different ships from different angles. I'm pleased that I was able to put all those hours of my earlier life to good use for the purpose of everyone's entertainment. Enjoy!

Search and Research #114

2009-01-27T23:02:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the delay on this...I had a virus on my computer that was taking up all of my nonworking time the past couple of days. It was a sneaky little bugger called MS Antivirus 2009, and it was a pain to get rid of. It made itself look like an intrusion alert from Windows, but when I clicked on it, it allowed the virus to implant itself on my system. I finally got rid of it tonight, and feel comfortable uploading an image again.

So here's Wai Fai again, minus the weird hair that she had. I liked how her old hair looked, but it was a pain to draw, so I tried to simplify it. I'm still not super-comfortable drawing it, but I'm getting it. Also, I left Jason's tie white in deference to our scientific fan contingent. :0)

Enjoy!

Search and Research #113

2009-01-18T23:03:00.001-06:00

I have to say that this guy was fun to design and draw. I went in a lot of different directions before settling on this one. It's sort of fun to have SCOM in the future, but I still don't know how the future should look. Every time I think about it I just draw a blank (literally!). And...on that bad joke, I leave you to enjoy this strip.

Search and Research #112

2009-01-11T23:25:00.001-06:00

...and we're back on track. This was an interesting strip to draw, particularly trying to convey SCOM's new surroundings. I thought that the small black robot from Star Wars might properly set the futuristic tone I was looking for! :0)

As a somewhat humorous aside, the character of Jason is fairly closely based upon me, although I do not have a Mr. Spock haircut. I even wore a labcoat around in highschool. And dang it! I just realized that I forgot to color his tie...grrr. I hate missing details like that. Oh well. Enjoy!

Search and Research #111

2009-01-05T01:50:00.001-06:00

Welcome to the new year!! This joke struck me as funny over the holidays and since it was time sensitive I'm interrupting the current story line for it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #110

2008-12-23T00:24:00.001-06:00

Hey everybody! (hey Dr. Eli!!) It's the holidays, at least here in America, and I'm going to let this strip carry us through to the new year! If you are taking time off, may you enjoy it. If you have to work some of the days in the next couple of weeks (as I do) may you get lots of stuff done. May you all find 2009 to be a peaceful, prosperous, and productive new year!! See you next year!!

- Eli

Search and Research #109

2008-12-15T01:34:00.000-06:00

We here, now, present the next installment in the prestigious and very critically acclaimed "Search and Research Saga", the online comic strip which the New York Times called the, "What? Get out of my office and don't come back unless you're bringing me a cheeseburger!" **

**The previous comment was written under the influence of Monty Pyton, and must therefore be excused of any facetiousness or silliness. Enjoy!

Search and Research #108

2008-12-08T00:07:00.001-06:00

Ok, on with the strip! I've started experimenting with some gray toned markers in rendering the strip (see #104 to see the first experiment)to kind of help add some better shading than I can add simply with lines. I am still trying to decide if I like using them better than trying traditional pen and ink shading techniques...and this strip is, for me, all about artistic experimentation and growth. As always, your thoughts on the strips are always appreciated, and your thoughts about the addition of grays to the strips are particularly of interest to me. Enjoy!

Search and Research #107

2008-12-01T23:51:00.001-06:00

Hey! Two weeks in a row! Let's see if we can keep this up. Tell your friends! Invite your neighbors!

On a separate note, if you weren't aware, there is a new Star Trek movie in the works. As a guy who was pretty disappointed by the previous two, I was kind of skeptical about this but after seeing the new trailer, I'm pretty excited. You should definitely go check it out. Enjoy!

Search and Research #106

2008-11-24T23:59:00.001-06:00

Phew! I think this has been my busiest fall ever! From illnesses to weddings, to helping my wife stay sane while getting a MLS, to doing whatever I can to make a little extra money in this crazy economy I've felt swamped. I can honestly say that all of that created a situation where I didn't have any ideas for new strips and didn't have time to collaborate with my buddy and co-writer Jason (who is also insanely busy). Things look like they're sort of calming down though and Jason and I have been able to chat a little about ideas for new strips so hopefully we'll be able to try to find some regularity in posting. Thanks for reading!

Search and Research #105

2008-10-13T00:30:00.001-05:00

Yes. Yes, it feels good to gt this idea out of my head and on paper...and now online. I have tried in the past to make the color strips the sort of things that are worthy of rendering in color. I really liked the idea my friend Bryan had of blending works from the history of art into the library setting, such as Strip #30. I'm a big fan of the surrealist painter Dali (and most of the rest of the surrealists actually) and so for this one, I settled on his The Persistence of Memory as a subject. It is not an exact copy as the Magritte was, but more like a homage to the painting. This strip is my tribute to the mind numbing and ongoing task that many student workers perform called Inventory.

In my student worker days, inventory was a regular task we were asked to perform for almost the entire school year. I think that anything we didn't finish during that time would be finished over the summer. The data would be analyzed and put to use, and the process would begin again the following August. I hated doing inventory. I hated it even more when the clipboard I had been using was replaced with a 5 pound portable barcode scanner that was not only unwieldy but emitted a loud beep for every barcode it scanned. Even now, sitting in my library office, comfortably away from the possibility of having to perform the task, I do not think of those times fondly.

This is for all of us student workers who were at one time or another called upon to sacrifice sanity in the stacks with a clipboard and a pencil (or a portable barcode scanner.) Enjoy!

Search and Research #104

2008-09-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been a while. And, as the strip indicates, I've been super busy. Things have calmed down though, so hopefully the weekly strips will be back on schedule soon. Enjoy!

- Eli

Search and Research #103

2008-08-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

How about these Olympics huh? Yeah...I'm really into 'em too. I've had this idea for like, 2 weeks now, but all my evenings turn into an "All Olympics, All the Time" situation. So, yeah, I'm finishing this strip a little later than I wanted.

This is a real situation...I spilled soup on my shirt during lunch one day, and there was a very obvious stain on my shirt. Not being able to go home, I had to cover it up and the only thing I could think of was the two name tags I have (one old, one new) and sat at the desk thusly attired, enduring many strange looks.

For the purposes of this strip, I envisioned that Marc had an old name tag that was misspelled, which he pulled out of retirement to cover a stain. Enjoy!

Search and Research #102

2008-08-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

Hey! Here we go with a new strip. I had my week as a camp counselor, and a week of recovery, and I've got a couple of funny ideas for upcoming strips, so the strip is moving along. After I scanned this strip in, I realized that I really made a mistake trying to put lips on Marc from this angle. I've never tried to draw Marc from this angle, but it's how I envisioned this strip working so I had to try. I don't think I'm going draw him from this angle again.

I also noticed that Boük's head shape changes in each panel, although I think that it is sort of interesting that maybe his head changes shape with his expression. We'll have to see. Enjoy!

New Art on Facebook...

2008-07-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody, I wanted to alert you to a new batch of preliminary art from Search and Research that I've posted to the Fan Page on Facebook. Check it out here!

I'm going to try to get a strip posted by this weekend, but we'll have to see how that goes. I'm in the process (and have been in the process for the past couple of months) of preparing for a summer camp for 1st-6th graders. The week-long camp starts next week, and I'm not going to do anything during the week after that either, but hopefully new preliminary art and possibly strip #102 will tide everyone over.

Eli

Search and Research #101

2008-06-29T17:01:00.001-05:00

As promised, here is a new strip! I'm going to go ahead and confess that I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to keep a "strip a week" schedule through the summer. I have a lot of stuff going on that keeps my free time tied up, but I will try to put up more strips than I did last summer. Here's to eating watermelon, raising tomatoes, and reading online comics. Enjoy!

Sketch and Resketch

2008-06-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

Here is a warm-up sketch of Marc that I did to get back into the groove of drawing him. It is also a promissory note that a new strip will be up Monday! That's right, I've written a drawn a new strip. It has taken a while, but my buddy Jason has sort of caught up on stuff at work and I've had a few funny ideas, so we're going to get rolling on this strip again. Thanks for being patient and hanging in there with us. We appreciate it.

Peace,
Eli

Search and Research #100!!!

2008-05-22T09:39:00.001-05:00

Yay! It's done, this colossal strip is done! I had wanted to do something big and special for the 100th strip, but really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I thought about doing a super long strip with maybe 12 panels or something, or one that was just one big image. i decided that one image appealed to me more, and the initial image I had was SCOM, having just watched the Transformers movie, tearing through the library having constructed a body from the office equipment that had been laying around.

I couldn't make that work though, so I decided it would be more exciting to draw SCOM in a robot body fighting a dinosaur. Obviously my favorite dinosaur is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. I used to draw dinosaurs all the time, but it has been a while, and I wanted to get it right, so research was in order, which is what I spent much of last week doing. Anyone who visited the Facebook Fan Page last week noticed that I put up a picture of SCOM in his robot body, which I also had to work out last week, because historically I'm pretty bad at drawing robots and I wanted to do this right.

So anyway, here we are. I usually draw these strips on regular, letter sized sheets of card stock which are 8.5 x 11 inches. The paper I drew this strip on is 12 x 17 inches, which just happens to be the scanning area of the scanner outside my office. So, this is a huge sheet of paper, which will soon be framed and hanging on my wall in my office. I think I can speak for Jason too when I say that this strip has been a delight to draw, a wonderful creative outlet, and great way to meet librarians from all over the world who I would not have otherwise met. I thank you all for your support, encouragement, and kind words over the past couple of years, and I look forward to what the next strips have in store.

It's going to be a couple of weeks until strip #101 due to my buddy Jason's schedule. He is been working feverishly on a big programming project, and has had almost no time to collaborate with me on future strips. He and his family are going on vacation this weekend and next week, and he will be out of touch, so I'll have to wait 'til he gets back on the grid before I can start even writing the next few strips (unless inspiration hits me during his absence...which usually doesn't happen.)

I'm going to post some of my preliminary sketches on the Facebook Fan Page in the next couple of days, so be watching that. Ok, I think that's about everything. Enjoy!

Click this image for a higher resolution image!

Search and...Research?

2008-05-15T02:05:00.000-05:00

Yes folks, research. I've had to do a lot of research for the upcoming strip #100...which I will describe in detail when I actually post the strip. Next week. That's right...I'm just not going to be able to finish this thing this week. However, to tide you over, I've posted a piece of artwork related to the strip in a new photo album called "Extras" over on the Facebook Fan Page . So...head on over and check it out!

- Eli

Search and Research #99

2008-05-05T02:09:00.000-05:00

Hey! I want to thank all of you who became fans of the strip on Facebook this week! If you haven't seen it yet, I've created a 'fan page' on Facebook for Search and Research and there is a link to it in the links section of this blog. I'm in the process of scanning some of the sketches I've done for this strip that haven't been posted online which I will be posting over there, and there's also a discussion board feature which I'm hoping to use. So, if you haven't already, I'd like to invite you to come on over and join the fan page.

You may notice that the jargon SCOM is spouting in panel two borrows heavily from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I love all the techno jargon they used on that show! I used to try to reword sentences in highschool using Star Trek scientific jargon to make myself seem smarter. All that positronic, neural net, venting plasma through the warp engines, dilithium crystal chambers, and tachyon pulses...it's just great. I was glad for the opportunity to work it into the strip. Enjoy!

Search and Research #98

2008-04-29T21:58:00.000-05:00

I can't imagine having to digitize microfiche. I'm all for it, but I am not the kind of person who could do that and not go crazy. That's why I think that we need robots with built in telescopes who can digitize this stuff for us.

On a separate note, I've created a Search and Research fan page on Facebook! I've uploaded all the strips there for easy viewing (well, semi-easy cause they sort of shrink the images). I still like putting my comments and larger images here on this blog, and will continue to do so, but the fan page will be a good way to communicate with you, the fans, and share stories, ideas, shoot the breeze, etc. Here's the link: Facebook Fan Page

I'd love for you all to add yourselves as fans, if you're so inclined. You'll need to be a member of Facebook to add yourself as a fan (it's a free registration) but you can view the page without signing up. I'm planning on putting up some art over there related to the strip that I haven't published on the blog, and who knows what else will show up over there. Well, that's all for now. Enjoy!

Search and Research #97

2008-04-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

Why is it that microfiche seems to be in the darkest room of the library? Anybody else feel that way? It's always a little hard to find, it's got those old machines in there. I can't blame SCOM for being a little nervous around those machines. I'm actually in charge of the microfiche and I am frustrated by it to no end. Despite working with it, I never thought about microfiche as a comic strip subject until my mom suggested it to me, so big thanks go out to my mom!

This time around I decided to do the gray tones with pencil. I've hesitated in doing this because pencil sort of smears around easily...but I can't deny that it looks best of all the grays I've tried so far. Enjoy!

Busy week....

2008-04-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

Hey everybody, I just wanted to pop in and say that due to several one time art projects that have popped up this week, it is unlikely that I'll get a strip up this week. See you all next week!

- eli

Search and Research #96

2008-04-09T19:39:00.001-05:00

Well, this was an experiment in adding gray tones with a ballpoint pen. But...I think I wound up overshading it a bit. I'm trying to work out the best way to do this whole gray tones thing with ink. I've tried doing straight cross-hatching with my marker pens, but I don't like that for these strips for the most part. I've also tried ink wash but it wrinkles the paper on which I draw these strips. I could use markers, but they're pretty expensive, especially for a set of all the tones I'd need. Anway, I think I may be able to use a ballpoint pen to do background stuff but not pervasive darkness like this.

This is the introduction of Ayvee, the new Electronic Resources librarian. If you think about her name and her job, her name becomes funny and appropriate. Enjoy!

Search and Research #95

2008-04-02T20:57:00.001-05:00

I want to thank everyone for bearing with me last week. It feels good to get this next one out. Enjoy!

Search and Research #94

2008-03-17T00:07:00.001-05:00

So, it's just like the caption says. My buddy Jason and I have been working out ideas and details for the next several strips, but our busy lives have kept us from really having time to connect all the dots. In the meantime, I wanted to do just an art piece. This is exactly my favorite thing to do on a cold day where I don't have to work...curl up under a blanket on the couch and read, particularly the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This was an experiment in using lots of lines to try to render objects in gray scale. I think it works in some places here, and doesn't in others, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I thought some of you might be interested in what drawing this was like, so I scanned in my penciled strip. I sort of shaded in areas to help me remember what I was going to darken in, and as you can see I've sort of indicated where things are going to go, but I haven't tried to make every pencil line perfect. I then inked over these pencil lines in pen and added in all the cross hatching and other detail. Enjoy!

Search and Research #93

2008-03-11T20:55:00.000-05:00

And now the explanation for the big reveal last week. After we initially revealed that SCOM had guns, even though it was pretty funny to me, it sort of bothered me that he had them. I mean, nobody is going to let anybody, even a machine, into a library with a gun. It's true that reality is suspended in that we have a walking, talking, abbreviating office machine in our strip...but we do try to keep everything else somewhat grounded in reality. So, this was a perfect solution for the whole gun thing. Enjoy!