Back In the Comic Biz!

The negotiations to begin the production of the new issue of the Omaha series are close to completion, and Kate is working now on the outlines for the 92 pages of NEW material we will be doing to complete the story arc. Kate says she will have this outline to me and Denis by next week. WOW! Now I REALLY have to get the lead out, vacuum the studio, buy a ton of new bristol board, clean off the hard drive, and get ready to go back to work after eight years of sitting on my butt.

I want to thank all the fans who have ordered commissioned drawings from me, without which practice I don't think I'd be able to face this prospect realistically. Now that everything "Omaha" is going to crash priority, expect fast turnaround on the sketches, and lots of news as it breaks, here and on the Yahoo group.

What I have done in the last four months, is (a) develop computer character models for the Omaha characters (only Omaha and Chuck are currently at working versions), (b) get back into drawing and brush rendering practice, (c) re-read the series for content and style .. you know, I almost forgot how good Kate was ...

I'm excited all over again at the possibility that this book may finally find its audience now that popular taste has caught up with what Kate and I were doing twenty years ago. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway. No matter what, it's going to feel really great to be doing Omaha pages again, and have new deadlines to be terrified by.

Omaha and CGI

Back in 1980 when the first news of Apple Computer was starting to break, I was envisioning a situation where I could interactively create and manipulate standing sets and characters for a computer-assisted comic book series. This was when I was halfway through the process of drawing the first Omaha comic.

I was able to realize some of this by 1986 when Kate and I finally broke down and bought a PC, and I did some of the set design and virtual background photography on the PC in a primitive "My House" sort of interior design program. The state of desktop software was not to the point where it was practical to try to design and pose characters, but it helped to be able to rotate and print wireframe models of the apartment and the Tabey mansion.

Fast forwards to 1995 .. Omaha is over, but at the same time, I had had a year of computer graphics training at the technical school, had acquired a Mac, and had been introduced to a new piece of software called Poser. At that point it was a simple fast program for posing virtual artists manikins. This program helped me produce a computer colored and partly rendered book, Tumbling Boxes, in 1996.

In the intervening years I've done virtually no drawing but a lot of CGI work, including third party modelmaking, and now I hope that these contemporary skills will help me realize my original intention of using the computer to help maintain a coherent universe for the comic characters, without any visible signs of "computer" stuff being done. We'll see.

Back in the Art Biz

In order to generate capital, and get back in practice, I'm offering to sell Omaha™ commissioned drawings once again! That's right, I'm drawing again. And you can place orders via PayPal from my STORE PAGE, which you see on the sidebar.

Temporary home?

I'm still new at this blog thing, and it's altogether possible that I may stop updating this and instead, reactivate my homepage at Winternet. We'll see how i feel.

Do you Yahoo?

Believe it or not, I had no idea that there was an Omaha yahoo group ... to wit, "Cat-Dancing-with-OMAHA@yahoogroups.com". Well, now I've joined it so I can keep track of what's going on, not to mention supplying current information on what's happening.

Message board added

I thought, it wouldnt be very interesting to just yammer away, if nobody had any chance to get back at me. So I looked for a message board to add. There are a lot of them out there, and I signed up for one, who said they'd send me an email with my instructions ... and it never came. Okay, I signed up for another, and after I got it installed, I got a page telling me, woops! they'd just crashed and lost everything, I'll have to recreate my account, sorry for the inconvenience. Strike two. The board I finally selected looks stable and powerful, let's hope nothing goes wrong with it. I set up an Omaha message board a couple years ago, and it went down, taking all content with it.

Nellie goes to Germany

Last Saturday afternoon Dec. 6, Maximilian Schönherr of DeutschFunk radio interviewed me about Nellie and the Drummers and played some of their music for the German public radio fans. It was fun to get some pointed questions asked and have a chance to get Nellie some international airplay.

Among other things, Max asked me if I was familiar with Kraftwerk, and did I consider it an upset of Nellie's purpose, that the state of the art in voice synthesis had advanced since these recordings were made. I told Max that I liked Kraftwerk, and that they were still listenable and enjoyable music even though they were no longer revolutionary like they were 35 years ago.

Basically, this is the real purpose of Nellie and the Drummers -- to have a new medium for creating entertaining music, not just for novelty value but for the fun of doing it a new way, and trying to use the (as yet) novel medium to make music that will be enjoyable in time to come, not just while it's revolutionary.

Old Codger Starts Blog

Yes, I'm a living antique. Yes, I date from the days when "blog" was something you drank at a party if you were foolhardy enough. (Blog was a "punch" composed usually of equal parts KoolAid, bay rum, and Everclear. If Everclear was not available in your area, lighter fluid could be substituted.)

Nonetheless, here I am, actually participating in the online information age, after fiddling around in the background for a number of years. First, as a website designer, then as a 3D animation hobbyist, then as a producer of computer-generated music.

Those of you who remember "Omaha the Cat Dancer," the unintentionally-influential adult comic that aroused the ire (among other things) of censors in every English speaking country in the world during the 80's and early 90's, yes, I'm that RWaller.

I'm also the RWaller who produces and programs Nellie and the Drummers, the only genuine all-computer pop band in existence. Yes, there are other bands produced by computer, even bands with virtual band members, but none of the others meet all the criteria:

1. Produced with no assistance from live recordings. (no post processed recorded live vocals, no re-sampled live music performances.
2. Actual vocal music, that is, real songs with lyrics, sung by a voice synthesizer, not just a synthesizer chorus going "ooo".
3. Have an actual discography of playable music.
4. Are original, and live on the Web, not in some anime production house.
5. Quality songs written by a real songwriter.

While I'm not busy with the Nellie music, and trying to find time and resources to finish some more Nellie animation, I work for the New Richland Star, my hometown weekly newspaper, and watch movies.