Tomcat Ltd

Another blog bites the dust..

2009-08-12T18:21:00.004-05:00

I should've written this awhile ago. For those of you who subscribe to this feed, or look at the blog, you may have noticed that it seems to be a little quiet in here. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was moving to a wordpress blog. Well the move has taken place and I stopped updating here. The main goal is to create a new webpage that combines the blog, homepage and comic all in one page. Now I've accomplished most of that, I transferred the site feed on the current home page to accommodate the new blog. So update your bookmarks, this is the new link to the blog: http://tomcatltd.com/wordpress/ It's a little rough around the edges so far, so I haven't launched it yet, but you can browse Same Apartment and read the news, so it's in the final stages. This will be my final blogger post and eventually this blog will be unavailable to view, but fear not dear reader the posts you've read and loved are in the new one. In fact I've amalgamated all the blog posts from here all the way back to 2005 for your viewing pleasure.

Same Apt Listen with Me..

2009-07-01T09:30:00.001-05:00

I don't own the lyrics, I never said I did, you can't prove anything!

This started out as an MJ memorial piece, but since some people seem to be sick of the subject I thought, why not make something for music in general? So here I am, with a giant picture that took a crapload of layers. Kinda reminds me of this I did way back when. I've been trying to do a Gar and Mac pic to go with the Posey and Mort pic that I did last year. I think this is as good as any. I definitely like the way it came out.

Leetle White Rabbit..

2009-07-01T01:56:00.000-05:00

Posey is pale. What can I say? That whole blush thing started long ago because I was trying to add color to her. Anyway, sorry for the delay in uploading this one, but it's been a shitty week. I don't mind saying that, because it's not just what's in the news, but here at work too (new managers trying to impress people always work against the peons doing the actual work). So all in all it's been a shitty week all around. Who knows, maybe with a new month coming in we'll be able to turn this around (justkeepswimming..). But enough about that. What good news is there? Well here you go, I finally got started making a new site. A couple of weeks ago, I started up a wordpress blog and am working to convert the site, from my own bubblegum and string code into something that is not only easy to update, but easy to change if the thought strikes me. I'll have you know, I had things to change about the current version of the site as soon as I put it up. I'm actually typing this up on Wordpress as we speak. So that's one of my goals. I'll have the feed ready asap, but for now the posts are going up simultaneously on blogger and wordpress before the blogger version of the blog (both of them) go down for good (and don't worry, all of that ranty goodness isn't going anywhere, because I've already gotten the archives from both blogs going back to 2005 already on wordpress).

Also, you know what else is a good thing? This comic, by coincidence, goes up on the third anniversary of Same Apartment! I like that because I wasn't able to celebrate the second anniversary because of the blackout last year when my computer died. And let's not forget the fact that I've been a part of this wonderful deviantart community for three years AND this is officially my 300th deviation. So I guess good things do come in threes, even THREES (unless you count the wordpress thing.. then that's four..)

Oh, and Faded-Myth, this Gar shirt is for you!

No Trouble Dougie..

2009-06-17T09:14:00.005-05:00

What can I say about Dougie? Does anybody get this one? I barely do and I wrote the thing. We bought Terminator 2 Judgement Day a couple of weeks ago and they have the extended special edition in there where there's more scenes in the asylum. One of the creepier moments involve something in the theatrical version though. It has Dougie the creepy orderly licking Sarah's face while she's under her medications.

Nah, nothing will come of it. It's just me drawing some funny pictures. Honestly, how many onomatopoeia are there involving tongues? I just had to go with "LICK"

Oh, and look another arbitrary milestone!

Edit: Apparently it's in the theatrical version too.

Denver Braineater..

2009-06-10T11:55:00.004-05:00

It's a couple hours late, but I don't care. It's not days (or weeks) late, and it doesn't look like crap. Someone the other week mentioned that Denver was introduced like he'd been there the whole time. And no, I'm not picking on you, I love that kind of critique. It's because it makes me think of things like this. That last panel was a lot of fun. It's been too long since we've gone to Gorey's. And look! A Gar shirt. Haven't seen one of those in a long time.

Bub..

2009-06-03T05:14:00.002-05:00

You know what, I almost forgot about it being Wednesday. The comic on the site's been up for three hours.

Really what can I say about such a simple comic? It was a funny idea that popped into my head recently. What I liked is that I got a chance to fiddle with the background a couple of times. I originally was making the lines for the walls and what not with vectors and it was coming out too sterile and that made any fault in perspective really glaring and I wanted nothing to do with it. So I lost the lines and started painting free handed. Sure it's not as detailed as all get out, but it looks nice. Takes me back to the early strips somewhat. I also had a bitch of a time getting the pacing right with those word bubbles. I spent all of Monday morning putting that together, but hey that can be entertaining too! Look at them dance!

A Newcomer Approaches..

2009-05-27T05:03:00.003-05:00

Introducing a new format in this one. I originally made the horizontal comics to save time on the thing and it worked for those little comics like say this one, but unfortunately for a comic of moderate size like say this one or this, required more space and got crammed (I even had to make that last one a little bigger to accommodate all the words in there). So I thought why not instead of trying to cram everything in a small space like that, why not just do what Penny Arcade and PVP do and just extend the comic down a little. So I took my 11x6 comic and extended it down into an 11x12 comic. And in doing so, shot myself in the foot. Because, like I said, I made the original horizontal comics smaller to save time. Maybe I just don't know the term streamlining..

But enough about me.. This comic's about Mr. Ashley Denver Gorey. He's a professional gamer, and I don't know if there are too many of these guys running around, but let's say in the Same Apartment world there are. It's pretty self exclamatory, he tests games and on the side plays in tournaments. He and Mac work well together don't they? This comic was done because while we had some wonderful jokes to go with the guy, we had no way to introduce him. We thought about doing another comic like Mac's introduction, but that seemed like a retread. See Denver is what Mac was originally. When she was first thought up she was going to be this antagonistic gamer to contrast Gar's more zen-like perspective. So the only things we could think about for his intro was Mac's story.. But hey I thought, why not just put him in there? And then we thought about the intro to the comic and the three main characters (it burns to look up those hyperlinks, you'd better appreciate them). So here's Denver. I hope you like him. Or hate him. He's just that kind of guy.

Same Apartment Treks On..

2009-05-13T10:28:00.004-05:00

That was a wonderful break. Well break implies that I took one, but you get the idea.

I saw Star Trek last Thursday. It was a blast. Sure there are some naysayers out there, but I'm easily pleased (let's not forget my opinions on Speed Racer). A successful reboot if I ever saw one. You should go see it. Anyway, this continues the tradition of the movie comics, started way back with Spiderman 3. Last week (the one that got cut) was ironically the Wolverine comic (and no it wasn't because the movie wasn't up to snuff, just the comic), and no, Gar wasn't dressed as Wolverine in that one either. About midway through the inking process I just started to think to myself "This isn't working." Maybe something will come out of it, but if it doesn't then I'm not too broken up about it.

Oh, and just about everything from this comic is from something. I'm not going to say what. You should already know. And if you don't.. I'm taking away your nerd license. Just in case you need a hint?

Dance Like No One's Watching..

2009-04-29T11:28:00.003-05:00

Posey gets down.

I'm putting this one up bigger than the normal ones. I can do that it's an online comic after all. The reason for this is that I couldn't cram all those lovely words (lyrics used without permission) into those tiny panels. It was illegible. But now it's there. I know it's busy but I hope you like.

It's been awhile since I played with the colors. And look, it's Mort! It's been awhile hasn't it Mort? Maybe next time he'll actually say something.

Featured songs here in order of appearance are Footloose (Kenny Loggins), Chase this Light (Jimmy Eat World), Ordinary Day (Great Big Sea), Who Are You (Who), and the last two are Bowling for Soup (I'm Gay and Shut Up and Smile) with a little It's a Small World (the Rockapella version if anyone can find that one online).
Cut from this comic were Supersonic by Bad Religion, Feelin' Alright by Joe Cocker and Under Pressure by Queen/David Bowie because I couldn't fit it/forgot about it.

This comic was inspired by my drive to work (what you don't sing in the car?)

Blackouts..

2009-04-22T05:42:00.001-05:00

Can you believe this has been on the site for four hours now? I just got done inking next week's comic when I realized that it was Wednesday morning.. Usually I'm just finishing up this week's comic by now.

Posey's such a nerd in that first panel. But she finds her inspiration where she can. And Kutner's recent demise would be something that would inspire her to take that word processor by the reins and start to write. But unfortunately for her inspiration is also fleeting. I've been here a couple of times that's for sure. Of course my experiences usually involve more gnashing of the teeth and hurling of nearby objects. But that's just me.

Oh, and I hope you watched the last couple of episodes of House to get that reference.. Who will take Sulu to White Castle now?

Doodles Doodles Doodles!!

2009-04-15T07:07:00.001-05:00

These pictures are almost a year old. It was originally supposed to come up as #101 and Mort's doodle comic as #102, but as I was working on this one, my old computer died. What my brother and I were planning is that the four doodle comics of the main characters would come up in the second book made for the second year. That's how it goes though, the best laid plans and all that shit. But for our birthday, we got an internal harddrive enclosure, so now I have access to all those pictures that were lost to the old computer (I had up to the unfinished comic #097 on the external harddrive backed up before it died so there were like two months I didn't have access to). I don't know if I'll do Mort's next, but for now I'm very glad to have this one done.

Simply Complicated..

2009-04-07T01:24:00.001-05:00

This is my half of the art trade with Simple Comics. We've known each other since high school, so this was a long time coming. I've been wanting to do something in the Simple Complications world for a long time. See our comics bridge each other every so often. Timber Valley, the city that Same Apartment takes place in is situated around a lake. The same lake the titular Circle City takes place in. So they're in the same world, the only difference is that the world is represented differently. We've even had some cross overs every so often here and here.. But enough about that. If you want to find some more Gar and others, go read Simple Comics' magnum opus that is Simple Complications. I'll wait.

Oh, and look Marvel's movie. About time he had one. Everybody and Aunt May has had a comic book movie now

Seeing Eye Caveman..

2009-03-31T23:18:00.001-05:00

This image just popped up in my brain. I'm not sure where it came from, but this is exactly what it looked like in my head. I don't do enough of these kinds of things anymore it feels like. Since it takes so much effort and time to do a comic, it almost doesn't seem worth it to do these kind of random jokes nowadays. But sometimes that's what I need. Sure I could probably do a heavy hard hitting story on Posey trying to lift Mort's cynicism, but in the end sometimes you just have to just play with pretty colors and images.

Plus how can you not like Captain Caveman?

Doodlebob!!

2009-03-25T04:59:00.001-05:00

Hey look, something that's NOT two weeks apart.

I've been scanning again. This time, instead of going around getting all of one character, like I did on Posey and Mac, I just told John to pitch in anything that looked good and I would scan it and put it in there. Took a bit longer than I thought it would, but only since I couldn't go against my urge to color every one of them. But you get to see some of the ones that I've been trying to work on the side here. One of those is the CSI joke at the bottom left there, and the 40000 kiriban (the one that got deleted when photoshop crashed as mentioned here)

Watchmen..

2009-03-17T09:04:00.001-05:00

What can I say it was a great movie. But there's one thing that my group of friends kept pointing out. Poor Posey, she's gonna miss like half of the movie.

I blame Jason for making this late. Still the tournament was great.

Oh, and even though this is a penis joke, I'm not putting mature content on it. You guys can take it right?

Mario, I hope you don't mind..

Awkward Situational Comedy..

2009-02-12T23:40:00.002-06:00

Wow two weeks.. It's not even that big a comic..

But wow the two weeks I've had. First I sleep mostly through my days off, which as of late, are the only days I get to work on the comic. My sleep schedule has been way off lately (typing this at 3:22pm after only waking up yesterday at 8:45pm gee I wonder why..). Plus this week's days off I couldn't get in the mood to do anything on this thing no matter what I tried. Last Friday I figured out why. I had a nice cold brewing somewhere deep inside (probably the spleen, that crafty devil). So the last couple of days, I've been not only coughing and sneezing all sorts of bodily fluids, but also unable to draw anything worth two cents. All the while the last panel of this comic lay untouched.

But anyway, enough about me.. what about this comic? This was actually the simpler one I had planned for this week. The other one had more panels, but I have a feeling that I may have been able to whip it up with less effort (hindsight's a bitch). Posey isn't usually a gossip, but it's one of those things that you've got to just tell someone about. And really how would she know what it looks like anyway? All in all, even though I got tired of looking at this comic days ago (really I was probably just cranky because of the upcoming cold), I had a ball working on it and I'm actually happy with the results. Not only that, but you get to see inside Gar's room. Haven't done that since #010..

The site version seems to be down at the moment, but should be up soon.

Oh, and there's something interesting that's going to happen involving Same Apartment soon, but as this description is way too long as is, I'll wait till everything comes together on it.

Elflord..

2009-01-24T09:43:00.002-06:00

To my Deviantart Readers: Sorry about being so late folks, I got called into work a couple of hours early and I forgot to upload it early. Those of you who checked out the site though, got to see this already since as long as I have the comic uploaded to Tomekeeper, it goes up automatically (hint hint).

On to the comic description!
Anyway, one thing I've noticed about this new horizontal style is that it allows these simple jokes to be done way more freely. I like that, since I had so many problems with comics such as the telemarketer comic. Jokes such as these shouldn't be so time consuming (I think I remember it was two weeks late). This one only took me a couple of days to do, and I actually like the results. After all, nothing like a little simple humor. Especially if it doesn't take two weeks to do..

Skulltime Bear is back..

2009-01-17T10:51:00.002-06:00

I've been watching too much Bones I think..

This is an old concept. I've got an old drawing of a fried head killed by a Care Bear Stare that's like three years old. The two people in the final panel are the kids from the movie. I thought "Why wouldn't they become police officers?" The dead guy's just a guy. Maybe Jeff Daniels? Don't know..

Had to make that stare from scratch. Scratch I say!!

Doop Dee Doo!

2009-01-16T09:02:00.001-06:00

Hey what do you know?! I'm on Technorati!

Technorati Profile

White Rabbits and Stupid Jokes..

2009-01-08T12:04:00.001-06:00

I'm having a ball with this new coloring style. This comic was an interesting one. I wrote it, drew it and inked it on the fifth. That's the quickest work we've ever had on any comic in Same Apartment's history. It took me a bit of time to get around to coloring it, but here we are on the eighth with a finished comic. I think I may just get on top of that New Year's resolution of making comics on deadline.

Anyway, this is just something that popped into my head. I knew I couldn't do it as a straight joke, so I chose instead to go with something that was so unfunny that it was funny, hence the hilarity in the last panel. I also found it a fun comic to work on some nice fun expressions. We all love a good stupid joke here and there don't we?

Happy New Year 2009..

2008-12-30T10:38:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year folks, just a couple of days left.

Funny story about this one: Originally they were counting the stars. Then I put that last panel in there with Gar catching the snowflake, but there was a problem. You can't see the stars if it's snowing. So I had the bright idea that they could just be counting snowflakes. But my brother (the writer) said no. How do you like that? Even though I wrote this one.

So anyway, some nice dialogue between Gar and Mac. I liked it through the whole process. That's something I don't often get. Bring on the 2009!!

What's that on the Horizon?

2008-12-23T22:56:00.002-06:00

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

This one was one of those jokes that I liked and wanted to see finished, but for some reason I couldn't get into the mood to color. I'm glad I didn't slap it together at the last minute to get it on time, because (just like last year's Christmas comic) I loved the way the coloring came out.

More Mort Christmas cynicalness. And the Muse as well! Haven't seen her in awhile, have we? Posey will crack him one day. I draw on my notes too.

A note on the layout of this comic, I thought maybe if I make the comic a horizontal style one this time it would help it go through the pipeline quicker. What do you guys think? I've got more tests coming..

It does tingle..

2008-12-12T09:30:00.002-06:00

I would love to wait til the Star Trek movie comes out for this one, but I figured someone will think about this joke by then (in fact I'm sure it's been done by now) So here it goes up.. early for a change. If anybody's seriously confused, it's because Zachary Quinto is playing Spock in the upcoming Star Trek film. He's playing Sylar on Heroes.. so yeah.

I think that new coloring style's doing wonders. At least for a simple one like this. I used that new brush for the last comic.. I wonder if anyone noticed any change? I'm sure my astute readers noticed. How bout it guys?

A note to the blog readers: I need to get my old harddrive off of the old computer before I start putting up thumbnails for the comic. It'll happen here soon don't fret folks.

Same Apartment dot com request..

2008-12-11T00:34:00.002-06:00

Ok, I updated the site edition of the comic after all these months after my computer died. I'll be back to putting up the normal blog updates and thumbnails in the comic archives soon here, but I'm concentrating more on this week's comic for now. But it's nice that now not only can you see both parts of the 100th comic up there (I was able to update on DA but not on the site, since I wasn't able to get to tomekeeper on another computer), you can also see all the current comics that are up. We're now up to SA#104, so that's good.

Funny thing is that according to Thurinus, I could've updated as soon as I got my new computer.. Not sure on the details, but that's my bad.

Anyway here's a request. Since the site's been dead, Same Apartment's stats on thewebcomicslist.com have completely flatlined. Help support Gar and crew there by checking out the comic on the site. All you have to do is click the link and check out the most current page at http://sameapartment.com/ Just click the link, if you like browse through the archives and if you haven't read the comics here on Deviantart, then you can read through them on the handy dandy browser. But even if you don't want to read or have already done so, then just click the link and move on to other interweb adventures.
Let's see if we can bring Same Apartment back to three digits again.

Marker Fight..

2008-11-08T15:38:00.001-06:00

I have an excellent excuse for why the comic is late. But since I haven't slept I forgot what it was.

So moving on. This was a suggestion by :iconsimplecomics: to do a real media comic to represent the months I went without the computer. I thought it was a good idea and here we are. I wasn\'t sure whether or not to tweak the background with photoshop, or to just leave it untouched like this, but I figured to leave it completely unaltered. with the exceptions of some size issues, what you see is what you get. This also marks the first time that there is an actual Same Apartment comic colored that exists outside the computer.