Summary: Donate to Haiti thru any means of your choice through February 15th, send me proof and your mailing address, I’ll send you an AL character sketch of your choice. It’s that easy!

In case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, Haiti was recently struck by a massive earthquake.  In a country already hard hit with poverty, corruption and lack of access to things that many of us take for granted, this event’s destructive qualities are terribly magnified. The situation currently is, for a lack of a better word, abysmal – and it’s not bound to get better any time soon.

For a lot of us, going to Haiti to help directly is not an option – with my lack of real life, survival or practical skills, you could possibly make things worse or stand in the way. But there are ways to donate and help out. As I put in a donation to the Red Cross yesterday, I decided to put one of my few actual abilities (drawing, apparently) to good use.

That’s why if you donate anything to Haiti between now and February 15th, through any organization of your choice (there’s a lot of good options out there — see below for some pointers) I’ll personally send you a sketch of any character of your choice as an extra incentive for you to open up your heart. All you have to do is send me proof of your donation to armando@atomiclaundromat.com (you may hide the donation amount to protect your privacy if you so wish) with your mailing address. DON’T SEND ME ANY MONEY. To avoid any confusion, I’m deactivating my own “Donate” page — I want you to go put your money in the hands of the people who can action in Haiti ASAP and just let me know when you’ve done it.  By the way, if you donate in a way that has no obvious “proof” – dropping off a sack of canned food at a collection center, or depositing money at your local church – email me anyways. I think that for something like this, we can do the honor system. Although a picture of a reader with a sack of cans would be awesome.

Donors in the USA
- American Red Cross. The American Red Cross is taking donations via text message – text “haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 USD donation (major cell carriers are waiving additional text messaging fees). You can also donate on their homepage.  

Donors in Mexico
- El Universal has an excellent page on all collection points and bank accounts for aid to Haiti.

Donors elsewhere
- UNICEF. They are collecting funds for children in need on their homepage.
- American Red Cross. They accept contributions from everywhere on their homepage.
- Canadian Red Cross. They are accepting contributions from everywhere, so visit their homepage. (thanks Elliott!)

I know that maybe a lot of you were already planning on donating anyways, so this is a small thank you on behalf of those whose life you may be changing. If this whole thing pushes just one person over the edge to make a donation, I’ll call this whole little effort a success.

This “offer” is open to anybody around the world.

I’ve received some requests (2, actually, but oh well) to get a glimpse of my work setup. Personally, I’ve always liked to see where my fave artists work (one of these days, I swear I’ll steal Adam Warren’s desk) so thought it would be a fun thing to share.  Without further ado, I present to you – THE STUDIO (a corner in my bedroom, but it sounds better when I call it THE STUDIO).

For your reference…

1. 28″ Widescreen monitor.  This thing has spoiled me forever – I refuse to use the puny screen at my office anymore.
2. Intuos 4 XL Tablet. Thus far, I use the tablet only for coloring and to write word balloons.  I really want to get around to really learning every possible use – although I don’t think I’ll stop doing hand-drawing and inking.
3. Pixma Pro 9000 Mark II printer – This printer could potentially kill a grown man if I dropped it on top of said man.  It’s a large format printer, and I use it for my guides and to experiment with for some cool posters and other projects I have in mind. Also, to print pictures of LOLcats.
4. My Chair. This is where I park my ass.
5. Paper sorter thingie. In progress strips, layout pages and random ideas are stored here. There’s an intricate filing system at work here people.
6. Muztek 11×17 flatbed scanner. This is an AWESOME scanner for the price. Also, it allows me to scan in the pages I usually work at with a lot of ease (no pasting/etc.)
7. Wall o’original art. This will build up with more time and be increasingly awesome.
8. Shelves. I keep here the DVDs and books I’m currently in the process of going through or reference material.  I have a lot of good books here that I’ve been using to self-teach drawing techniques, coloring, webcomicking, and other stuff.  Drop me a note in the comments if you would like to know a bit more about my reference material.
9. Magnetic board. Reference drawings (Bob and Angela, currently), script ideas and some assorted pens readily at hand.

And a closer look at my work area, with some in progress strips (You’ve seen this one before). 

Hope you enjoyed the look at the space - on some future post I’ll share my comic process (from layout to finished piece).  Won’t really be a tutorial, unless somebody actually thinks I can impart some knowledge…

I’m playing around with my sexy new tablet.  It’s so sexy I could do unspeakable things with it.  At any rate, I’m continuing down the path of self teaching on coloring and digital technique, and I present to you a colored version of Bob.

Bob in his amazing technicolor glory.

I posted this on the comic’s Facebook page last night, and it was funny reading through some of the comments/reactions. First of all, some people had visualized Bob to be red/orange.  It’s curious how someone can have a very clear image of the color in their heads, and I went ahead and destroyed it.  Other people totally got the color aspect of it (why I chose it) — he’s been described as a vintage milkshake machine / refrigerator / sewing machine.  And one more person commented on the legs’ design itself: why does it look like mecha hardware? Excellent question! One which will have to wait for a resolution.

Well, I’ve been negligent in posting about this, but I recently did a gueststrip for my friend Rocio on her webcomic, Felinia goes to Paris. It’s about a cat and her vacation to Paris.  Oh, and she has long conversations WITH her phone, not ON her phone.  Rocio is a longtime friend and we were in a comic-making workshop (not to be confused with sweatshop) ages ago, where she was already excelling with mad art skillz. So, go check out my contribution and read through her archive!

One of my favorite webcomics is Girls with Slingshots.  The site’s tagline describes it as “Two girls, a bar and a talking cactus”, but that really doesn’t encompass what Danielle Corsetto (the author) has achieved with her comic: a really funny look into the life of two young women and their everyday occurrences, which makes me laugh out loud at work very often — while at the same time being poignantly sweet without being sacharine.

And of course, the crowning achievement of McPedro the talking cactus, who I wish would show up more often.

Anyways, GWS recently celebrated its anniversary, so I took up the opportunity to buy one piece of Danielle’s art – the original art to strip #733.

GWS - Strip 733

With so many people doing work directly on the tablets and photoshops and vectors and whatnots, original “physical art” is a luxury. When I opened the envelope, I was blown away by how crisp, clean and beautiful Danielle’s line work looks up close.  She could put this in a Xerox machine and have her strip done with no additional retouching.  Also, she has the sort of penmanship that my mother was never able to instill upon me.  Lettering done by hand is also a dying art, and Danielle pulls it off wonderfully.

Also, this strip features a “dead” farting kitty.

GWS - Strip 2

If this sounds like total fanboy gushing… yeah, it absolutely is.  Check out Danielle’s comic as soon as you have the chance.  Just don’t forget to come back. I’ll be waiting.