Did a little fooling around with Inkscape today. Originally set out to draw a bunny, but it started to look like a dog, so I let it lead me in that direction. All of this is done with my mouse, using shapes and bezier curves.

If you'd like to get it in SVG format (a vector format that works with Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator), you can get the file at the Open Clip Art Library. I've dedicated the drawing to the public domain and uploaded it there to join in their push to reach 10,000 pieces of free clipart in their catalog.

For fun, I like to write little songs for my kids. This is the latest one and is sung to the tune of "The Blue Danube" by Strauss. In case you're having trouble imagining how it works with that melody, I got out my el-cheapo USB microphone and recorded an mp3 of "Volcano Smokeys Pizza Place". Please understand that the mp3 is just for demo purposes and any criticism of my singing is completely missing the point.

Volcano Smokey's Pizza Place by Greg Bulmash is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.brainhandles.com/contact-us.

At Volcano Smokey's pizza place
There was a din-o-saur meeting space
Where all the triceratops would go
To see the famous singing bronto
The T-rex would play the stand-up bass
While raptors on drums would rock the place
The dinosaurs danced with such grace
At Volcano Smokey's place

Pterodactyls flew through the dusky blue
Shining spotlights in the twilight
By the gingko roots they played silver flutes
On pizza they dined while the starlight did shine

The big sauropods stomped
Little fabrosauri romped
And the allosaurus chomped
On a big plate of pasta all covered in cheese

In moonlight, as the dino-band played, love entered the room
Indosaurus danced with Vulcanodon and swept away the gloom

They danced 'til night was done
And nobody had to run
All the dinos had some fun
At Volcano Smokey's great pizza place.

A few days back, more than one web-comic artist I follow linked to an interactive comic as an example of a cool use of technology to enhance cartooning. The problem for me was that it was in Flash and a little complicated. I wanted to build a tool that any cartoonist could use to create something like that.

So I came up with a utility I call ComicScript. I'm still just at the proof of concept stage, but basically when it's done, any comic artist who wants to build a grid of panels will just fill in a few details about his/her grid and get the JavaScript code and files needed to implement the grid on their site or blog.

Check out my test of an 8 x 2 (8 wide by 2 tall) grid comic (I would have posted it here, but I realized my proof of concept was too wide. Love to hear what you think.

So I had this general idea for some t-shirt design featuring a zombie, but thought I needed a zombie face to do it. A quick search for zombie clip art wasn't turning up anything I really liked... at least not anything free.

I've been finding that if I'm willing to invest the time, I can do some halfway decent stuff with Inkscape. It's like Adobe Illustrator, only it's free. It doesn't have all of Illustrator's functions, but it has some Illustrator doesn't have. So I drew a cartoon zombie face which I've contributed to the Open Clip Art Library.

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