Guten Tag.59--Have a Blue and Green Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! Technically, Christmas Eve, but I won't be able to post this tomorrow. Well, here it is, a milestone by any of my standards. Strip #100, and I hope it fills your heart with Christmas cheer and memories of years past and present. Of hanging ornaments with your brother. Hope everyone has a great day and holiday week. My older brother and his girlfriend are staying with us this Christmas, so I'll have plenty to keep myself busy with. Plus, I'm going to start working on putting a Guten Tag book together and getting it printed. As well as finish the first issue of Mega West. But that's for another post and time.

Well, see you all next year. 2010. Dang. Only two years left before we destroy the world through man-made climate change, just like the ancient Mayans predicted thousands of years ago.

Alright, take care.

Frohe Weihnacten und ein gutes Neues Jahr! (Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year)

-ryan

Guten Tag.58--Leftovers and Making Amends

Wow, busy times right now. Little break from the madness that is final exam week. Which for me means "4-5 projects due in the next four days" week. Paintings, graphic design, metalsmithing/jewelry, psychology. ugh.

Anyways, Guten Tag is nearing the 100th strip, which means break time for me. Oh, that's odd, it looks like it's going to stop at #100. How coincidental... Probably won't have that one done until next week.

In the mean time, stay classy. I think that is from a movie. That I have not seen.

-ryanHOFFMAN

Guten Tag.57--Pigturducken

Hey everybody, Happy Thanksgiving! Hope all is well: family, friends, food, football..., weather, traveling, etc.
This strip is inspired in part by the tradition of preparing Thanksgiving turkey in a turkey fryer, as well as the other tradition of Turducken (which I am slightly mortified by, but still interested in trying). And I thought I had invented deep fried butter for an Illustration class last year, but it appears Paula Deen and others have perfected the art of it already.



Well, that does it for this week. My older brother is flying in from Texas, and going straight to Thanksgiving dinner with us, so I'm excited. Should be a fun weekend.

Take care.
Don't eat too much deep fried butter.

-ryan

Guten Tag.56--Modern Communication and Green Christmas

Hey everybody. The second strip here is inspired by a radio station serving the greater Detroit area called WNIC, and they usually start playing Christmas music right at the beginning of November. Take a listen. I'm sure a lot of people prefer this, but I can't listen to it until after Thanksgiving, or else I'll get burned out on the Christmas spirit before it even arrives.

Man. I can't believe 2009 has already flown by. Life just keeps accelerating. Ponder this in your brain.

Take care.

-ryan

Guten Tag.55--Pumpkin Bed

Hey, finished this yesterday. Hahah. What other things can you think of doing with old, moldy pumpkins?
Make a list, then share that list with your family. You can make a day out of it.

Alright, I gotta fly. Catch ya later.

-ryand.hoffman

Guten Tag.54--Halloween Stuff

Hallo everyone. It's Halloween tomorrow. So I did this illustration/animation in the spirit of Halloween. My inspiration was a friend telling me about 3-D pumpkin carvings, so after much scholarly research on such academically respected websites such as Google and Wikipedia (there exists a Predator pumpkin, and it is cool), I thought the best idea for Lex to carve would be something insanely detailed, such as the Coliseum. So yeah.

Oh yeah, here's this week's comic. Halloween costumes. And a little social commentary for good measure.



Alright. Take it easy.

-ryan[drew]hoffman

Guten Tag.53--Brotherfight pt.2, Ring of Death, and Apples.

More comics today. My Xbox 360 did indeed die recently, and for some reason I thought of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's okay if you haven't seen the movie. I liked about 66% of it, but did not care for the psychedelic drug trip-like flying sequence towards the end that goes on for TWENTY MINUTES. The last scene of the movie was awesome, though. But yeah, YouTube the HAL-9000 scene if you want. I did.

Anyways, I just realized that there are eight more weeks until I give Guten Tag a break for the new year. Once I finish #100, I'm planning on putting a book together with all 100 strips, as well as earlier stuff I did before it was printed in Wayne State's newspaper. Maybe some pages from my sketchbook and production photos? I think it would be a cool little book. Also, I'm thinking I'll have more time next semester to work on strips, so I was thinking about trying a longer and larger format for Guten Tag. I've got other ideas and projects brewing--some with my brother, others with my good friend Sean, so I want to give Guten Tag some room as I explore those possibilities.

Alright, well, I've got some stuff to do. Have a great week.

-ryan

Guten Tag.53--Man vs. Wild and Indoor Voice

Hey everybody. School is busy. These are the most recent comics that I have drawn. I hope you like them.
Alright, I must do more homework. Take care.

-from rayn hfofamn

Tuten Gag.52--Michigan State Trooper and Metalsmithing Class

Took a little time off between updates, but things have been busier around here. My brother, sister-in-law, and niece flew in from California the 26th of August, so we've been spending time with them as well as family on my mom and dad's side. On top of that, school has started back up, further increasing the busy-ness. But I'm enjoying it. My little niece is awesome!

I'm getting closer and closer to my goal with Guten Tag. I want to get over 100 strips by the end of this school year and collect them into a book that I hope to sell. I'll likely have more than 100, plus extra stuff that I want to put in there like scans from my sketchbook where I work out ideas for my strips, and other stuff. I'll probably start doing actual work on that during Christmas break.

Well, have a great Labor Day.

-ryan

Guten Tag.51--Headed Down South to the Land of the Pines

Hey everyone, just got back Wednesday night from a week in Cleveland, Tennessee. I stayed at my friends' house before they went back to school at Lee University. It's been a while since I've been down there, so I enjoyed it. Met a lot of their friends from Lee and went to some cool places down there. Drove through Chilhowee Mountain, swam in the Ocoee River, and of course, ate at Chick-fil-A, Zaxby's, and Krystal's. And yes, there was discussion among those of us from the North and those down there from the South concerning the correct term for 'soft drink' (prompting this week's strip). Fun times. 

I might be going back in a couple months with my family since my oldest brother and his family unit will be in Michigan in less than a week! We used to go down to Knoxville every other year when we were younger, so I'm excited. 

Other than that, school is starting in a couple of weeks. Bring it on. I have a couple books due at school.

I think America may be slightly better if we all ate a little more chicken.

later.

-ryan

Guten Tag.50--Special Milestone Post!

There's really nothing special about this post. I just wanted it to be. See, 50 is half of a hundred, which is a significant number in terms of milestones and in general. Because it's easy to add 100s to each other, since it's practically 1 with two 0's. And it's almost as easy to add 50s to each other, since they're half of 100. I think this is why we place more importance on "50th anniversary", or "250 years of service!" or "100 ways to do 'x'" (although, 101 of anything trumps 100, because it's one more. sometimes you will see this in book titles. e.g. "101 dalmations", or "101 ways to help birds". but by this logic, we should also see titles with the numbers 102, 103, 104, etc. because all those numbers are bigger than the others).

But could you imagine the chaos if we switched from counting 50s and 100s to 47s and 94s? People would either have to use math or their cell phones (because they have calculators in them). Pandemonium. 

Alright. Chew on that for a minute.

Take care.

-ryan

Guten Tag.49--Moths

Hey everyone. Not much going on lately. I think that's the first time I did that extreme of an angle in a Guten Tag strip in the panel with the moths. I want to mix things up every now and then without going too far from the look I've stuck with for Guten Tag. I think it fits. That's actually what my porch light looks light.

In related project news, Sean Phelan and I recently finished the final (fingers crossed) page layout thumbnails for the first issue of Mega West. Today I got all my bristol board together and cut it to size, and now I just need to start drawing. I have another blog for that project, so if you want further news, I'll be updating it soon. But feel free to go there anyway: MEGA WEST

Awesome, I'm pumped.

Alright, that's it for now.

Take..luck.

-ryan

Guten Tag.48--Thrice the Guteness.

Oh hey. I suppose it's been a while since I updated. A fair amount of stuff has been going on in the past few weeks. Most importantly, I recently got back from visiting my brother and sister-in-law in California, and I finally got to meet my niece! Madelyn is amazing and such a joy to be around. 

Brandon and Joanna, (my brother and sister-in-law) were in China for the past 4 years, and had Madelyn five months before they left to come back to the states, so it's crazy to think that my little niece has already been in China (dur), as well as Vietnam, Hawaii, and some other asian countries (I think), before she was even six months old.

I can't wait until September when they come and stay with us for a while.

GUTEN TAG! I made some:

On an unrelated note, I recently bought the game Psychonauts off of Xbox 360. I remember playing the demo a few years ago, and liking it. But after someone from the boltcity.com message boards pointed out that Scott Campbell art directed it, I had to check it out. (Scott Campbell, by the way, draws some cool stuff. He's also involved with the Brutal Legend game that's coming out.)

So I just finished the game last night. I tried to get every item and level in the game, but I'm a level short of 100. 

Overall, the story was very unique and solid. The dialogue was excellent and very funny at times, and I thought the character development was given great attention. 

The game is for the most part a platformer, but goes out of its way to bring different challenges to a traditional platforming experience. Not a lot of puzzle solving, except for in the way your different abilities are used. 

The thing I really liked about it was how the overall concept of a 'Psychonaut' played out in different levels. You interact with certain characters throughout the game, and transport into their minds in order to solve what's wrong with them in the game. These are essentially the 'levels', and each is unique in its look and feel as well as its gameplay. For example, one guy you meet is like a conspiracy theorist gone mad, so his mind is a 60s era suburb with all the streets at odd angles and curving above your head. Another level takes place on a Settlers of Catan/Risk type gameboard where you can switch between controlling pieces on the board from afar, as well as shrinking down to the board level to complete objectives. 

Finally, the aesthetics of the game are great. Great environments, great art, great soundtrack, etc. Really cool game worth buying.

Well, that's it until next time. Still working on MegaWest with my friend Sean. We've almost got the page/panel layout of issue 1 completed. We already did, but it felt like the pages were too crowded with panels, so it needed to be reworked. Can't wait to finally start pencilling and then inking. 

Scrabble.

-ryan

Guten Tag.47--A Double Dose of Wasting Your Time

Hoo boy. Busy week coming up. My cousin in the Air Force will be home tomorrow and is getting married this Saturday. I'm standing in the wedding, so all the usual wedding stuff is going on this week, plus it's the last full week of my illustration class. My last project is to design a barf bag. Not a whole lot of ideas yet, except for this sketch:

For those unaware, a rainbow colored yawn (or rainbow yawn, for short) is one of many euphemisms for barf. I thought that it would make sense that a cloud would vomit a rainbow, given the context of this bag possibly being in an airplane. It would be colored of course. So yeah, this illustration class is great.

Too bad about the Wings. 

This is not a sports blog, and I am nowhere near qualified to discuss sports, so I won't.

However, the Red Wings are an amazing team, and I think one of the best faces of Detroit that we can present to the country, so I'm bummed to see them lose the Cup.

But they will definitely be back next year. 

Alright, end of stuff unrelated to Guten Tag.

Drink milk.

-ryan

Guten Tag.46--DoppelTag Saturday! The Learning Channel and Rabbit Season.

Because even though it is summer, and I only have one class, I still find a way to be lazy and not update on time. Apologies.

Yeah, you've probably watched these shows on TLC. I know I have. While eating triangles.

I think the inspiration for this week's strip came from years ago, when one of my brothers either almost ran over a bunny when mowing the lawn, or actually did, and severed its foot. And I'm neither a PETA fanatic, nor a proponent of animal cruelty, but I can't help but see the irony in the latter scenario...

Well, I wish you a fantastic week. Don't get stressed out.

-ryan

Guten Tag.45--Comi-conned

So yeah, I went to my first comicon this past weekend. It was pretty sweet. Saw Guy Davis, who has been drawing the B.P.R.D. series regularly for the past few years. Got to talk about the series a little bit while he did a cool sketch of Abe Sapien.

 

Also got to talk to David Peterson, who draws Mouse Guard, and is also from Michigan. My friend Sean and I were talking to him about how he does his comic, and just comics in general. He had some good advice about plotting the script and laying out panels. He also did a nice sketch of one of his characters, Black Axe for me. 

The cool thing is that this all happened within an hour of the doors opening, so I just walked around for the next 6 hours looking through boxes of comics. I guess that's how comicons go? Maybe it's just Detroit. I'm sure San Diego or New York is much bigger and has more stuff to do, but that's alright. The fact that there were less people than I expected meant it was easier to talk to the guests, so that was cool. 

Some dudes from Battlestar Galactica were there too. Commander Tigh and Chief Tyrol, for any nerds who follow the series...like I did... Anyways, they were cool to talk to. Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) was talking to us about the Red Wings/Anaheim series, so that was cool. Some old dude was creeping out the girl who played Kat from BSG. He wanted her to sign a picture that was taken of him and her, in which he was wearing a shirt with a picture of him and her on it... It's like when you take a picture of yourself holding a mirror. And then he got down on his knees and gave her a box of chocolate or something. The dude sitting at her table, comicon security or whatever, I guess, was up in his face waiting for him to do something, but this guy was just being weird in a non-threatening way. Awkward. 

So overall, got a bunch of sweet deals on trades, got to talk to some artists/writers that I like, got to talk to some guys from a show I watched religiously, saw a few people dressed up like Deadpool and other superheroes, Storm Shadow(?), missed Taimak (Bruce Leeroy from The Last Dragon), etc. It was alright. I'll probably go back next year. 

Alright. Later. 

-ryan

Guten Tag.44--Finals

How is it possible to make it through the day on 3 hours of sleep? I'm just glad this semester is almost over. No more all-nighters for me.

-rh

Guten Tag.43--Unbiased Journalism

Just presenting the facts. You decide. 

-ryan

Guten Tag.42--Car Trouble (Edited 4.19)

So I've been listening to a number of composers lately: Holst, Mussorgsky, Debussy, Stravinsky, Belioz, Sibelius, etc. Thank you, Pandora radio. My oldest brother tells me that most of these guys' music falls under the genre of tone poems, not necessarily formal classical music, even though I wouldn't be able to make that distinction. (at least not yet, since I haven't studied or listened to enough classical music)

Anyway, tone poems stray from the formal structures and traditional scales found in classical music, and try to evoke a certain mood or match the persona or feel of a certain subject. It was a modern movement of the late 19th-early 20th century that was most likely inspired by the aftermath of WWI (acc. to my brother). I'm really digging it, as opposed to older classical stuff, because a lot of it seems more dynamic and chaotic. I like to think of it as classical music's counterpart to post-rock/post-metal music (Explosions in the Sky, Pelican, etc.)

Anyway, I'm glad that the sun's getting out more everyday. I like to be warm, not on the brink of hypothermia.

-ryan

Wow, just realized I didn't upload the strip before this one.

Here it is anyway:

alright. later

-ryan

Guten Tag.41 (I think this is a bad post naming convention. I mean, the number refers to the number of the post, not the number of the strip, so why..

...am I even numbering them at all? Shouldn't I just give them titles? I guess numbers give you a bearing of which post is more recent, but that's what the navigation bar is for. For now I'll keep the numbers, since I'm not clever enough to come up with a catchy title for each post.)

alright. comic strips. 

-ryan

Guten Tag.40--Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

So here's the second of my graphic-novel movie related Guten Tag strips.

I really want to see Watchmen. Even if there's not a giant squid bomb...

Gah. busy busy busy. I wish I could draw all day. 

Alright, take it easy everyone.

ryan

Guten Tag.39--'Catchup'

Alright, hopefully you've noticed the redesign of the blog. It's all thanks to the awesome skills I've been honing in my web design class so far. Oh yeah, scroll all the way down the page to get the full effect. I'll probably have to change it soon for spring, but knowing Michigan, that might not come for a while.

Anyway, I have been doing strips, so here they are. Suggestions?

later

-ryan

Guten Tag.38

hello hello. I'm all excited that it's going to be 45 or 46 degrees tomorrow. But I'll probably stay inside all day and squander this heat wave by doing 'homework'.

enough jibber jabber.

look, I made this:




-ryan

Guten Tag.37

Not much to talk about since last time, except for the fact that I've finally played Left 4 Dead. My lust for zombie genocide is momentarily quenched. 

Oh also, it's still one hundred degrees below zero here in Michigan.

Alright, later.

-ryan

Guten Tag.36

Long time, no see. Sorry. I apologize by presenting you with these original Guten Tag strips, free of charge:

Well, it's a new year, and already for me it's off to a good start.

My brother and his wife had their baby recently and she's beautiful. 

Madelyn Marsaili Hoffman. 

I can't wait until when they move back to the states.

Alright, have a good week. 

-ryan