Metapanel

Where the balloons end up
For the last year or so I’ve been writing a newsletter. This Sorry Spacesuit it’s called, and it’s been a great way for me to figure out some things about myself and my goals as an artist, my process and my values. I’ve made some great friends with it and had wonderful in-depth conversations about […]

The Halcyon Years – “Dead Baby Army” (2002)
There was a subset of The Halcyon Years which tried to blend music and webomics. It was called “The Synesthesia Drive-In” and was a collaboration between myself and close friend Nichlaus Von Hulsebus, who is now the front man for our own Hang Dog Expression. “Dead Baby Army” was the last of these, and draws upon a narrative that was […]

The Halcyon Years – “Sand Dollar Collar” (2002)
There was a subset of The Halcyon Years which tried to blend music and webomics. It was called “The Synesthesia Drive-In” and was a collaboration between myself and close friend Nichlaus Von Hulsebus, who is now the front man for our own Hang Dog Expression. The first collaboration was “Sleeping Dark Things“. Nich came up with a musical rendition of […]

Directions “Up” – (2003)
“Up” is the final piece in Directions. Trying to get a webpage to scroll up is difficult, so I went the route of having the viewer position themselves on the page. Kind of a cheap trick when you think about it. But back then, I was no html expert! Funnily enough, the original page had plenty of […]

Directions “Down” – (2003)
“Down” was the most straightforward installment in Directions. It’s a regular vertical scroller dealing with artistic frustration. I think the real interest lies in the metapanel, an open composition of photo collage that bleeds into the background. I enjoy the palette, the sickly mustard which rolls into warm oranges, and balances out the complimentary blue in the center of […]

Directions – (2003)
So there used to be this thing called Bitpass. When it was originally launched, it focused pretty heavily on monetizing webcomics. I was invited to be a beta tester of their system and create content for sale. This was 2003 and although it seems somewhat silly now, there was very little movement in terms of an easy […]

The Halcyon Years “No-Man’s Land” – (2001)
The Halcyon Years was a series of short infinite canvas comics, some of which included early experiments with interactive elements. This piece was the third installment in the series, from 2001. Some of the early Halcyons were based on dreams, this one included. You can read the comic here.

Redress of Grievances – (2003)
George W. Bush’s Iraq war began in March of 2003, and this comic was published some time in April. Remember, this was long before Obama, long before all the hope and change stuff. Long before political quotes were pasted on a stoic image of Thomas Jefferson and passed around on Facebook as indictment of the […]

Set-up, (Beat), Punchline – (2004)
According to the internet wayback machine, this horizontal scroller was made sometime in 2004. There are many in-jokes and references to mid 2000’s webcomics in here. At the time, web-publishing meant that you could instantly comment on trends and work. Although the idea is ubiquitous now, it was a fairly new idea at the time. So the […]

Five Ways to Love A Cockroach (2005)
Neal’s 2005 collaboration with Alexander Danner, “Five Ways to Love a Cockroach” has found a new home. It was one of a handful of comics built with Markus Müller’s Infinite Canvas application and made a decent splash at the time of it’s release, including winning the 2006 WCCA award for best use of Infinite Canvas. It was also featured in MoCCA’s “Infinite […]