Chippy and Loopus!!!

Justin Wright 1981-2008

To say it was a sad day today at Pixar is an understatement. Justin Wright, a talented story artist here at Pixar died last night due to a heart attack. Justin was only 27. He was born with a number of heart defects that ultimatley resulted in a heart transplant at age 12. He grew up painfully aware of his own mortality. Perhaps it was this knowledge that made him so passionate and enthusiastic about everything he did. Or, more than likely, that was just Justin. I only knew Justin about a year, and only got to work with him for a few months. In that time, I learned that he was a brilliant artist and a gifted story teller, as is evidenced by his blog; Charlie, a deck Hand. . He was also quite the guitarist, able to not only write songs, but seemingly play the entire Dave Mathews catalog. (He was a HUGE Dave Mathews fan, a fact that earned him no end of ribbing among the Pixar story crowd). It goes without saying that Justin was a nice guy, but he was more than that. He was kind, warm and endlessly encouraging. I'll miss playing pool (badly) with him. I'll miss hearing him walk around the halls, strumming his guitar. I'll miss teasing him about Dave Mathews. I'll miss him admonishing me for not owning an Xbox 360. I'll miss his "Dude! Sweet!" when he sees a drawing he likes. I'll miss not getting to know him better.
My heart and my prayers go out to his girlfreind Ashlee and his family.
See you around, Justin.
-John

New Episode: Calling out the Big Guns...

Inked with a Raphael #2. What do you think? Me? I'm having fun actually dipping my brush into ink like a real cartoonist!

New Episode: Better with age...kinda..

PS: We had the battle of the bands last friday. We played well, but lost anyway. It doesn't matter, as we had a good time and the crowd loved us. For a complete run down listen to this:
http://web.mac.com/projectdoa/Site/Podcast/Entries/2008/3/12_Plot_Device.html

In other news, I finished my Afterworks story, which was an incredible amount of work. Between that, band practice and actual work, I had little time for the strip. That's about to change, however. I will be gearing up to produce the strip 3 times a week, monday, wednesday and friday, or possibly saturday. The other news is that I am looking into moving the strip to a new site that actuall supports webcomics. Maybe a Wordpress?comicpress thing. I want the strip to be more accessible to new readers and one way to do this is to finally move to a real site with archives and an intro page and hell, maybe even a forum and a store!!
It's time to take this thing to the next level. I hope you all will come along for the ride...and bring 10 friends each with you. Any advice as to how to achieve the above is totally welcome.
Thanks everyone!
-John