Conference of the Birds.

All: Random bird noises over top one another.

Owl: Alright, order now I must insist!  Hmm... hoot, indeed.

Canary: Cheep.

Owl: Quiet you... myes.  Now, minutes from last meeting hmm eh wot?

Flamingo: Kay guys, minutes from last time... Cheep cheep, squack squack, hoot hoot, polly wanna cracker, pretty george pretty george, quack quack- what the hell?

Duck:  Baha!  You fools!  You never even noticed, it was I, with the fake moustache all along!  Secret duck spy, away! (Flies away with magical pixie dust trailing behind)

Owl: Subterfuge!  Unethical wot.  Fowl play if I do say so myself.  Hoot, yes.  Hmm.  Old business!  What say ye business of olde?

Robin:  The cats had their meeting in the gaaaahden.  I saw them.  They were being naughty.  They're all planning an attack of sorts.  The one cat was all, 'I want to eat them.' and the other one concurred!  Concurred even!

Gasps all around

Owl: Outrageous!  Flabberghasting, I would invoke! Any gander on what our side's found out?

Robin: Well sir, our top man's been pecking away at it.  Watching them.  He's a naughty bird.  Mr. dirty bird.  Mr. Dirty bird thinks the next location for their nefarious plans is behind unkle mongeral's fish market.

Penguin: Oh, I love that place, best sushi ever! have you ever had the spiced atlantic tuna? I tried it once and I was walking on air.  I mean I guess I don't technically know what that feels like but-

Owl: Enough! Of all the improper, indelicate, harumph, whoot, well then, all those in favour of putting together an ambush poop squad at unkle mongeral's, mmmyes,  after the meeting has been adjourned say tweet (series of collective hoots, tweets, and chirps) Hmm, so yes new business?  Business of newliness that has the shimmer of a glistening thing that shimmers glisteningly hm?

Canary: Yeah, I got some new business.  My wife left me for a cockatoo!

Owl: Indeed.

(Cockatoo looks around suspiciously, and attempts to leave, suspiciously)

Canary:  Hey buddy, I see ya!  Too scared to step it up, canary style?

Cockatoo:  I did her a favour man, she just picked the guy with the bigger plumes!

Canary:(Jewishly) I can't help it, it's molting season!

Cockatoo:  That's what she said.

Canary:  You're dead!  You're dead, that's it!
(They fight vigorously and exit)

Owl:  Hah, quite so.  Ah so... hmmm. Ah!  Right.  Hoot.  Furthermore, there will be a bread crumb luncheon with old lady Doris and Helen this weekend and... ah.  Mmm...  ah.

Robin:  Worms chirp!

Owl:  Yes quite so!  Oh ho ho, don't think I forgot now hoot. Thanks for chirping in though, verily!  The early bird special will be worms.

Multiple robins in falcetto unison:  Righteous!

Budgie:  Now! I need to speak to you all about the birds and the bees... tennis and dinner next wednesday?  How is that for everyone?  And if things go well... who knows?  Hehehehehe, you know what I'm talking about.  Hah hah, sex!

Penguin:  Hah hah, awesome!

Robin: Not me, I'm going out with the gull of my dreams.

Seagull:  Teehee, oh you stop it!

(Collective groans)

Owl: Terrible, simply terrible.  My... what a hoot!

Hummingbird:  There's lawsuits causing a flap up in here!  Exercise caution!  Sam!  You in particular have been ruffling many a feather.  What do you think we should do about this situation?

Sam: Just follow your nose!

Hummingbird: See?!  That's exactly what I'm talking about!  Stop rattling cages! Stop it!

Owl:  Any final thoughts?  Queries?  Quarries?  Qwertys?  Come now.  We must finish this off with a literary bang, I do persist, in modicum, hoot.  Aha!  Yes.  Hoot.

Sam:  How much man is a tucan sam if a tucan sam is you?

Owl:  Hoot!

Books!

I'm making books, man.  And it's about time, I tell you what.  Not writing books mind you.  Just making the physical things that house the words and whatnot.  Here's my first attempt, and will be the cover.  The inside will feature a faded version of this whistle man in the corner dancing and fluting when you flip the pages.  FUN!

After that I have the plan of making a 3D page of one of the graphic novels I've done, layering matte board to add depth.   Then making a graphic novel from a story I once wrote in what I call a "waking state fever dream".  Here it is!

So here, we begin, in a world with two moons.  And you ask, "How can a world be so different, a world with two moons?".  

Imagine, my friends.  Imagine.  Take in all the newly invented colours you've never seen, from a different rainbow prism of light.  Blue, red, and yellow are obsolete in this old world order.  Right in your own back yard, you could have a sterling banquet, if you'd just show the grass some affection.  There are no consequences for stopping to smell the roses, because when you do, they'll give you a hot meal, and a place to stay for the night.  They're hospitable, but they aren't called roses.  They're called conquistadors.  And they've been around since long before you were born.  But they loved you immensely.  

When you were born, you grew on a tree, and I was the tree.  How magnificently you grew on that tree.  And you were the colours in the new colour spectrum.  Jape, and rainteen, and billowpaxton, and ga.  You wore them well, and the conquistadors agreed.  And the tree was proud, and I was the tree. 

So now that you live in the world with two moons, I think you'll concur that we have more time to commit to the beginning, not the end of our lives, 'cause we have no linear path.  I've lived your life, and I know you've lived mine.  

Yesterday I was the plank in a pirate ship, and the man who attempted to mop tumbled over.  He was just remembering the day before when he was a blade of grass, when a small boy looked at him and decided on a whim that he was perfect enough, as far as blades of grass go, and wove him into a net, what caught a bird.  That bird had a conversation with the woven blade of grass about how significant we are under the light in the evening when we all live in the world with two moons.  I know this, because two days ago I was that bird.  What's mine is yours, and when we take care of each other, we take care of ourselves.

I couldn't believe it, the day you took a trek to confabulate with the moon, the far left moon, to ask him why he chose not to revolve around us, as the other moon did, the one on the right.  We all knew it was because he was stubborn.  

No one talks to the far left moon and doesn't end up spending time with the badgers.  The pachydermatous, too cruel, too-far-behind-with-the-times-and-the fashions-and-every-other-snazzy-thing-you-could-imagine badgers, flying high above the surface of the moon on the left by means of hot air balloons and a lonely satellite station for refueling purposes.  Though one could not spend too much time in that station, lest they lose so much bone density that back problems supervene.  

You went on though, and requested I join you, but of course I could not because I had a previous engagement to wed a rather beautiful, yet spindly knothole in a wooden fence to a grisly, pale, pitchfork in a smidgen of harmonious wedlock.  And besides, trees can't move, I've decided.  It's simply too ridiculous, even in the world with two moons.

So you sat on your feet, with your hands in tune, and flew to the left to go talk to the moon.  The moon on the right was just passing by, and you got your first glimpse of how pristine he was.  A beautiful alabaster globule, he was.  

Only the thing you must remember about the moon on the right is that he has the memory of a goldfish, but if you ever met a goldfish, you'd know its wisdom is unmatched.  Abstemious, and gathered, to battle wits would leave you bereft of any dignity you could hope to retain over a millennia.  Never fight a goldfish.

I wish just in scores that I could have seen your face when you got in place, through the atmospheric layers to the surface atop, and started to speak.  The moment in history we can all recall in an instant, if we think hard enough.  It's the same moment that argyle was invented by a scottish terrier just a mile east.  A firefly sat on a fern, clipping his toenails as he spoke his mind on the theory of evolution to a thoughtful tyrannosaurus rex, listening intently.  

Who should appear in front of you at this moment, but the man on the moon.  

"Get out of my way, the man on the moon!", you grumbled a tad, and still to this day, it's the only exposure I've had to you livid.  And you were rather fuming indeed.  I don't blame you, risking your hide and the things that you love, and those vindictive badgers who hovered just above.  And here stands a man.  Bearded, and smelly, like cheese, and not the good kind.  It can't have been pleasant.  And remember what you said after that?  Sure you do.  

You said, "Listen stinky cheese man on the moon with an ugly beard who I just don't like very much.  Even though perhaps given the chance, you may be the sort of gentleman who I'd fancy the odd game of Super Soup (Badminton) with.".

He replied, "My dear sir, I accept your duel.  Bazookas at dawn.  And would you look at that?  The perfect eclipse, and following that, the breaking of dawn up here on the moon, the one on the left.  So my good man, have at thee.  En garde!".

The moon was appalled, the one on the right, looking upon you, about to go fight.

"This can't end well, I can't even look, but I don't have a choice, here I go, out to orbit, and good luuuuuuuck!".  As he passed by again.  

"Alright, 48 paces, you dog." Said the man on the moon, cross as he could, but anyone should note that he quite clearly cared deeply for you.  How many people have come to the moon, and spoken to this man?  A seldom few, and they're with the badgers now, flitting about so terribly, terribly out of date.  Blown sky high by bazookas.  Fueling hot air balloons and speaking of less than current events.  

The badgers enjoy the sport, to be sure, but what about the moon to the left?  All full of holes and craters, how self conscious he must feel.  Especially when compared to the immaculate complexion of the one on the right.

47 paces later, the battle began.  The man on the moon had either cheated or miscounted, and turned around one step too soon.  This could be because he was a poor mathematician.  It could also be because math had not been invented just yet.  Whatever the reason, I would never presume that cheating had occurred without proper evidence.  Although the evil grimace on his face was rather menacing.  I must ask you though, how clearly can a tree read facial expressions from a million miles away?

Clearer than the clearest thing ever, it turns out.  What a cheater, that moon man.  "Make him into moon pie, out of his bones!" I managed to communicate via telekinesis, quickly enough to have you spun around and dramatically dodging out of the way just in time!  How thrilling!

So now you've given him his first fair fight, but as a result, tragedy most unquestionably had to strike.  The moon on the right, he was making his rounds, looking chipper as always.  Having forgotten this whole ordeal had occurred.  This is the bit where it is important to note his unique goldfish disorder.  He was grinning at you so sweetly when the moony man blasted you, but you were too nimble for his likes, weren't you?  You were, and you leapt like a kumquat for cover but that moon...  That moon was too innocent to see the malicious nature of bazookas and got one right in the eye!  Can you imagine?

This knocked him right off course, as it would anyone.  Led him right into the sun.  You screamed and shouted, and I telekineticized and we all blew our moon trumpets, but before we could see what happened the badgers, who may have been acrimonious and anachronistic, but they cared for that moon, and in their hasty anger, they flung him back to earth, and nearly cracked it in half!  Shifted the tectonic plates, most irrefutably.  Pangea had become history before the eyes of any who had them.  

And as you flew back, you went into a dream, and you forgot all of this.  After the stubborn moon began revolving in memorial of his brethren.  After I gave knowledge, after the prism broke.  Dinosaurs came, and mammoths grew to size.  Cave men painted, and evolved, and you woke up.  But you, man, standing up there.  You forgot your place.  Where the cacophony of humanity had once spurred poetic intangibility in your ears, and mine.

Do you remember?  The moon on the right, he's okay.  They named him Callisto, and he lodges near Jupiter.  

You saved him, in the end, made the conquistadors swoon.

Even though we now live in a world with just one moon.

It's been a while since I've done a self portrait!

Self portraits are for suckers.

So, when I do self portraits I examine my life.  Really, truly take a hard look in the mirror, and I ask myself, "Bryce, what in the world are you doing with your life?" 

And to that, I respond, "Cartoons, yay!  Boop!  Bloo blee blah blurp."

This usually solves any existential crises I may be facing at the time.  And then 6 hours later this happens!  Cool, thanks for looking/reading guys.

Bryce.

Unicorn Monkey Piggyback. A totally normal thing.

Unicorns and monkeys are super good friends like all the time.

And I decided to spread awareness of that fact by making this PRINT of it.  Which you can buy at my shop now!  In addition to this amazing news, you can also go to my facebook page, and if you find my Etsy shop that way, you get a most excellent 10% discount, just because I feel like it...?  This seems ridiculous, but I'm an artist, not a money guy, so go buy the things!

Caricatures Finished.

It was a 2 week process, but all the caricatures are finally done, and now available for people to purchase.  It's a cool way to show off how cool you are to the other cool kids (who are also doing it, cause it's cool).

Caricatures

I've started a series of 11 caricatures for my website.  These ones will all be free for now, and afterwards I'll be charging a reasonable sum.  But for now, these will promote the service.  So the first one, my friend Erica, whose blog you can find on the right sidebar of this blog!

More panels for ya.

I'm getting a little closer to the kind of line weight I want for these panels.  The last one especially shows that silky smooth look I'm going for.  Anyway, check out the final version HERE if you want to be a cool guy.  Thanks a lot sirs and ma'ams.

Bryce.