From now through July 15 you can get 30% off on qualifying orders from The Retropolis Transit Authority, Saga Shirts, and Hot Wax Tees by entering the coupon code GoBig50 during your checkout.

"And what is a qualifying order?", you ask. Before I answer I dip my nose well into my mug of coffee, and I mumble to myself while counting on my fingers. Because it’s a little hard to explain. But on most orders of three shirts or more you can save 30% – yep, a nice, fat 30% discount. The discount’s based on something you can’t see, though, and so it’s confusing.

It all depends on the cost to produce a particular shirt, not the retail price: so while three dark colored shirts (which are expensive to produce) qualify for the discount, three white shirts (less costly to produce) don’t. On the other hand, an order for two dark shirts and one white shirt will qualify. So if you try it on an order and the coupon code doesn’t work, well, you could always throw another shirt in there to push it over the top, and yes, I do know exactly how self-serving that sounded, believe me. But it’s true.

This includes a couple of redesigns of my "There’s an Art to Rocket Science" and "Having a Swell Time in the Future – Wish You Were Here!" shirts. Along with, you know, everything else.

And if you’ve made it this far you should also know that there’s a similar deal for 40% off on orders even larger (call it a minimum of five of the more costly shirts). To get that one, which I heartily recommend, use the coupon code GoBig100.

Work proceeds apace on Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS while I watch the pages update in The Lair of the Clockwork Book. Here we see Gwen, who is not completely happy about what she’s learning from Doctor Temiar.

"Apace", I think, is just vague enough to suit because in the nature of things I work wildly but slowly on new scenes or characters, then produce the illustrations just as wildly but quite a bit faster; then rinse and repeat. I spent about a week on Doctor Temiar’s office only to find that you’ll never even see parts of it since the final shots worked better if I concentrated on one side of the room.

That’s because here I’m continuing something I’ve played with in the Clockwork Book illustrations, which is to (often) follow the rules of continuity editing as we go from page to page. I’m not welding myself to those rules; in fact with an interactive story like TWO BRAINS it’s sometimes impossible, or at least unusually difficult; but I’m trying; and I am also indulging, I see, in a large number of semicolons; this is due, I am sure, to the fact that I’m re-reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin books.

Whew.

Anyway this is part of Gwen’s main branch in the story, which soon after this point splits again into two additional branches in that branchy way these things happen. I started with a bunch of illustrations that come late in the story; here I’ve reined myself in, and I’m much nearer the beginning.

Made as the filmmakers’ final project at the Utrecht School of the Arts, Blik is a story told entirely without dialogue and – because the characters’ faces lack any features – without the use of any expressions at all. The whole thing is done with an exacting use of body language and as challenging a prospect as that is, these folks (now at Polder Animation) pull it off brilliantly.

There’s something very pleasant about their combination of watercolor-like rendering and their use of light, shadow, and – at one point – rain. Very nice work!

Well, it’s been quite a while in production but it looks as though we can finally see the new serial adventures of The Mercury Men at syfy.com, starting on July 25th.

I wrote about the previews for this production back in August of 2009. There have been some bits and bobs of news since then, but this is certainly the biggest and best news of all.

It’s great to know that they’ve found a home for it, hopefully (but not likely) bringing in great big bags of money and popcorn. My guess is, the popcorn’s a lock.

And until the 25th of July you can amuse yourself by browsing the project’s digital props like, for example, the entirely imaginary action figures, the entirely printable papercraft characters, and the entirely unnecessary vintage newspaper ads. What? Did I say unnecessary was bad? Some of my best friends are unnecessary.

Anyhow the syfy link above goes to their home for the episodes; but the production itself has its own site, here.