Michael Martine

My schedule, work, and interests have been changing and right now I feel like I have nothing to say here. This blog feels like a burden, so I’m just going to leave it alone for a while. If you’re here looking for themes, they’re still here, but I’m not doing anything new in that area. I am not accepting new custom theme work at the moment. If anything changes with any of this, I’ll post an announcement.

Working on Google Video of the Day and my job (at which I will also be blogging–hooray!) are where my attention is going nowadays.

See ya.

Mutts, which had this quote on the home page from Albert Einstein:

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

I really like Patrick McDonnell’s drawing style.

Duck Walk, the blog of Marc Deckter, a “freelance artist working in the animation industry in Los Angeles.”

PopCultureShock

I know I’m just totally copping someone else’s post, but it’s too good not to share. From wish jar journal via Drawn:

It’s good to get this kind of reminder when I’m starting back up in my own artistic endeavors.

I’ve collected a few links during the week I didn’t have time to post individually. Hence, the link digest:

Bumblenut: Awesome illos and animations.
TokyoPop / Harper Collins Deal over at MangaBlog.
Qooqle: Substituting “G’s” with “Q’s”, this YouTube search engine is pretty darn good. Especially if you like the naughty bits, as they tend to be popular searches and are always on the Qooqle home page.
Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips: The title says it all. Excellent post. I’ve done some SEO work and this is good advice.
Ethan Persoff locates, collects, scans, and posts crazy vintage instructional comics about topics like STDs and surviving nuclear attack (via BoingBoing). Here’s a little sample of the gems he finds:

BibliOdyssey is a blog featuring vintage illos from old books. It rocks.
Modsquare: experimental electronic music.
Download the upcoming graphic novel Continuity.
Ralph Bakshi’s Phone Doodles

Insane supercute flash animation!

A young, autistic (perhaps Aspberger’s) has created an entire city in his imagination called Urville and crafted many lego models and detailed architectural drawings of it. He has written a history for it.

Inspiring and insane at the same time, the idea and the drawings are very nice. The attention paid and the high level of detail is… well, it’s autistic. I don’t mean anything bad by that. People with Aspberger’s have incredibly high levels of concentration and enthusiasm for their passion (it’s usually one subject in particular) that most people are not capable of. From the English portion of the site:

Since 2003, i spend all my time at my Urville project. This includes drawing, history and foreign languages study. This last point it is in the objective of trying to be more known. And why not wouldn’t I be travelling in new places. Meanwhile, I know that I have much more to do before arriving at that point.

This is a character sketch I did just now in pencil (Derwent HB). It scanned a bit light so I tweaked the levels a bit. Jyn is a character in a story that’s been forming for a while, now.

From Scott McCloud’s awesome Understanding Comics:

By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning,” an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.

That is so cool. Other stuff from other books (spent a few minutes at the library of Barnes & Noble) or that I thought of for myself:

• Use maps for accuracy and consistency as characters and “cameras” move around a space during a series of panels
• I need to start looking for and saving pictures of all sorts of things that I can use as reference material and backgrounds
• Many artists work on 2-ply bristol board, but my scanner pretty much only does 8.5″ x 11″, so until I get another scanner I’m not sure what I’m going to do
• Look into something called the Ames Lettering Guide for lettering in speech balloons (people do this digitally now, as well)
• Pen nibs: Speedball c-6 for lettering
• Templates for drawing various speech balloon ovals

As you can see by the links above, I just discovered the Mr. Art website. God I love them interwebs!

In the process of becoming yourself, sometimes you gotta backtrack. Sometimes you live with regret. had I not stopped drawing years ago, I would now be approaching the height of my ability. But I did stop. I thought I had to do other things, be someone else. I didn’t trust that natural talent would carry me through and I didn’t want to spend my life “filling orders”, which is how I saw the world of a commercial artist. Now I know I can do this on my own terms. And though I’m regaining it with a vengeance, right now my talent is little better than when I was in high school.

My interest in manga and anime has reinspired me, and I’m going to move forward from here, and try not to let the regret get the better of me. I also thought it would be fun to show a couple of pictures of my newly acquired drawing tools and one result of using them. I got some pen nibs and holders, because that is what I saw so many of the mangaka using in Manga: Masters of the Art (not an affiliate link). Even when I drew before in my life, I favored pen and ink, but I used self-contained cartridge pens. There is no comparison! Nib pens are superior in the line they lay down and how they feel. I also got some sketching pencils, a Derwent HB and a 7B. I got a plastic eraser, some india ink, and a pencil sharpener (that’s the funny-looking thing next to the ink bottle). I’m also trying to save money as I do this. My tool case is an AOL CD mailer case (finally found a use for one) and my nib case is a matchbox. Hey, they work. So, I’m chronicling all this on my blog (what else are blogs for?). And even though these first steps back into drawing haven’t produced the most beautiful work, I’m posting it anyway as the start of this new story in my life.

Holy crap have I been busy! But I have to post about Roller Warehouse starting a blog and doing their own thing with my Wheatgrass theme. That rocks. Good work, people! Blog on…

I was at a fast food restaurant (and we all know how famous they are for customer service) when the woman in line in front of me asked to see a manager. She told the manager that she had sent in her ten-year-old daughter to order food and bring it back out to them, but that her daughter had been ignored while others stepped ahead of her to place their orders. The woman pointed out the register operator who she felt had done this.

The manager said she had never known that register operator to behave like that and that she was “good with kids”. She then asked the customer if her daughter had approached the register when the register operator asked to help whoever was next. You can imagine a shy ten-year-old girl not bellying up to the bar with gusto. This situation wasn’t helped by the fact that in this particular restaurant nobody seems to know where the lines form or where they’re supposed to wait for their food. The competence level in this place isn’t exactly startling.

But here’s the lesson. By telling the customer repeatedly that she had never known the register operator to behave that way, she basically told the customer: “I don’t believe you, what you say contradicts what I think I know”. By asking the customer repeatedly if her daughter had done certain things or behaved in a certain way, she told that customer: “You did everything wrong. You have no complaint. It is you who is at fault.”

What to do:

1. Never imply you don’t believe what a customer is saying, even if you don’t. The customer must feel their complaint is legitimate before they can feel it’s been dealt with satisfactorily.
2. Respond by saying that you will take care of the situation and immediately offer refunds or extras. Apologize and make these offers as a way to make up for what happened.
3. Never imply that a customer didn’t follow a procedure correctly. Simply ask them what it is/was they need/needed and take care of it.
4. If the complaint involves another person, speak with that person privately for a second and tell them they are to apologize to the customer and that they’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Tell the person they are to say this for now even if they feel they did nothing to the customer. You will discuss the situation with them later and find out what really happened, but for now they need to “play ball.”

Maybe fast food restaurants don’t pay their managers enough deliver good customer service, or maybe they did offer training but that manager didn’t listen very well. In either case, there’s something in this incident for anyone involved in delivering customer service to learn from. It’s more complicated than “the customer is always right”, but not so complicated anyone couldn’t follow these suggestions for happier customers in any industry.