Somewhere in SF comic updates: “Celebrity Doppelganger Week”
(or the comic that makes you think of the characters IRL.)

Guess who stepped in to save Somewhere in SF from another week of nothingness? None other than Claire Leona, whoo! I was wondering what she was talking about when she mentioned a “Celebrity Doppelganger Week” but after looking it up, it has to do with Facebook and look alikes!

Poor Jenny, no Asian-American actress from the 90s looks like her. Off the top of my head, I can’t name anyone. After a little exploration, maybe Melissa Ng Mei? Speaking of which, why would Natalie want anyone to think she looks like Tori Spelling? Then I realized, “Oh yeah, she used to be alot cuter back then!”

Second week in a row of missed Somewhere in SF updates. What could be the culprit of these missed updates now? The answer is quite simple, really. Final Cut Pro and making a booklet. All of my time has been taken up by cutting segments of film in Final Cut Pro, trying to make a workable film based on the mountains and mountains of footage I’ve shot. You’d think editing would be easy, just toss a few clips, add a few fades and BAM, you’re done. Well, it’s not and I’ve never realized how big of a faux perfectionist I could be, alas, that’s just the way it is.

Taking up the spare time I have in between Final Cut Pro and sleeping is that Pregnancy booklet I’ve been working on. I’ve taken too long editing the damn thing to get it perfect. After it got reviewed by the hospital council in it’s near completed form a while back, it’s almost ready to go. At the moment, with two of my undertakings currently finished, I feel like an absolute boss. A sleepy one.

Somewhere in SF comic update: “Gossip SF”
(…or the guest art, as drawn by Claire Leona.)

This week’s SF adventure with Dr. Hotness and James will come next week as I was not able to finish it in time for today’s update. In the meantime, enjoy this awesome guest art by Claire Leona featuring Sara, Jenny, and, Lucy in a schoolgirl ‘Gossip Girl‘ type style that seems to be charming American airwaves.

Wheeeeep!

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It’s cloudy outside, the gentle winter breeze is playing with the palm trees and my plastic chicken with it’s crazy legs that move as dictated by the wind. Tomorrow, the skies will be gray, the streets will become wet, traffic will get slower, and motion will be determined by flowing red and white lights passing by.

What does rain have to do with the next track of The SF Chillout Sessions? Well, nothing short of being the title of the song featured. From 2007’s Rise comes “Rain” by Samantha James, a beautiful and delightful electronic dance-pop singer.

Electronic and organic never seem to go hand in hand, just listen to countless electronic/dance bands out there. Yet the same can’t be said about Samantha James. From the lush grooves of “Rain“, the apparent soul influences, the R&B styling, and James’ sultry voice fill the soundwaves, a laidback and mellow sophisticated jaunt that is surprisingly danceable and filled with depth, a rarity.

“Rain” is the 2nd track of The SF Chillout Sessions.

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It’s been a while since the last update to The SF Chillout Session, in fact, it’s been a WHOLE decade since the last update sometime around August 26th.

To welcome back  The SF Chillout Sessions, we introduce a man from Warwickshire, UK. A man with an amazing raspy voice that sings soul with an earnest and laidback passion, a cross between Stevie Wonder and Rod Stewart. That’s probably the best way to describe James Morrison’s music.

From 2006’s Undiscovered, comes “You Give Me Something“, a soulful acoustic blend of laidback pleasantness. With a memorable chorus hook that ranges the gauntlet from soft and warm to maddening, and well-written vocals that showcase Morrison’s talent and manages to not be absolutely sappy as fuck.

“You Give Me Something” is the 3rd track of The SF Chillout Sessions

Since it’s been a while since the last update, here’s a little recap.

3.) James Morrison – You Give Me Something
4.) Mutya Buena - Real Girl
5.) Toploader – Dancing in the Moonlight
6.) Jason Mraz – You & I Both
7.) A Man Called Adam – Barefoot in The Head (Acoustic Mix)
8.) Richie Havens & Groove Armada – Little by Little
9.) Amethystium – Etheral
10.) Soularia – Show Me
11.) Jane’s Addiction – Jane Say
12.) Primitive Radio Gods – Ghost of Chance
13.) Nicolay & Darien Brockington – I Love The Way You Love
14.) Air - La Femme d’Argen

Somewhere in SF comic update: “As Summarized by Sara”
(or the comic where sara is hit on by a creepy man.)

My throat is a little scratchy, my nose a little stuffy, I’m listening to KCRW 89.9FM, and I’m drinking some refreshing ice cold water from a see-through Coca-Cola glass. The comic is queued up and ready to be posted and I’m ready to fall asleep, fully aware that I’m gonna wake up feeling absolutely terrible and sick. Ah, the absolute downside of spending the entire week filming in rain.

Worth it? Absolutely.

A guy flirting with a pregnant, engaged, woman at a bar. Creepy right? Not as creepy as buying this pregnant woman an alcoholic drink as an icebreaker. I’m pretty sure that the Gardener would have something to say about Natalie pretending to be pregnant with his babies. This page pretty much assembled itself, mostly due to the fact that BigFish drew the characters almost perfectly.

The background was originally much brighter but I added a filter and dimmed the colours a bit. Originally, the background found tooth and nail with the characters for exposure and this made the page feel… noisy. After dimming the “lights” of the background (per say), this made the main characters pop up

Since I finished the page yesterday, I’ve been using whatever free time I have during this busy week working on that pregnancy guide that was supposed to be done by OCTOBER of LAST DECADE. (…even though I’ve already pissed away the money that I was paid on advertising I haven’t used on Project Wonderful and buying BigFish something.) You know the drill, fixing up small art mistakes, correcting grammar, and double checking the info. This guide has to be perfect if it’s gonna have my name and SF’s characters in it. Perfectionist, away!

Damn, Corrine Bailey Rae has a beautiful voice.

Somewhere in SF comic update: “Where Did We Go Wrong?”
(or the comic where James reveals too much info!)

The background, the twilight San Francisco Bay skyline, was added at the very last minute, like just moments ago and I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

So, in this page we have Lucy trying to find clothing to look pregnant, all the while wondering how her life got to that point. (Hint, hint: I think it might be the alcohol?) Meanwhile, James, wonders why the hell he even tries dealing with Sara’s bullshiy. A gay man going after his brother’s fiance? Ohhhh.

By the way, I added a slight white outline to the characters.

I’ve redesigned Jenny’s room which is apparent in this update, as to why Lucy would be looking for pregnancy clothes in her room, I don’t know. Speaking of which, right behind Lucy I drew an Nintendo 64 box which is not visible in the 3rd panel itself. There was a Nintendo 64 box in the original version of Jenny’s room.

On the topic of Land Rover.

While recent models of Land Rovers are brilliant vehicles, the older models were rugged, powerful SUVs that tackled mountains without breaking a sweat… but driving them on city streets wasn’t a good idea. Not to mention, the Land Rover Discovery, the specific model that James owns, was prone to breaking down.

And break down it did.

Somewhere in SF comic update: “The Three Other Candidates”
(of the comic where Sara reveals her pregnancy!)

A new year brings a new shading style to Somewhere in SF! Shading is now done by covering the skin tone with a darker shade and then lightly applying the original skin tone in different layers. It’s easy to do but requires a bit of time. Either way, the difference between the two styles is staggering.  The characters now have a little more implied weight and depth than the previous incarnation of the shading style.

So… it’s been a while since the last update, huh?

After a few weeks (or is it months?) of not updating the SF blog with something, I’ve finally decided to give the big ‘ole blog some love. Logging in to the WordPress control panel after some time of inactivity brought upon the following image. That’s a lot of spam that I probably won’t go through. I’m not even sure if I’ll delete it at all.

Somewhere in SF updates with: “Are You Finished With Those Errands?”
(or the comic where Mr. Jacobs finds out about Natalie’s relationship.)

The page numbers at the top of each new comic are gone. The numbers on the page never match the number on the comic database and it just leads to confusion. Seriously, if you’ve ever looked at the page numbers, you’ll notice that sometimes the number jump randomly. It’d be kinda hard to figure out where the numbers got messed, mostly due in part to the pages that have been removed.

It’s better this way.

Well, would you look at that! It’s an SF update that is actually on time. Overall, it was a pretty fun page to draw. The garden that Jacobs owns is quite possibly my favorite thing to draw. The only thing that gave me a hint of trouble was the night sky and the color of the garden itself. Originally, the garden was a lighter than what is seen in the final page. In contrast, the night sky was also a little lighter (…and brighter) than usual. For a night time scene, this looked weird AND had to fix it.

Maybe there is noticeable difference, maybe there isn’t.

Usually, the character color never changes and stays consistent. It’s noticeable in the image above. Speaking of which, The Gardener is the darkest character and James is the lightest character of the cast. Over time, the character have gotten slightly darker. The change is so subtle that nobody would notice.

Blah, late Happy Halloween!

Now, there is a reason why I’ve been missing a ton of SF updates lately. In fact, I’m actually behind two pages by schedule. If I don’t finish an SF page on time, I still send next week’s comic outline to BigFish for her to finish. It’s pretty much a well-oiled machine that guarantees we never run out of comics.

There’s a reason why Jenny is pregnant and it’s the penultimate reason why I’ve missed so many updates in the past two months. In the time I spent in El Salvador, I was commissioned to create a sort of small pamphlet, 30-40 pages, dealing with the basics of pregnancy. It’s not a new thing, in fact, I’ve done this twice before creating a poster featuring the girls of SF and a chart. A smaller version of the poster is available on the DrunkDuck site without most of the information available on the bigger version. The second chart is not available online since I never bothered to put it up, I doubt I still have the files.

One of my relatives owns a relatively successful hospital in Central America. I guess it runs in the family or something as everyone I know has had something to do with either computers or general health.

It’s probably the reason why I’m often intrigued by medical textbooks and I’m absolutely amazed by the human body. Fun fact, my entire family was disappointed in my decision to follow a career in video game production, then video production instead of studying to become a doctor. Sometimes, as I read up on the human body and awe at it’s intricacies, I wonder if I’ve made the right decision.

Either way, Mrs. Nurse (I can never pronounce her name correctly) asked me if I could make a short booklet (pamphlet, whatever.) dealing with the changes a body undergoes through pregnancy and a few symptoms. Going by some old SF chart featuring the SF girls all preggers that I made a while back (I saw the chart and it had some wear, I guess the humidity over there ruins things faster), she suggested that I use Jenny, as people seem to respond to her. As we all know, Jenny really isn’t mother material.

But here I am, a few weeks later from the day that proposition was made. I know more about pregnancy than I ever wanted to know (did you know that a woman’s odds of having quadruplets are about one in 600,000 and that during pregnancy, the uterus expands to 500 times its normal size?), BigFish is tired of drawing Jenny pregnant, and I’m really, really worried as to how the pages will appear when printed cause I’m sure I probably messed something up (Update: it did, some pieces of the art look absolutely terrible). Oh, and I realized that I really should brush up on my Spanish since it really, really sucks.

So, how did Jenny get pregnant? Well, at first she was supposed to pretend to be pregnant with a fish plushie to cheat Mr. Jacobs out of money and score some time off, but Mrs. Nurse didn’t like that, at all. After going back to the drawing board, the story now goes as follows:

Natalie and the Gardener are absolutely in love, lovebirds if you will. They both want children but Natalie doesn’t want to get fat and she’s afraid that she’ll fail her pregnancy test because there might be multiple choice questions. The two lovebirds come up with a brilliant plan, they’ll use a surrogate mother.

Both Natalie and the Gardener ask Jenny if she’ll agree to be a surrogate mother, Jenny refuses since she really, really hates kids (and the Gardener.) Disappointed, Natalie asks Mr. Jacobs if she can have eleven thousand dollars and offers this money to Jenny. After thinking about it for two days, Jenny realizes that she’ll make more money in a year being a surrogate mother than she’ll ever make as a maid.

A few months into the pregnancy, Jenny goes to Dr. Hotness for her monthly ultrasound. It is here where Dr. Hotness makes a shocking discovery, Jenny is having a set of twins, boy/girl,  instead of just one kid.

(Here’s a fun fact about the odds of having twins, Hispanic and Asian people are least likely to have twins which is estimated at 1 in 150 and 1 in 300, respectively.)

Around Jenny’s eighth month of pregnancy, Natalie discovers that she’s pregnant and keeps it a secret. After Jenny gives birth, the Gardener tells Jenny that she can have the kids since Natalie’s pregnant. Pissed off, Jenny punches Natalie in the face and kicks the Gardener in the balls. Not having the heart to give her newborns to an orphanage, Jenny decides to raise the kids on her own.

And if you are wondering, he’s what Jenny’s kids look like:

Somewhere in SF updates with: “A Reservation for Two”
(or the comic that shows the parallels between Sara and James.)

It’s been a long time since an update to this blog appeared. The last update was sometime in August, around the 29th. The last comic blog update was on July 12th. Either way, the blog is overdue for a post update. To sum things up between the long space of internet silence, Somewhere in SF moved locations from http://soapopera.bigfishcomic.com to http://bigfishcomic.com and gained a new webcomic management system that decimated the original one and caused a meltdown which resulted in having to reupload all the original pages.

Now, this page is one of the longer SF pages we’ve made with a whopping 12 panels. Usually, standard SF pages have 5 to 8 panels in them. Not this one, this one took a little longer to make. In actuality, it took two weeks to finish this single page. Not because it was hard to draw or anything, no, it was because I’ve been really busy with other projects (more on that in a latter post) that have drawn my attention from the world of SF resulting in various comic delays.

For missing quite a few updates, this page is on time!

Here we see James and Sara getting ready for a date. James gets ready in a matter of minutes, meanwhile Sara takes almost an hour. This is also a first look as to how much Sara’s body has changed with that new extra emotional baggage she’s carrying. Also, I absolutely love how Lucy is struggling.

I DO HATE HOW THE BREADSTICKS CAME OUT.