Like I said in 640, our show at Awesome Con was pretty amazing. Steve McBarnes was kind enough to post videos of the first two (of a total of 3) rounds, so here they are! The second round featured Michael Bracco and Noelle “Gingerhaze” Stevenson, and you’re about to be blown away by how awesome it gets. Seriously art fighting at it’s best.

Round 1

End of Round 1, Beginning Round 2

Round 3

If you’re ever at a Super Art Fight show, take video. We love when we find this stuff.

Oh man, a lot of things, you guys!

Hey Pennsylvania Peeps

This weekend I’ll be a guest at the Comic Geek Speak Super Show in Reading, PA. If ONE of you just comes by and says hey that would be amazing. Details here »

Super Art Fight + ThinkGeek

We’re doing a Super Art Fight show with the gang at ThinkGeek on May 4th (“May The Fourth”, the geekiest day of the year) at Jammin Java in Vienna, VA. It’s gonna be a dope-ass motha of a show!

If you’ve never been to a Super Art Fight (seriously where have you been?) it’s a competitive, improvised, live action, geeky art competition. If that doesn’t have your attention, why are you reading this?

TICKETS AND MORE DETAILS HERE »

Super Art Fight: The Book

We are doing one of them Kickstarter things. Specifically, it’s a book all about Super Art Fight called SUPER ART FIGHT: “THE GREATEST LIVE ART COMPILATION IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE. It will feature:

• Comics
• A collection of our poster art
• original illustrations by our roster
• collaborative “MEGA TOPIC” illustrations
• Wheel of Death illustrations
• Anecdotes, Show notes and so much more

Not only is it gonna be a fun book, but there’s fun prizes like custom original artwork from our team, exclusive t-shirts, and all of it goes to help make Super Art Fight superer.

I’m still deciding if I’m really going to make the next comic about “procrasturbation”. Also, thanks to Systemics Marty and Grace for help figuring out how to write this one. I can’t say it took the whole month but I was a little stuck.

Super Art Fight at the Black Cat on February 22nd!

In an ongoing effort to pretend to be a rock star, the Super Art Fight crew (including myself) is playing a show in Washington, DC at the legendary Black Cat rock club! I couldn’t be more excited. February 22nd, 9:30pm doors, $12 tickets, all ages. More details and info on preorders here.

I’m talking about comics and stuff in Baltimore!

I’m giving a talk called “How Comics Can Make Us Better Designers” to the web/design/development community in Baltimore as part of “Refresh Baltimore” on February 26th. It’ll be based upon but a revised and awesomer version of the talk I gave at Refresh last fall. It’s free. You should come! Here’s the EventBrite. Here’s the other details.

I’d love to see some Systemics in the crowd, and I’ll have time to answer all the questions people have on design and comics and stuff. Let me know if you can make it!

Here’s a time lapse of the show thanks to @apreche (of Geek Nights):

And our own Brandon Chalmers flipping a table for charity:

If you like that and are ANYWHERE NEAR LA, please for the love of g-d and all that is holy come to our LA show at Nerdmelt on the 19th!

This morning was kinda weird and fun, I got to Baltimore and be on the 98 Rock morning show promoting tomorrow’s big Super Art Fight show at The Ottobar (tickets still available!). They had on the show all morning guest Darrel Hammond from SNL fame, and he was a great sport when I put him on the spot to say “WHEEL OF DEATH” in his Don Pardo voice. What you can’t hear in this bit is that we were FREAKING OUT because being on morning radio isn’t exactly something we’d done before, but I think we handled it pretty well.

Welcome to the second installment of “Ask Rossmom”, where people write in and my mother (yes, my actual mother) answers your queries about life, the universe, and everything! If you like it after reading this one, and want your own questions answered by my mom, write them to systemcomic@gmail.com, subject line “Ask Rossmom”. The second one comes from @Alli893:

Dear Rossmom,

When Rosscott first told you about Super Art Fight, what did you imagine it to be? Were you at all concerned about him turning to violence?

Also, baby pictures of Rosscott would be superb! (He’s gonna kill me for even asking!)

-Allison

Allison, that’s a good question.

When Ross told me he was involved, actually immersed, in SuperArtFight, my first thought was–well, he does know tae-kwando so I guess that might help.  But, if it’s just go and beat somebody up, no holds barred, that gave me pause.  After all, he’s my son!!!!!

He wasn’t brought up to be violent.  Even w/the use of words, he knows better than to sink to the level of four-letter words.  (Yes, I know he uses them in The System, but I realize that it’s sometimes necessary to get his point across, although I’m still not sure why it’s necessary.  And, he certainly knows much, much, much, much, much…..better than to use them around me.)

Then when he explained the concept to me, I was lost.  I understood what he was saying but when he mentioned, “The Wheel of Death”, I was really worried.  Really seemed rather violent.

But, once we went to one and experienced it, I felt relieved.  My son was explaining the fighting  (and he is excellent at doing that), not actually fighting and no blood was involved.  (Of course, being a super comic artist in his own right, he could easily attack and win, I’ve no doubt.  And, I would be ok w/that.)

If you haven’t seen one, it’s something that is total entertainment and shouldn’t be missed.  And, this coming from an ‘old’ person, says something.  (Not that we ‘old’ people don’t understand fun stuff.  We are w/it too!–sometimes more than you ‘young whippersnappers’.)

Baby pictures of Ross–there are a ton (and, I mean a ton!).  He was a very photographic baby/kid (and still is)–long eyelashes, always smiling, total ham (well, the Kosher version) for the camera.

Ross said he would rather include some pictures rather than my totally embarrassing him (and I certainly have a few that would definitely make him go hide in a corner and cut off all human contact:)

Hope that answers your questions.

ROSS’ NOTE: I can’t find any quick pictures of me as a baby, but here’s two that are embarassing, and I think that’s the point. Left, me doing some dance pretending a cane is a trombone or something? The batman pajamas are key, and I think that’s a Ren and Stimpy t-shirt. Right, me and Rossmom at the Grand Canyon. Notice her shirt:

Friday night, a big show is hitting Baltimore. I’ll be there MC-ing as usual, hope you all can make it! Here’s the details from SuperArtFight.com:

Super Art Fight LIVE! at The Ottobar
Friday, March 16th, 2012 – 8pm Doors, 9pm Show

The Ottobar
2549 North Howard Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Admission: $15 (All Ages Show) – Tickets ON SALE NOW

Facebook RSVP: Right Here!

The Card So Far:

• Main Event – Super Art Fight Championship Bout: “The Nicest Man In Art Fight”Brandon J. Carr (Champion) vs. Jamie “Brawlin’” Baldwin (Champion)
• Super Art Fight Tag Team Title Bout: “The Business” Henry Alexander & “Charm City Shinobi” Dann Malihom (Champions) vs. “Angry Zen Master” Jamie Noguchi & MECHA IMPACT
• #1 Contender’s Bout for SAF Tag Titles: Michael “Spaghetti Kiss” Bracco & Chelsea“Grose Misconduct” Grose vs. Darl “Apocalypse” Gnau & Bryan “Silent But Violent” Prindiville
• Grudge Match!: Nick “Ghostfreehood” DiFabbio vs. Kelsey “Killer” Wailes

Also Appearing:

• Your Super Art Fight Hosts Marty Day & Ross Nover
• Live DJing from The Megadrives

Musical Guests:

• Paul and Storm
• Beefy

Valentine’s Day. That’s a thing.

Happy Valentine’s day! I am doing nothing on the site to celebrate it, but I did something great to celebrate it last year. So go forget you maybe saw it and check it out all over again!

Come see me at Katsucon THIS WEEKEND!

I’ll have a table and be signing things / meeting people / selling wares at Katsucon all this weekend, and performing two (count ‘em, TWO) shows with Super Art Fight. The table will be in section GG 13-15 with Dern, Jamie, and Mikey, which should be fun. If you don’t want to buy a damn thing, stop by and mention you read the comic. I don’t mind, honestly. I’ll probably even give you something free, because I’m a nice guy like that.

As for the shows, on Friday night we are doing Super Art Fight: UNLEASHED which will be a complete shit-show of ridiculousness. Let’s put it this way, no pictures are allowed and it’s 21+ 18+! to get in. And considering what goes on at other shows, this will be… something. On Saturday, we’ll be performing in the Main Events area, with a big extravaganza of a thing! We have a super secret special guest that I’m really excited to meet. He won’t be at the Unleashed show, which is probably for the best.

If you like this comic…

Also check out these other chart-jokes here. Aaaaand if you like making fun of clients, here’s all those comics! If you’re a huge chart fan, you may want a print of this or any other comic on the site, and chances are you’d also really like this t-shirt:

Buy it from the store for only $20!

While “carpe diem” is normally translated as “sieze the day”, this is actually not an accurate translation. “Carpe” is better translated as “to pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather”, so it would be a better (though less catchy) definition to say “Pluck the day”. Of all the possible days you could pick for the day you might have, try to choose the best one you can. Or, in this case, do your best being careful with picking your gadgets.

See also: The Six Stages of Gadget Grief 

San Francisco Bound

For those in the San Francisco area, I’m leaving tonight with cohorts of the Super Art Fight crew to head to Macworld | iWorld, to participate in our first ever west coast Super Art Fight appearance. If you’re attending Macworld, be sure to come by and check us out! If not, you can watch it LIVE. Details on the show and how to watch live here. Basically, at 2pm PST / 5pm EST on Friday, go to the Macworld uStream feed here (until 6pm): http://www.ustream.tv/macworld

While I’ve been to SF before, it’s been a while and I’m looking to find some good coffee, have some In-N-Out, and generally have a great time with the rest of the SAF crew. If you want to follow how that’s going, or share any local insight, be sure to follow along on Twitter as we post under #superartfight and #SF_SAF. Or just follow my general hijinks on Twitter @rosscott.

Because I’m a full time professor and can do whatever I want, I had Jami “Angry Zen Master” Noguchi come to campus this week to do a Photoshop painting tutorial for my students. Beyond melting some faces off with his Photoshop jitsu, he also took the time to paint a portrait of me.

I was invited by American University’s Design Club to give a digital illustration master class. I took the opportunity to draw a screwy portrait of my Super Art Fight cohort, Ross. No audio because YouTube hates my audio tracks and gives me grief about monetization and shiz like that which makes no sense since I recorded the damn things, but whatever. Here’s a timelapse of the illustration.

I’m uploading the entire presentation which is about an hour and half, so if you want to something to lull you sleep on a restless night, I’ll hook it up as soon as it’s ready.

You can find his original post here.

UPDATE: Oh! And here’s a picture of me for reference: