Customer service stinks

I only have to do customer service rarely at my job, and while I am often frustrated when calling in for support, really those fine people often have to deal with a lot of flak. I remember at my first job, the number of times I heard the solution being “is it plugged in?” or “have you turned it on?”. Likewise, I remember hearing of these irate customers calling in to complain about the most ridiculous of things. I always respected how the customer service representatives would keep their cool, man that has to be tough.

So obviously, Nate’s having a hard time following directions and being a simple answering machine (can you blame him?). How do you think this will turn out for Nate? Follow Nate on Facebook or Twitter (or even Google Plus! har har), and leave your comments! Links are below!

Catching back up

Ok, so I’m catching back up. I finally had some time Friday and Sunday night to get this strip done. I still need to get ahead again, having that buffer is REALLY nice, especially when schedules get crazy.

So not a whole lot happens in today’s strip, except hopefully you can see the setup for the next couple of strips. Do you really think following the rules will keep Nate out of trouble? Unlikely. I’m really pleased at how Nate’s “angel” part of his conscience came out today, I hope you enjoy it as well.

So to try and improve my art skills, I’ve been doing a lot more sketches, and I have to say I’m extremely disappointed with myself. Nate works very well for me at this time because robots are generally more primitive geometry, and cartoon people are much simpler than real people. But I’ve come to find that I have absolutely NO skill at drawing a person’s head. Also, I have troubles at certain angles of the body, and it’s just really frustrating to see an image in your mind, and not be able to push it onto a medium. But, I guess this is why they say that practice makes perfect, right? I need to dig out some of my comic book art books again and run myself on a refresher course. I get so jealous when I browse deviantart at the skills of other artists. Someday I hope that will be me, too!

Wow

So, I got behind on drawing Nate because the tip ripped on my Wacom Bamboo Stylus that I use for drawing on the iPad, and it took about 10 days to get a new one, which was ok, because I was a week ahead on my drawing, but then wham-o, life kicks in full swing and I am in a daze trying to figure out what happened to my time. Here is an example on my typical week (barring normal work and house responsibilities):

Sunday: Church, Bible Bowl practice (daughter), Puppets (daughter)
Monday: Cub Scouts (son)
Tuesday: Volleyball (me), Basketball (daughter)
Wednesday: Bible Bowl practice (daughter), Church
Thursday: Basketball (son), Girl Scouts (daughter)
Friday: Only night with nothing planned
Saturday: Basketball games (son & daughter)

Thank goodness I have an awesome wife! Awesome or not, though, that is just plain JAM PACKED! I got home in time last night to draw a new strip, but volleyball wiped me out. So here is the lame strip I drew in the meantime to show how both Nate and I are completely zonked.

I have resolved, though, to not be a slacker! So next Tuesday, normal updates will resume.

Nate just cares too much?

Nate may have trouble relating to people, but he has no problem at all relating to computer hardware. Hopefully he can make it through such an emotional job experience.

This is a week that I’m glad I had a comic drawn ahead of time. Late last week, the “nib” tore on my Wacom Bamboo Stylus, making it impossible to draw on the iPad. I’ve ordered new ones, so I should be back in business soon, but it certainly made me respect the process of having a buffer of comics ready. I can clearly see that even having two pre-drawn would be important.

I’m still trying to make up my mind whether to save my pennies and get an off-brand Cintiq for drawing, or to get a Galaxy Note 10.1 (which uses a Wacom digitizer, but still has the limits of being a tablet). If you have any thoughts, feel free to send me a tweet, or write a comment on my Facebook page.

Thanks for reading!

Just trying to be helpful...

Nate is doing his best to be helpful, but his approach just isn’t quite what this customer needs. I remember having a temp job right after college, and I always hated answering the phone. First of all, us engineer types generally just don’t like talking on the phone to people we don’t know. Second of all, it’s awkward enough when it’s your full time job, but doubly bad when it’s just for a day or two and you don’t know the business. Third of all, in general you’re working with people who automatically assume your a putz, so any mistake you make just seems to reinforce that feeling in them.

Drawing on the iPad continues to go well, and I’m both getting faster and improving on my art (I hope that opinion isn’t just mine =). I’m strongly considering upgrading to a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. It has a Wacom stylus that is pressure sensitive similar to the Cintiq. It also is a lot newer, and therefore has a much better processor than my first generation iPad. I’d love to be able to afford a Cintiq, and I’ve definitely been looking at used ones, but tablets have such an advantage on being portable, and given the cartoony style of Nate, it just seems to better fit my “family” lifestyle by being easy to pick up and put down, even while sitting on the couch with my daughter or son.

I'm loving this!

The more I learn, the more I am enjoying drawing. I’m thinking about writing a tutorial about how to do digital comics using the iPad. I know there are some sacrifices that I’m making, although I think if I purchased a new iPad I think those limitations might go away…

So how much trouble do you think Nate can get into at this new temp job? I mean, Nate’s a good guy, what could go wrong if he shares his robotic expertise?

Completely iPad?

I can’t tell whether I like the art better or not. Some things are incredibly hard to do on the iPad, but I counter that with the convenience of being able to sit on the couch with my family, and being able to talk. If you have any thoughts, send me a tweet @Nate_the_Robot, or follow me on Facebook!

Regardless of the method, I am hoping to greatly improve my update rate. I’d like to do at least one update a week.

Learning to draw on the iPad!

So I’ve been working hard recently at learning to draw on the iPad. I tried this a long time ago (if you go back until you see the strip entitled “Where the null pointer have I been?”), and I believe I’ve improved a LOT. Check out this sketch I did!

So tell me, what do you think would make Nate this angry? Tweet or respond on Nate’s facebook page!

Elections are rough...

I try so hard to be a good citizen, and I certainly make sure I vote at every presidential election, but it’s so easy to get frustrated with elections. The local candidates never seem to take the time to write anything useful in the paper. If they write anything at all it’s just stuff like, “I promise to create jobs, improve the economy, etc, etc…”, which of course everyone wants.

So enjoy today’s strip where we learn who the best candidates are … robots! Well, not the “terminator” kind… Hopefully everyone who reads is familiar with the Robosapien, a toy remote controlled robot that was a big Christmas present a few years back. Also, I think the Roomba is fairly well known now too.

Late nights

I enjoy my Nate’s, but it can make for some late nights. I hope you enjoy this one, I spent a lot of time trying to learn and better use the vector editing tools of Manga Studio. I’m getting a little better with it, but I still don’t know how to view the individual points in a vector and manipulate those points specifically. If I had that part down, I think I could fix up the scanning errors to look pretty nice!

I’m considering retrying to do some work on the iPad, but using a vector editing software. I’d still use Manga Studio to put it all together, but I think I could create the characters much easier.

What did we do before the internet?

I often wonder this, it’s simply amazing the things that people are capable of doing, and the internet allows us to share them, learn from them, and improve on them. Here’s a great example where a guy has created a glove for working with the XBox that allows you to do gestures very similar to those in the movie Minority Report.

Xbox ‘Power Glove’ Offers Precise, Kinect-Like Gesture Control

I suspect a lot of novel things like this always happened, I mean those of us that are engineers are always nerdy and doing nerdy projects at home. But with the internet, you have cases where someone says, “hey look what I can do with an accelerometer”, and then another says, “you do, if you apply this kind of math, you can determine this kind of complex movement very easily, and then another says, “you know, you could put this on a glove to recognize gestures”, and eventually you have what we see here in this video. Simply amazing!

Robot Fish!

What do robots try and catch when they go fishing? Why another robot of course!

Robot Tuna Joins Homeland Security Arsenal

Busy busy!

So wow, after last Friday’s updates things got super busy! With two kids in elementary school and fall activities, free time is hard to find. Having said that, I’m hoping to get an update done tonight, and to try and build up a queue so that I can keep scheduled updates even when I hit a busy patch like I just have.

I haven’t seen much excitement since last week in regards to robot news, although I did stumble upon this video:

Meet Baxter: A Robot With Common Sense

I’m not sure any of the technology is new (I know MIT was making compliant robot arms years and years ago), however the combination of technologies is very innovative and useful. I really like the idea of the monitor showing eyes, I think they provide a great “feedback” interface with the robot that people can quickly relate to. At $22,000 though, don’t expect to get one of these for Christmas!

Here’s another interesting robot:

Senior Care Robot Deserves a Hug

The video is in another language, but the subtitles give you a heads up what this cute robot named Hector is saying. The touch screen looks to work kind of like a giant tablet, except it has the nice vocal interface and once again, graphic eyes for feedback. Hector looks to be fairly mobile and looks to integrate with a home automation system.

In other robot news, it looks like “Roomba celebrated its 10th birthday. Nate wants to know when Chana is going to buy one so that they have less work to do. They have some ethical concerns, though, buying a slave robot =).

link

Poor Nate

Nate is just having a bad time, hopefully things will look up for him soon…

So, like many of you out there, I enjoy playing World of Warcraft. I’m currently looking very forward to the new expansion (Mists of Pandaria) coming out just two weeks from today! I’m a pretty casual player, so I doubt it will affect my schedule on putting updates out. I currently have four level 85s, and am working on two more, although there’s no way they will get there before September 25th. I haven’t decided whether I will make a monk or a pandarian when the expansion comes out, I guess we’ll have to see how long it takes my main to complete all the quest zones and achievements.

September 25th is a big day, because that’s also the day that The Avengers comes out on blu-ray/DVD! I can’t wait to own that movie and watch it repeatedly!

Seriously???

Late night are taking their tolls I guess, apparently I forgot to color the table in panels 1, 2, and 4! Sheeeeeesh… I’ll get that fixed and uploaded tonight, silly me…

So no major robot news to post, however, I thought I’d share with you a youtube channel for an AMAZING hobby robot builder. Here’s a link to Zenta Olbaid’s channel. All of his works are amazing, but I’m especially impressed with these two:

MorphHex

This is a hexapod (6-legged robot) that transforms into a ball. The mechanics of this guy is amazing, and I can’t imagine how someone can put that together from their home, but watch the video and be amazed!

PhantomX

I’ve always wanted to see fast walking robots, and this one does not disappoint! Check out the speed of this hexapod walking starting at around 3 minutes in!

Boom goes the dynamite!

So watching tutorials is EXTREMELY helpful. I was able to zip through scanning, coloring, and lettering in less than 2 hours tonight. I decided to go ahead and post it, at this rate, there’s a potential for twice a week but I’m not going to make any promises. Certainly knowledge of Manga Studio EX and some more digital drawing techniques is key to being able to produce these more rapidly.

I’ve been trying to watch for some robot news lately, but I haven’t seen anything since the recent Mars landing (which is an amazing feat all its own). I need to make a fix here where I can paste links, at the moment it won’t let me embed html (for safety purposes).

Well Nate isn’t out of his rut just yet, but hang in there, eventually things do start to look up for him…

Thanks for reading!

Super Fast Robot!

Check out this super fast running robot by Boston Dynamics! The guys that work there are making amazing progress in making legged robots that can move quickly and over nearly any environment. If you get a chance while you’re there, check out some of their other videos, especially on Big Dog.

Cheetah Robot runs 28.3 mph

Nate can’t run nearly that quickly, unless it’s trying to get away from doing some work.

Wow, Boston Dynamics has been busy!

Normally they only release videos a few times a year, but we are lucky enough to get two in a week! This video features the LS3, which seems to be an improved model of “Big Dog”, the legged robot. It’s still noisy, but much quieter than Big Dog was. It shows how much progress they are making on legged robotics. This one can carry a 400 pound payload for 20 miles without refueling. Pretty nice!

LS3 – Legged Squad Support System

I love you YouTube

I’m astounded that it has reached the point that independent film makers can create movies of such quality on such low budgets. Here is a link to a four part series entitled “Drone”. It takes place in the near future where a lot of the military action is handled by robotic drones, ranging anywhere from aerial fighters to probes. The series is about a robot soldier drone ordered to take actions that violate its morality code. Check out the first two episodes here!

(NSFW language warning)
Drone: episode 1
Drone: episode 2

Currently, these are the only two episodes completed. I’ll add updates when the new ones are done. This is a four-part miniseries.

Back in the saddle again?

Ok, so I should have tried using the full version of Manga Studio before when I got frustrated and quit. It’s much more pleasant to work with. My plan at the moment is to have new strips up every Thursday. My current process is to draw and ink on paper, then scan in to Manga Studio EX using their 2DLT vector conversion (a VERY nice feature for improving the quality of the scanned image), then coloring and adding dialog in the software. I’m certain (as I always have been) that there are tricks to color faster than what I am currently doing. It seems like that is the part that takes hours whereas the rest of it just flows so easily, which it really should for something like this where most of the work is coming up with the joke.

If you enjoy reading Nate the Robot, please Like my page on Facebook. I’m easily motivated (or demotivated) by the amount of interest I receive. I’m hoping that some of the visitors I get from deviant art come here and see it. I know my website is kind of weak for allowing discussions, but I would greatly enjoy having discussions on my Facebook page. If you haven’t seen my deviant art page, please visit it at http://topjimcomics.deviantart.com.

This week, I’ve been heavily shopping on eBay for a cheaper used cintiq. While I suspect there would be faster ways of coloring using my current setup, I have no doubt that I’d be much quicker using one of those. But there’s a hefty price for that technology, so logically I need to wait some time to improve my skills and motivation, and keep consistent on my output.

Thanks for listening!

Oops

A few corrections to the above post. First of all, I should have said “Thanks for reading!”. Obviously you’re not listening to me. Second of all, somehow I typed “Thursday” when I meant to say new strips on Tuesdays.

I penciled the next strip last night, and had quite a bit of fun doing it. The next strip is going to be in a “Sunday” format with 6 panels, so I have some extra work to do to get it done. Hopefully you enjoy it! Tonight I should be able to ink it and get it scanned, and then comes the process of coloring. I watched some tutorials on Manga Studio EX on youtube, though, and I think I’ve learned some secrets to coloring faster, so hopefully that leads to faster progress. I’d really like to reach the point of putting up two strips per week.

Fell of the face of the earth?

I’m not sure anyone missed me, but I fell off the face of the earth. I threw together this update real quick on my iPad, and I was happily surprised at how much faster I was able to draw “Nate” style comics while on it, and that now has given me some heavy motivation to continue. Don’t get your hopes up (and again, I say, I don’t think anyone really missed me) too high, but I’m really hoping to get back into uploading at least 1 strip per week. Thanks to anyone who still checks…

In-Laws 2

It’s hard to do everything right when you’re made wrong. Better said, it’s hard to do everything right just in general (certainly enough to please your in-laws).

So this week I took an extra step and added a little texture to the background. I’d really like to figure out a good way to shade in Manga Studio Debut. I’m not sure if I need to change tools, or just upgrade to the full version. My art skills are out of date as in, but compound on that fact that I’m old school pencil/paper/ink pen (not even color), and that mostly what I used to draw was superheroes. I really enjoy doing Nate, though, it often captures a little bit of my life as a software engineer and a family guy. I hardly have as much trouble as Nate does, though! But I do try and find humor in the day to day struggles of being a software engineer and having a family.

In the news this week, the space station just added an observatory module that provides a huge windowed view of Earth (see http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100213/sc_afp/usspaceshuttleisseurope_20100213164039). The space station will always hold a special place for me because I used to work for a NASA subcontractor designing a rat habitat to perform low gravity experiments (no rats are harmed during this operation =). Anyways, I was very sad to have to leave that job, and as such, I always follow the space station and what is going on with it. While I’m very excited to see the funding lengthened for the space station, I gotta admit I’m pretty sad to see that the funds are getting cut for the manned moon mission (and along with it, the move to make it to Mars).

I don’t think I caught any exciting robot news this week, but I’m going to start adding more news in here when I add strips, most likely in relation to interesting news articles (which often means robots and space, but could easily include movies and comics). If you enjoy discussing these things, become a fan on Facebook, and feel free to start a discussion!

This is just a test

This is just a quick test to see what happens when I add news twice on the same strip.

Murphy's Law

Who’d of thunk that Murphy’s Law worked on robots, too?

Out Too Late

What, you didn’t think Nate had anyone to come home to?

Really helpful, guys...

Ok, so sometimes your friends don’t always say the best things to cheer you up.

Nate #5 : Heavy Drinking

I wonder what’s the legal age for a robot?

Nate loses his job

Life is rough when you’re a robot…

Let's Begin

So on this first “strip”, it only took me about 10 minutes to draw it, about 5 minutes more to ink it, and then three hours to color it inside the software. Either there are some shortcuts I don’t know about, or I am not very good at using a drawing tablet =).