Post Turkey Day, Home Stretch!

Hello all! It's been another small writing hiatus. Mostly because of this guy.

Lil poop monster. 

It's also been due to health reasons. Woo, health.

I am honestly surprised (but mostly pleased) that slowly, locally at least, word has been getting around about the comic. I got a DM from an old professor of mine (probably one of the reasons I still thought doing a comic was viable even though I seemed to pass the phase that a lot of folks got into it at.) He asked me what the message in my twitter "about me" meant.

To be fair, it used to say "Webcomic: Jan 2014." Hard to believe I'm the byproduct of two English teachers.

I shot a little bit back and forth with him where he offered his help with building my site. While I do have a site up, I honestly am not one to say no to help. I've wanted to talk to him about it for the longest time, but somewhere between my anxiety, worried about bothering him because it's been a few years, and everything else under the sun, I wanted to wait until he mentioned it to me.

Sound logic, I know. (If you're reading this, oh man, I'm sorry. ((It'd also be awesome to just hang and chatup webcomic stuff if you're ever in the mood for it.)))

Despite everything, I have been working on the comic still - trying a full all-out with inking and sketching up pages while I'm getting used to a dog in the house. I also have a late WIP that I've been testing my blending skills on because I got hit with a little nostalgia. Though...I suppose it's not quite nostalgia if I've never watched him before.

Paul McGaan, Night of the Doctor

There's no other way to say it: Guh.

So hey! Last weekend's misadventures included a trip to help out a group of people I consider my adoptive family. I have many a tale I could spin about the SCA but suffice it to say, check out the society's main website to see what it's all about. Then check out one of these GoPro helmet cam vids because the fact that this thing occurs on a yearly basis is mind blowing. As much as I love the armored combat, I am more of an archer mostly because I got to a point where I was utterly terrified of getting my hands beat in. I made some friends that weekend and, despite an injury from an accident back in April, I had a fairly good time.

I did manage to make some headway on pages despite having to spend part of the week in repose. I'll be releasing some of the unused panels from the recent edits I had to do with importing the pages into Manga Studio EX 4. I'm hoping I can keep up with the schedule I set for myself between the physical therapy and the puppy coming home next weekend, I believe I'll have my hands full.

Part of the reason I keep up with weekly updates and this weird style of writing is that when I'm going over the days, things will come to me. Between seeing Thor 2 this weekend with my folks (which I admit I enjoyed even with a great deal of the movie being The Loki Show. Even if Loki's my favorite, sush.) and the tornado that unfortunately wrecked a great deal of local area, I missed the second annual ComfyCon.

ComfyCon was made as an idea between Danielle Corsetto of GirlsWithSlingshots and Randy Millholland of Something*Positive, it's a weekend of panels and livestreams based entirely around webcomics: from getting into the "business" of webcomics to attempting to manage your first anthology. I only managed to hit the opening ceremony on Friday night, but (almost) all of the streams should be online as recordings so I plan on taking some time in the next week or so to look through a few of the panels. If I had been on top of things I would've suggested it earlier but y'know how things get.

That's really all for now. Tune in next week if I haven't drowned from puppy bliss.

Mischief: First Impressions, Creative Process, And Gods, I've Taken a Load of Cute Animal Pictures Lately.

I've been telling the story recently of how my site's URL came to pass. In my supposed infinite wisdom upon looking towards college I decided to take all of my gen. ed studies in my first few years of school to get them out of the way at a Junior College. And because of that infinite wisdom my senior ass got stuck with two big-project courses in the same semester as a sound design and statistics course. Translation: on average, I had three hours of sleep at most each night. And when at least two of these days have me doing twelve hours of projects and courses (and attending course lectures) I spent the mornings shuffling into class with a red bull in one hand, Starbucks in the other. By all rights, I probably should've hard a heart attack of some kind by this point. I have curbed my intake since then. I also probably sleep twice as much.

The second reason I feel like the zombie part of my moniker is relevant is it seems that when the seasons change, I turn into a shuffling mass of illness. I had planned on fully plugging through the software I mentioned last time, Mischief, but only managed to get into roughly two days worth of working on different projects in the software itself. I will say that based on my short time in the product I'll probably try to purchase it in the future.

The first picture I tried to work with in it was just a simple sketch and linework study. While it's definitely a great tool there are some things to get used to. Lassoing and resizing parts of the picture is not impossible, just not as intuitive. And I would like a hexidecimal input for colors just because it's how I've learned to keep track of my own colors when I'm working. But I realize I'm not everyone.

I will warn you though - the lineart in this picture was done with their 6.5 brush. All of the lines. It really makes a difference on brush width when you're zooming into what you're working on. 

The second day I worked for a while doing gesture sketches in the software. While I really wish I would've been able to do a full piece (color, et all, blending too) I believe I'd love this software as a sketching tool then importing it into other software as a flat image. Because of the infinite canvas capabilities alone (not to mention the brushes) I would love this software as a way to sketch out future pages and thumbnail projects.

This is the year of changing software - I made the decision to work in the Manga Studio program for the graphic novel I'm working on, and it's made a difference in my layout and drawing style. I started picking up Frenden's signature brush packs for both Photoshop and the MS software - brushes that mimic traditional pen nibs and the like.

Yes, when I can't think of anything, and my brain is still loopy from sickness, I apparently draw my mascot self. One of these days I'll figure out a version of them I'll stick with. 

 I'll be posting some of the panels I had to cut out of the graphic novel when it gets closer to launch.

My personal FB has turned into an explosion of Puppy Pictures. We finally got to hold our Puppy last weekend, and he is incredibly adorable. Between that and the bf's mom's new puppy, I've suddenly made minor popularity as a cute animal photog. Almost reminds me of the ducklings caught in the sewer drain that happened this summer.  I may get the DSLR back out when we get Puck home with us for good and take a few photos of the rascal. Hopefully my eye for composition has gotten better and the pictures will turn out halfway decent.

I mean, this still isn't too bad and all as far as photos go but it is a cell phone picture. (boo. hiss.) 

That's enough out of me for tonight. I've got to sleep still.

Mailing Lists, updates, or Why I Haven't Posted In Almost A Month.

Alright, lesson learned. I've started marking days to update the blog in my google calendar. I love the ability to schedule things and have my phone shriek at me.

So, what I've been up to lately: so, right after the (re)launch of my personal portfolio site, I got sick for a few weeks. That meant that instead of working on the comic pages, I was regulated back to working on scripts for future chapters. I'm up to chapter three at this point, probably about halfway through. Writing has a way of biting my expectations in the ass, though, so we'll see where that goes. After I got healthier the bf's birthday rolled around, so I felt the need to quickly put together a picture for him based on the game that both of us have been playing to death lately.

Yep, that one.

We've also had some wonderful news: in late November, the BF and I will be experiencing a whole new adventure in our relationship: I'm talking of course about having a pet together. We finally found a breeder (admittedly very late in the year) and have a wonderful, fuzzy baby corgi puppy coming to live with us. We decided to name him Puck, and we get to see him in two weeks.

I don't know who's been making more high-pitched noises, myself, or my bf.

What's down the road? More comic pages, and a review of a new program that I recently discovered thanks to the internet. It's called Mischief, and it's a vector-based program that supposedly will save your art at any size. I'll be writing something on it by the end of the week, just downloaded the trial today. 

One more thing before I go: I recently put together an advertisement for a friend's online magazine called Beautiful Monstrosity. It's for the comic's site, and the subscription/mailing list is wide open now that I fixed it (durrhurr me.) If you're interested at all in being told when the site itself is completely live, skip on over here and fill it out. Leave a post on my FB page if something's messed up.

That's all I got time for. Til next time~

Diving into things headfirst.

I am this close to putting reminders into my phone about regular post updates. (You can't see my fingers, but they're a few inches apart. Okay, well, about a foot apart. I'm still kind of lazy.) While I can just as easily throw a bunch of art tutorials and whatnot on my setting on tumblr, it takes more time and dedication to put together coherent writing on this blog. And I'm not entirely 100% sure on that coherent part.

Anyway. hn. Unless you've been blatantly ignoring my posts for the last couple of months I'm working on launching my own webcomic. You never realize how much plotting, planning and prep goes into the general amount of work to get one of these things off the ground. And, unlike "normal" comics (by "normal" I mean what most people think of when they hear the word comic: Marvel, DC, Image) doing it as a solo project can be daunting. You're doing the writing, the thumbnail sketches, the pencils the lettering, and the coloring. Not to mention setting up the website itself. I've got a personal goal of completing a certain amount of pages before the site launches, with a deadline of December 31rst. If I get ahead of myself, I'll launch sooner. You'll be first to know!

Speaking of launching, I'm incredibly close to launching my personal site fully, Caffeinated-Zombie.com. I know I've mentioned before that I'm working on the site, but earlier this week I managed to wrap everything up. The only thing I'm missing at this point is a photo for my about page and I'll be launching the site itself tomorrow. There might be some slight updates to the layout/color scheme of the blog to match, but it won't be too much of a deal. 

That's about all I've been up to this week. Hope to see you around. 

Incorporating 3D in a 2D Comic.

This last week started off lousy with a surprise discovery of a ground nest of wasps in our front yard and a flat tire almost a year after my last one. Apparently, wasps don't take very well to a lawn mower over their heads. Surprisingly, I got away with only a few stings. And thankfully, the rest of the week has progressed in a more positive manner.

Anywho, I wanted to talk about a trend that I've seen increasing in the last year or so, at least with digital artists: incorporating 3D into 2D pictures. A few years ago, Matt Kohr posted a series on how to use Google Sketchup to make the framework for a complex background. As a series based around concept art in general, this term is apparently nothing relatively new - fast and loose, sampling textures and shapes in a piece to get a concept down fully and quickly is a practice not unheard of. What surprised me, however, was after I decided to mix 3D backgrounds into my comic projects that this is a practice slowly spreading in comics too.

My first comic project that I discussed last week. 

Environments are harder when you're starting out. I'll admit, the most I'd ever done with digital backgrounds involved very little in the way of straight lines beforehand. So it seemed like when doing an urban-based story, throwing an environment together in Blender with the Freestyle plugin seemed like a great idea. I wasn't alone, however; people have been using Sketchup to start backgrounds and expand on them for at least a year at this point. 

The only downside of creating your own backgrounds in 3D is it does tend to take much longer than in 2D because you're rendering everything of importance. The one upside is that once you have the piece done, you can use it and re-use it again and again if more than one scene is based out of that area.

Once I get the main character's store and apartment done, I'm set for several chapters' worth of stuff. 

What are tips and tricks you use when dealing with environments? 

On Comics, Projects, And Lucky Number Three.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like my particular health situation is going to be clearing up any time incredibly soon. But! I said I'd try to keep up with this blog again and I'm going to do just that. This week's post is going to be dedicated to projects I've had to shelve over the last year.

When looking back, my current webcomic-to-be (located here) is not the first comic I wanted to portray. It's the third. The first (and ultimately, the second) was a project I titled Feathery Wings. In it we had the shapeshifter angel-type (Aske) and an Italian student studying abroad in the States and trying to keep her head above the water. I wanted to go for less of a Judeo-Christian route and explore other versions of the guardian spirit aspect, so I delved into the Norse concept of Vordr, tree-spirits that protected a family or place...and a less-than-happy one that was now treeless. However, as promising as this story seemed (and how borderline Supernatural some of my issues were) I shelved it because I couldn't find a real overarching story. But Aske wouldn't go - they had been one of my first solid designs outside of college, and they weren't going away. I wanted to experiment with a series that had a genderless character as the main character or a strong part of the main cast.

The concept of basing a series around mythology has always been a big draw to me, even moreso with reading American Gods around Christmas last year. So, the world slowly built up around the idea of Gods on the Earth, but something holding them back from tearing the world apart - a pact of non-interaction, of sorts. This left (most) of the deities free to choose lives past the humdrum of their mythos, and integrate with normal society. In comes Ashe - a bouncer at a Mead Hall that acts as a safe haven for otherworldly types. Again, this concept was shelved because of the sheer amount of backhistory I've had to research to date on the world. I felt that until I got a solid connection to the roots of the environment itself, putting it to page was going to be on hold.

So what now? I wanted to start smaller, build in the same universe but without as much interference from the deific standpoint. Humans, and their foibles, and the smaller scale.

That's where I'm at now, that's where Stacked Hand comes in. Aske will still come back at some point, but for now, well...once the comic is introduced, I'll speak a little more about the character creation.

Busted Wrists, Distractedness.

So, I know about a month ago I said I'd start posting more regularly again. Time has a funny way of slipping out from under you and slapping you on the face as a parting gift. To attempt to make up for this, I figure, I'll try to do a bit of a recap of this year so far (since a few of you are indeed, folks who kind of know me.)

Earlier this year the bf and I had a conversation that basically ran like this -

Boyfriend: Man, rent's going to go up when we renew our lease again this year.

Self: With the way rent and utilities are, hell, we could probably afford a mortgage on a decent house.

Boyfriend: .....

Self: .....

Self: I'll start looking.....

Fast forward to April and we've closed in on this lovely ranch-style home that I'm currently sitting in. There's still bits and pieces to the place that need to be fixed up. (Bathrooms, deck, downstairs, etc) But so much of it is cosmetic adjustments that we've been happy with so far. Hell, three months down and I've gotten settled in here nicely, myself. Just sometimes feels a bit...empty. We're working on fixing that. If any of you know of a (reputable) Pembroke Welsh Corgi breeder in the Midwest States, I'd be happy to hear of it. We've already gotten scammed once. I should've figured out beforehand but the idiots wanted us to pay in Bitcoin. Bit. Fucking. Coin.

Anyway. There have been enough personal changes in my life that started me thinking about trying to publish my own work. I got serious about it, as opposed to sitting back and worrying that my art/writing/etc isn't good enough to put something out there for the world to see. It's been two years since graduating Bradley University, and I can definitely say that my work has gone up leaps and bounds since then. Plus, it seems like that's the advice I keep seeing from several artists: Keep doing what you love, the work will come to you. Or something similar. I know I'm chasing down leads as fast as I get them, but in the meantime, I'm pushing to launch my comic and it's website by the end of the year. If I can get it out sooner, well, the more's the merrier for me.

I've started working with a couple of local groups, Start-up Peoria and Dr. Ardonaut's Lab, on some various projects. If even a singular one sees the light of day, I'll be delighted. I'm hoping that with the locality of each group I'll see some responsibility taken on all ends - the last few projects I was asked to work on left me incredibly jaded about pro-bono work, to the point where I think the only way I'd consider it is if everyone had an equal stake/amount to lose in the process. That and I have extensive knowledge of the person. Too many times it's been a start and stop - on my part too, admittedly - and several times I've produced a few pieces for a group only to have the people involved stop returning my e-mails.

As of late, I've had a carpal tunnel flare-up in my right wrist, so things have been somewhat slower. Even though I'm left-handed, the medication they gave me is incredibly draining. I will be posting commission prices within the next month for things inbetween comic pages, so be on the look out!

A small news post.

For those of you still following I'm realizing that I've been kind of slacking behind on the updates in this particular sphere. Hopefully soon I'll be able to fix up this particular site with a slightly better layout that will be productive for future plans. Though I do have a page where I put up every piece of art that I finish. Just kind of trying to reorganize things. don't mind me.

Violinist Dance.

I meant to post this awhile ago, but I've been caught up working on other things. Drawing such a dance, such a motion was really run. I hope to try to do something similar in the future. 

Never stop trying.

I've been working on more stuff again this week, including a design for a character I've had running about for a little over two years now. It seems like sometimes, the best mark of improvement is on things that are still around to work on. On the left is a portrait I did while I was still in college. In theory (and ideally) what I thought was one of my best pieces at the time. I thing about December or so.

The one on the right is the piece I'm working on right now. While I am still working with a (more) subdued palette than what's pictured, I wanted to try with what I've learned about faces to color it in. It's encouraging to see how much I've progressed in such a relatively short time.

Self-Portrait 2013

I was nervous yesterday about the job interview I had today, so I started working on a small self-portrait.