March13
I now finally, finally have my copies of Furlough, and I’m surprised how satisfying it is to have actual physical evidence of this thing I worked on for so long. I’ll be putting it on Etsy on Monday (and posting when I do); in the meantime, here’s a four-page excerpt.
Hint: our heroine does not receive welcome news at this impromptu meeting.
The full issue runs 24 pages, plus a lovely, shiny cover.
The first day of the convention was entertaining and illuminating – I didn’t get to walk around, and instead the convention came to me. I had some really, really nice conversations, shared cat craziness stories with people, saw friends, and forced myself to overcome certain aspects of my shyness. More later, including Lessons Learned From My First Convention and pictures of my really rather pretty booth.
March12
“Cat,” I said earlier, “you aspire me to create works of art.” So: cat as muse. Right then.
I’m posting this because I can’t stop laughing at it.
Please do click to enlarge; it has nice details.
I’m putting this together right now, laying it out so I can print it tomorrow and offer it to the public on Saturday. I actually just changed the title, as I realized that the original one, “Crazy Cat Lady Comics,” was a bit of a misnomer – for starters, I only have the one cat. Two pairs of Danskos, yes, but only the one cat.
Off to finish laying out so I can hit the copy shop tomorrow afternoon. It’s been a momentous week so far; it’s a state I think will continue til Sunday.
March10
Finally, after all this tagging and “No, I’m totally going to!”-ing, I have actual evidence and ephemera for you. I’ll be posting an excerpt on Friday, just in time for the Emerald City Comicon. Which I will be at. Where you should come see me.
In the meantime, behold my promotional art!
Pretty, no? More details as the week goes by, I swear. I’ve been holding myself back from posting, because RSS-based senseless squeeing doesn’t benefit anyone. So I’ll be back later to discuss how much I love printing, how I will basically be sitting amongst my comics RSS feed at the convention, and what else I’m putting together to offer up at the convention.
March5
If I were not so tired, and if it were not so late, this post would just be a drawing of myself, holding two stone tablets out to the masses. Tablet the first would say: FUR. Tablet the second would say: LOUGH. For it is done and it is currently uploading to my printer of choice.
It is very late, and I won’t get very much sleep tonight. I really, really don’t care. It’s done. It is done. IT is DONE.
The Emerald City ComiCon is on Saturday. I’ve got things to do, oh yes, but for the next two days? Nothing! Nothing, I say. I will play with my cat and watch some movies and talk to my boyfriend about something that isn’t comics or Photoshop and, oh yes, sleep. I am terribly excited about these things.
But not as excited as I am the upload finishing in the background of my overtaxed computer. Yes yes.
More previews to come in the next few days – oh, the pretty pictures I have to show you.
February26
It’s amazing to contemplate the mass of paper-based records I’m going to accumulate in my life.
Why am I thinking of this? Because:
Because that’s 23 inked pages in my hands (two pages per sheet of bristol), and I feel toward them the way many people seem to feel toward their children. This stack feels like an artifact I’ll be carrying around for the rest of my life. The longest graphic work I’ve completed so far.
This is only a step. Here’s what I have to do still:
- Scan
- Fix fucked-up panels (there are a few – I’m looking at you, crab-handed main character)
- Letter
- Lay out
- Get printing quotes
- Print this thing
- Sell it to an unsuspecting public
It’s enough to make a person want to go to bed.
Oh, in the interest of being honest in media and not giving the children misleading ideas about what ladies actually look like, I’m TOTALLY Photoshopped in that picture.*
*True – I’ve got a really painful zit an inch above the spot between my eyebrows, and it’s been bugging me so much that the idea of preserving it in any way bugged me too much to allow. Smoke and mirrors!
February16
Scout’s honor. 23 pages, last panel penciled tonight. I’ve kept up a pace of at least three pages a day for the last week. I am very, very curious of what kind of pace I’ll be able to keep when I start inking Wednesday. (Prediction: MUCH SLOWER.)
Here’s my stack o’ bristol on my lovely handy drawing pedestal device.
12 pieces of paper, 23 half-size pages.
I’ve scanned them, and I’m going to back up the files online, because I’m so paranoid I might as well add a nice tinfoil chapeau to my collection. This is partially because I realize that if anything went awry tonight, I would, as the kids say, cut a bitch if anyone tried to hurt my pages in any way, shape, or form. I have no desire to do this. Hence, I will be placing them out of reach of the cat.
My head hurts, but I’m jittery excited right now. Man, this is fun. Wednesday: inking. Tomorrow, however, I have different plans:
January31
Today, by the grace of craigslist and a man named Mark, John and I managed to score tickets to the sold-out Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival. I’ve gone for three years now, and it’s been interesting to see their submissions evolve. A good third of the first one was just about full-on terrible, because a new festival didn’t attract the best-quality filmmakers. It was worthwhile even then, though, and it’s gotten markedly better year after year.
Still, I found myself more critical this year, and I think I really enjoyed fewer than I usually do. However, being in a script-writing state of mind, I found myself pulling lessons from them. Such as:
The length of a short film’s credit sequence is nearly always inversely proportional to its quality.
There are some film and animation professors out there erroneously giving well-intended advice to people. Other innocent people do not necessarily need to be subjected to your Introduction to 3D Modeling project. Learn, get graded, and move on.
Bickering is not the same as character building. Furthermore, bickering is not cute and serves only to make the viewer hope all of your characters die.
Many storytellers find female characters necessary only when they need a lady to move their plot along, i.e. someone needs to get knocked up so some plans can get derailed, or a male character needs some kind of vague, briefly explained motivation.
What feels good shouldn’t be fled from; actually, something that feels really lovely, a story that reassures you on some base level, is enough to justify a story sometimes.
Just as with full-length features, there is a point at which an inflating budget can not only not help a lifeless story but can actually make it worse, because the audience feels sad that good money was thrown after bad for a terribly written script.
And this, I admit, is my own damage:
I hate fanboy humor to the point that watching it for more than a minute makes me physically uncomfortable. This is my problem, based on a past relationship, but that knowledge doesn’t make my reactions less potent.
So, when not entertaining, at least educational. That’s good.
I’ve been painting and drawing a lot this week. Here’s one I finished last night.
Bring on the bizarre Google searches!
I’m looking into making art prints, so I’ll be posting far more pictures once I have a means of getting them to people.
January20
It’s been watercolor week at Chateau Breanne. Mostly I’ve been doing painting/drawing hybrids, like the one in the last post. Last night, I was working on a painting for a swap (via Swap-Bot) called Little Works of Art. Whatever it was (sculpture, painting, fabric thing, what have you) had to be at least 4×4 inches and no more than 12×12. I settled on 4×6, as that’s the size of my beloved watercolor postcard paper.
Not based in reality at all, even the tiniest bit.
Usually I lean on the crutch that is my beloved bold black ink lines. I’m feeling steadier with a paintbrush, enough that I didn’t have that feeling of, “Oh, god, one more paint stroke will fuck it all up!” while I was finishing it. Nice.
The jellyfish will shortly be making its way to Australia, where it will promptly be destroyed and consumed by the region’s myriad and marvelous incredibly deadly native species.
December2
I had a lovely Thanksgiving. I won’t elaborate too much here, as the essay below does a fine job of explaining what went on and why it was good. I sat down that night with an urge to make some wee pictures illustrating my day and ended up with a very contented illustrated essay.
Read the rest of this entry »
November29
My archives, that is. This site doesn’t really have a basement or attic to speak of at this point.
I’ve spent today primarily in the house, and I cleaned out my room and decrapped my art desk. In doing so, I found the daily comic I did back in February. I did this a day after everyone else in internetland did theirs, and then did not post as I did not, at the time, have a place to do such a thing. So here it is now. It is rather large (8.5×11 paper, cannot be reduced due to scrawling penmanship), hence the separate page.
I also updated my Etsy store. I added fresh inventory of my creativity zine, and I added a new one too – A Selection of Surreal Moments from My Recent Vacation, which I wrote in September, following my two-week August trip.
I used to use this store entirely for my jewelrymaking enterprises. I rediscovered my cache of jewelry-made-to-sell (see: cleaning, house, overdue), and now I’m wondering if I should let the zines and jewelry mingle, or if I should make a separate Etsy store for each one.
