This is for a graphic novel that has so much going on that I thought the best course for the cover would be to include everything (or at least as much as fits on one page).
I don’t know why the release image is missing the Dark Horse logo in the top left corner, though, but the roughs below have it. Edit: It bothered me so much that I went in and added the Dark Horse logo myself. (Why even bring that up? Because balance takes at least fifty times as long as the drawing part, usually– it’s a chronic cartooning condition that eats up the brain. See black areas below.)
I’ve been thinking if there’s a way to replicate some of the good parts of the scattershot mosaic we get on Twitter and elsewhere – “here’s a few of the things looked at, things worked on, scribbled, noticed, etc.” – not strictly chronological and not meant to be comprehensive, just a slice through someone else’s moments. So here’s an attempt at a condensed version of it. Feels like it might work?
note: I suspect RSS readers will strip it all and just give you a bunch of images in a row; I was considering removing these posts from the RSS feed altogether, but I’ll just say the blog presentation works a lot better.(and it also shows the picture captions when you click on them)
(Maybe it’s fine as long as I don’t go overboard with twenty pictures every time.)
This one could qualify as archival too, since it was drawn in 2021, but it’s personal work, and not out yet, so instead it’s a peek at the ongoing present, as I rework some of it this morning.
Last year I spent a fun afternoon coming up with some “home-made” costume concepts for an IKEA ad. The idea was that the girl in it progresses from making cardboard outfits as a child to growing up into a career in 3D and VFX. The final commercial mashed together pieces of my other ideas, but these were my favorites as drawings.
(Free Halloween idea, and maybe the green screen one can work in some sort of St. Patrick’s Day scenario too.)
When I set up this new blog six months ago, I made a very conscious effort not to start with a big statement of intent. No manifesto about Why Blogs or I’m Leaving Social Media For Good or anything like that.
I just posted a current thing — a photo I took from the window of a moving car — and then posted a few quotes next, and didn’t make it a big deal in any way. No big plan, no attempts at comprehensiveness. I just needed it to exist without needing it to be anything in particular just yet.
What I was looking for was a better way of being online in some approximation of “real time.”1
Twitter is no longer an acceptable option, if it ever was. Its alternatives, even the good ones, all have the same problems — while they still serve some of the social functions, I need a better way of sharing work and pictures and thoughts in progress at my own pace, with more continuity, more permanence, and more depth (when needed)2.
The blog did already survive the threshold of “two posts, then a three year gap, then an apology for not posting, then death” that most blogs don’t, but now it feels like I do need to decide on -some- approach to it before it sort of peters out.
For artists and creative people, the easiest, go-to model for an “online presence” is to share “process.”
Many people (by which I meant me) seem to feel as if they start off each morning in a kind of “productivity debt”, which they must struggle to pay off through the day, in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time evening comes. Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood than this vague sense that I’m falling behind, and need to claw my way back up to some minimum standard of output. It’s as if I need to justify my existence, by staying “on top of things”
filed under the archive
