Drawing comics, mostly. The Joe is Japanese comic, to be exact. Somewhere around 140 pages so far, not sure where it's going to stop (probably in the 250 range, near as I can tell, but that's pretty hazy territory), and all in gorgeous Fatescrew colors. I'm just doing the line-art and some of the layout/pacing... as it's always been with JiJ, it's written by Joe himself and el Nortega, and then I mangle it up and give it back and they hammer on it some more and eventually something comes out the other end looking like, in this case, a graphic novel.

It's certainly not the sort of story I thought I'd end up working on... fantasy, crime, horror, even superheroes, sure, but bizarre semi-biographical treks through foreign lands of socio-personal mystery and adventure? Didn't even pop up on the radar. When they pitch "The Meets" it's usually Lost in Translation meets A Million Little Pieces, which you must admit is at least something different. And it's got jubblies and fight scenes and downhill street races (I'm told, haven't got there yet), which are all fun to draw. Wally Wood helps get me through the talky bits.

Before you ask, I haven't "quit" animation. It's just that I'm a contract animator, and so I animate when I get contracts. Something which isn't happening a lot lately, probably on account of this "economy" thing I keep hearing about [/dry_voice]. Still, I hear there's some positive noises from the people we did the baseball bit for, so I'm sure I'll be back on the frames again eventually. In the meantime I guess I'm dedicated to drawing at least another 100 pages of Joe is Japanese. And after that, who knows... comics is the ultimate do-it-yourself storytelling media, and I haven't forgotten the material deep in my archives. Those concepts aren't dead, just sleeping, and I'm a lot more confident in my ability to draw comics now than I was back then.

It's weird how I get into jobs... it's never through the front door. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten a job through the use of a resume, or an interview. Instead everything happens because of some other damned thing, a hurly-burly chain of happenstance combined with my general willingness to bounce along letting the current take me where it likes (usually someplace where all the drowned squirrel corpses pile up).

I've been wanting to draw comics... well, pretty much since I decided I wanted to draw for a living. Comics was where it started, The Spirit, Pogo, Little Nemo in Slumberland, Krazy Kat, ZAP!, Cheech Wizard, Deadbone, Those Annoying Post Bros, Arzach, Blueberry, The Airtight Garage, Appleseed, Akira, Usagi Yojimbo. When I set my single step on the journey of a thousand miles, comics was the destination. And yet somehow I ended up taking the scenic route... the one with all the soggy squirrel bits, through Animation Alley by way of Kiddie Korner with a couple detours along T-shirt Trail. And now it's Comics Canyon, at least until I hit the next fork. There will probably be Curves Ahead (aaand we're done with that metaphor).

There's nothing like throwing yourself into the deep end to impress upon you the need to learn how to swim, and to learn very quickly. You would think that the past 8 years or so of drawing animation, and the previous 5 years of drawing cartoons for the kids' magazine (including a stack of two-page comics stories, there's a couple in the Gallery) would have left me in a pretty good position to draw a long-format graphic novel in a realistic setting.

Ahahahaa... no. The last six months has been a fairly non-stop continuous slamming into a wall labeled You Suck. I've had to completely re-learn perspective, AGAIN. Anatomy needed boning up, composition, all the crap I'm constantly harping on in these Journals, I got a nice taste of my own foot (mmm, toe-cheesy). Easier to talk than to walk.

Thankfully I can still fake it pretty good, to the point where lately I've even begun to fool myself. David Chelsea's Perspective for Comic Book Artists helps a lot. So do the old Loomis books. But ultimately, as always seems to be the case, the only thing that really helps is practice. You gotta burn to earn, talk and study is fine but it's time on the table that hammers it in.

The first 50 pages were harder to draw than the next 100. I can hope that trend continues, can't i?

It's slightly reassuring to find that most of what I've been saying is still valid. The three most constantly required basic skills that keep coming up (outside of actual drawing technique) are still Perspective, Composition and Anatomy. Might be I'll have to add Architecture in there someday, though I might humbly suggest that Architecture is a subset of Anatomy (the anatomy of buildings), and that the same important parts of anatomy that you need to know (what parts go where, what they're for and how they attach to other parts) are the same important parts of architecture that you need to know. And in the same way that I've built up an internal library of physical variance (which I apply far too rarely), I'm slowly building up the same for architectural details.

Still, comics ain't easy sailin'. You've got to employ a wider range of artistic disciplines, simultaneously, than in any other creative field I can think of. It's like drumming, keeping track of time and several beats and all your limbs do different things all at once, and somehow from chaos emerges rhythm.

Though I think this disturbs the neighbors less. At least until they read it.







I'm not done posting Fantasy Craft bits, but the flood is back to being a trickle. I put over 60 illustrations into that book, including the cover, which makes it the largest single body of my gaming work to date. If you've been wanting me to put out a collection, then I suggest you buy it for the artwork and get a free game.

Crafty Games also has the license for the Mistborn RPG, and I guess it's safe to say that I'll be doing some work on that (though to what degree I can't say yet). I wasn't wasting time with all those Mistborn fanart pieces so much as getting some practice in. And it won't be the last Brandon Sanderson project I get to play with, I think. The internet is wonderful for making connections.

So that's the news from my end of things. Not particularly thrilling, I could use a little more sunshine and lollipops, but nevertheless I do abide.