Although I said I’d try to do these monthly, I’ve already sort of failed since it’s February when I’m posting this, but hey, I’m not gonna let that bring me down. I knew the goal wouldn’t be perfect to begin with, but it’s a good starting place. At least not that much has been going on, so as promised, there’s more musing about my art, my creative drive, my printing and work processes, and anything else I’ve felt like sharing from the last little while.

Creative Drive

At the end of December I got the flu and it was pretty rough on me. Although it sucked, when I felt better I rearranged a bunch of my furniture in my room and it was a nice way to start the year on a new slate. Last time I made a post I talked about how stuck I feel, and how little my creative drive was, and although that’s sort of the same, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic and I don’t feel as stuck. When I wrote that I recall feeling very lost. Now I feel more like I’m wandering freely– I know there’s a lot of things I could be doing, honing in on those things is hard but I’m not letting it bother me too much. I feel like the best way to describe it is that before I couldn’t see anything, but now I can see those things, and I can work on them as I please, even if it takes me awhile to get to them.

With that, I’ve had a few commissions I’ve worked on this past month or so that have helped me feel less lost. It’s nice to have a purpose in creating, that’s not just all in my own head. Even if you’re really into your own work, usually it takes so long to get out there that it’s kinda… lonely? It’s hard to let other people in while you’re working on it. So outside things like that help a lot.

INSPIRATIONS

Not sure if inspirations is quite the right word, but I wanted to write about some of the things I’ve been watching/reading lately that i really enjoyed. I read Paper Girls some point last month (I had bit the bullet and got the big compendium- before knowing what it was even about, really) But luckily I ended up falling in love with it– the artwork, the well crafted story and all the things that intertwine them. Without going too much into it, there’s a point where many different plot points happen at once in different places, and the fusion of prose story and art there is really just what comics are all about, man. It was good shit.

I also recently (finally) watched The Haunting of Hill House, about 4 years past the hype but I enjoyed it a lot. It reminded me of ways I’d love to tell stories– how it interwove the past, the present, the future. (Something Paper Girls also did, but in very different ways, ha.) Each character was important in their own way, and made big mistakes or big conflicts with one another in a way that was so well crafted and compelling. So compelling, that I tried to go right into a completely different show afterwards, but it didn’t hold my attention like Hill House did.

It was my birthday last week and I celebrated by adding to my comic collection– I have way too many to keep that up, but I’ve been gently trying to make myself read more often, especially comics. I know a big part of being as good writer/artist/comic artist is consuming work that inspires you, so hopefully I’ll keep that up, one way or another.

zine making Progress

I finally got all the assets I’d need to print my own zines from home– even getting a stapler specifically for booklet stapling. Its weird that I’m so excited about a stapler, but I know how convenient it is. I’ve always been into things like book binding and making zines ever since I was a little kid, so its a process in comic making I really enjoy and have fun with. I have cover and copy papers, multiple cutters/guillotines, etc. I need to figure out how to perfect double sided alignment on my home printer, but that’s a note for later. Now I just need some things to print– Preferably some new things that I haven’t got myself to make yet.

As a way to ease in, I realized I neglected to make a proper cover and zine for my mermaid pirate story, Field Research, last spring. Now that I have all these printing materials, I thought it’d be a good time to prep and print some copies. I may have an opportunity to sell them in person soon, but I’m also thinking of setting up a shop online. I’m not sure where, but that’s something to decide later on when it’s more of a real thing in my mind.

Besides that, I want to make new content to make into a book. There’s a lot of little zines I’m interested in making, as well as a lot of bigger projects. I’ve been dying to jump into and sink my teeth into a bigger project, but I have so many that are only in scripting or partial thumbnail stages, that it’s hard to settle on what. It might be easier to go ahead and work on my smaller zine ones for now, until I can settle on what to go foreword with.

Personal Projects

This month I wrote a document for myself that listed all my major (and some more minor) comic projects and where I am in each one. Some are a lot further than others (Cypher Creek is obviously the most completed one, but ironically the one I’m still really drawn to working on. Sometimes I just think about how much I want to keep working on it– I know the main story line has been told, but I designed it in a way that I can keep telling smaller, more anthology like stories.) Most of the big work have pretty solid plot synopses but nothing solid outside that– Besides some old scripting I’m probably going to revamp anyway. A lot of them I haven’t touched in over a year and a half, if not longer– My senior year I mainly focused on shorter, more complete stories, and my senior project, so these bigger worlds haven’t had a chance– which is another thing that draws me to working on them.

I’m really excited to dig into and script or thumb these other projects I got burned out on or put on the back burner. Besides Cypher Creek, my main ones are– Rock Bottom, Bonnie & Psy, and Ophelia and the Deep Dark. (I’ve linked the pages I’ve worked on for those that I have up). I also have been working on and off on another story, that I posted concept of here. Scripting is such an arduous task that makes you feel like you’re doing absolutely nothing. I want to DRAW, not script or thumb. But those things are important, and they build the infrastructure to do the rest. I have a few different reasons to work on any of them– Rock Bottom is the oldest one in concept (one I came up with in high school, around 2016?) and has already been redone once. Bonnie and Psy I have a lot of the big bulk of the story planned, and some penciled pages, but not a lot concrete to show for it. For another class senior year I decided to write the story for Ophelia in prose, but never got to finish the whole thing, even with how condensed I made it.

As I get to scripting and thumbnailing, I’m also interested in decompressing my storytelling— I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at compressing, and showing what needs to be shown in a short amount of pages and panels for the audience to get it, but maybe not enough for them to be immersed in it– I feel like there’s not a lot of breathing room in some of my work. (Which is a little ironic with how much I write.) Maybe that’s okay and I should accept it as my own, but, I don’t know. Every story is different and its not something I should fret about. Its become a joke to me that I usually end up adding at least 1 page to a lot of my projects (A 10-pager I had turned into 11… My 20-pager turned into 21… etc. ) But, in that way, I feel like I can start decompressing it myself as I work on it. Its good to be able to get a story out quickly, but sometimes you want to live in it longer. It’s not something I’m going to force my stories into, but something I want to keep in mind for myself as now I have the time and pages to do it.

When I work on stories for comics, I compare myself to my own old work too much. I find myself very often being like “You already made a ghost comic– you already explored this theme– you already did xyz” and wanting to make myself explore new territory. New and different things are great, and I feel like I’m good at coming up with random things on a whim, but nothing like that that I’d like to develop. More like exercises. As I continue working on my older projects and refresh them, I want to find the one that excites me like it did when I first made it. Maybe that ship has sailed, but it’s one of the things that’s keeping my from just picking and working on something already.

There’s just kind of a lot of ways i can take my comic work right now. But I’m trying to take it easy, and not constantly think about all the work I could be working on if I just sat down and produced already. It’s a very capitalist way of thinking I shouldn’t shove into my artwork but hard to pull away from completely.

Goals (hold yourself accountable, DAMNIT)

Mainly, I want to finish a cover and assets for Field Research, print a few out and maybe sell them with other copies of my work. I’m gonna force myself to make a post or two on Instagram– for some reason that’s so hard for me. Lastly, I want to work on scripting out at least one of my projects, whichever it might be.

That’s all I have to say this time- Hopefully by the next update I’ll have some good news, otherwise, thanks for reading my ramblings.