Happy end of February– Time moves on. This time I actually have some updates that aren’t just musing, which on its own is fine, but it feels good to have some progress that’s tangible. And with pictures!

Prepping to Table!

This month I worked on tabling in my home town– I’ve done a few table events in school, usually slapping things together semi-last minute (Or, if not last minute, taking a lot of time/stress out of my already limited free time). Since I didn’t have to stress about tabling AND school work for the first time ever, it was nice to focus most of my free time on prepping for this. (I work full time, but since its not art related, its nowhere as draining artistically as art school.) When I saw a tabling event being tested in my town, I thought it was a good way to dip my toes back in, and get back on my feet a bit. It would be a bit more professional than before, but in a more relaxed and less high stakes way than a bigger con.

Zine Production and Revamps (hah!)

(this subsection name is funny to me exclusively because it involves a vampire comic I made)

I had a zine for A Vampire’s Reunion that I threw together last minute before a show last year– I had some weird page breaks for the 12 page comic, in a way that having a 12 page zine wouldn’t quite work, so I had 4 breather pages to make it fit together better. The problem was, I sort of just threw some sketches of the environments on to a page, one that took up a whole 2 page spread right in the middle of the book. The page after that also had a sketch, but much smaller, and I just hated how it looked. Since it was the middle spread, I decided to just take it out and print a whole new one, this one with a little bit of color.

Additionally, I had a pure black spread near the beginning that also annoyed me– so I made a little drawing to go on that. I printed a few off on one sheet, cut them and double sided taped them to the old copies (New ones I just plan on changing that page of course, but it was a pretty low-hassle make-shift solution for the time being. All in all, I enjoyed fixing it up and I liked how it came out so much more than the first time around.

On to mermaids! I managed to finish the cover and assets for Field Research and I have a lot of process work for it! I originally sketched it digitally– I had this idea to have a little flap on it, like one of those old school pirate journals. A lot of the design for the cover page was inspired by that, like the stitching on the spine. I printed it out two sided on Bristol board (my printer did not like that– I had to just put it through twice.) I inked it, and finally I broke out the light table and did an ink wash on watercolor paper. (I wanted to do a wash because I originally planned for this piece to have a wash layer on the comic pages, but ultimately did not have the time and was satisfied with the piece without it.) This ended up being a bit more difficult since I had it double sided, but since the inside didn’t have a lot it wasn’t too bad. I scanned both pages separately, put them together, then colorized it. At first, colorizing was much more frustrating than i anticipated- the colors just weren’t getting as deep or as vibrant as I wanted them too. Eventually I got it, involving duplicating the wash layer to deepen the darker values. I really enjoyed how it came out, though I wish I spent a bit more time on the inside cover.

For the inside, I planned for all these pages to be one after the other, so it didn’t take much finagling to get it how I’d like- I only had 2 extra pages to work with, two at the very end. One I put a conclusion-y sketch, the other I put my original character designs along with some notes. If you ever think cleaning up old dirty sketchbook sketches would be easy to just slap on a page, you’d be surprisingly wrong, at least in my case. But I managed to get them to a level of polish that looked good enough for me.

Lastly, I did throw together a little zine of a lot of my shorter comic projects, from 1-3 pages, most being one, thus the name. A lot, but not all, of the pages can be found here on my site. Two of the pieces, Ophelia’s Slog and In Ten Seconds were the ones that weren’t actually one page, but I figured the name would still work out. I took a note from my idea on A Vampire’s Reunion, and designed it so the middle spread would be in color. Funny enough, since they’re only a page it didn’t HAVE to be in the middle, but it worked.

Buttons & Stickers

Along with my zines, I worked on some new buttons and stickers. After considering what would be best way to sell buttons (buying them online, versus investing in a button maker, etc) I decided it’d be easier to buy them for now and think about getting a button press later on. I found an Esty store (CheapestButtons.Net!) that sells them very cheap (so much that cheap is part of their marketing!) From there I found the website and decided to order from there! They seemed to be great quality, as well as being able to do a lot of different designs– This was a huge selling point for me, as I wanted to have a lot of different designs to work with, but a lot of other places would charge separate for each at a huge cost. My friend and I prepped 25 button designs total and did 10 each about a week and a half ahead of time. Unfortunately, winter storms in the shipping area delayed it just enough we didn’t get it until a day after the event, but when they did get here they were exactly what I wanted. I’m super excited to have them for next time! After hand pressing a number of buttons in college, I was also so glad to just pay for it and not have to go through that struggle.

The stickers were printed at home, and most were mostly just prints of things from my comics and illustrations– I did them very last minute. (Ironically enough I completely forget to grab them for the table, but c’est le vie!) I still have a lot of sticker paper, and I’d love to make specific sticker designs in the future when I have time. My prints were more art I had already done– I planned to print more but ran out of time.

Tabling Locally

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this table, but it was pretty nice! People really put their all into their work, and focused on all types of crafts, not just art, so it was fun to see the breadth of the types of creators in my community. Most tabling things I’ve done have been specifically art or comic/zine related, so I enjoyed that a lot. The turn out itself was pretty decent, but not overbearing. It was the first event of its kind, so I’m thinking as it goes on, it might become more popular. There was a lot of sitting around and doodling, which was fun after two weeks of grinding on page and graphic design. I probably spent about as much as I made back on fellow vendors.

Like I said earlier, it was a nice way to dip my toes back into tabling, and it was a lot of fun tabling as a team with my roommate. It gave me a lot of ideas for ways to display my work in the future, or streamline the selling process, keeping track of inventory, etc. I made a google sheet for inventory, but didn’t use it at all– I think I’ll print out a copy next time to tick off on, especially if I have pen and paper out anyway. I was still rushing out the door to finish everything I wanted to do unfortunately– So next time I’ll definitely have all of that stock and inventory sorted before I go.

I’d like to get some more display pieces– maybe some of those standing cube pieces that you can click together separately and mess with that. Eventually I’ll draw a mock up and decide what I want to put in exactly, but we’ll see. I have a binder that I could also display prints, but we’ll see. One day when I have a lot of zines, I’d love to get one of those magazine-esque racks to put them on. I want to have some kind of display to advertise custom work and commissions– I’ll work shop that and figure out what will work best.

I had a lot of change for the first time EVER tabling, which is kinda hilarious, but didn’t have anywhere to put it– Next time I’ll definitely invest in a small cashbox. I’ve thought about getting a square reader as well, but I’ll wait to do that until I’m more certain It’ll be helpful.

I’m excited, to say crassly, to finally get my shit together and table in a more professional way, and possibly sign up for bigger cons or events further away– I’d love to go back and do more events in Minneapolis and nearby! But I still feel like I have a long way to go to do that– mostly because I need to compile where would be best, when their events are, when the applications are, etc etc. It might be a long process, but I don’t mind.

Creative Drive + Personal projects Update

It pretty hard for me to implement deadlines for myself (As a popular tumblr post jokes, I know who made that deadline and they’re full of shit) so having a specific deadline enforced put my motivation into overdrive.

Because of that drive, afterwards I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work on my personal projects, though I’m happy to say I did work on one a little. I decided to do some plotting on my story Bonnie & Psi, a story about a alien fleeing to earth and meeting a bored convenience store worker. I feel good about jumping in, even if it’s not what I focus on over all, I’m no longer scared about the sunk-cost-fallacy of working on one project all the way, versus a little here and there until I get focused on one.

What drives me to work on this in particular? I’m not really sure. I think the recent read of Paper Girls was a good inspiration to work on my sci-fi story. While I was looking at my old documents for it I found my entire original list of influences! Influences are a big part of my creative process- I like to have a whole list of what excites me in the story to keep me motivated, and finding the old one really re-sparked the project for me.

Besides that, as a little nod to Cypher Creek, Bonnie lives in the same town Freya went to college in. Since I didn’t talk about the city much, It’s a good opportunity to expand the world building, and the connection excites me for whatever reason. I love having my work being an interconnected universe.

Overall, it still needs a lot of concept work, world building, etc. for the different spots in the story. Everywhere needs more work, but in particular, the middle needs a lot of elbow grease. However, I never realized how much work I did have of it– My initial “word vomit” document of me musing about the characters and world is TWENTY SIX PAGES. Like, bro. That is why rambling is my brand– its all in huge rambling paragraphs that tangent off and come back, written in steam-of-consciousness. So, I have to pair that down. I’ve been going through the old scripting and trying to figure out what I can keep and what need redoing. A lot of it is that I have a new way of scripting that’s more streamlined to look at, but before that, I need to work on the outline for the overall plot a lot more. I formatted it into the Plot/Pitch Bible I described in this post, and it’s a lot easier to access and view than that 26 page document, hah.

There’s something to say about it being one of my only comics that I don’t have much tangible pages to show of it (I penciled an 11 pager of it, about three years ago at this point for a final, but never inked it. I’d work on inking them, but I’d rather just redo the whole thing at this point– I’ve gotten better at my craft by now and I have some new ideas for the sequence.)

I have a new idea for how the story will start too, which interests me– This is gonna be a longer story, probably the longest one I have planned, so it’s a little daunting– but I’m enjoying working on it for right now.

One thing that I liked a lot about Cypher Creek was having a lot of characters to work with. That can be both a blessing and a curse, of course. With Bonnie & Psi, they are basically the only two developed characters-despite being very well developed, I felt like I needed more to the story. Luckily, the middle of the story needs a lot of plotting and specifics still, so I’m working on putting some new characters in different parts to flesh it out a bit more.

The first is Psi’s advisor, a character I’ve had involved for awhile, but haven’t developed. It was fun trying to make another of Psi’s species, but enough of her own character design elements that they’re different. The other is another species of alien, who’s basically a bird boy– I’m thinking they meet him at another planet, and he’s some kind of space traveler as well. I’m not sure how either will quite fit in yet, but I feel like when I do, they’ll slot in like a puzzle piece.

GOALS

LAST TIME’S GOALS

Last update I said I wanted to finish my assets and cover for Field Research and print some copies, which I actually did, woo! I also made a post on Instagram like I’ve been dreading doing for the longest time, for whatever reason. Worked a bit on Bonnie and Psi the past few days- still not sure if its one I want to solely focus on, but I’m having fun reworking old plots and thinking of new things.

NEW GOALS

Right now I don’t have any particular things to put as a goal, but I’m thinking of having one be to read a book or two on my shelf– Right now I’m thinking maybe Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire, and another if I have time. I want to maybe finalize these sketches/character designs and ideas, and flesh out more of the second act of Bonnie & Psi– Not completely, but at least have more solid ideas of the beats and what brings us for A to C. I’d also like to try and advertise my commissions more– I made sheets but never posted them anywhere. (If you happen to be reading this, and are interested in them– here’s the link to the google doc!)

Thanks again for reading, if you did!