Once I realized it’s been over a year since I updated this blog, I decided I’d dust it off and catch up everything since then. As this blog started as a New Years Resolution, I’ve been thinking about how those relate to my current resolutions and goals, and how much I’ve grown since I started this blog. This particular post is long, with a lot of musing in that direction, as well as some creative work and personal updates.

LIFE UPDATES AND Reflecting on 2023

At the end of 2022, I began this blog as a New Year’s resolution to myself. I originally planned to update this blog monthly, when I was really stuck as an artist post grad and having hard burnout. Rereading my blog posts is really interesting to see the mindset I was in; I felt so bogged down by the idea of making art as “content,” feeding algorithms, staying relevant. A lot of the times, it feels like you must do these things as an artist (And many other creators and professions) these days. You must monetize your hobbies, generate your content, generate content of you making content, get that hustle, etc etc. Rereading my old posts, these thoughts were at the forefront of my mind.

I mentioned how I felt bogged down by all the work I COULD be doing but I hadn’t, and how uncomfortable that made me. I do remember feeling this way, but… I’m not sure when I stopped feeling that way. As I get older and further away from the feverish haze that was college, the less I feel inclined to even notice such things. I’m less worried about trying to churn out new work to feed algorithms, though i do still feel those ways sometimes. It’s funny though how little I’ve always “fed” these algorithms anyway, but it was always something I thought about, even if I wasn’t posting. It felt drilled into me, that to make it these days as an artist you needed a dedicated social media, even better, every social media, dedicated, you needed to be seen by as many people as possible to even get the chance of a job, much less your dream job.

Its also a little funny in retrospect, how a lot of social media platforms have honestly died in the last year.

Between Elongated Muskrat’s effects on twitter, to the rise of generative AI, I really don’t feel that guilt to post work and put myself out there as much anymore. Maybe its because my twitter and Instagram are absolutely dead and empty of artists and community I used to have, or maybe I’ve just grown past that weird sense of guilt, but my worry about those things are gone nonetheless.

Last year when I started this blog, I was worried about missing my “chance” to get a good job (read: a full time, benefited art related job using my degree I went into debt for) out of college. The longer I was out of college, the further and further away it felt, and I tried desperately to keep up that feverish grind of my college days. But the thing is… college was hard! (In my case, at least. I’m still looking to get an ADHD diagnosis.) For me, It was art boot camp, and it’s unrealistic to try to keep that pace up your whole life. When you do, you crash and burn. And school I burned out HARD. After I graduated I barely drew at all for the rest of the year, which most definitely enhanced my feelings of not being enough, needing to make more art, work on my portfolio and apply for jobs, etc etc. But everyone needs a rest. Its sucks knowing these things in theory, but your brain tells you that everyone BESIDES YOU should be extended grace, compassion and empathy. I’ve heard similar sentiments before, so I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling, at least.

And its even more anxiety inducing when your whole family also wants you to put that degree into work instantly in a nine-to-five. (Sorry, Dolly.) On top of that, I don’t personally subscribe to the notion that college is just there to help you get a job. Even if I never did anything professionally related to art, I would still highly value my time I spent in school and the things I learned, and how it helped me grow as a person. Unfortunately, school is so, so expensive in the states that it’s hard to just be a student for learning sake. You can’t go just for the sake of learning and enhancing your skills, it has to amount to something akin to a direct salary boost, enough that you’re willing to go into debt over it. I’m not saying I didn’t go into school with that same notion– that I needed to use my degree and make a great career– but now I can appreciate that it did a lot more for me than only giving me more job prospects.

There’s also something to be said about how its just really difficult in general to be able to support yourself 100% on art, especially how the industries are right now in particular. Its hard to be a comic artist, animator, concept artist or anything right now. You can do everything right but that doesn’t make openings appear out of thin air. So many animator I know of have been laid off and from what I’ve heard, Cartoon Network is practically dead. It’s just a dreary outlook at the moment.

That’s not even factoring the overall economy and job market. It’s hard to search for jobs in general these days- So many are fake listings or bots, and the ones that are real use algorithms to sift through resumes, so you have to churn out application after application to even get a chance. There’s hundreds of applicants, and even if you’re lucky enough to get an interview, there’s still no guarantee! Even if you hit it off, if they get any bad vibes, or don’t hear you say the magic buzzwords, then you’re out. You have to be perfect. And it’s exhausting.

In my search, I had resigned from my day job last August. I had a number of interviews for places that looked good in my hometown. I was really excited and hopeful for the future, but as more time went by with no replies, my hope faded. Trying to get professional advice was also disheartening, and felt like a failure for a long time. All the resources my school told me about were so much more grandiose in my head, but the people behind the wizard’s curtain were still just people, trying to get through their own work day. I felt like there was nothing I could do; With the headspace I was in, job searching was a stressful and fruitless task.

After having some interviews I was excited for go nowhere, I pretty quickly caved and went back to my old job, but less hours. There’s been some ebbs and flows, but I’ve more or less been working less than full time there since then, with time and emphasis to put on my other hobbies, and most importantly, my art. And it feels much better. Who knew having free time that wasn’t dedicated to just sleeping, eating and working would make your mental health better? Hah. But for real, I am very lucky I happened to find a place where I can work less hours without an hourly wage decrease; I have a good pay rate for my area and I’m able to support myself on it. Without it, I’d never have time for more art.

I knew I didn’t want to look for a different day job for the rest of the year, mostly for the ease on my taxes since it was already almost September. Since I wasn’t sure how my future would look at the time, I just pumped the breaks and stayed content where I was. Honestly, one big thing that kept me going through 2023 and this year was getting back into gaming pretty hard. A lot of Genshin Impact. I focused a lot on Genshin last year– I never spent money, just tried to maximize what I could without it. That’s where the fun is for me. Along with that, my ever revolving obsession with Minecraft and Stardew Valley came back, and even my love for Binding of Isaac came back for a little bit.

At the beginning of the year, there was also House Flipper, VR with my friends, and more Stardew when the 1.6 update came out. I also finally got into learning my bass guitar more, using Rocksmith (A Harmonix, Guitar Hero-esque game specifically for learning guitar or bass), and it’s such a blast. I want to do it more still; every time I walk into my room and I see my bass and want to play. Its nice to have a hobby I’m content with being mediocre at– It’s weirdly freeing, leveling up your skills, but knowing its not going to go anywhere. It’s just pure fun, no “monetize your hobbies” in that. Getting more into my other hobbies, I found that I stopped worrying about working the “right” job and realized as long as I had enough to support myself, that didn’t matter as much. The right things would come eventually.

I focused a lot on art shows throughout the year. I tried to have new work for each show, but more often I tried to have better ways to display it. Being surrounded by other creatives for those has been nice, and not trying to push myself too much has been nice as well. I have personal stuff I’ve been working on here and there, but nothing I’m forcing myself to do, nothing I’m stressing about. I stress enough at my day job– no need to put extra pressure on myself outside of that.

I’ve been very content in being a freelance artist with a day job. I’ve stopped holding self shame for working food service alongside my art, in spite of the popular stereotype. There’s SO MANY WAYS to be an artist, moreover a person, and conventional aesthetics don’t mean as much as I once thought they did. I’ve also just never thought of certain jobs as “lower,” so it’s silly that I held myself to a higher standard. I’ve quelled the anxiety of trying to get a “real” job at this point in time, no matter what family members or society think I should be doing. Work is work, a job is a job, and I pride myself in trying my hardest, no matter what field I’m in.

It’s interesting to look back at how I thought about these same topics just a year ago, and how much I’ve grown since then. Overall, I think I wanted to make this blog to hold myself accountable. I never actually posted monthly, but I think it did what I needed it to at the time. I felt super stuck, and making that comic process guide and my other updates felt like a beam of light shining through a caved-in mine shaft. I wanted those things to help me out of the rut I was in, and I think it served its purpose. That isn’t to say I’m abandoning this blog; quite the contrary! But I won’t restrict myself to specific time frames. This blog is mostly for fun, and for myself, and if I’m stressing about it, it’s not fun.

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

It only feels right to also mention some of the ones I had at the beginning of 2024. It’s a little ironic, since we’re already well into summer, but nevertheless.

I had a few small new years resolutions for the year, which I’m tentatively half way done with, but not going to push myself too hard. I made them pretty easy on purpose, so I could feel like I did something, I guess.

My Main 3:

1. Make Comic Pages. Doesn’t matter what.
2. Make a zine or two. Doesn’t have to be high effort.
3. For the love of God switch off of Chrome and start using Firefox.

The last one I did in December, and honestly, can’t say I like a browser more. I’ve been aware for awhile how bad Chrome is: it takes up a lot of RAM, its probably stealing your data is many ways more than they even tell us, and it makes up a large, large percentage of internet browser usage, to the point of approaching monopoly. Firefox, though, is more independent, has tons of extensions, and values privacy more than others, especially alternatives that still run on some version of Chromium. I’ve seen Tumblr posts about switching for years, and I always went, “Yes, I should switch to Firefox… but I’ll do it later.” That’s why I decided to make it a resolution, even if its a super small one that’s easy to fulfill. Sometimes we need those little check-marks to feel like we’re making progress, and after putting it off for so long, I don’t know why I did. It’s great! It easily transfers all of your stuff, there’s pop out picture in YouTube, tons of other little features that I enjoy. Most of all, I love that if there’s some tiny things from Chrome that I like better? Extensions, baby. I didn’t like how I couldn’t save images the same way on mobile Firefox as on mobile chrome, and I looked it up and low and behold, I fixed it with a single extension. Any niche problem you have, Firefox can (probably) fix it. That stuff’s awesome, and if there’s anyone else on the fence about switching, I wholly recommend it. Its pretty fast and easy. And the logo is adorable. I love foxes. (Not sponsored… but would. Hah.)

I start with that as it’s the least art focused resolution. As for the other things, I’ve already made a decent amount of pages, and I’ll be making a lot more with this project I’ve been working on! I’ll be discussing it more later on, but it feels awesome to see pages done– to see all my work finished and not just half finished ideas on word document.

Besides that, I still haven’t made any zines, womp womp womp. I have a few ideas that might be fun whenever I get to them, but if I don’t, I’m not gonna sweat it. I’m really trying to not beat myself up over those type of things, and its not FUN to work on art only because you feel like you should. Not for pay, not for fun or rewarding, just… Because my brain said I should. That’s no way to work on things.

That’s a lot of an update on my general thoughts from the last year, but what kind of work have I been up to lately?

ART From last summer/fall

On the art show side of things, I did a lot of piece of work or fixes to old ones as I did a table in August and also October. In this post I show my original inside cover for Field Research, but I didn’t like how it turned out and every time I saw it… it bothered me. I changed them out, adding a little doodle and some more pirate elements, as well as texturing the plain colors. In the following photos, the new one is on the bottom.

I also made some sticker packs for my Genshin Impact stickers, and sold them as a little bundle. I made a small print of the original Cypher’s Creek page, where Blake and Chuck do hockey-pizza box Ouija board. I made a Cypher’s Creek post card, trying to emulate those big bold city or state ones. I’m honestly not too crazy about the post card, and sort of want to redo it. I’m not sure if it’s the design, the colors, or both that I dislike. They’re pretty hard to print out though, so we’ll see. Those might be fun to experiment with lino or letter print for.

Slightly related, mostly because I used it as an example while lino cutting, but my table-mate/roommate/best friend Crow and I designed some Lemon Rat Press logos to have at shows. Lemon Rat Press is our joke company name for the two of us, and I think it’s rather cute. We gave out little stickers of them for free– my only mistake was putting them on too glossy of a paper, so people thought they were temporary tattoos. But now that’s an idea for the future, ha.

For the October show, I motivated myself enough to make a lot of Halloween themed work. I love Halloween. If I could make my entire aesthetic Halloween all year round, I would be happy. Crow agreed with this, so we decided we’d try tabling with two tables for this show. I enjoyed it a lot. I previously worried I didn’t have enough work to fill out a full table, but now I’m thinking we were just cramped before.

This is from my last show, in February. Since then we decided to mostly take a break on art shows. We like doing them, but they’re a lot of work. I’m excited to have time someday to really put my all into them one day and create a lot of work just for them, whenever I get the chance.

But here are my Halloween pieces I made– I made them in such a fervor, as fast as I could last September and October. They were so much fun. I’ve started sketching digitally and printing on to Bristol to inks, and I enjoy it a lot. Its so hard to get the grit and feeling of a brush pen digitally, and its easier to control, weirdly enough, when there’s no undo. Besides that, I just enjoy how traditionally inking feels, and I’ve never had any issues with the blue line. I specifically print them pretty light, so that could be why. I feel like I really leveled up in terms of digital coloring effects for these pieces, especially the Baphomet one. Despite being mostly monotone I think i was able to pull it off with a nice effect. Return of the Campires was a fun one as well; I tried to emulate those old pulpy, campy horror movie posters, and it was so fun laughing at the little puns and experimenting with the colors.

Another funny or weird thing related to art, and social media believe it or not… last fall I posted fan art of a Minecraft Youtuber I enjoy on Tumblr. I was aware the fandom on Tumblr was pretty big, but I received way more attention for what was mostly a shit post than I expected.

Just with basic tagging, I didn’t go to crazy. And hey, it’s still not like, crazy or anything, but it really was for me. Compared to getting 4-5 likes on a tweet, or a dozen or two on a instagram post, I got over a thousand notes in less than two days. It blew me away. Tumblr is everything an art platform should be: Organic discovery and organic following of artists. It has other issues, but it’s somehow one of the better platforms for artists these days. I’d like to make posting on there more of a habit; It’s a platform I’m much more comfortable with anyway, as I’ve been on it for over a decade. I’ve never been much of a poster, mostly a reblogger. But I’m trying! That’s more than any other platform, huh?

At my last table, I designed a new business card which I honestly forget about until much later. I still haven’t finished it, but I think its fun and looks cooler than what I have now, so maybe I’ll get those new ones done before the next show. I already drew myself as a vampire, so I wanted to go for a werewolf. Considering how much I look like one in real life, it was a no brainer. Here’s that, and a few other miscellaneous character drawings and doodles I’ve done since my last update.

Since I’ve discussed it on this blog… My printers been giving my nonstop issues for weeks. Even if I made more artwork to sell for shows, I’m not sure I would even be able to print them at home anyway. it’ll have clogs in the nozzles, even after just printing, and getting brand new ink, it just splats black ink all over the pages! I’ve been mostly printing blue line for comic pages, and if its small I’ll just white it out. But sometimes its just not salvageable, like yesterday. Not only were the black splotches out of control, it didn’t even print anywhere near the right color.

Here’s some photos of my messed up prints. Next to it is a correct one (the coffee one), to compare the colors. Hard to see with the photos, but it’s a lot more washed out, has streaks, and of course the splotches.

I have some new dream printers I want. I initially loved this one for the low price and the large flatbed scanner, as well as it being an EcoTank. (I mentioned my printer and Brother die-cutter here.) However, I didn’t realize when I bought it, how expensive the ink was, oh my god. I know that’s how they make a lot of money with printers, but holy crap. It probably shouldn’t even be called an EcoTank (Or for Brother, an “INK-vestment” machine) when they’re basically overpriced cartridges anyway, just some more ink. I’ve been looking into some actual EcoTanks, such as Epson’s line. I know a lot of printer fanatics wouldn’t like that, but Epson makes good machines, and I wouldn’t mind getting one instead, even if the ink isn’t wholly archival.

The one thing I liked the most about my printer was the full A3+ scanner. For awhile, it was awesome, now it seems there’s some sort of issue with that too, where it scans much slower than it used to, and moves the scanner back and forth over the same spot of the page over and over. It’s just really difficult to find a nice, not dinosaur, A3 sized flat bed scanner. Maybe there’s other non-flat beds that would be good, but I’m not sure. If there’s any one reading that scans artwork that has any sort of advice on that, let me know. I honestly would’ve probably gotten rid of this printer by now if I didn’t want the scanner so bad.

At the beginning of the year, I didn’t draw for the first month or so, and it gave me a similar sense of dread as the not drawing for the second half of 2022. I tried to remind myself that my skills weren’t gone, and sometimes you just need a break from art. Eventually I broke through with this drawing. I’ve been redesigning some old characters from around 2015 or earlier, and It’s fun to see how they’ve changed, both in the drawing and as characters.

BIGGER PROJECTS

In May we had a Kick Starter for Gay Mormon Dad, a graphic memoir I’ve been illustrating with author, therapist, and comic book nerd Chad Anderson. Last year we did preview pages and tested the waters for publisher support, but ultimately decided to fund the creation through Kick Starter. It was successful! It came down to the wire more than I expected, after an outpouring of support initially, then it slowed down until the month was almost over, before a flood to get it across the finish line. Even though I was aware that’s how a lot of Kick Starters are funded (more support near the very beginning and very end of a campaign) it was still a nail biter! It was amazing seeing so many people come together to support our project.

As for how the work itself is going, I’m doing pretty well keeping up with it. Last month my biggest problem was wrist/elbow pain, but I’ve managed to (mostly) mitigate that this month by adding some more stretches into my warm up routine. (For fellow artists: Remember to stretch! Oh my god! Simply stretching and doing warm ups have helped me SO MUCH.)

In my own comic work I write, I rarely have outside factors to motivate me, besides maybe occasional art shows or anthology deadlines. In 2022, when I was really burnt out, I tried and tried to get myself to write a good story for an anthology, and I stressed myself out about it enough that I ended up submitted a half-assed product just to get something out there. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes those motivations are good! But sometimes they just drag on you more, and add to the burden and guilt of not creating.

So in that light, I have a lot of external motivation for this. I’ve pushed past all senses of “dread of creating,” or maybe blank page syndrome, and I’ve been sailing full steam ahead. It sounds so silly, but after years of schooling being my only motivator to finish things, having sleepless nights and stressing myself out, it feels really good to get work done without that context. I still have outside motivators, self and otherwise imposed deadlines, but lately it really feels like I’m a real freelancer and I can actually get things done. This is very loosely paraphrased, because I don’t have the source: I recently read something about people being happier when we have at least one pursuit with instant gratification, and one with delayed gratification. Instant for that quick dopamine hit, like playing a game you like, and delayed for that sense of accomplishment when it’s finished. Both things are crucial to have, and working on this has given me that delayed gratification to an extent. Its fun to work on comics for a full month, and then look back at handful of finished pages, which always gets me excited to get started on the next batch.

it’s also so helpful to not have the burden of the entire comic on your shoulders, art and writing and all. I love writing my own work, but its so easy to get into my head about it. So having a writer with an awesome written story, that’s no problem, it’s not even a factor. I can just do what the script says, and go within my own limitations to make that as good as I physically can. Its more like a puzzle: I know what each panel is trying to express, so how can I make it work in the best way possible? How can I follow the 180 rule while characters talk; how can I display a scene change without confusing people, or crossing bubble tails, or diversifying my shot distance and language to make a good over all composition? Comics are full of little puzzles like this.

Thumbnailing my own scripts (And I usually don’t even fully script my work)… I often get overwhelmed with decision paralysis. I know in the back of my head that I can just change around the thumbnails, the conversations and the speech bubbles, and the panel layout if I need to, which can be helpful… Until it’s not. Until I’m reworking the same sequence over and over again fruitlessly, overwhelmed by all the possible iterations I could have. Constraints are where creativity and problem solving shine, and they’re so important for comics and art in general.

As I’m getting into the flow of working on this big project, I’ve decided to break up every month into a certain number of pages that I complete in batches. I’ve tried to wrangle myself into working better and harder with a ton of spreadsheets. It makes it like a game to me, similar to the constraints, and I feel like these type of “gamification” are really important to keeping me motivated and read to work. I’m recording my working hours on each section (Layouts, Pencils, Lettering, Inks, Coloring, etc…), averaging every section, totaling every page, comparing them to each other, comparing each section to how long I THOUGHT things would take, etc etc… It honestly might be a little overkill, but its important to me and helps me work, so I’m not going to question that. I estimated the percentage each section should take me (i.e. Pencils take me about a third of the time) and I’m using those as well. In summary, the numbers give me dopamine, and it’s easier to track my speed or progress that way.

I’m ever expanding it, and it’s another puzzle for me as well. I think I like spreadsheets in the same way I like coding: it’s fun to know what I want it to do, and try to figure out the solution for how to do it. Finding specific formulas or shortcut keys to make it do what I want is awesome. I’ll get more into how it factors into my process when I write my next post.

THE FUTURE OF THIS BLOG?

I’m planning on making another “Comic Process” post, as I realized that the first one only discusses brainstorming and thumbnailing a comic, and I literally ended it with “Then draw the dang thing.” Which, is true in some sense, but not so helpful in practice. It’s only everything until I first start penciling. So, my next post will be a continuation, my way of “drawing the dang thing,” step by step. If not for others, at least for me: Something I can look back at every time I get stuck or forgot a trick to speed up my process. After that, I plan on updating periodically when I have some things to share with no hard deadlines. Whether they’re actual updates about anything creative, or if its just musing about the creative process or other under-the-hood art things, that’s to be determined. And finally, if you somehow made it through this insanely long, insanely rambling post, thanks for reading!