Creating Comics for EVER!

In a parallel universe my mind is strong and in tact. My body is made of metal (Cyberman style) which means that I can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and never get tired. Never get sick. Always advancing forward. Working 3 jobs without so much as a sniffle.  From time to time the Doctor may swoop in a foil one of my nefarious plans…but all-in-all it wouldn’t be such a bad life, would it? Can you imagine how productive I would be!?!

Fortunately…all my emotions are still intact, I don’t have a creepy monotone robot voice and I don’t have to stomp around everywhere I go.  However, that also means my frail human body gets ill.  Recently I came down with a horrendous head cold that quickly progressed into massive pain in my sinuses.  Then, a day or so later, that pain spread to my teeth.  I could barely even eat (which…now that I think of it…maybe wasn’t such a bad idea) they hurt so bad.  This was a full blown, skull cracking case of sinusitis.  Being that sick is NOT conducive to being creative and you can’t make with the comics without being creative.  Kristy’s recent Inside the Studio article To be or not to be….schlubby talks about taking care of yourself when you work in a sedentary type job like the comics and/or design…but it appears I’ve yet to take all that to heart…though it’s something I’m working on (started counting calories a couple weeks ago and I’m already down 6 lbs).  Luckily for me I’m the kind of person that only goes to the doctor when I’m feeling really ill so antibiotics seem to work on my system double time and my sinus infection began improving very quickly.  This is NO time to be sick boys and girls. No time at all. So do yourself a favor read Kristy’s aforementioned article and then take care of your selves.

You may be wondering what I’ve been up to lately with comics and colors.  Busy as ever I’m happy to say.  Still plugging away at the flats, though I feel like I’m nearing a point where I need to seriously consider pulling back on that some.  I enjoy flatting.  Getting paid to work in comics ha always been a dream (even if it’s in the limited creative capacity of flatting) and I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth…but my true passion isn’t in being a flatter.  In any case…this weeks assignments include some cute little gerbils and some Star Trek (which geeks me out in a HUGE HUGE way).

Thanks to recent events I’ve taken in some comics projects OTHER than flatting.  First off I’m working on an 8 page twilight zone-ish horror story written by my friend Chris Murrin. I’ve roughed out almost all of it now, finished pencils on one page and started briefly digitally inking some.  Speaking of digital inking…I picked up a book a while back called The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics by Freddie Williams II.  I can’t recommend this book enough. If you’re interested in learning how to draw your comics in Photoshop or even just refine your technique…this book is a must.  Freddie has written a fantastic book and even though I’ve been working in PS for…fifteen years I still learned a lot. I’m using some of Freddie’s techniques on my 8 pager and it’s been great.  You can find it on Amazon. If you’re interested at all about drawing or drawing digitally…you should pick it up today.

This last week also gave the the opportunity to color a couple of covers for some trades which will be out soon for PKD Media.  I can’t show them to you just yet, but I think they turned out good. They were the first covers that I’ve colored which made me incredibly nervous and probably a lot slower that normal…but in the end I was happy with them.  As soon as the books come out I’ll be sure to post them here.

Well…the work beckons so I better get back to it.  Thanks for following along.  Next week we’ll be taking a look at the entries for the big 20th Coloring Challenge.  See you then!!