Keep this short and sweet. I’ll post more shite later on other stuff.

Webcomic. MÜT ON A STICK: You won’t get the title unless you’re very, very ethnic AND old, old school.

I spent the better part of today doing CGing this comic. As usual, I make things difficult and don’t use reference, even at least for the colour. Goes to show that just grinding it out gets the best results for me when it comes to CG. 

I was surprised how decently I managed, at least for rendering the sky. I used Photoshop and the same old brush I always use. For some reason I’m more effective with full opacity settings on the brush. I can blend without it being a faint thing. 

If I keep this webcomic as sporadic ongoing, I should stick with it as it’ll remain interesting for me to continue. My long form comics are what I really enjoy doing predominantly,

It’s entirely “uncalled-for” humour, but hey.

In other news:

Comic a week is chugging along. I’ve been doing it, but I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I should. I’ll change that as soon as I get some obligations out of the way; which should be cleared up after 8 September.

I’ve worked on Incunabula a bit more. I’m redoing it again from the start. I’m working bigger so that my inked line work will be tighter. I found that working at A4 was too restricting, and that my inks look like some amateur did them. When I did the cover on larger manuscript paper, my inks were satisfactory. So far I’ve done the first two pages. Admittedly, they are splash pages, but the amount of detail I’ll put into them will be quiet a feat.

Since I am taking my time with these pages, I’m somewhat enjoying it. I like working on something, taking time off, and looking at it with fresh eyes. You tend to admire the results more too, as the work you put in pays off. If you rush shit, then you get shit.

Commission work is now my priority for this week (amongst all my other non-comic related priorities). I went out of the house today, and went to my Uni’s library and got some work done. These days, I cannot work at home. There are too many distractions. Internet, for one, is very, very bad for getting things done. It’s also refreshing to move about and just bask in outdoors. The library is quiet, and there’s enough space to put a laptop on the table as well as spread your page. The best thing is that it’s open until 9pm on weekdays; plenty of dedicated work time. 

The List isn’t getting a lot of love as of late. It has a tentative January release date (same like the last volume). I best get cracking on that so I can give it Tom in increments. I don’t want to do the same thing I did last year and lump it all on him in one shot to ink. As I’m sure I’ve said before (if I haven’t, I’m saying it now), I want to put more work into my pages. I felt that with each volume, my work is improving, but there’s always something that feels like a step back. I’m going to put more attention into my backgrounds, and I have to learn to adapt to Tom’s inking style. When I pencilled the last volume, I was pencilling like I would ink it myself, but Tom has a grittier bolder inking style than I do. He also takes liberties with my details. So I have to make the most of his inking style as its pretty damn good.

Henry

I’ve been throwing the idea of doing my own anthology for quiet some time now. Sure there’s the tentative Oztaku Anthology, but I want to do things differently. This is spurred on by getting other anthology comics over the years. Titles released locally like: Fist Full of Comics, Xuan Xuan, Moshi Moshi, Pirates, Something Wicked, Oztaku, Generation, et cetera; but also other international anthologies, in particular Robot and Flight.

 It’ll be a limited series of 3 collections. I think 3 is a good number, and doing an anthology one way can only last so long until it’ll stagnate. 

Ideally I want it in full colour, making it expensive from the onset. I’ve also found that there are a few artists I know of already hesitant with working in colour. I might be able to assist with that by doing the flats for them to work off, but I already see this turning into a nightmare task.

Although, the main differences that separate what I want to do from most other Aussie anthologies is the quality control. I want to choose artists that would go into it. I’ll be flipping the bill for this, so I might as well make it the way I want; and I want quality. This poses problems in itself, as getting artist commitment would probably be difficult.

I’d be acting as a default editor in chief as well, so that would be additional work for me, on top of creating content. It goes without saying, that because this is my project, I’d be doing the lion’s share of work as well, which is honestly, something I am looking forward to. I happen to like learning new shit, and because I’d be working at my own pace, I’d have the chance to enjoy it too. So pre-press, marketing, distribution, sales and customer service.

Storywise, they’ll be shorts. It can be a story spanning the whole 3 collections, or just disparate one-shots per collection. Nice and easy. It would range from 15 to 20 pages from each artist per book. If there were 6 comikers in total, and each did 15 pages minimum, then it would hit the 90 page mark. I think that having 15 pages per story is important as it would give the reader something substantial. This anthology would conceivably be shared with everyone who’d come across it, so I want those who come by it to enjoy it naturally, and come away with an experience. Ideally, I’d want the shorts to be experimental, so whoever comes across this anthology will experience something they haven’t read before, but I know not all comikers are inclined so, so this isn’t essential.

That’s it for the moment. This is only an idea. I don’t have the time necessary to devote to this…yet. I guess after July 2010, I’d have the time to do this properly. 

I’m putting this in writing so that this may actually happen in the future. By writing things down, at least I find for myself, that I eventually make my ideas happen.