Earth Day and Command+Z

What you see here is (one of) my desk(s) mid-finals. There are about ten books piled around my computer, at least three cans of ginger ale, all kinds of paper and pens, and a three pound bag of gummi bears. I'm not just sharing this to embarrass myself. There's something critical in this snapshot that is important to what today is.

Oh yeah happy Earth Day!

As an art student/comic artist, I find myself using excessive resources in my process. I've probably killed more trees than any so-called environmental vegetarian ever would. I feel like I'm taking trips down to the paper recycling bin more and more every week. In light of the holiday, and in light of my high school background as an environmentalist, I think the sustainability of traditional art is huge issue for me. I try to think of ways to reduce my embarrassing paper trail every year, but it's a difficult task. The nature of art is creation, which requires consumption of resources.

I reuse and hoard paper like no other. The bristol you see laying on my desk contains my failed blue lines/inking experiment, pencils for an instruction page, and the inks for a GHOST! test. Oh, and it was my roommate's print reject. But! Not everything can be reused like that, right? Last semester I tried to get away with doing my pencils on one side of bristol and printing blue lines on the other. Needless to say, it was off and on in quality, and it was a little awkward to turn in as a final.

When I was at a high school that didn't have recycling bins, I would carry around a tote bag to capture people's plastic bottles so I could recycle them at home. I still recycle religiously, but I retain that hoarding nature with the paper I use. I'll keep the sensible paper like large sheets left over from a trim, but I'll also keep weird things like masonite I find on the street and the back of drawing pads. Will I really ever need a marker-stained sheet of cardboard? Probably not, but just the thought of throwing away a "perfectly good" blank surface rips my eco-drilled consciousness apart.

I'm a little neurotic, so paper conservation comes rather naturally for me. However, that's not good enough dammit. Which is why I'm leaning more and more towards digital process. Using just the computer is the godliness of saving trees. There's also a huge advantage to going digital within the programs. For example, I just learned that Manga Studio EX grids out three-point perspective lines for you. GOD DAMN talk about a time saver.

Command+Z never looked so good.

Fantasy Co-op Publishing House for Webcomic Artists

I can't decide if the joy of literally rolling in a pile of comic books I made outweighs the torture of orchestrating it all.

I wrapped up Acid Monday orders today.
I was up till 5:00 am.
I can not tell you how fucking amazing it feels to get that done with. I've spent countless hours organizing spreadsheets, reimaging pages for prepress, and packaging so many boxes until my hands bleed. All while in college, which requires so much time itself. The time I had to spend on the books really ate into my homework time (the job didn't help either). I was stuck in a vortex of responsibilities and ambition.

But don't get me wrong. I shit my pants when I got the books. I can't say much for being proud of the content, because, well, it's really bad. But at some point I stopped caring about what the book was about and started just concentrating on getting it out there. I think I'll be able to appreciate this more once the stress from turning my tiny apartment into a publishing house blows over.

When (and if) I self-publish again, I will have to seriously consider having a direct handle on the books. I liked having the control of the printing, but when it came to organizing the physical objects, all hell broke loose. My apartment kind of looks like a post office monster exploded in the living room. I'm thinking that next time I might just send the books directly to a book store or to Amazon. But I guess that takes away the advantage of having presales to financially assist me. I know the big printers like Lulu (which has awful printing quality so I've heard) will handle this all for you, but they lack the control I found so awesome with a smaller printer. I would be all for outsourcing a shipping/handling business to handle the grunt work, but then I think a) do those even exist? and b) oh no not more money.

I mean, this business already doesn't make much money as it is, and relying on presales to pay for the printing runs makes it even harder. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a co-op for webcomic artists looking to print their books? Getting everything moving to publish your book by yourself is incredibly difficult. If there were a co-op that could assist webcomic artists in things like printer connections and pre-press and (especially) shipping, I think I wouldn't be as afraid for my future as I already am. I know I'm basically talking about starting a publishing house, but what the important part is that it would be directed towards webcomics. If a comic artist is hired by a publisher (like tokyopop or vertigo) to create a comic, they don't want the whole comic already, right? But with webcomics that's kind of the way it is. There's a kind of artistic freedom that comes from not working for a publisher. You don't have to get your script approved or your sketches edited. You wouldn't have to work in a specific style to fit the boundaries of the company. I mean have you seen the manga asiles at B&N? They ALL look the same. (in format and style)

That's why a co-op publishing company specifically directed towards artists that already have their work out there on the web is something that I think could attract a really diverse collection of work that appeals to the internet-hungry generation. Maybe even developing into an industry with popularity-based salaries through advertising on webcomic sites. Maybe I'm fruitless in trying to create a fantasy middleman that will make what I'm doing a profitable career, but I can dream right?

Maybe it's something for a future project.
For now I'll keep blindly making webcomics.

GHOST! Logo

So as some of you may know, I'm in the middle of scripting and developing my next webcomic project, GHOST! The comic is about a purgatory-esque dimension that is infested by "ghosts." The suicide/murder victims that inhabit the land are split into a group that hunts these "ghosts" for research/game and a group that believes the "ghosts" are a direct connection to heaven and thus worships them on a spiritual level.

As of now, along with working out plot demons, I'm trying to find an identity for the comic. I drafted up a few logos for the comic the other day and this is the one that I brought to some kind of completion.
Thoughts? Hopefully you can see what I was going for, but I'd like a second opinion on it. I'm worried about readability or visual awkwardness, but right now I am too attracted to that H to coherently make a decision.

You can see more of GHOST! over at the smackjeeves site (http://g-h-o-s-t.smackjeeves.com/), but there's not too much up there now.

Lucid out. <3

Ahw Hellz Yeah

So I caved in and started a blog. Balls. I mean. Yes woo fun!

In an attempt to not make it one of those things that I start half heartedly and then give up after two posts, I'm going to be keeping it relatively impersonal. Meaning you won't be able to hear about what I had for breakfast. Sorry. What you will hear will be based around my stark raving mad obsession with the comic art form. The FORM, not the fan agenda. I make comics, I don't have time to read them. This is about what I like to call "comic theory." It's a pretentious little term I devised in order to convince myself I'm not just drawing dumb shit and putting words over it. It's a little more than that, isn't it?

Let's hope so, otherwise this blog will be stupid and contrived.

Other than farting out pseudo-poetic essays on the nature of comics, I'll probably end up discussing the terrors/wonders of the webcomic/self-publishing world and throwing out a couple of technical tutorials. Maybe we'll learn something while I'm blathering on about gutter width affecting the spacetime continuum.