Captain’s Log 21·6 | 22·B: The King of Formats?

Yesterday in a big mess of brainstorming I circled around the idea of making a prototype comic. Again. You know, the same prototype comic I made back in April. But for real this time, you guys.

Last night, before work, I did concept drawings for the characters. It happened that I had a printout of my pixel art mockup for my Wren game in my clipboard

And so I tried to match styles. Which, in turn, the pixel art is an attempt to match styles with the hand drawn art I’ve been doing, so…

I was very pleased with the result, and so I carried my brainstorm across in my 16x9x3 format:

I think that this comic format and my tendency towards cartooning are so suited one to the other that that’s basically what I should do. Just go back to making comic strips of anything I feel like, and hoping that I can eventually harvest fully grown stories off the comic vine.

The art style works best, I think, if the characters are a little more lean and lanky than the pixel art equivalent, but I think drawing to pixel to drawing design pipelines are worth considering.

But here’s another thing. I can produce 2+ strips a day in this format, even when I’m not making Beans. Meanwhile, the average update schedule at, say, Arktoons is once a week.

So why not be random splody and make comics of everything? When I have enough Hat Trick, I’ll ask Arktoons if they want it, and easily keep up a once-per-week upload schedule. When I have enough Jump the Shark, I’ll ask Arktoons… etc, etc, etc.

And maybe Arktoons will turn me down. But I think this is the way forward. I think it always was, even though most of the comics I produced in April and May were false starts. The nice thing about false starts is I can make ’em, then turn around and make the proper starts. It’s all good.

Bunny Trail Junction AKA Magic Beenz is back on the menu. But I think not beenz. The beenz were an experiment, and the result was “It’s aesthetic, but not what I’m going for.”

Captain’s Log 21.6 | 21.A: Concept Singularity 2

I’ve got a bunch of ideas whirling about right now. They’re not organized, and I’m blogging them because it’s better to have them out than in. This is going to take into account many of my recent adventures.

For general blog readability, I’m tucking this beneath a fold, but the conclusion came to me the next day.

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Thanks, I hate it.

I’ve started doing a book about my ADHD. I dunno. Maybe it’ll be useful some day. I’m working in my Zoom & Enhance workflow.

Tonight, for grins and giggles, I did the page of me overlooking Anvor.

I have started working on the book because my mind is stuck on a continuous loop of how crap it is that I do not choose what to focus on or focus well enough to do anything. I am enjoying my new day job as much as one can. It’s a great fit. But I dislike having a day job. I have a list of almost 30 projects, and 5 or 6 of them would be guaranteed hits if I followed through on them.

I’m getting that frustration of wheel spinning again.

The ADHD book shouts out the big list of projects. After all, 90% of my problem is a million great ideas and zero follow through. And because of that, I keep getting reminded that more than one of them is financially quite viable. Aside from Anvor being… okay. Fine I guess. I would enjoy it… 8 Lives Left would kill, and so would Re-Tail.

The problem with being inspired to consider my problems is I get to wallow in my archetypical despair.

But perhaps now that I have an idea what I’m aiming at, I can get that fixed. Yech.

Who can deliver me from this body of death? Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Anyway, tonight’s process has got me thinking about the painting I’ve been going on about for the last three posts. I was unsatisfied with how the cartoon painting of Anvor came out. It’s fine. It’s okay. It’s not great.

I think this experiment is failing. Well. I think this experiment is succeeding, in that any experiment which teaches you something is a success, and this one is teaching me that I don’t like the results of my digital painting.

After being intensely dissatisfied with the painting of Anvor, I decided to do a quick, small, study, where I dug up a photo from the internet and painted my own version, using the sloppy zoom & enhance methodology. Only I convert it to Wren. I decided to go full thirst mode on this, because the point was I wasn’t having fun or enjoying the outcome and so let’s paint something I will find pleasant to look at. Behold, study in blue and orange:

Thanks, but I hate it.

I think it’s a decent enough picture for a quick, impressionistic study made solely 100% for fun. I will probably include it henceforth whenever I make a great gallery of Wren. But I think that impressionistic brush paintings are not going to be it for me, and this picture was the straw that killed it.

Well, these pictures:

I just like these pictures so much more:

At the end of the day, I am still a cartoonist, and content so to be.

Woke up this day to people bashing Shel Silverstein in a blog I follow. I endorse bashing Shel Silverstein. It is abundantly clear to me from his work that he hated little kids, and given that I, who enjoy writing for children, have to have a day job, it irritates me that a man who hated it made a career of it.

You know, making kids books is a good enough calling. It’s a freaking fantastic calling. It’s just about the best calling there could be. And yet, my mind is always on churn, looking for other things to do, or ways to complicate it, even though I make kids’ books just fine.

Aaannd..

I dunno what’s next. Focus on getting the ADHD sorted. Maybe try to find a short path to feeding my family as I get there.

Awesome Moments awaits.

Despite the extensive 3D work I’ve put into it, I think I want to ditch using 3D rotoscopes for consistency because they stiffen my drawings in the same way painting does. I dunno. I suppose still using them as reference, but not for tracing might work out allright.

More studies, more practice, more refinement are in order. But less of A, and more of B:

And I need rest and spiritual counsel and prayer.

But!

I feel like we took a detour that was needed to be sure of the road.

Captain’s Log, 0210208.060

Well, the week of my nativity is over.

Time to actually get serious.

This last week I did what I wanted, when I wanted, and nothing else (except what was required to keep my family and their animals alive, of course). And what I wanted turned out to be the basis of a platforming sequel to my hit game Candy Raid: the factory.

This gif has a lot of little things worth talking about, but let’s get back to it.

I need to either search for a day job, or else gear up to pay my bills with my projects quickly. Option 2 means running a successful crowdfund ASAP. The only project I have that is close to ready for that is Awesome Moments, my Bible Story book.

Because of my social media fast, the earliest I can run the Kickstarter in question effectively is March. If I choose to work my butt off on Hat Trick, or my bestiary, or on this little Candy Raid platformer, I can hypothetically have either of these projects Kickstarter ready by then. But I have to be 100% committed to the project. And my history of underestimating time to completion on projects leads me to believe I’d need at least two months to get either of those ready. And even a successful Kickstarter wouldn’t disburse funds until April.

Which means I need to hunt for a day job.

Sucks to be me, but I’ve been employed at dead-end day jobs for 15 years, and I’ve done the starving artist thing for 6 months. Being jobless definitely helps my projects, but not by giving me more time, but rather by giving me consistent time. If I can get something with regular hours, I should be able to keep my productivity close to the same.

If not, such is life. So let’s talk about how we are going to change our approaches to Vargenstone and Everything Else as a result.

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Captain’s Log, 0210201.073: Keep Moving Forward

Here are pictures of the Night Mare, in roughly the order I made them:

No relation to today’s post whatsoever. I just lined these up because I wanted to, and I find WordPress’s gallery convenient for the task.

This is my yearly custom of pausing and considering my life’s path and whether I want to continue on current lines, or what course adjustments I should make. As such, there will be an over abundance of navel gazing.

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Drams Æther

Æther is measured in drams, which are also the unit of currency in many lands where the substance is harvested and used in various machinations. The units are as follows. Four drams (4ᵭ) to the nip. 3 nips (3ꬻ) to the gil (1ꬶ). 1ꬶ of aether is about a teacupfull liquid radiant. Dram coins frequently (depending on the local culture) have an aether crystal set in the coin itself, whereas larger denominations of coins are theoretically exchangeable for aether. Seximal and duodecimal denominations are normal for other currencies.

Of course, a 1 gil aether stone may be worth considerably more or considerably less depending on the intensity and nature of the radiance stored therein and on market forces.

This is what I mean.

Take a model that looks like this:

Pose it like this:

And then ‘trace’ it, only, pushing and changing and ignoring and tweaking to get the look I actually want.

And with ink:

Status Report 0210118.053

Vargenstone

Vargenstone remains where it was last time I last time I spoke…

…and while I am going to try and get some serious work on it done this week, I’m not going to stress over it while I’m the only guy changing anything.

Theria

Meanwhile, I feel like I’m done with the virtual pet for now. Not permanently, but I was doing it to scratch an itch and the itch is scratched. I will probably continue adding pages to the book storyboard at a rate of one or two per week so that I’ve have a huge head start when the project gets the limelight.

Hat Trick

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Captain’s Log 0201211.075, Just a couple more pages, boss…

This week has been a bit of a trick. Members of my house had major surgery. I was blessed by God and my brother with a building, which I had to help drag to the farm I live on.

The Awesome Moments storyboard remains where it was on Monday. Work on the Candy Raid promo art got done.

I have two more days to this workweek, today and tomorrow. Assuming a minimum of 2 pages per day, that’s 4+ more pages. So, when we hit the ground running on Monday, we’ll see how that went.

I have been toying over the last few weeks with the ideas of taking Sunday and Wednesday off rather than Saturday and Sunday. I tried it out this week, and I think that will be my pattern moving forward.

Psychologically, I’ve noticed my love for Hat Trick has been creeping back. I started on Awesome Moments last month with the assumption that when the storyboard was done, of course I’d Kickstart Awesome Moments first. It’s my most important work after all. But now I am content when this leg of this journey is done to pick up the next leg of the last journey.

Not to mention my January and perhaps February are spoken for.

It’ll be amusing (to me at least) if I produce nothing really in 2020, but come out the gate swinging with multiple products in 2021 because I spent all of 2020 laying the foundations for them.

I’m going to do my pages now. My plan is to do the bare minimum each day to progress, then switch over to work on my RPG engine. However, if the mood strikes to do more than the minimum, I will let the muse have her way. Ciao.

Update

There we go, hoss.

Methinks I should try something new.

Yeah, I think I’ve used this pose a little too obsessively lately.

Oh well. The pic of Jenny (the rabbit) was only meant to be concept art anyhow. It’ll do.

But on the bright side, I finished the promo picture for Candy Raid!

… dang it!

Hopefully, I’m done with Candy Raid for the foreseeable future. Now, I can focus on the more excellent work of finishing the Awesome Moments storyboard, all the while wishing I was making my RPG instead.