Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Stormchild News' LiveJournal:

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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
10:22 pm	Endless Winter got featured on Drunk Duck today http://www.drunkduck.com/news/news_archive.php?story=549 Pleasant surprise to log in and see. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 13th, 2009
7:05 am	Happy Friday the 13th, gang Make it a good one, folks. And for those that don't know: I was born on a Friday the 13th (in September), and given the whole superstitious bad luck nonsense that usually gets attached to the day, whenever one rolls around, that's my day. I consider it a party day. A day to cut loose. Not an additional birthday on my behalf, mind you, but certainly a celebratory day. So go out and make merry, my little outlaws. Run around; jump up on benches or tables and scream! Get all the crap you have building up inside of you out by taking today and cutting loose and not giving a flying fuck about the negative shit people try to feed you. Make faces at everyone who stares at you too long, and tell someone you don't even know, someone who looks like they've lost the world, that they're beautiful, and that it will be okay, and then walk away. Kiss someone you've always wanted to kiss. Tell someone that you've been crushing on that you want them in your life. Take a leap. Push things until your heart has near-exploded over and over again, and you find yourself collapsed, a bundle of nervous energy, giggling to yourself because you actually did something you didn't think you'd ever be able to do. Boys and girls alike, do this for me. Partake and enjoy. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
11:45 pm	MegaCon 2009 Over the last couple weeks I've been really getting back to pages and my writing. Endless Winter issue 3 is almost finished, and then there's just issue 4. I'm hoping to have both issues done, completing the story arc by MegaCon, but we'll see how that goes. That's a fair piece to do in a month around job and kids. There's no reason I shouldn't have the third done, though, as I'm less than ten pages from the end of the issue and I've done five pages in the last week, including two on Sunday. So here's to it.... Oh, and yes, I'll be at MegaCon again this year, February 27th - March 1st, table Orange #1 in Artists Alley. Looks like Hexx and the kids are going to sit this one out, but I'll be sitting the table with my friend JP. Who knows...he might sing you a song if you ask him nicely. Hope y'all can swing by. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 25th, 2008
9:50 pm	A lot of shit has happened this last year, most of it I'm nowhere close to working through. But a couple of good things have happened, including taking advantage of the bad housing market to buy my first house, one I wouldn't've been able to even think about getting into a year ago. The process was arduous,especially with the financial institutions clamping down on a lot that they let slide in the past (things that got them into this mess in the first place), but in the end, after a few near-misses, we managed to finally get a house that is essentially twice the size of what we were renting before, WITH a two car garage and a porch the size of our rental's living & dining room area, for less a month in mortgage than what we were paying for rent. If you are in a position to do it, I'd suggest that now is a great opportunity. Check your credit to see if it's even viable, then do your math to figure out how much you have coming in and going out to know just how much you can afford a month...and then look for something a little lower for breathing room. Don't let your agent try to talk you into looking in a higher price bracket just so s/he can get a higher commission or make a quick sale, you know what you need to be paying a month, because otherwise you'll be the one foreclosed on in six months, not them. Your credit will be trashed and they'll just show your now bank-owned property to the next person. Get a FIXED rate, and give it a shot. I mean, essentially I got a house with very minimal repairs needed, paint mostly, for almost a third the price of what it previously sold for, and for little more cash down than what would be spent on first, last, and deposit on a rental. So "The Bunker" has changed locations, and Hexx and I are working on getting it into shape and finishing the last of the unpacking. And...looking for which box I...put my in-progress pages. >.<;; (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, July 11th, 2008
7:17 pm	Mom and Mustang related video entries, plus studio update Mom first Mustang second I've re-started working on my youtube videos, starting with entry 6. I'm trying to catch up on the backlog of material I've recorded over the last seven months. I've also started working on pages again, but I'm not going to talk much about that, or post, until I finish an issue, so y'all have a chunk of something to read. There was a convention I wanted to do in August down in Miami, I found out about it at MegaCon, but then everything happened and I lost track until last week. Their website says the alley is all booked up, so...maybe next year. I'll see what else is out there in state over the next couple months. That is all. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
1:06 pm	Charlotte Carmine All the sci-fi stuff I do is thanks pretty much to my mom, who raised me on reruns of Star Trek and first runs of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. In more recent years we would watch Buffy, Gargoyles, Babylon 5, and Firefly together. We went and saw Serenity in theaters after I caught her up on Firefly via the DVD set. SG-1, Batman, and dear lord, we actually destroyed a VHS of Independence Day and another of Die Hard from watching them so many times. Die Hard, not quite with the sci-fi, but crazy action and clever banter. We must've watched both movies a few hundred times. As a child she read me Shakespeare, most notably "Hamlet" and "Macbeth", along with "Jabberwocky", by Lewis Carroll, both of those probably go a lot towards explaining, much like the sci-fi, why I write the types of stories I do. Also, Marvel's Larry Hama written GI Joe comics, and when I ran into a word I didn't know, mom went off with me to the dictionary to look it up. We shared a dry, somewhat warped, and frequently morbid sense of humor that no one, not even my dad, ever really seemed to entirely get. Hexx is the closest. And yet she was also the most gentle, giving person.... Last Thursday morning my mother had a heart attack while driving from my grandparents' place -- where she lived part time to take care of them -- to the house she shared with my (step)dad. Though she was dead before paramedics arrived, they were able to get her heart re-started, after thirty minutes of oxygen deprivation. She was effectively brain dead, with her heart rate being maintained by drugs and her breathing by a ventilator. I read her "Jabberwocky". Life support was disconnected Sunday night, and my mother died surrounded by her parents, my dad and older (step)sister, my mother's cousin, and my uncle and his wife. Hexx stayed with Persephone in the waiting room next door because we didn't want to expose the baby to whatever may have been floating around ICU. I held mom's hand and laid my head on the pillow next to her, singing her songs she sang to me as a child until her heart slowed and stopped, everyone else had left, and Hexx had to come in and get me. My mother was, of course, my mother, but she was also my greatest influence and my oldest friend. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 31st, 2008
11:42 pm	Burnout To the site, LJ, Drunkduck, DevArt, MySpace, ComicSpace -- this is a global. Not to be so much with the drama, tho.... I've spent the last year and change working on Sune issue 5. I've felt something I haven't felt in years and had a difficult time putting my finger on, but I knew I'd felt it before and had a notion of what it was, but not how to put it into words. Not sure I wanted to. Anthony and I have been working on something that takes place in the same universe as Sune and Endless Winter, something on which he'd do the art, while I scripted. Now, while I can bang out a script for an issue in six or so hours when I have my brain around where and why it happens, this one has been fighting me for months. I'd been working with it on the side, between working on Prenna, Sune, Endless Winter, and an attempt at new Dimension shorts. Look, without me getting more verbose than I already have (course we know that's not going to work, you watch), I'm pushing burnout again. When I was talking to Anthony tonight I told him I knew the feeling but I wasn't sure when and where from, and without missing a beat, like any friend who really gets you, with whom you've had history, he said, "Prenna," and he was right. That one word said it. 1999, and what ended the original incarnation of Prenna. Now back then, what ended Prenna was that to me the world was broken. The story was broken. I had tried to force it and as a result it had holes in it that, while minor or completely unnoticeable to most people, were so blinding to me that I couldn't focus on the story anymore. I'm going to say right now, this is NOT the current case. I do not view Sune, Endless Winter, or Prenna V2 as broken. However, what I am going through as a creator is the same. I look at what I do as a second job, a second full-time job, and I'm trying to create this universe in a way that makes me happy, but I'm trying to do it in a window of time that would be laughable to even refer to it as "part-time", and while I have, over the last year, started to reach out for the first time in over ten years to people like Anthony and Hexx and Grace for assistance, I am still trying to shoulder most of it myself, on multiple books, looking at it as if it's a full-time job, and trying to treat the Stormchild comics as if they, and I, are a Marvel, DC, or Image and obviously failing miserably. This is not an assembly-line operation of corporate comics, where I do one task and can then pass it on to the next person, turning out one completed book a month, certainly not three. I've tried to deny it, half-acknowledge it, and then without a good answer by which to remedy the situation, go back to trying to juggle them all by myself (for the most part) a couple weeks later. However it has finally caught up with me. Hexx has watched me say I'm going to work on something and then come to find me still staring at the page three hours later, with maybe a piece of a line down, if I'm lucky. I keep wanting to turn out work for a variety of reasons, including the feeling that I owe it to those of you who enjoy the work, but you know, what I owe to you and, most importantly to myself as a creator, is to produce a piece of work that is good, not rushed. Something with which I as the creator am happy. I am not a Marvel or a DC, I don't have the crunch or the deadlines, and while you guys don't generally (ok, every now and then there's one or two in my inbox) get on my case when I haven't updated in a while, I feel bad about not giving y'all new pages. I'm doing it to myself. I'm making myself carry this load on my shoulders that just about no one could carry pushing the same schedule, and then I kick myself on y'all's behalf when I start to stumble. Only this time I have the benefit of having gone through this before. And I have the benefit of having people close to me who have seen it. I'm not going to push myself to the point of hating my current projects, or to where my desire to produce makes me break the worlds and stories on which I'm working. I'm pulling back before that happens. I'm going to take a break. A real break, not a "I'm on hiatus but really I'm going to try to do at least as much as I was doing before if not more, just quietly" break. That's akin to trying to quietly prepare for a triathlon while suffering from pneumonia. It's stupid. It's taken its toll, and the last few months, the confusion surrounding the death of my father, my [still] trying to suss out my feelings for him and for that part of my family, what I left the sister I barely know to deal with in all of that mess...none of that has helped. And while the high point of the last year was the birth of my daughter, a huge thing...well, as frequently comes with that, there has not a lot of sleep for dad and mom, so I'm sure that's added a bit to my inability to focus creatively and the associated frustration. I need to step back, take some real-live breathing room. Maybe even, as has been suggested, packing up my pages so I don't see them every time I sit down; I have pages for different projects everywhere. Don't let it get to the point where I was when rounding out 1999. I'll likely still go to cons, we'll see. My main focus right now I think is attending to the well being of my creative energy, and the long-term health of my projects. For me and for y'all. Thank you for your continued patience. -R. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
1:48 pm	So, what's up with R. and the Stormchild crew? Yes, I know, long time and all that. Let's see.... In October, Persephone, daughter of Hexx and myself, was born. It was all planned out, but no matter how much planning you do, it's never really enough. Thus, it has taken a lot of time and energy to balance the whole new baby thing, and for everyone to find a rhythm with the new addition. January my father died, and so I went up to Lynchburg to bury him, met my long lost little sister face-to-face for the first time in like ten years, and then realized that I just simply didn't know anyone. Everyone had a relationship, a history, except for me. Yet they were looking at me like I was supposed to fill this kind of...stock role as eldest child and son, his friends and family, for this man I never really knew. Telling me I say things a certain way, or look a certain way that reminded them of him, or asking me if it's okay if he's buried in this or that. Touching me. All these strangers coming up and hugging me, crying, doing all the things that are perfectly normal to do in such a situation...only I don't have even a passing connection to most of them. But that's been me historically. I barely knew this guy, or anyone else, and yet I jumped in the car and was gone. And then I'm standing there and I realize that most of these people couldn't be fucked to send me an email or call me over the years unless I initiated it and followed it up, and I've just driven from Florida to Virginia to try to offer comfort and support for them. So I said "screw it" and drove back home about a day and a half after I drove up. I tried various times over the years to be in contact with these people, and it was always pretty much one-sided. Blood does not a family make, and even with family, as the saying goes... The only people worth having in your life are the ones that have proven that they need you in theirs. It's a two-way street or none at all. My family was in Florida, with a woman waiting patiently, a wild gamer boy, and a baby girl that smiles every morning she wakes up and sees her mother and I looking back at her. As far as epiphanies go, pretty cheap, price of gas not withstanding. Issues 5 of Sune and issue 1 of Prenna (all colorfied, that one), were completed, and this weekend is MegaCon in Orlando. I'll be at table Orange 3 in the Artists' Alley, and aside from the usual assortment of books (including issue #5 of Sune and #1 of Prenna ), there will also be Sune-related Stormchild t-shirts of three different designs. August 2008 winds out Stormchild.com's 10 year anniversary, so with this year it's my full intention to complete this Prenna arc and finish up Endless Winter allowing me to free up all my art time to devote to Sune. I still want to play around with stories for the other titles, along with entirely new stuff, but time is so limited between job and family now, that I need to pare down the number of projects. So, except for Sune, I'll cut back to just writing chores, and see what I can find in terms of artists for the other projects. At least, that's the current plan. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
10:48 am	Reorganization I thrive in chaos, as Anthony said last night. This is why, historically, I've always worked on multiple projects at once, and back then I had the time to do so, being single when I started this habit. Now, however, I'm all familified and I have enough multiple constantly running "projects" on the home front that are naturally occurring, to where I don't need to go and artificially create my chaos. As a result of that, I can only realistically afford to give my focus to one project at a time, given that these are no longer the years where I can dedicate all my waking non-working hours to producing material. It's not that I can't work on (currently) three books simultaneously, doing pretty much everything myself, just that I can't do it all consistently. Two or three weeks, maybe a month and a half, I'm running fine and then something derails me and suddenly I don't have one book on which to catch up, I have three, and nowhere near the time around job and Hexx and yard work and spending time with the boy (and soon girl, in addition) and helping with homework. It's one of those reality check moments. And a bitch for someone such as myself, who has grown very use to doing everything singlehandedly, not having to depend on really anyone, especially when it comes to the creation of my comics. Anthony has been assisting with layouts and Hexx has picked up a pen for the first time in, like, fourteen years and started to help me with inks, but really, I need to cut back what's on my plate, and luckily, I'm probably in the best place I can be to do that. The line art for the first issue of this two-issue Prenna story is finished, and I have my own layouts for half of issue 2, along with the first five pages in various stages of pencils and inks. Endless Winter is two issues down and going into the third and final issue for this current arc. If I can get those two books down, I can dedicate most of my own energy and time on the art front to Sune, which has the longest to go in terms of story. Then, while I continue on with the writing side of the other projects, I can perhaps hire people on to take over art chores for future one-shots and story arcs of those titles. I just need to do a better job than I have in the past of picking artists who aren't flakes. So, I think my first two tasks are to bring on a colorist, to take over the Prenna pages and book covers in general, and for me to finish Sune issue 5. That will at least give me another issue of Sune complete before I go off and do this other stuff. Few things are more momentum-zapping than going off to work on something and then coming back to the reality that you're not even at a "start" or "stop" when you return, but still somewhere in the middle. Then I can focus on the second issue of Prenna while Hexx inks the pages of Endless Winter that I have done, and Anthony works some layouts for me. Since the second issue of Prenna is shorter than the third issue of Endless Winter, I can get that knocked out and over to colors while at that point I move over to Endless, do pencils for that and hand it off to Hexx for inks, and then move over to Sune. Not sure what they're doing, I think they're both kind of busy at the moment, but I'll check with Grace and San to see if they have any open spots for colors either now or in the immediate future. If they're booked, I'll see who else I can find. Meanwhile I'll be looking around for artists. Course, that's always all easier said than executed. There should also be a new site design finally coming down the pipe in the near future. Instead of trying to wrangle one more project into my list, that was my first step on this whole "relying on other people again" kick. So with luck we'll have a nice shiny new site soon that will still have the general vibe of the current site, while at the same time being a little bit cleaner visually and better organized for ease of use. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
2:48 pm	Otakon is this weekend Okay, so the Otakon schedule is now out and available in PDF format on their site. Friday night is my "workshop"...on the schedule it just says "Stormchild Studio" from like 5:30p to 7:30p in Workshop 3. Though I haven't spoken  with the planner directly this week, I was told by another staffer last night they have someone else doing sequentials and inking on Saturday (unless there's been some confusion, which is entirely possible given the jumping around between phone and email conversations). So, to avoid being overly redundant, and because the workshop apparently has no particular designated subject... I'm going to just say, "the creative process" and let those who attend pretty much dictate the topics by the questions asked. Plotting, scripting, dialog, penciling, inking, lettering, tips, tricks, materials, whatever...I'll pack my laptop and my art supplies and we'll just go from there. If you want to talk about the comics, we can do that too. Actually, I find the idea of something more freeform like that rather appealing. Sure, it has potential for chaos, but therein lies the entertainment value. Afterwards, Hexx, Anthony and I are going out for dinner (I don't particularly care where so long as it has beer), so anyone who wants to tag along and continue whatever trouble we've gotten ourselves into is more than welcome to follow. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
7:54 pm	Otakon 2007 is a go. I will be at Otakon, along with Hexx and Anthony. We'll have goodies at the table in Artists' Alley, and there should be a workshop, but I'm still waiting to hear back from Otakon on the when and where of the `shop. Come on by and hang out...and buy stuff so I can feed the children. :P I'm going to try something different this convention, though. See, for as much as I may want to have in-depth conversations with all the people that come to hang at the table, I get distracted by the business, the things going on at the convention in general, all the people milling around...and I feel bad when I feel as if I haven't been very attentive to those of you who come by primarily to see me. So come on by, but understand if I'm a little scatterbrained. Because of that, however, we're planning to going out Friday or Saturday night (probably Saturday) to grab dinner some place, with anyone welcome to come along and hang out that wants to. You want to shoot the shit about the comics, characters, or just the technical aspects that go into making comics, here's your chance. You want to pick my brain, feel free. It'll be a little fireside chat. So mark July 20 - 22 on your calendars. We look forward to seeing you there. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 31st, 2007
12:01 pm	Given what's happened here on Livejournal the last couple of days, I am seriously considering going elsewhere. I've already created a new personal account over at Greatestjournal (I have 4 accounts on LJ: this one for updates, my original personal one from 2001, my current personal account, and one where I (rarely) talk about my creative process and the development of projects), but I'm not entirely certain that Greatestjournal the best option. I understand the root as to why the deletions happened, but the misuse of power, the lack of review beforehand, the lack of communication to those who had their journals and communities suspended for no valid reason, and the lack of a response to the users...it's bad enough it was knee-jerk, but for it to have been so heavy-handed, and the rather abrupt comments of Six Apart's CEO in interview followed up by his artful attempt at manipulating the users with a "we're really sorry (save for these stipulations that make us not really all that sorry)" don't help their cause. To me, at least, the only way Livejournal staff could make ammends is not with lipservice, but with the offered and accepted resignations of the management involved, those who pushed it through and those who failed to stop it, and the man at the top, who is responsibile for all those below him. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 5th, 2007
12:30 pm	Sune #5 has been updated on-site with pages 6 through 13. If you've been waiting for the full scene update, this is it. Now I'm off to work on the next pages, with Sune and Goshen. Comics Top Page Issue 5 top From page 6 (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
1:48 pm	Hello loyal followers of the Blackhearts and the corporate. Yes, I should be whipped within an inch of my life for making y'all wait so long for updates again, but...you know I'd probably enjoy it. Over the last couple of weeks I've been uploading the Sune archive to a space on drunkduck.com, including pages that were never online (like new pages at the start of issue 2). In addition, over the last few days, I've been uploading new pages altogether. Another page went up today, and updates have been and will be, roughly, daily. That doesn't mean Stormchild is being abandoned. I used DD a couple of years back as a mirror, and it will still function pretty much as such. Sort of. On DD the pages will go up as they get finished, page by page, but on Stormchild, as always, the pages will go up in blocks, in complete scenes. The scripted nature of DD's pages doesn't really allow for that since it displays the most recently uploaded page first. But so there you have it. Those of you that are still around, thank you for your patience. I've said before and I'll say it again: Sune will not be abandoned. http://www.drunkduck.com/Sune/. Links to specific issues are on the right-hand side beneath the pages. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
12:40 am	Post MegaCon MegaCon went very well. While I didn’t happen to have all the books I’d wanted to bring, I did have Sune 1 and the usual prints, along with both black and white and color bookmarks, four different batches of posters, and the Dimension ash that included the two short stories and a few sketches. It turned out to be a nice spread of b&w and color material. A couple old acquaintances stopped by the table and I saw more than my share of old familiar faces out and about on the floor, including San (who colored the first Sune cover) and some of his crew. Hexx and the boy enjoyed themselves and business went well enough Saturday and Sunday that I wish I’d had the chance to be there Friday, but job is job. Even got a nice comment on the art from Gigi Edgley, by way of the Quill shirt made for Otakon 2005 that Hexx was wearing. Also made a few new contacts, by way of a guy that does shirts and would perhaps be interested in some work from me, and another fellow out of St Pete who took copies of both books on hand to try out at his store. So overall it went well. I appreciate those of you that came to the con, and those who came specifically to hang out at the table with me. I apologize for con-brain; it was a long last week up to the convention and I just didn’t have a whole lot left to be entertaining. I bought a new set of shelves a couple nights ago and all the current stock of books, prints, posters, and bookmarks have all been loaded onto it, with space left over for what’s to come. That should make future conventions a little bit easier. There are some photos on the quiet-as-a-mouse BBS, under the "Token" subforum. (Comment on this)
Monday, February 12th, 2007
11:31 pm	MegaCon Orlando - Feb 16-18 This weekend, Feb 16-18 is MegaCon in Orlando. I will have a table in the Artists’ Alley (the purple section, from what I understand) and look forward to seeing those of you who can make it to the con. The Stormchild table will be a little slimmer than I’d hoped, but I should have six or seven different prints, some posters, copies of Sune #1, and an ashcan/`zine collecting the two Dimensionshorts and some related sketches. The table will be open Saturday and Sunday for certain; Friday will be a bit iffy as I work my paying gig Friday, but we're heading up directly after, so if traffic is good (and given how I drive :P ), I may have the table up for an hour or two before close. Though I won’t happen to have copies with me, the second issue of Endless Winter and issues 2 and 3 of Sune should be available online shortly after the con. Probably by a week. You know how things go; sometimes time just doesn’t come together like you plan. So please, stop by and consume. I’ll have my sketchbook and art board with me so I can dutifully make use of my time table-sitting to work on the current issues. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
6:50 pm	Okay, the previous post was not intended to illicit the response I got from Mr. Saker, but I'll take it. He offered up a donation of $50, and I thank him for it. That will get issues 2 and 3 of Sune in the direction of print...if ComiXpress will run the them given the nudity and whatnot in those issues. If not, I'll have to reconsider my printing outlet. Luckily enough, I work for a printing company now, so if need be I may be able to fall back on that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
9:06 pm	Chibi-Pa has been cancelled. I contacted the people involved shortly following my previous post, and after waiting a couple of days for a response I contacted them again to discover they were holding off getting back to me until they could confirm whether or not they could actually afford the venue, and they would let me know one way or the other when it got to that point. A couple of days later, the announcement was made in a post to their site that the con was off. I still have not been contacted. Given the reaction I've seen.... Basically they said thank you to the dealers and artists that wanted to come, but to hell with the attendees who wouldn't throw in money for a free con, and there were some poorly-phrased comments directed at others who didn't follow through or couldn't come up with a certain bit of cash or event, leading one to believe that the organizers were the victims of nothing other than the incompetance of others. ( pasted from the front page of chibipa.com in case they take it down/edit it ) You know, I understand frustration, but you don't take it out on your base or resources. They were putting on a free con, and so they should have been prepared to foot the bill entirely by themselves if push came to shove, and because they couldn't, when donations and fund raisers didn't bring in enough, they took out their frustration on a fanbase who was told there would be a free (entry) con. You have to expect that if you tell people they don't HAVE to pay for something...they won't. You don't go off on them when they don't; it's like telling someone they can call you whenever they want, and then yelling at them for waking you up when they call at 3 in the morning. I put Sune up on the site (in addition to various other comics over the last 9 years). I have a donation button. I mention/throw a link to the print copy of the first issue from time to time. But I don't flip my shit when I don't think sales or donations are as great as I hope. That donation button has been up on the Comics page for the last two or three years, and I watch my hits, I know I have no small amount of unique monthly hits, but there's not been one single donation in the time that button's been there. At cons, out of my trunk, people at comic stores I talk to...they buy that copy of Sune issue 1, but online sales...nothing in comparison. Might as well not even be up for sale online, and that's fine. I mean...it's not FINE fine. Of course I'd like sales or donations to come pouring in, but you know...it's on the site for free, and so I set myself up for that downside, and my flipping out over it does no one any good. If it were that much of a problem I'd say, "look boys and girls, I appreciate the attention, but here are four sample pages for the next issue and here is where you can buy your copy". Point being, amidst all the rambling, is that there are better ways of dealing with things than taking out your frustration on your bread and butter. Beyond just being not professional, it's rude on the levels of basic human interaction. ... That said, I should be at MegaCon, and it's my hope that I'll have print copies of every issue of Sune and Endless Winter that have been completed at that time. Oh...yeah...and aside from having cleaned up art (I make corrections to some shots...perspectives, symmetry, lighting, etc when I have some distance from the pages and make them ready for print. The stuff on the site is very close, but not always "finished"), I sometimes have extra pages set up for print. The second issue of Sune, for instance, has extra pages in the opening flashback that gives a few glimpses at Sune's history. ( And Grace, who has done colors on some of my pieces here and there, colored this piece I did of Quill and her crew ) Current Music: Velvet Acid Christ - Collaped (Darkspark Radio) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
4:45 am	Conventions (And ranting, apparently) I've been hit or miss with conventions in the past, mostly miss. The last con I attended was Otakon 2005, and before that it was the now infamous Kunicon Miami in 2004 and then MegaCon 2003. However, in 2007 I'm going to try to hit twice as many as I have in those last few years, and it's my intention to try and run a table at most if not all of them. I have a list. I've been big on lists the last few months. I'm really liking lists. Dec 30 2006: Chibi-Pa in West Palm Beach, FL Feb 16-18 2007: MegaCon in Orlando, FL May 4-7 2007: Jacon in Orlando, FL Jul 6-8 2007: MetroCon in Tampa, FL Jul 20-22 2007: Otakon in Baltimore, MD Aug 25-26 2007: Houkocon in Jensen Beach, FL Because of work, most of these I'll only be able to attend on Saturday and Sunday, except for Otakon, where at this moment Shanda and I, along with Anthony, should be all three days. Since it's been a year, these other cons are sort of a ramp to Otakon, and then a wind-down with Houkocon, which seems like it should be a nice, cozy little con to serve as a good capper. This is also an experiment to try and get an idea of which cons I like to attend BEHIND a table, and how financially viable they are individually. For instance, Otakon is likely going to be a money loser, as it's in Maryland and I'll probably want to drive, but we had a blast last time so I have no problem taking that hit (I just hope gas isn't as expensive as it was when we went in August of 05). MegaCon, however...MegaCon's a mill. I like it, but it's so jammed, so stuffy...and it's not the dealers, it's the artists and the has-been actors. Not all, there are always exceptions, but it seems as if there's no shortage of creative people who are too full of themselves. It's like, dude, you were on a TV show that was canceled before most of the attendees were born...and you, yeah YOU...you draw/write COMICS. They're fun, and in rare instances they're even beautiful and clever, but outside of the very tiny industry that it is, you're a nobody. Joe Average doesn't know you, has never heard of you, and doesn't care. The only question you may get is, "you do anything I would have heard of?" And unless you're on Superman, Batman, or X-Men it doesn't matter. Even if you are the reaction is likely going to be, "really? Wow. I loved reading that book...when I was ten." Too many artists with egos they really shouldn't have, many of whom will do nothing with what talent they possess after the first few years of simply TRYING because they get disillusioned or frustrated that no one else sees their brilliance, so misunderstood, and they'll quit. Accept that you will never produce the perfect line, the perfect piece, the perfect page, the perfect story, but just do your best. In six months you'll have grown, look back, see every single glaring flaw and hate it anyway. You do what you can given the limits of your ability at the time and you move on. Do what you can, know you'll get better. But if you let it twist you up inside, you will kill your soul, and it will be no one's fault but your own. I mean, Christ, I've known plenty of guys that artistically whoop my ass, in pencils, in inks, in colors, and almost across the board none of the ones I knew ten years ago, even five, are doing jack nowadays. They lacked the motivation, they burned themselves out, they gave up; it's not just one reason, but you know, here I am, the writer who got fed up with flaky artists and taught himself to draw, and yeah, my stuff has its flaws. Sure I may draw a mouth too low or an eye a little too high, or a character may not look exactly the same ten panels in a row, but as long as Sune doesn't look like Mr. White, as long as you know what I'm getting at and I know that it's more important to get done than it is to fight over one fucking panel for 6 hours when I could have gone on to the next page and gotten that finished, that's what's important. It's respectable to take pride in your work, but if you can't allow yourself to screw up, if that becomes more a hindrance than a strength, you're no good to anyone but your own ego. An ego that you will murder when you don't get shit finished and it starts to eat at your self-esteem. If it doesn't get finished because of that one little thing, no one is going to give two shits how much you tried to get it perfect. You spend anywhere from a couple weeks to six months working on a single issue of a comic that someone is going to pull online for free, or buy for two-fifty, read in ten to twenty minutes, and then shove into a box for the next three years. It's not a bad thing, just a reality check. Me, I'm just a guy who writes and draws stuff. Sometimes people like it, sometimes they don't, either way that's cool. I do what I can when I can and I'm pleased some enjoy it. It's nice when people share an interest in something you like doing. Well, I think I've done enough damage. Normally I would proof a post before making it, but I'm well beyond tired and my eyes are woobly. Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 19th, 2006
12:50 am	In the most recent YouTube video, aside from Endless Winter and Otakon, I made mention of my first online comic from the mid-90s, Prenna. That's where my sort of unofficial mascot, Maggie, originated. Well, Anthony is working on the art for the reboot of Prenna and he asked to see some of the old pages, some character designs, etc to refresh his memory and I stumbled across the last batch of finished pages I did back in the day. The 3rd or 4th story arc had been finished and I was going to start another one, and in full color, when I burned out and walked away for a couple years. The links that follow are those color pages (bad BAD art and all) from the late 90s, involving the core cast. http://stormchild.com/clr-prenna7pg01.jpg http://stormchild.com/clr-prenna7pg02.jpg http://stormchild.com/clr-prenna7pg03.jpg http://stormchild.com/clr-prenna7pg04.jpg http://stormchild.com/clr-prenna7pg05.jpg Bit of trivia, for those that found me originally by way of my Home Made strips on Sexylosers...Prenna was the inspiration for those strips. Or rather, the taboo theme explored in one of the character threads in Prenna. I was initially going to use the characters of Gabriel and Eve, but realized that there was just too much back-story to try to keep it canon (which I'd have to do...it's my nature) and still explain it enough to poke fun at in a four panel strip...so I just took the basic notion, created the characters of Michael and Clarissa, and went from there for Home Made. As a nod to the origin of the strips, in the first strip, third panel down, you can see a poster on Michael's bedroom wall of the Maggie character. Another note...since I'm talking about Prenna and its characters; I almost never do anything throw-away in a story, especially when it comes to character placement. Frequently you will see characters appear as background. Consider them...like DVD Easter Eggs. It may end up being something well down the road, and in a totally different story, but I always have in mind a reason for any placement. It's my way of expanding upon the universe. Like the memorial statue at the end of Endless Winter issue 2, though it's usually not that blatant. Sometimes it's just someone walking in a crowd. (1 Comment |Comment on this)