Month: May 2023

You may have noticed last week’s blog is missing; I was informed that it may compromise our agents in the field, so it has been annulled for the sake of national security.

Real talk time: I’ve not been doing so well lately. I’ve been frustrated at the day job, stifled in my living space, stressed out socially, blocked creatively, and just all around exhausted. Individually, these problems would be nothing new, but they’re each building pressure from a different angle, and it’s really starting to get me down. All of this pressure could be released if we could just move to a new home, but there is literally nothing we can do about that except wait for the people who are in control of that situation to actually do something, and good luck to that happening anytime soon; we’ll be lucky if we get to move out before the end of the year at this rate.

I’ll be reiterating all of this to my therapist at some point; I’m currently organising my first therapy session in almost 18 months. Therapy has helped me a lot in the past; I started in 2019, back when my living situation was simultaneously better and yet so much worse than it is now. I won’t say that I’ve backslid to where I was, but I’d rather avoid letting myself go that far down again; I have more responsibilities that I did before, and I can’t afford to slip up now.

Speaking of which, the Fifth Ace Showcase is still on track to resume on the 5th of June, barring any major upheavals, like, say, moving to a new house (I can still dream). I’ve been trying to keep my creativity sharp by doodling in my spare time at work, mostly characters from my Twitter neighbour MakeMineAmalgam and his Fodderverse line of custom action figures. It’s low pressure fanart with no deadline i.e. quick and simple to produce with little to no judgement involved; he likes the fact that I draw his characters, and I enjoy drawing them, so win-win.

Also, kitten update: Sparrow is getting big; I swear he’s twice the size he was when I brought him home, and he’s absolutely full of beans. He’s been keeping us up at night by bolting around the place and trying to climb on everything; the sooner we can get him more space and a decent sized cat-tree to keep him satisfied, the better (again, that new house would be very nice, universe). Since he’s around the right age for it, we’re looking to get Sparrow neutered in the near future; the last thing we need is him tearing up all our stuff in a fit of heat. At this point, we are more or less committed to keeping him, and every foster home we’ve looked into is full anyway, so we’re in this for the long haul.

That’s all for my angst this week, though if any of it gives the great cosmic consciousness a hint that we would really like to move into a new house very very soon, it was worth it.

Ciao for now.

I’m running out of excuses here, aren’t I?

So I’m almost two weeks overdue for new comic pages, and it’s looking like the hiatus will be lasting longer still. I could go on about how the day job is sapping my energy, how our continued hurry-up-and-wait situation when it comes to house hunting is frustrating me, and all the usual reasons I give; I mean, they’re all true, but that’s not the point. Instead, I’m resorting to “dissatisfaction with my art” for a semi-fresh option.

I’ve been agonising over the opening page for this next story; the establishing shots are relatively more ambitious than what I’ve done in the past. I’m shooting for a certain atmosphere and feel, and I’m just not quite getting there. I’ve found some nice downloadable materials and I’ve been looking up relevant references to figure it all out, but it’s still missing the mark. I know that I may not be up to the level I want to be when it comes to art, and I’m never going to get there unless I push myself a little; the trade off is that the artwork itself is delayed.

So, in light of this, the Showcase will return in June, rather than any time this month. That doesn’t mean I won’t still be working on stuff until then; I’m going to use the rest of May to work out the kinks in my art, and maybe even build up a buffer for a change. I hate to delay things so long, but if I try to rush out all the pages before the end of May, not only is the artwork going to suffer for it, but I’m going to just burn out a lot quicker again.

Though I’m never going to be perfectly satisfied with my art, I still want to make sure it’s as good as I can get it; a wise man once said: “You develop taste faster than you develop skill.” I know why I dislike my art, I just don’t necessarily have what it takes to make it better yet; the sooner I can get on that the better, but I’m not going to subject you all to the entire gruelling process. At least, not unless I start streaming again; wouldn’t that be a novelty?

If I can shift the blame anywhere else, it would be the inconsistency of the day job; normally I’d relish any chance to use any spare moment to draw when there’s a slow work day, but that’s not conducive to doing comic work. If I’m working on a sketch or a doodle, that’s no problem, as I can put it away in between work assignments and come back to it later on. Comic pages are a different story; not only does breaking the flow of work disrupt the creative process, I also use Clip Studio Paint for my comic work, and because I can’t install it on multiple machines, I have to use my laptop for that; it doesn’t look good when I pull out my laptop to do my own stuff at my work desk. Starting to miss those two hour load shedding breaks…

I occasionally keep myself sane by doodling on Photoshop on the work PC; keep an eye on my Instagram and Twitter (for as long as that still exists) and you might see my random flashes of inspiration that I manage to squeeze into the spare minutes. 

Okay, enough excuses for this week, I’m going to go try and wrestle some results out of myself, and I’ll hopefully have something better to complain talk about next time.

Ciao for now.

Okay, so maybe ComicCon hit me a little harder than I thought…

I fully intended to get the first page of the new Showcase story out yesterday, but I had forgotten how much essential recovery time after a convention was required. Don’t get me wrong, ComicCon Cape Town was a resounding success, I’m sure it will continue to be so in years to come, but holy cow are we out of practice when it comes to conventions. It’s been three or four years since the last full-fledged pop-culture convention took place in our city, and we’ve been so eager to get back to it that I don’t think we fully appreciated just how much energy it takes.

That said, I had a truly fantastic time being there. While I wasn’t running my own booth, I did spend about 95% of the convention at The Dragon Wagon, selling my fiancé’s TTRPG dice; I’m totally okay with this, I’ve always been more at home behind a table and greeting people as they go by. Sure, it means I have limited contact with my fellow attendees, but it does help prevent my introverted brain from being overwhelmed. In any case, I still saw a bunch of old friends; some were from my former workplace, and we could reminisce about the past traumas of that crapshoot; one of my best friends still based in my hometown, showed up unannounced and surprised us; I even had a few strangers come up and tell me that they follow my comics and this blog, so shout-out to all of you for letting me know that people actually read this stuff! 

Also, a big congrats to my fiancè herself, MittelElfCat, for winning Best Wig at the regional cosplay competition, and for her TV news interview that allowed her to show off her Geralt cosplay to the nation, love you hun <3

The most astounding thing was how well our stock was doing; most of the more expensive dice sets were gone before the end of Thursday, and we dwindled down to almost nothing before we even got to Sunday; never underestimate the allure of shiny math rocks to those in the D&D crowd. To say that we made an absolute killing is an understatement; I won’t give specific numbers, but let’s just say that we made more money in four days than I usually make in four months. I don’t know exactly how to feel about that, but it shines a harsh light on my day job, that’s for sure…

All this to say, the Con wiped us out in the best ways possible, and coupled with a sudden spike in workload at the day job, I’m still getting myself back into the swing of things with drawing. On top of that, I made a last minute decision to swap out which story I would be presenting first for this next issue; it wasn’t the one I initially had in mind, nor one that I even had lined up for this issue, but it’s the one I wanted to tell the most. Plus I already had a breakdown of it prepped in advance, so we’re going with it.

Hopefully I’ll be able to kick off this story tomorrow, if I get a chance to breathe at all today.

May the Fourth be with you.

Ciao for now.