Month: October 2023

Good grief, where did this month go? I’d probably better do something around here…

No guarantees that the Fifth Ace Showcase will return first thing in November; I did say it could be the earliest that it would reappear, but I naturally didn’t want to promise anything. The day job hasn’t been too hectic, but I’ve had enough going on day to day that stuff has been keeping me occupied. In the evenings, I just want to zone out, and I’ve been using podcasts and Let’s Plays while playing Minecraft as a means of doing so; I only rage quit once in the past week, which is a vast improvement on my usual playstyle. All this to say, there may or may not be comic pages from Wednesday next week; maybe by November 6th if I feel I need a bit more time to build up a buffer.

In terms of stuff happening day to day, I am overjoyed to report that my fiance absolutely crushed her learnership interview, as I knew she would; she heard back the very next day with them offering her a contract for next year. Not only is this something she’s been wanting to do for a long time, it’s something that is going to change our lives as a whole. In order to take on the contract, we have to move closer to the school where she will be working, which means we need to be living in a new place by the beginning of 2024. We’ve been waiting for a potential house purchase all year, and that still hasn’t manifested properly, so we’re currently looking for a place to rent instead. With the salary that my fiance will receive from the learnership, we should be able to afford a bigger space than we currently have; that said, if I can find a different job closer to the school myself, it’ll be a lot easier on my fuel tank, and my car’s fuel tank too. As much as living in a full-sized house would be preferable, anything bigger than the two rooms we have now would be an upgrade, plus we wouldn’t be dependant on anyone else for owning the house; if we are renting purely on our own income, we are still living our own lives without anyone holding such things over our heads.

A bigger salary would also help with sundry expenses; we’ve made more trips to the vet in this past month than we have in years. First Silver had some unidentifiable pain that we needed anti-inflammatories for; then she developed an abscess that had to be drained and sliced, and then flushed daily by us for a week; and then just as Silver was recovering, Sparrow got an upset stomach and was vomiting all night on Monday; it didn’t last long, but the vet gave him an anti-nausea jab just to be safe. We’ve managed to stay afloat, but it’s always inconvenient when the day job can’t pay on time; moving house is the perfect excuse to try and find something better.

The biggest change that would come with a new house would be more space; it sounds obvious when I put it so plainly, but it’s also the thing we’ve needed the most for a long time. We’ve spent three and a half years in our tiny home, living on top of each other and having our stuff clutter up what little room we still have. To be in a bigger space, with everything spread out, and having dedicated rooms for our activities is going to be such a relief; with a proper office space, I may actually be more productive in my personal work without having to fit in between everything else that life has presented us with, piling up on the desk.

Other than that, there’s a new D&D game on the horizon; with our every-other-Thursday game on hold indefinitely, one of the players has elected to run a game of his own with a new group, starting in a couple of weeks. I’ve been brainstorming characters to play since the weekend; whenever I join a new game, I always make a bunch of characters so that I can pick one to fit whatever everyone else chooses. I’m already quite attached to a few of them, and am keen to be playing again; the Thursday group was okay, but that was the one with the problem player I mentioned way back in March. Due to circumstances that are not my place to describe, it’s unlikely that we will ever return to that game, and I’m okay with that if it means I’ll no longer be sharing the table with someone who I am convinced is an actual, clinically sociopathic narcissist.

Well, that was a bit of a longer post this week; like I said, stuff has been happening. Tomorrow we’re going to see the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, which I’m sure will be gloriously stupid, but probably highly entertaining. My fiance will be in cosplay, so if you’re at Cavendish Mall and see a Foxy the Pirate animatronic standing around, come say hi!

Ciao for now.

The weekend cannot get here quickly enough; whenever I think that time is passing quickly, it decides to crawl instead, and vice versa. The fact that this is going up a day late should prove that.

My sleep schedule has likely been permanently altered by the ever-nearing arrival of summer. With the sun starting to rise earlier in the morning, our cats are waking up earlier to match it, and subsequently so am I; 4:30 AM is the new standard, and if I had more space, I’d probably use the extra hour for exercising (hahahayeahright). We’ve given up trying to keep Sparrow inside until the sun is fully up, since he’ll climb the curtains and whine until he gets what he wants, so we just let him out as soon as possible; he settles down a lot quicker after he’s had a chance to scope out the neighbourhood before coming back inside for food. Silver doesn’t wander as far, but she’s had to spend the week indoors; she developed an abscess on her shoulder over the weekend, which we think may be linked to whatever pain she was in last week. We’ve been keeping it clean and flushed after the vet lanced and drained it, but to say Silver was mad with us would be like saying the Sun is a little bit hot. At least the vet said we didn’t have to give her any more antibiotic tablets; they were making Silver throw up, which in turn brings up the tablets, and rather defeats the purpose of the whole business. By Saturday, she should be in the clear to go outside again without fear of infection, and her attitude has already been improving a lot.

Scripting for Fifth Ace Showcase #0 has been slow; I may have my shortlist (and I’ve trimmed it down to a lean 24 pages), but deciding how much information to include in each character’s profile is tricky. I want to present something that shows off the intrigue of each character, but I have to be careful as to how many spoilers I can include; there are things about the characters that have yet to be revealed that I want to be plot points further down the road. Heck, most of these characters haven’t even been revealed yet; they’re still waiting for their debut stories down the road, whether those appear in the Showcase or some other hypothetical one-shot that I may or may not write. I want my universe to have a very lived-in feel; there is backstory to all of these characters, because some of them have been around for decades in-universe, and they didn’t spend all those years doing nothing. At the same time, I don’t want to delve too deep into anything that might make for good stories in the issues to come, especially if it seems like there would be a foregone conclusion to those stories; if there’s anything referencing a “historical event” in the timeline, I don’t want the ending of that story to be too obvious, is what I mean.

With all this going on, my fiance had an interview yesterday for a learnership position at her old school, her next step to becoming a student teacher. I knew she would absolutely crush it; she’s been working so hard, and she’s so passionate about the job, they would be fools not to hire her on the spot. We’ll hopefully know the results within a few weeks; maybe if the position is secured, it’ll be the final push needed for things to get into motion regarding our living situation.

That’s about it for updates this week; I’ve got a board game day coming up on Saturday, and we recently acquired a bunch of new games to try out with more people, so I’m keen for that. I’ve also been experimenting with some solo board games that have been waiting for me to find the time; I have plans for those too…

Ciao for now.

It’s been another one of those weeks; between sick cats, work overload and a very stressed out fiance, I think I’ll be conserving my energy and keeping this one short.

As stressful as it all seems, everything I just mentioned has passed, or will (hopefully) be passing soon; it just kind of gets to you when it all hits at once. Everyone is/will be okay, so nobody panic; we’ll try to do the same.

Artistically speaking, despite not being able to fit in anything between frustrations at the day job, I have at least compiled a shortlist of the characters I want to feature in Fifth Ace Showcase #0; I may cut the list down further depending on how long I want the issue to be. Previous issues have all been 36 pages, but I might shorten this one to the more usual 20-24 comic book page count; I’ll decide after I’ve properly written up the script. Oh yeah, I’ll actually have a complete script for this one; character profiles aren’t the kind of thing you just improvise. Naturally, the fewer pages I have to write, the quicker I can get it done, and there are some characters that I’m still debating on whether or not to reveal at this stage for fear of spoilers in future stories. I’ll work it out as I go, if I can find the time.

Like I said, I’m going to keep it short; there’s a ton of stuff that needs doing, and with Friday the 13th happening tomorrow, I’ve got to shore up my defences.

Ciao for now.

The spooky season is upon us, apparently; wouldn’t know, it’s not such a big thing around these parts. Though once we get closer to the end of the month, it’ll surely become more prominent.

Having more or less recovered from ComicCon Africa, I’ve been slowly getting back into the groove of making art again. Last Sunday in particular was a lot of fun; for an art study, I did a recreation of a comic page by John Buscema, my first unofficial teacher from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. I specifically did a page of his from Savage Sword of Conan, since I’m still toying with a sword-and-sorcery comic idea, and Buscema is still regarded as one of the signature artists of the genre. Here, you can see my effort compared to the original; I wasn’t trying for a one-to-one recreation, especially since my page proportions are slightly different, but I think I still did a good job on it.

Savage Sword of Conan #1, Page 15 – Original art by John Buscema.

My recreation.

I’ll likely be doing a few more of these in the weeks to come while I continue to fiddle with my own story concept; I’ll stick to Buscema’s art for the most part, but there are a lot of other great artists on Savage Sword of Conan that I should reference too; Barry Windsor Smith comes to mind…

I’ve also been slipping in a bit of fanart here and there on social media; I did a new Fodderverse piece the other day, as well as a Draw This in Your Style challenge from someone I follow on Bluesky. I have to say, as compared to Twitter, Bluesky is shaping up as the place to be; I’ve barely glanced back in the three weeks since I made it to the new platform, and I’m seriously considering shutting down my Twitter feed for good. I’ve got about 10% of the followers on Bluesky that I had on Twitter, and I’ve already had far more interaction than I had before, and none of it negative. I find myself making more of an effort to interact with people than before, because I know the more highly curated experience is less likely to attract the kind of people I’d rather not see. The platform itself is a little barebones compared to its predecessor (still waiting on a private messaging option), but as it’s still technically in beta, that’s to be expected. I’m anticipating good things from Bluesky; considering how Twitter seems to be literally getting worse by the day, Bluesky doesn’t have too many hurdles to jump at this point.

As far as comics go, I’ve got a slightly different idea for the next part of the Showcase; given that I won’t likely get a full issue of three stories out before the end of the year, I’m considering a zeroth issue, a #0 that will literally be a character showcase. It’ll give me a chance to introduce a large number of characters and explain their abilities and motivations outside the continuity of stories; I’ve hinted at several pre-existing characters in my universe, but if I wait for them to show up in the main story, it may be years before they appear on the page. With an Issue #0, I can devote a full page or two to each character, expand the scope of my world, and maybe drop a few hints about what is to come in the future. We’ll see how and when this will manifest properly; I’d better start putting a shortlist together of who I want to introduce this way…

Anywho, that’s all for now; I’ve got my paid D&D gig tomorrow, and then a family lunch on Sunday, so I’m looking forward to drowning out the work week in positive interactions.

Ciao for now.