Month: February 2024

Yes, I’m still alive, believe it or not; I just didn’t really have anything much to say last week, and inadvertently forgot to mention it.

I may have been somewhat distracted; I’ve lost count of how many times I watched this trailer:

Honestly, I was sold the moment this was announced; this series (and theme song) were an integral part of my childhood and elevated my love of superheroes from a very young age. Fingers crossed that this means we can get a revival of the 90’s Spider-Man cartoon as well; it was meant to have a dimension-hopping storyline for its final season, and the Spider-Verse is pretty much a proven concept at this point, so…? Maybe? Please?

While actual comic art has been a bit of a non-starter at the moment, I have been busy with a project that I’ve been sitting on for a while; in my spare moments, I’ve been creating character portraits as part of a 100 Original Characters challenge. It’s essentially a basic, yet expanded version of what Fifth Ace Showcase #0 is meant to be: a collection of all the characters I have plotted out to join my comic universe at one stage or another. I had selected the most prominent ones to have bios and backstories written up for the comic issue, but the 100 OCs challenge is just about getting their look down and catalogued; I’ve had the list prepped for almost a year at this point, but I never dug in my heels and started for a number of reasons. At this point, I just said “to hell with it” and hopped to it.

I’ll share a few of the pictures when I’m comfortable that I’ve got enough in the bag to confirm that I’m not going to abandon the project part-way through; I’m having a lot of fun with it, as I’m getting to draw a bunch of characters with unique designs that I would otherwise be sitting on for ages until they appear in stories. It’s also allowing me to explore the characters a little more intimately; most of them were just one-line descriptions that I intended to flesh out later, but just the process of drawing them makes me think of details that hadn’t yet occurred to me to include in their characterisation. Hopefully this will motivate me to get back to the comic pages soon too.

I don’t know if me making progress on this project is a result of that new-start energy that might burn out really quick, but it might also be due to the vitamin supplements that I was recommended this weekend past; I certainly feel like I have more energy, though it could be a placebo effect for all I know. Whatever the cause, I’m feeling more productive than I have in a while; let’s hope that I can maintain it for a while longer.

I’ll leave it there for this one; I had a whole other spiel about some of the comic book documentaries I’ve been listening to lately, but I’ll save that for another slow week. Right now I want to get back to drawing; I’ve got a lot of social interaction and meal prep to do this weekend, so I’ve got to take advantage of every moment that I can.

Ciao for now.

Maybe I should just make Fridays my blogging days at this rate, huh?

Artwork is crawling along; I’ve been doing a lot of doodling in my brief moments of spare time, trying to get back into the groove once more; I think it’s working, but only time will tell. Exercises are still being maintained, regardless of screaming underused muscle groups. There’s still a roof over our heads, there’s still food on the table, and Sparrow only seems to lose his collar once per week on average. All in all, life goes on.

I had a whole rant about social media that I was going to post with this, but having typed it out, I’m not in the mood to rile up anyone about anything, least of all myself; social media is already stressful enough without inviting more stress, so I’m just going to leave it unsaid to the world at large. That’s what my journal is for: ranting about my opinions where they can’t be used to bother anyone.

I’m going to try and get some more artwork done and listen to the new episode of The Magnus Protocol, so have a good weekend everybody; I want to keep mine as uneventful as possible.

Ciao for now.

The fact that this is a day late should already give you some idea of how this past week has been, but I’m gonna splurge some more of it at you for a bit, anyway.

I still haven’t found the energy or motivation to get anything done around here, and it’s down to the usual suspects; the mounting workload at the day job means I have had no free time to get comic art done during the day. The massive burst of productivity that I was riding at the beginning of the year no longer has room to expand in the ever-growing deluge of “real” work that I have to do to keep the roof over our heads. I have to make do with the little nuggets of writing that I can squeeze in when I’m at least 20% sure that an email isn’t about to land in my inbox within the next three minutes; that is literally how I’m typing this up right now. So let’s just consider any future comic updates as TBD and “when they get there,” yeah?

At least I can say that I’m keeping up with my exercises; I got through the first 30 day workout program and am three days into the next one. The first month was more about settling into the routine of getting up at a certain time and doing something first thing in the morning, ideally before it gets too warm; this next month is about cranking up the intensity a little. It’s still nothing huge, but the fact that Day 1 left me gasping for air in a shower-worthy sweat means that I’m definitely on the next rung up the ladder now; the residual ache in certain muscles is another indicator that I’ve come to appreciate as a physical feeling of progress. I’m making it a point to not check my weight, as I know these minor exercises are not going to move the needle very much; any real change is likely only going to happen around the fifth or sixth month mark, if anything. At this point, I’d settle for getting more energy out of it; if fitness is directly proportional to energy levels, and I increase my fitness, then I should have more energy to get other stuff done, in theory. 

What I’m saying is that I want to get fit so that I have more energy to actually do what I want to do i.e. write and draw more comics; I don’t know if that kind of energy can translate into creativity, but it would still be nice not to be completely burnt out by the time I get home in the evening, so I’m doing what I can. I guess running would probably be the ideal thing, but I don’t care how many joggers I see going past the house in the morning: I am not going outside before the sun comes up where people can see me; say what you like, but I do NOT look good in running shorts, and I haven’t shed enough of my dysmorphia to not care about that. Hopefully that can start to change with enough exercise as well.

Anyway, back to the grindstone; going to drown out what passes for “music” on the radio with the new episodes of The Magnus Protocol and some YouTube video essays while I get through whatever happens to ooze into my inbox for the rest of the day.

Ciao for now.