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.

Phew, has it really been a week since the last post? It feels like both an eternity and no time at all; this past week has been a blur of activity.

ComicCon Africa was a rousing success! The Dragon Wagon did well as always, and we had a team of people to help out this time, so we were able to get out of the stall a bit more often than usual. I still stuck around as much as I could, as is my wont for such things, but I was able to join my fiance for some photo ops and autographs with the visiting celebs for a change. We met Anthony “C-3PO” Daniels, Veronica “Ash Ketchum” Taylor, and John “Jack Harkness” Barrowman over the course of the convention; they were all extremely lovely, positive people and an absolute pleasure to talk to. I was as conservative with my cash as I could be, though I still found the wiggle room to support a few of my favourite local artists, and there was a lot of inter-stall trading happening everywhere (you’d be surprised how effective dice are as bartering tools). Overall, despite the additional expenses that we had to factor in, we still made a sizable profit that proved the trip to be well worth the effort.

There were some hectic storms happening in Cape Town while we were away; looks like we picked the right week to be in a different city. Fortunately, our cats were safe in a very well respected cattery; I can only hope their time in close proximity with each other helped their relationship somewhat. They are both very happy to be home again, though they were very vocal with their complaints when we picked them up; Silver doesn’t like being in a carrier, and while Sparrow handles it a lot better, he hates car rides, carrier or not. Both the trip to drop them off before we left, and the one on the way back were a cacophony of caterwauling, but they calmed right down as soon as they were out of the car. We’re going to give them the day to acclimatise back into the home situation, and by the weekend they can go out and roam again; there was a tree that got blown over in the park across the street that I’m sure Sparrow will love to explore.

Naturally, while I’ve been away, artwork has been on hiatus once again, and I will be taking a break from posting comics during October. However, I am keen to get drawing some other stuff in the meantime, as well as potentially building a buffer for the next issue of the Showcase, properly this time. I’m still running on the creative energy of ComicCon; seeing what everyone had to offer in the Artist Alley has been a major inspiration and motivational booster to me. You’ll recall how I mentioned that ComicCon pulled me out of my depressive spiral; it was in my first major blog post on this site when I finally returned, almost a full year ago. In the time between ComicCon Africa 2022 and 2023, I’ve gone through a lot, artistically, physically and mentally; on the whole, I think I’m a lot better for it, and it’s the power of creativity that has helped me keep pushing through in many situations since. I’ve stumbled here and there, and I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m feeling refreshed, reinvigorated and…a third thing beginning with “re” that I can’t think of right now.

Even being back at the day job hasn’t put a dampener on my mood yet, so I’m going to ride this high for as long as I can, and get started on whatever comes next.

Ciao for now.

…

…

…

…revitalised!

No, I’m not going to do the Earth, Wind and Fire joke; I might have done it, but I only just remembered.

Keeping it concise tonight; we’ve had a busy day setting up The Dragon Wagon for ComicCon Africa, which is starting tomorrow. It’s going to be an intense four days; we have a lot of stock to sell, celebs to meet, and spending impulses to reign in.

With the latest Fifth Ace Showcase story now wrapped up and complete, comic updates are done for the rest of the month. No guarantees when the next Showcase issue will begin, but it will likely be November at the earliest; I want to try and be as efficient as possible with the next stories, and with a bit of luck the pages will be flowing faster than ever before.

But for now, I need some sleep; see you on the other side of the convention!

Ciao for now.

Going to keep this one short; it’s been another one of those weeks…

Once again, it looks like Friday’s Showcase page will be up on Saturday instead; if I get a chance this weekend (unlikely as it may be), I’m going to make a concerted effort to finish as much of the remaining pages as possible, because next week I’m going to have zero time to do anything other than ComicCon prep.

Yup, it’s almost upon us; on Tuesday, we do final packing, Wednesday we fly out, Thursday we set up, and Friday is kickoff! I can tell you now that next week’s Bottom of the Deck is going to be even shorter than this one; it’s going to be a busy time, though I’ll take that kind of busy over the day job any day.

We have our list of things we want to accomplish at ComicCon; there are several celebs that we want photos with, and I always like buying from local creators when their stuff catches my eye. Even better, because we have a larger team to run our stand this year, I may get more of a chance to explore and find new stuff, though knowing me I’d be holding the fort the majority of the time anyway to avoid being crushed by the crowd. Also, I have trust issues.

Also, I think I’m on the verge of leaving Twitter/X behind forever; I’ve finally managed to get onto Bluesky, which has attracted a lot more people in recent times. It won’t be easy, starting over on a new social media, but considering how limited my Twitter presence was anyway, I won’t be any worse off.

Anything else I might be able to add would amount to angst, so I’m going to leave it here for now. I’ll pop back in for a quick post next week before the convention, but other than that, I’ve got work to do.

Ciao for now.

Don’t know what it was in particular this week, but it’s been a rough one.

I think I took my “sketch, don’t snack” strategy a bit too far; I was skipping lunch completely, solving the issue of eating it too early and not spending extra money on a second lunch later. Unfortunately, that means I reached the “hangry” stage of the day a lot earlier, and it lasted until I got home; combined with a few frustratingly busy days at the day job, and it did not put me in a great state of mind for doing anything. Going to make sure I have at least something to eat during the day to stop that cycle before it goes too far.

In related news, tomorrow’s Fifth Ace Showcase page may only be up on Saturday; between the crashing energy, social obligations and taking every opportunity to earn a bit of extra cash, my evenings have been/will be rather unproductive on the art side. At least the pencils are all done, so I have less to puzzle out than I would otherwise; getting all the pages done in advance is still paying great dividends, regardless. Similarly, my #Swordtember uploads might end up being a bit sporadic in the next few days; my buffer has run out due to lack of time/energy at the day job, so I might even skip a few if I can’t build it back up in time. There’s only so much you can account for when it comes to life in general, I suppose.

All of the above hasn’t spelt out a particularly happy label for my mood lately, as you can imagine; the roadblocks in productivity and frustration at work brought on a severe case of the “poor me” mindset. It’s that feeling of helplessness in a situation that you cannot change, not for lack of trying to find a way out. The only thing I can do about it is wait, and I’ve done so much waiting already. If we’re lucky, I only have to stick it out until the end of the year; I don’t want to jinx anything, but some progress has been made in regards to our overall condition, and it may come through by 2024. It’s the first, bitter taste of that terrible illusion: hope (5 points to anyone who knows where that line comes from).

I stopped actively hoping for stuff to happen a while ago, this year in particular; too many potential opportunities for change that fell through will do that to a guy. I instead resigned myself to just letting whatever would happen, happen; I keep my head down and just try to do my best without getting attached to any possible outcome. I wanted this year to be the one where I made some concrete decisions and be less “go-with-the-flow,” and while there have been a few areas where I’ve done that, there is still so much more beyond my control where my decisions have no impact. There are some things I cannot change, so I have to control what I can instead, which is only so much and not nearly as much as I’d like. All this to say, hoping for change is scary, because if it falls through, I don’t handle it well. There never was much hope; just a fool’s hope (only 2 points for that line, that’s an easy one).

On that sombre note, I’m going to knuckle down and get back to doing what I can for now; ComicCon is two weeks away, and there’s a lot of stuff I want to get through before then.

Ciao for now.

Phew, what a week; it’s almost over, but if anything I’ll probably be even busier for the next few…

The Home Alone saga is coming to an end; I’ll be happy to have my fiance home to help wrangle the cats and just be a general presence in the home again. Whatever benefits I might glean from being by myself are outweighed by the disadvantages; my existence is overall better for being around people, even if it’s just one person in particular and not too many others at once. This will mean I won’t be able to keep watching Young Justice as part of my morning routine, but I’ve only got like 10 episodes left, so if I binge a few more tonight, that won’t be an issue anyway.

As far as being productive goes, my strategy for doing batches of inking on my comic pages has not worked out the way I planned. I fully intended to ink three pages at a time and then colour them as needed, but as I finish inking a page, I immediately want to colour it. I’m still keeping ahead of schedule, but if I want to finish the current Showcase story before we go up for ComicCon Africa, I should probably strive to be even more efficient. I am really enjoying the work so far; I’ve missed writing/drawing Kinetica, and I’m taking advantage of her powerset and inner monologue to experiment with more ambitious visuals and situations, at least compared to what I’ve done before. At the same time, I don’t want to overdo anything and end up burning out before I get the story done; it’s a balancing act for how far I want to push the visuals, while also keeping them simple enough to get everything done. It’s all a matter of how much time I can spare to devote to the pages, and the day job still gets in the way of that.

That being said, there is something I have been able to fill time with, when I cannot work on comic pages. With the month rolling over tomorrow, it comes with the #Swordtember art challenge; 30 days, 30 prompts, all relating to bladed weaponry throughout the month of September. I attempted the challenge last year, but only got about halfway through before abandoning it. This year, the prompts are more character based, very much in my wheelhouse, and I have my larger graphics tablet to work with compared to last year; a recipe for productivity, methinks. I’ve already been getting a headstart on some of the prompts in order to have a buffer to upload during the week I’ll be away at ComicCon, and I’ve been using a lot of free photo references from the fine couple that run The Pose Archives on Twitter and Instagram. Suffice to say, I’m having a lot of fun with the challenge, and even if I still don’t finish the whole prompt list like last year, I’m proud of the stuff I’ve done so far. Doing the challenge is also a great way to have stuff to post on social media every day for a month, which I need to get into the habit of doing anyway.

So, long story short, I’m keeping busy, and as long as I’m busy with stuff that I consider engaging, it keeps me happy too. Though it’s punctuated by stressful projects at the day job, chasing down stubborn cats at sunset, and financial woes (which will hopefully be resolved at ComicCon; how many times can I mention ComicCon in one blog post?), it’s been a decent week. My “sketch, don’t snack” strategy has been very effective in keeping me focused on artwork, and my superhero cartoon binges have kept me in the mindset of the kind of stories I want to tell; a winning combo, I’d say.

Let’s hope I can keep it going, and maintain this productivity for as long as possible.

Ciao for now.

I’m feeling productive today; the day job hasn’t managed to quash that yet, but the day is only half done at the time of this posting…

I can attribute my good mood to the fact that I’ve finally gotten the latest Fifth Ace Showcase story done; the last page of Martial’s first solo tale will be uploaded tomorrow, but I got it done last night. I also have all the pages for the next story, the one that should have been August’s but is now September’s, all thumbnailed out and a basic script complete. I intend to start uploading that story next week, no break; I already took a break halfway through this past one, so I need to make up for lost time. Plus if I manage to keep to the proper schedule, I should have the whole story uploaded by the time ComicCon Africa starts; I’ll have to get some pages done well in advance, but I think I can manage. I’m dangerously close to having a buffer ready; though I will say this next story has some much more ambitious artwork plotted out than some of my previous ones. I’m going to be playing with perspective shots, crowds, backgrounds… It’s going to be quite the challenge.

I won’t say being home alone has improved my productivity; if anything, it’s just a different set of distractions when it comes to work. It hasn’t been easy on the cats; Silver doesn’t mind being inside so much, but she gets super irritated by Sparrow, who doesn’t handle the lack of space so well. Their time outside is very limited, and sometimes they don’t get it at all if it’s raining, and an under-stimulated ginger kitten can be extremely distracting when one is trying to get stuff done. I think he’s slowly adapting to the routine, but we’ll all be glad when Sparrow is able to spend the day out and about again; if it was summer, he wouldn’t have to come inside so early either.

Productivity aside, I don’t know how much of a break there will be between this next story and the start of Fifth Ace Showcase #5; I still need to pick out which stories I’ll be doing for that one, and there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff that I want to get done too. I still want to do character profiles for my current cast, as well as the many other characters that will be turning up in future stories; my intent is to have a short time-lapse video of each character’s profile picture uploaded alongside the finished artwork, something I can have on video sites like TikTok and YouTube Shorts for better cross promotion. Unfortunately, this is something I can only do with Clip Studio Paint, which is exclusive to my laptop, which I cannot risk using at the day job without being disciplined; it’s Photoshop doodling or nothing during my spare moments. As such, the character profiles are something I can only do after hours, and that time is taken up by the comic work; I had intended to do all these profiles during my break earlier this year, but life got in the way, so maybe that’ll be my project for the rest of this year after ComicCon? We’ll see; I have literally one hundred (100) character profiles I want to draw; that would be my biggest ongoing art challenge ever.

All this is for the future; right now, I have the next story to finish up, and I am really excited to see if I can pull off everything I want to include. You’ll get to see if I manage next week.

Ciao for now.

Well, this has been quite the week; you can tell because I completely forgot to upload this last night.

First and foremost: Dragonfire was a huge success! We literally did twice as well as we did last year, and ComicCon Africa is a go! We’re going to have a lot to do in the month between now and then; there’s flights to book, a car to hire, stock to order, kitties to set up in care, the list goes on. It’ll be worth it, though; we’ve always done well at ComicCon, so this year should be no different, especially because we have a lot of stuff on hand that we’d already sold out of before the show opened last time.

On the other hand, the first of three weeks at home alone have been a mixed bag. I’m not feeling as lonely as I thought I would, mostly because I’ve been too busy to focus on being alone for a change. Most of this boils down to wrangling Sparrow; having to be locked up for most of the day makes him super hyper in the evenings, and he only gets about an hour and half of outside time between me getting home and the sun going down. It’s not an ideal situation for him, but we can’t trust him not to wreck the rest of the flat if we let him out of the bathroom, so it’s the lesser of two evils. He at least has plenty of food, all of his toys and a warm bed in there; he just really appreciates being able to roam when I get home to let him out. Silver is no issue at all; she’ll sleep all day without complaint, though she’ll be straight out the door the moment I open up in the afternoon. At least with the weekend coming up, they’ll both get plenty of time outside; fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain.

In terms of productivity, I was hoping to do more while I had the house to myself, though it’s not like I magically have more free time or energy; I had planned on doing daily uploads for the Fifth Ace Showcase, but I think we’re just going to stick to the regular Mon-Wed-Fri updates until I get the rest of the current story done. The August/September story may be more sporadic; I’m still trying to work out what I want from the script, to reach a predetermined ending through various potential plots. Not being able to go beyond thumbnails while being at the day job does mean the time I can devote to the comic during the week is limited, but that’s not anything new; it does suck when I have a burst of creativity while at my work desk and not being able to fully actualize it in the moment. Plus ComicCon coming up means I’ll likely have even less time to draw full pages.

That being said, I have been able to doodle a lot more to fill time however I can; I’ve been using it as a coping mechanism instead of eating at unnecessary moments during the day. By keeping myself distracted with sketching, I don’t feel the need to snack as much, which I’m prone to do quite a bit when I’m lost in my thoughts, and that can happen a lot when I’m home alone and/or stressed out. So my new eating routine is to have an extra large breakfast, with a reduced size lunch; I get a boost of energy in the morning, and then maintain the rest of my day with minimal snacking, while being much more artistically productive, with the occasional swig of coffee to keep my eyes open until I get home for supper. So far so good.

Oh, and one more side effect of being home alone is not having to be quiet in the mornings or keeping the lights off for fear of waking up my fiance; I can put on some music or videos, and not rely on my phone’s light to get to the kitchen without stepping on anything. I’ve been taking the opportunity to rewatch Young Justice, probably the best animated adaptation of the DC Comics universe since Justice League Unlimited ended. I only ever saw the first two seasons, which was the extent of the show when it was first cancelled, but there have been two more seasons since then, and I need to refresh myself on everything before diving into all the stuff I’ve missed. I can get through three episodes every morning before work, so I should be caught up to where I left off before these three weeks are out.

So that’s where I’m at for this week; keep an eye on all the socials for updates, and I’ll let you know if everything is still standing by next time.

Ciao for now.

It’s still Thursday somewhere in the world, right?

Yesterday was a great day of historical remembrance in my country: National Women’s Day, in recognition of the 1956 march of 20 000 women, taking a stand against the passing of a segregationist law. The issues that such a march brings to light continue to be relevant, and the occasion is recognised with a public holiday to this day. For me, such a day falling on a Wednesday is ideal; I’ve always maintained that a midweek break is better than a three-day weekend, and if only the four-day workweek was a thing, more people would know this.

Yesterday in particular was highly productive for me, yet another significant indication that I am totally not lazy no really I’m just clearly neurodivergent because when I’m doing something I enjoy then I can churn out massive quantities of work you don’t even know – whoa, that sentence got away from me. But seriously, I was able to pencil five comic pages yesterday, and add all the dialogue captions to them, plus a sixth page; the remainder of the current Fifth Ace Showcase story is well on its way to being ready. Now all that remains is ink and colour, which may only happen next week on a day-by-day basis; no other public holidays in the pipeline that I can use for such things, and the weekend is going to be busy too, though the next few weeks may leave some room for it…

As I mentioned last time, this weekend is Dragonfire, a small convention for a university roleplaying society that otherwise welcomes all comers for some games and game accessories. My fiance’s business, The Dragon Wagon, will be there to sell all kinds of TTRPG dice and various other things, and if we make enough cash, we can even make it to ComicCon Africa this year, so it’s a big deal. But after the weekend, my fiance will be away for three weeks while she does practical training for her teaching degree. I may still get to see her on the weekends, but I’m going to be by myself for the majority of the time, with only the cats for company.

I won’t lie, it’s not going to be easy; I never do well when I don’t have her to come home to. My sleep schedule gets completely thrown out of whack, I tend to stress-snack relentlessly, and I just feel lonely in general. It will be the first time that I’ll be juggling two cats on my own for an extended period, so maybe three won’t be a crowd; I know Sparrow is going to be a handful after being locked up all day while I’m at work, so that’ll be interesting.

However, given how much comic work I have to catch up on, I might be able to distract myself by powering through some of it. Not only do I have to finish July’s Showcase story, there’s still August’s story (which might as well be called September’s story at this rate), as well as the backup story I’ve been working on for Issue #1’s downloadable release later in the year. I clearly have no shortage of artwork to distract myself with, so I may as well use that time constructively; I’ve shown that I can pump out large volumes of stuff when I have the free time, so time to put my money (what money?) where my mouth is.

Anywho, hold thumbs and cross fingers for our success at Dragonfire, and if all goes well, the Fifth Ace Showcase will return next week.

Ciao for now.