My sleep schedule just doesn’t seem to allow me to sleep past a certain point in the morning anymore; I don’t know if I’m just used to the cats arriving for food, or whatever else it might be, but I feel like I could be more productive with it.
As someone who uses a lot more physical and social energy than I do on her day job, I would not dare try and rob her of much needed recovery time.
I am grateful to have a day job, but there are days when I feel a bit out of my depth. A chance to draw something for someone else and knowing that they appreciate it is all too rare.
Myself and the person in question did a little art trade over Bluesky, drawing each other’s original characters, just for fun. I was well pleased with the artwork I received, and the artwork I produced seemed to go over well, too. All in all, it was the best part of my day.
The subject of this comic might be the antithesis of a “gentle” comics habit, but the moment I start making excuses, that’s where the slippery slope begins.
I chose not to count any of the hourly comics I drew yesterday as part of the #gentlecomicshabit, so by the letter of the concept, I skipped a day and therefore cannot miss a second day in a row. So even though I was excessively productive yesterday, and my body is sluggish from a large meal followed by exercise, I refuse to break the habit building this early in the game. We press on, in the name of bettering one’s self!
Okay, this one has layers to it, with a bit of an in joke, I’ll describe it as best I can:
My exercise routines come in 30 Day Challenges, and the one I picked for January was called “Reboot.” It had nothing to do with the old CGI cartoon, but I still used that show’s logo as the figurative face of the challenge, to show that I had beaten it. Next month’s challenge is called “Shadebound,” and is fantasy-ninja themed.
Yeah, it’s going to destroy me; wish me luck!
I have over a hundred original characters in my upcoming comics continuity; there isn’t even a multiverse involved and I’m still trying to juggle so much.
I swear I’m working on stuff, you’ll be seeing it eventually, I promise!
My current desk setup is more convenient for ease of access and working overall, though there has been an unintended side effect.
While I’m more than happy to give Silver attention, she’s very much opposed to my hands doing anything else now that she has easier access to them.
I would probably be more comfortable in this heat if I shaved, but there’s an issue I have when I go beardless:
Hopefully that will be less of an issue once I start losing some weight. I should still trim, though…
For those not in the know, I work for a printing company as my day job (now a different printing company than the previous one), and I was commissioned by my H.O.D. to design a print for a banner wall, one that we can use as a display sample; he said I could literally do anything, such as incorporate something with my comic style and characters.
My Bluesky followers will have seen some progress shots of what I’ve been working on: a splash image of 20 characters in a dynamic charging shot. This thing is going to be 3 x 2.25m in size; I might even ask if I can have a second print to keep, juuuuust in case I ever end up back in a convention booth…?
If you’ve known me personally for any significant amount of time, or follow me on Bluesky, you are undoubtedly aware of how I handle the heat:
There’s an ancient Greek term: Kakotherēs; it literally means “bad at summer” or “unfit for summer.” I can imagine an ancient Greek hero with that name, whose weakness is temperatures above 26 degrees Celsius; he would look just like me.
First blog post for the #gentlecomicshabit. The idea behind this daily exercise is to form the habit of creating comics at a set time each day, by creating said comics within a small time limit that gradually increases. This first one only took a minute (plus some minor formatting, but I’m primarily counting the drawing time), while the next one will be done in two minutes; the next will take three minutes and so on, until I’m sitting down to draw for up to an hour or beyond.
I’m slotting in my drawing sessions directly after my daily workouts, so that I can link the two habits together and build them simultaneously; that should explain the topic I chose for this first one:
As time goes on, I’ll increase the number of panels and broaden the subject matter, but I want to eventually use these daily habitual sessions to be drawing actual Fifth Ace Comics updates; it could be a month or two before I reach that stage, so enjoy these silly little doodles in the meantime.
Ciao for now.
