Tag: blog

I keep wishing it was Friday, but then that would mean I would have missed posting this, and that would be wrong. My wish will come true tomorrow…

Another week has gone by, and we’re still in motion! The Showcase has resumed uploads, and we’re just getting to the action bits; a fitting way to return, I’d say. I’m going to be using my rare injection of free time over the weekend to keep the buffer up so that we don’t slip behind schedule for the rest of the month; I’ve got a lot of stuff happening towards the end of November that might put a crimp in it, so best to preemptively avoid that.

Those who follow me on socials know that I post the preview thumbnails to Instagram, plus the links, when each comic page goes live. I also used Instagram to post my pics from my attempt at Swordtember earlier this year; it was the most active I’d been on the platform in years. I’ve been considering using it more and more, especially with all the drama unfolding around Twitter, my currently most-used social media. I don’t really have enough followers to be concerned about the whole verification thing (I’m #RatVerified, and that’s enough for me), and even if I did I wouldn’t be coughing up any amount of money to keep it. I’ll likely stick around on Twitter for as long as possible, but when it inevitably goes south, I want to have a decent presence elsewhere too. I’ve been giving Mastodon a look, but it’s a bit technical for me, and Artfol is more for tablet-based stuff; Instagram is shaping up to be my new primary, despite all the spam bots…

I’m also looking into expanding my digital art portfolio by exploring some different techniques. I recently acquired a bunch of new brushes and some instructional stuff for digital painting, which is something I’ve always wanted to give a proper try. I found the resources through Jazza via Drawfee, two content channels on YouTube that I am a big fan of, so anything that they recommend I know I will find useful. I’m also a big fan of Frank Frazetta’s style of painting, so in lieu of using up a lot of space and money on oil paints, I would love to recreate his effects in a digital medium. It’s one more thing on top of everything else, but that’s kind of the point; I need to keep my momentum going, and anything that keeps me busy is good. With any luck, once I start churning out non-comic art on a regular basis again, it’ll end up on the site in a separate gallery before too long.

In terms of things other than art, it’s currently NaNoWriMo season, and I have elected not to partake; all my previous attempts failed dismally, and I just do not have the time or energy to try again this year. It’s a shame, because I did come up with an idea that might have benefitted from some concentrated writing, but I’ve got enough going on right now. At minimum, I have to focus on the scripts for the next Showcase issue, since I’m going to be leaping directly into that in December, so a novel isn’t exactly on the cards. Add it to the list for next year.

Think that covers everything for this week; keep reading the Fifth Ace Showcase, and I’ll see you next time.

Ciao for now.

I’ve been yawning wide enough to swallow the world whole all day, what the actual hell…

It’s another Thursday, my fellow cards, which means it’s time for another update. It’s been a quiet week overall, things are trucking along; progress is being made on some stuff, less so on others, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

The Fifth Ace Showcase is still on track to resume next week, no worries about that. We’ll be back to the regular Mon-Wed-Fri update schedule, all the pages for this first week back will be ready before the weekend; I am determined to stay well ahead on the updates this time around, with a minimum of a three page buffer once the updates begin. I’ve been sitting on this story for a while, and it needs to get done so that I can carry on with all the other ones that have been gathering dust.

One of the big differences with this current story is that the art is 100% digital; all the previous Showcase stories were penciled and inked by hand before being digitally coloured. I made the shift to full digital for Agents of A.R.M.O.R. because there were a number of things I wanted to include that are easier to do digitally. I don’t know if this will be a new standard for future Showcase stories; I do enjoy working on paper a lot, but with my new graphics tablet, digital is looking a lot more feasible. We’ll see what happens; I do know there are certain stories that will work better without digital techniques, if I get the practice in.

I mentioned in passing last week about some additional things I want to do to elevate my site and my work a little more; that’s the kind of stuff that won’t be seeing some progress for a little while, most likely not until 2023. For a start, I want to get back to streaming again; I had a lot of fun streaming my art, and it kept me focused on the work, which is always a benefit. I’m still debating over which platforms to stream on; I’ve heard Twitch hasn’t been too nice to their affiliates lately, and TikTok doesn’t play nice with ReStream, so I might go YouTube exclusive, but nothing definite yet. I’ll figure it out once I find time in my schedule, probably Saturdays, will keep you posted.

The plan is audience building, spreading the brand far and wide to bring in as many people as possible. The kind of job and life that I want depends greatly on other people, and I have to do my best to make a good impression on a large scale. But again, that’s still a ways off; come next year, we can flesh that out a little more.

That said, if you want to support me in the meantime, I have a Ko-Fi account for tips (button is over on the right), and I take art commissions too, so PM me for that. Which reminds me, I’d better update my price list on Twitter, that thing is so out of date…

See you back here on Monday for the return of the Fifth Ace Showcase!

Ciao for now.

Alrighty, I’ve officially been back on this site for two weeks now, what have we got to show for it? To be honest, more than I expected, which wasn’t much.

As I mentioned last week, we kicked off Fifth Ace Comics’ new weekly strip, Magic Beans; while the audience is still small, the few people I’ve been able to get direct feedback from were very positive about it, which makes me happy. Might have to actually work on a sizable buffer if it takes off the way I want it to…

The new miscellaneous gallery that I theorized about previously, will likely materialize sometime next month; between the day job and keeping myself functioning, my projects tend to move a little slowly. This was to be expected; I’m still building up momentum again, after all. Somewhere along the way, we’ll get up to the level of production that I’ve always dreamed of, though in order to do that, I’m going to have to lay out a plan of both space and time. By which I mean I need to clean up my nightmare of a desk, and draw up a proper timetable.

One thing I have been managing to work into my schedule quite seamlessly has been a workout regime that fits neatly into my morning routine; I started it the day after I put up my returning blog post in a fit of revived optimism, and I’m proud to say that after two weeks I haven’t skimped on it yet. It’s a 60 challenge from darebee.com called The Hero’s Journey, so naturally I was attracted to the literary reference when deciding on what program to choose. What I like most about it is that the exercises are different day to day; one of my biggest obstacles in the past when it comes to exercise is the mundanity of a boring routine. With this program, I’m doing something different every day, with a fun fantasy flavour on top, so I’m never bored. Out of breath, collapsing to the floor and feeling like my heart is about to burst, sure, but never bored. In a total of 60 days, I’m on track to finish the challenge before Christmas, and come 2023, I’ll be ready to try something different (or even start over with a higher challenge level).

All this to say that I think I’m on the up and up. Won’t lie, there have been a few bad days here and there; the day job can really grind my gears at times. More than ever, it makes me think about how much I want to be a content creator, someone who produces what they want, and puts it out there with the hope that others will enjoy it and want more. But that’s never going to happen if I don’t actually put in the work. Sure I could be doing more, but more will come soon. Step by step, I’m rebuilding my power base and slowly bringing myself back to where I was, and hopefully further beyond. I’ve certainly got a couple of ideas about how to do just that…

More on that next week; keep reading Magic Beans, you bunch of cards.
Ciao for now.

Okay, second consecutive week blogging; that’s a good sign, let’s gooooo!

So, some of you may have seen the new comics that were uploaded yesterday; you’re probably wondering “What is this? A new series? What about the Showcase? Are you really abandoning it again?!”

Fret not, you bunch of cards; the Showcase is not over, I’m still hard at work on the current story, and others besides. However, due to the time and effort required to get full comic pages done, alongside the day job, I don’t want to push myself to crazy extremes and burn myself out again.

As such, I have decided that Fifth Ace Showcase uploads will only return in November. Which means we’ll be back from Monday 7th, and rounding off the current Agents of A.R.M.O.R. story by the end of the month. This will allow me to build up a buffer, and not sacrifice quality to rush the pages out.

But what to do for the rest of October? Let the site lay quiet with nothing happening but the weekly blog post? Perish the thought! Instead, in order to keep a little traffic flowing on Wednesdays, I’ve decided to upload something smaller, simpler, and quicker to create that I can reliably put out every week. Hence the new comic strip, Magic Beans!

I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while, and I’ve got several strips drawn and ready to go; I’ve uploaded the first three in order to introduce all the primary characters, and give you a little taste of the humour that is to come. Once the Showcase starts up again, Magic Beans will continue to run, a little extra nugget of content alongside the main stuff for you all to enjoy.

In addition to this, over the next few weeks, I want to add another gallery or two to the site, featuring some of the other stuff that I get up to in my spare time; I’ve got several projects that have been on the back burner for a long time, and while progress on them is still slow and sporadic, I’d like to show you what I’ve got going on. This will include stuff relating to animation, character design, traditional mediums, fan art, writing etc. Yeah, I have a lot of ideas rolling around in my head.

Any other new galleries that show up will also be updated sporadically; I don’t want to throw everything at you if there’s a chance they won’t stick, but eventually (next year, maybe?) I hope to be uploading something every day of the week, even if it’s just a doodle of some kind. Again, don’t expect it all to start churning out tomorrow or anything; this is just a direction I’m starting to vaguely saunter towards.

That’s all for this week; I hope that you enjoy Magic Beans, keep an eye out for the Showcase next month, and I’ll have some more stuff for you on here soon.

Ciao for now.

Wasn’t sure if I was even going to post this, but here we go.

It’s been a while.

My unsuccessful attempts at blogging in the past notwithstanding, it’s been pretty quiet on this site for a little over a year. No news, no comics, not so much as a peep. Even my other social media posts have been sporadic at best. To be honest, I was hesitant to even look at the homepage myself; it’s been sitting there this whole time, a testament to one more unfinished project that I let myself start and abandon.

Except this project isn’t over; not by a long shot.

I won’t lie, there were moments in the past year when I wasn’t so sure about that. My creativity and motivation suffered a major blow last year; I lost my day job due to a company restructuring, and the idea of losing my livelihood and possibly my home sent me into a tailspin; having been retrenched before in the past, it was an old trauma brought back with a vengeance. 

I was fortunate enough to get my job back a month later, but I had fallen a long way in that time, and crawling my way back out of the pit was not easy. I was unsure of my position, feeling that at any moment they might turn around once more and change their minds again, and the constant paranoia added to a fresh wave of responsibility. It was a torrent of fear that threatened to flush me back down into the pit, and I struggled to maintain my grip on the ever-slick sides as I slowly forced myself back to the surface.

I think it was Comic Con Africa that was the final handhold that I needed to pull myself back out. Returning to the convention scene after all this time was like drawing back a curtain and seeing everything that I had been missing out on: the creativity, the passion, the joy for the characters and stories that we all love so much. I was even able to sell some of my art there that people liked and appreciated; it was a major boost to my self-confidence that I hadn’t felt in so long.

It made me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.

I kept this website functioning because I fully intended to return to it one day; I didn’t know when, I didn’t know under what circumstances, but I knew I’d be back. There is far too much stuff that I want to put out there for me to give up on Fifth Ace Comics completely. I have so many characters I want to share with the world, so many stories I want to tell, and the only way I’m going to be able to do that is if I start posting again.

It’s going to be a gradual process, but consider this post my first step back on the road. This is a marathon, not a sprint; I’m going to be taking things slow and steady, and I hope that the work you’ll be seeing from me in the near future will be all the better for it.

Keep an eye on my socials for some miscellaneous art pieces, and (fingers crossed) I’ll be back next week with some official content.

Ciao for now.