Here’s a picture of some calendar doodles from last month as a Holidailies filler. I spent today out and about and didn’t do any drawings, but had a lovely time anyway. Tomorrow will be chock full, as I have a comic to draw and some work to do on my cafepress shops. See you then!
Now that my comic is well underway, the mechanical act of producing a strip three times a week is starting to feel easier. That seems like I’ve gotten over the first hurdle on a project like this and I can start tackling other aspects like good draftsmanship and storytelling.
I’m thinking about closing the comments because I don’t want to feel like I have to answer to my readers on the decisions I make. This isn’t in reaction to anything that happened over at my site, or any of my readers’ comments; it actually has more to do with the way I react to the discussions in other comics’ forums. With the example I just linked to on XKCD, I noticed comments like “you’re insulting your audience! How dare you!” and “I don’t think you ended the strip right. Here, I photoshopped it better!” I love having people participate, and it’s wonderful that they’re in to it enough to take the time to write a reaction to what I’m making, but It’ll hurt my ability to tell a story if I’m worried about what they think the characters should do in addition to my own thinking about what they should do. I don’t want to write a comic by committee. And I’m not saying that people who have forums like this do that- to the contrary I see that the comicker hard ly ever participates in those threads. But I know myself and I know how self-conscious I can be. I also know that when I post my comic to the cartooning forum on LiveJournal for exposure, and get feedback, I am compelled to respond to the positive and negative, and the negative will tweak me out for longer than it should.
But really, that’s what this project is all about. It’s practice! I’m practicing the act of comic creating, storytelling, ink and color, building traffic and handling feedback appropriately. It’s all part of the process of making and maintaining a webcomic.
I joined the Holidailies portal again this year, because I’m a masochist, but also because deadlines seem to keep me drawing. I’m getting very close to 30 comics over at snooglezoo, which means ten whole weeks of posting with only a few lapses, and I think that’s fantastic.
I’m trying to exercise some discipline lately. If I’m not drawing, at least I’m doodling, because doodling leads to ideas which lead to drawings, which is pretty much what I need to be doing not to be miserable. Also, if I’m drawing I can’t pick on my cuticles because my hands are busy. everybody wins!
Anyway, with Holidailies I’m going to have to post something to this here blog nearly every day from Dec 5 to Jan 6, either 50 words or a photo (or in my case, a drawing). This on top of keeping up with the comic every three days, it should keep those art muscles of mine nice and limber. Here goes!
I make local commercials for a living. You know, those commercials for local businesses which have low production values and just in general, look cheaper than national ads. We try hard to work with what we have, but often what we have is no time and even less budget. That’s when the crap happens. Every now and then we end up with an opportunity to do something cool, and depending on how exploited we’re feeling, we can end up with something to be proud of. I’m not sure this is one of those, it’s a little thrown together and based on something I did in school, but I still think it’s kind of neat.
I’m going to be putting more of my commercials up on YouTube, mostly so my parents can see them. I’ll probably post more of them here, too.
It kind of goes without saying that I have an interest in the Archie universe, despite the fact that I have never, ever read an Archie comic in my life (at least not cover-to-cover). But holy crap, they’re finally updating the style! That’s amazing!
I think I’ll pick myself up a copy of this one, for posterity, and to see if they’re going to update the themes to go along with the new artwork. Seems doubtful, though- the new issue is called “Bad Boy Trouble.” Meh, maybe I should reserve my judgements on something I haven’t ever read and just see what comes…
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This is my sketchblog, which is for doodles, comics, essays, and other stuff that an illustrator and comicker might blog about. I'm Veronica, and I run this joint. All the artwork is copyright Veronica C Guzzardi. Please don't use it without permission from me. Please contact me if you want to pay me to draw for you; that's my favorite.
