I’ve started doing this exercise that sits me down in front of pen and paper every single night. I’m making more drawings than I’m posting on the blog here, and I’m okay with that. I’m making doodles that I can see developing into stuff and that’s good, too. Then I did this last night:

I haven’t forgotten about SnoogleZoo, I just needed to take a break. I don’t think doing a serial webcomic is for me- it’s not exactly the time commitment, like I thought it was, because doing all this constraint-free drawing is taking up the same kind of time that working on SnoogleZoo was. I think it’s more like feeling trapped within a certain framework. It felt like homework and I think it was stifiling the art. Not to mention all my other art that I wasn’t doing.

I’ve been kicking around a couple of ideas of what to do- I miss the characters more than I thought I would, so I’d rather not abandon them to the realm of silent, one-off illustrations. But I don’t want to get trapped slogging through an un-interesting story arc just to meet a deadline. I’m thinking I should just do stories on a whenever-I-feel-like-it basis, which I think will serve my desire to do something of quality, and also prevent me from growing a readership of any respectable size.

But you know what? I don’t really care about that right now. I really need to be making art before I can concern myself with things like making art on a schedule.

So don’t worry, Pan. We’ll be back soon enough, and you can pick on Efram and get extra whipped cream from the Kitties’ cafe and have all kinds of fun and silly adventures with the rest of the gang real soon. But sometimes I will have to give my attention to killer robots and pin-up girls, too. It’s better for everyone this way

Tags: being blocked, comic, drawing, snooglezoo, work, works in progress

(UPDATE May 30, 2009: I realize that after I wrote this article, I turned around and started working on a lot of so-called “purposeless art.” This article sort of represents the last death throes about my old opinions about art, and the last time I use this argument as an excuse not to work. I still hold the premise- that there’s nothing wrong with pitching a concept, getting paid for it, and THEN developing it; but there is also and equally nothing wrong with drawing for yourself and wasting materials and NEVER getting paid for it. And so, I give you my whiny rant:)

Neil Gaiman posted a link to a review of Coraline on his Twitter feed on Sunday from what looks like a conservite Christian blog of some sort. I have a fundamental disagreement about how the reviewer read the film (which makes sense, seeing as how I’m not a conservite Christian, but there are plenty of Christian reviews who disagree with this one as well), and there is already a discussion in the comments of the article.

But I’m deeply offended by the suggestion that Coraline is not a cohesive story with a moral because the development process went from concept to contract to outline, and then to finished novel, rather than having the story finished before he tried to sell it. Here we go again with the very foolish notion that art must be done for its own sake, and getting paid for it must always be incidental to its creation for it to count.

Art has deep roots in business. The art of the rennaisance exists largely because rich patrons paid people to make it. My favorite example is that the Sistene Chapel was a commission, and I like to think that Michelangelo had a contract in hand before he had the final sketches down, if not a nice fat advance.

I don’t particularly like being called an artist because of the image it conjures of being some flighty, flaky, beret-wearing, loft-living, starving waif. I’ve setteled on “illustrator,” or “designer” because at least there’s an implication that I’m a businesswoman there. At one point I wanted “art mercenary” printed on my business cards, but a buddy of mine who is better at marketing than I am talked me out of it (“I don’t care how cool is sounds, you say ‘mercenary,’ and people think Blackwater”).

The point is that I have skills and I’d like to be paid for them, thank you very much. And I think that people who have skills; artists, writers, carpenters, tapdancers, whatever; should expect to be paid if people want to continue consuming what they put out. Neil Gaiman is a “brand,” as the article says so callously, because he has a record of producing something that people want. It’s simple supply and demand. Just because there is money involed doesn’t give a project any less soul.

Tags: art, business, contracts, Coraline, Neil Gaiman, work

I’ve been working so hard at Doing Stuff and Being Interesting lately that I haven’t been getting much sleep. I made a lasagna last night (which I’m looking forward to eating for the next three or four days), and I’ve been adding a lot of stuff to my cafepress shop, but I totally skipped over Monday’s comic and I don’t feel like making up for it. Also I’m falling behind with Holidailies. Whatevs, man. I’m not going to spend all 30 days of Holidailies writing about how I have nothing to write for Holidailies.

Boss is on vacation at the TV Farm this week, which does two things: I have more of a chance to get away with slackitude, and I have more stuff to do that I have to fit in around my slackitude. Which balances the whole thing out, after all.

I will draw tonight. I will draw tonight. I will draw tonight. And I will probably not sleep enough tonight, either.

Tags: drawing, holidailies, work

Called in sick to the TV farm on Wednesday, and spent the entire day sleeping. At least I’m getting getting-sick out of the way before the Christmas maelstrom hits. But, dangit I have work to do! I’m getting some of it done insofar as I’ve been adding new and exciting stuff to my cafepress store at a rate greater than most of the rest of the year (which is to say I’ve done it three times in three days and updated all the old sections with the new products), but that’s still not quite where I’d like to be right now. And my comic is suffering.

I think I’m not sick so much as exhausted. Well, there are a few days off on the horizon. Stay on target…

Tags: busy, christmas, fatigue, POD Stuff, work

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.

Tags: forums, negative feedback, snooglezoo, webcomic, work