Tag: ink

Concerning Happiness and Focus

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Byrd

I have a new friend. They do poster art professionally. They’re work shows a great deal of enthuesiasm. I visited them last week and they showed a bunch of their work to me. You really feel like they enjoy the process when you look at their stuff. It made me reflect on my own work, and how much I don’t enjoy it sometimes.

My own work makes me think of the quote “I hate writing, I love having written” by Dorothy Parker. I think of this phrase often, as a lot of my process is driven by the need to produce anything. It’s driven by hitting a quota, because the fear of becoming unfocused and moving on before the project is finished is paramount.

This led me to reflect on how much I miss animation, and I spent a whole day considering the idea of adding a 30 second animated teaser for each comic project. I’m not an animator, so these projects would be limited, probably involving a lot of “squigglevision” style (which I’m a big fan of). But still, it would require a lot. I’ve probably spent a good 6 months on this particular project, and it’s not done.

But I spent most of the day considering whether or not to purchase After Effects and a few plugins, as I have other animated teaser ideas for my other projects. I think a few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice, and would have impulse purchased After Effects. But this time, I wrote out my projects, and my wants, and came to the conclusion that with the labor and skill available, adding animation would be untenable.

But it really sucks to walk away from the ambition of that. Which brings me back to enthusiasm, but enthusiasm within the scope of what can be done. I would love to get to the point where my work reflects how much I think and adore the characters, places and ideas in my scripts and comics.

Like, “Enter Cedar”, I knew that these characters had names, but I never took the time to discover them until this week. I was drawing them uniquely, they’ve had personalities, but I was rushing through the illustration of pages and not taking the time to discover what those names were. Perhaps it’s these areas I should make more time for.

Concerning Music Selections for a Medium That Is Silent

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Byrd

I miss doing songs with the comics. Maybe not with every page, but every episode should have a recommended song. Because Tapas Comics had a feature where you could add a song, there’s an entire Original Soundtrack for “Deep Circuitry”.

I really enjoyed that, because most of my comic projects were meant to be either live action or animated. Overall, I really miss audio. I miss the music and working with voice actors. I miss the collaboration and the spontaneity that would come with working with others.

Groph didn’t get music accompany. When I started illustrating “Groph’s Green Wizardry”, I didn’t have any music in mind. In retrospect, I think the soundtrack for “Groph’s Green Wizardry” would just be lofi.

For “Enter Cedar”, here are my initial thoughts on a recommended song accompany.

Episode 01: Smog “In the Pines”
Episode 10: Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld “Hey Hey, My My”
Episode 11: Philip Glass “Tagore-Scene II”
Episode 12: Tom Waits “Come on Up to the House”

Concerning the Black Mold Boy

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Byrd

On my Tapas Comic page, I have the following listed under my profile:

“Toot toot! If you’re reading this comic, all aboard the Attention Deficit Train…”

Because I can’t focus on anything. Just doing weekly pages in a single installment of the Imbibe Universe is painful. So here’s some character design for the Black Mold Boy, a character in the series “This Bitter Earth”, which is scheduled to be illustrated 5-8 series down the line.