After much thought … and several days forcing myself to color when I really, really did NOT want to, which slows things down, I realize that I’m really not giving myself ANY time.  The change to full pages didn’t work out as it should have.  I could do them all, but it’s considerably more work than I was doing before and it’s cost me time, money and keeping on schedule.  While getting colorists on board will help… I think I’m going to return to old way of updating, by splitting up the pages and leave the full pages for Wowio and print.

I spend 2-3 hours on every page and when I have six pages to do, plus 2-3 Abby, that’s around 20 hours… just for coloring and no time to get ahead.  I DO get up at 7AM and work from the moment I get up until I go to bed around 10 or 11 every night.  Let’s say that’s 8 hours a day, outside of other stuff that must be done.  If I have 42 hours in a week, I’ve already lost 20 of them for coloring alone, leaving me 22 to pencil, ink, scan and prep.  Prep and base color filling takes 8 - 10  hours to do them all.  That leaves me 12 hours to pencil and ink in.  It takes about an hour to pencil and ink each page.  So around… 6 - 9 hours (Can’t forget NeverNever pencilling/inking), leaving me… 4 hours to letter comics, write AD txt and write scripts.  It takes more than 4 hours to letter, write scripts and text.  And now you see why I haven’t been able to get to Shivae! and why I think I just suffered near burn out.

I kept trying new things, which lifted me up for a short time, but then caught up AGAIN, so I’m going back to where I was.  Less pages to color overall and more time to finish commissions ( I have a sky I have to do on one commission to get it completed and tons of inking that I really need to get done. :(  Books to get printed… PURE and Sivine Blades to continue with.

Cape managed to pretty much take me out this week. I don’t want this to happen again after A-kon and the trips to Tennesses.

Some of this is repeated from earlier posts.  Most isn’t.  Stuff changes from month to month.

It’s May!  We have Alien Dice and Akaelae updating primarily along with Abby’s Agency.  There shouldn’t be any interuption in them, but I AM looking for a colorist to take over coloring Akaelae to free me up to work on other things that need to be worked on.  The position pays $25 a page for 2-3 pages to be done per week dependent on donations which will pay for the coloring at $25 a page.

Flowerlark is going to begin coloring Shivae! Cler this week. I have been paying her off and on to recolor Sivine Blades as well and will continue to do that.  I am working on getting Book 1 completed before beginning to update the comic itself.

I’m still hoping to begin updating Sivine Blades and PURE this summer, but may update them in black and white and then have someone else color them.

Genoworks Saga is just sitting… I have inked pages.

Abby’s Vacation is sitting … I need to set up its website.

I do have big plans, but I need to get all the ‘old’ stuff done before moving forward and the old stuff is a gazillion books.  Especially for Alien Dice.  I’m heavily considering redoing the first 20 or so pages of PURE.  I actually have 20 pages scripted of Sink or Swim to be redone as well.

Free Comic Book Day was a blast. It was also the best Cape event ever. The creators of Love and Capes were on my left and Damphyr of Deviantart was on my right. I spent at least an hour just chatting with her since we were sharing a table. I’ve actually been reading her journals on Deviantart over the last couple of years. It was nice to sit next to someone doing manga style artwork, unlike previous years when I was sitting next to ‘other’ artwork. I also chatted a little with Kathryn White of Blue Canary. There were several DC writer’s behind me and a good showing of people. I must say, Greg Pak stood out to me. I’m not sure what the deal was, but his table was vacant when I walked by several times.. it may have been because his tent location was a little … askew and he was difficult to find. My husband sent me to seek him out to autograph his World War Hulk hardcover. I made a beeline for that area since I assumed he had not checked there. I immediately liked the guy.

It skimmed the other tables, took notes… and stopped at two of them. Strangely, the two that popped out at me had something in common. Both were being actively published by companies and one was in the process of working through movie rights.. since comic book movies are so big right now.

The first, was a comic called Samurai and Dragon. Which I’d post a link for if I’d carried the loot from downstairs upstairs.

Red 5 comics was the second one. Their Neozoic comic caught my eyes… due to the dinosaurs.

The whole thing was a lot of fun… even if my husband did spend ALL of the money I made on comics.

He kept encouraging me to go talk to the other writers and artists.. but the thing is, I have nothing to show them. Not a thing. Nothing. Nothing to make talking to them worth anything. I guess the worst part of it is… I don’t read comic books. I just don’t follow them. DC annoys me, as I’ve mentioned before and so does Marvel to a degree. I think I’ve been a bit put off by them, although there have been a few interesting stories I’ve read in ‘passing’.  My husband has hundreds of books and leaves them laying around.  I know many of the heroes and random details about their storylines.

I guess it’s in my mind that once I start talking, they’re going to realize that I don’t actually READ their work.

Only now, I’m a bit depressed. I’ve bookmarked a couple of sites in the past and have been working on sketching and drawing on the side when I can, but taking another 10 years to get to a level in which I feel competent enough to approach a comic book company with my work is just out of the question. I’ve been mulling around the fact that I can write and formulate many, many stories, but drawing them is an entirely other matter. I want to spend more time on the ones I’m doing, but am not in a financial situation in which it would work to bankroll a bunch of artists, so … my first order of business is to finally get everything caught up on. This year, we’re finally getting caught up on the taxes from the year we fell behind. Everything else will fall into place.

Then… I’m going to start ordering the correspondence courses from Joe Kubert’s World of Cartooning. I’m going to start with Story Graphics, then Pencilling and Inking. Each course costs $275-$325. I could take them for $175, but the extra $100 pays for professional critiquing.. which I would like. The second set of lessons is from another site I found that goes over the body anatomy in detail called The Structure of Man. Even though I only did 30 pages or so of work out of the book I have … and do intend to do more, I think I can get more out of seeing the artwork done as someone does it. I’ve found I pick up things well from SEEING it as it’s done. The improvements I’ve made were very good, but only a few things click at a time.

The other thing is once I’m done with this ‘back’ work… converting all my scripts to the tablet and all the books into book form so I have everything on the SAME page, I am going to start having other people do my work for me so I can spend more time on other work. Most of these things that will begin updating again are going to update depending on their support, which will be the cost of however much I end up paying the artists. I noticed that I FORGOT I posted a colorists needed note on Deviantart and haven’t responded to anyone yet… since I forgot about it.

May 3rd is Free Comic book day and I will be at Cape!

There are also a whole lot of other people who are going to be there, so stop by and say hi!

Also, don’t forget plans for A-kon 19!  It’s from May 30-June 1st.  I’ll be in the DEALERS room, NOT the Komik Market.

I will ALSO be at MFM ‘08 in Memphis Tennessee over Labor Day Weekend.  I don’t get that far to the east or north often and will likely not do it two years in a row!

Heh, June is going to be one of ‘those’ months.  I have A-kon … and a wedding in Tennessee to attend. I haven’t been an hour away from home since Kim was born.  (Maybe a couple of hour and a half trips.)  This basically means that June’s going to be a horrible month for updates.

April is turning out okay, although almost over.  I’m working as hard as I can to get three updates for AD and three for Akaelae done, then start hitting the three for Abby.  I still have a page of Shivae! to do and am trying as hard as possible to get No Angel #1 done in time for A-kon. :(  I still have two pages left to pencil/ink and the cover to color within the next week to ensure I get a delivery in time.

In May, I’m probably going to do alternating updates for the weeks, 2 pages for AD and 3 for Akaelae one week, 2 for Akaelae and 3 for AD the next.

I’m also considering doing up all the comics for AD for Wowio first as they are and then doing the updated art/edited text for print.