Con Season Wrap-Up and Misericordia

With OSFest coming to a close, the intense part of con season wraps up. For the most part I think I did well. Made at least one sale at every convention I showed. Won a couple of awards. I'm going to try and keep the momentum going, I think it's time I start submitting to art shows all years round, even if I'm not able to make to it a particular convention. I'm going to submit to a few outside my usual geographic haunts. We'll see what happens.

Finishing up the first story of Misericordia was quite an experience. Two complete pages a week was a lot of work, and a lot of last minute scrambling on my part. I did a hurried rewrite a few pages in and lost my backlog of pages in the process. I'm rethinking my workflow for the second part. I'm also preparing part one for a print edition. Stay tuned for that.

Currently, I'm documenting my progress on Misericordia in lieu of regular story updates. Check it out: http://theendofallsuffering.com/.

Misericordia

My new webcomic Misericordia is now beginning over at http://theendofallsuffering.com/. It will be updating every Tuesday and Thursday. I hope you enjoy it.

The Misericordia project has been gestating for about three years. It's gone through a number of revisions and changes over that time. The character on the left over there is  Ms. Eri, one of our 2.5 leads (you'll see).

I'm excited to get back into working on a regular project. I didn't even realize I was missing it, until I was finally in the middle of putting it together.

How long will it run? I'm not sure. I worked on Eye-Eighty for over eight years, but I honestly had no idea where I was going when I started. I see the shape of Misericordia and know how it ends, we'll just see how many detours I make in between.

See you at the end of all suffering.

Convergence Post-mortem

I have returned from CONvergence mostly intact. The art show, as usual, was impressive. I'm always astounded at how generous and enthusiastic Minnesota fans are when it comes to art. I sadly missed the artists meet-up, but I did attend a couple of very good panels that made me really think about my own attachment to the things I make, and allowing a much more intensive critique of what I'm working on.

I'm not sure what I sold at the show, I try not to get to concerned about those things while I'm at the convention.

With that in mind, I'm looking for a group to do that with. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of local groups for comic book artists, so I will probably have to find somewhere online. If you have any suggestions please post them in the comments.


As I'm getting close to finishing up Iris White #2, I'm really looking at my process. Am I enjoying working in this format? Is there something I can change? Would it be better served if I worked in shorter updates?

CONvergence

Heading off to CONvergence today. I have art in the art show, so if you're reading this and attending please stop by and have peek, of course you're welcome to bid on it too if that's your thing. I'm bringing some issues of Iris White #1 up to wave at people. I'm going to make an effort to at least connect to other artists and even try and talk about making art in general. Things I used to avoid much to my determent.

Iris White #2 is nearly complete. It should be out by the end of July. There will be one more issue to close out this chapter, a break while I get another project off the ground and then I'll return for the next three. I'd like to release it in chapters of 3 for the foreseeable future.

Script writing has been coming easier lately. It's the most difficult part of the process for me and results in a lot of stalled out projects. I'm making myself work through them and perhaps that is paying off.

Here's a preview of one of my next things after this round of Iris:

(click to enbiggen)

I'm still around

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. Convention season is upon me and between getting things ready and trying to get the next Iris White finished, I've been busy.  Part of the reason I began this blog was to get into the habit of sharing my processes and having a conversation about making art. So, sharing is still not yet a habit and I need to make a more concerted effort to do so.

Working on Iris hasn't been easy. Working in a longer format has had challenges I didn't expect. One I didn't expect was I miss the immediacy of feedback when I did Eye-Eighty as a web comic. I also got used to the way I could write a little bit produced some pages and then stew on the story a bit and write again. Iris is much more of a long game, and as of writing the second issue can start feeling myself getting used it. Still it's a lot more work and I can see why comics are often developed by teams. Perhaps that is something to explore in future projects.

Speaking of future projects, I'm going to post so preliminary work on a few other more nebulous things I'm considering, including something Eye-Eighty related. But for the moment here is a work in progress page for Iris White #2.

Iris White #1

The first issue of my new limited series Iris White is now available from Indyplanet.com. It's available in both print and digital formats.

Iris White is a horror series about a scarred woman, who works as an investigator for a mysterious organization called The Edifice. The first issue finds her traveling to an abandoned estate that used to house a cult and may be connected to some recent missing children cases. There is a path on the estate, a path to somewhere called A Beautiful Place.

I am working on issue two at the moment, I hope to have it out in early June.

I hope you enjoy Iris White.