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/.

Trepidation

I haven't exactly been successful in opening up and sharing about how I make, hence the four month gap in entries. I have been working. In fact I am on the cusp of launching a new web comic.

All artists struggle with being judged, and to actually show the process leading up to the finished is perhaps even more daunting. I really didn't expect that.

A page from Misericordia

I finished the second Iris White comic. I wasn't satisfied with it. I struggled with keeping myself invested while putting together and I think it shows. I'm not abandoning the project, and I learned a lot just getting that first one together and ready for publishing. Iris is going to stew for a bit while I figure out what to do with her.

Misericordia is a project that has been gestating for a few years now. It was something I was planning to do in the future but I felt like wandered post Eye-Eighty. To be sure there were external things going on in my life at the time, that contributed.

At the start of September I decided to finally sit and get Misericordia ready. It a wholly different experience to working Iris White. It felt right, some of the old elation I'd get working on Eye-Eighty came back. This was the project I was supposed to working on, I just didn't know it.

I have a good start. A lot of pieces are in place. I just need to do a few last things before launch (i.e. fidget with the details). I have a lot of old writing and sketches about it, I'll be putting some up here once things are underway. I hope it's good. I hope you like it.

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?

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.