Author: Kelci

Wow!

It’s good to see everybody on Blogger again! All you fabulous artists and writers, I missed you.

I never thought I would miss this, but MY GOSH I do!

In my opinion, Blogspot is so much better than WordPress or any other kind of website format. Especially for artists.

So much has changed in the last six months since I left this site, but I came back. Blogger is so much cleaner, so much simpler, and so much nicer to use. Plus, most of my awesome friends and inspirations, like Jeff Laclede and Brian McDonald are here, so it’s good to be with a good crowd.

I’ll be updating this space with new art, new sketches, and new info soon. So stay tuned.

You are awesome!

Oh man, so much has happened this past year. Where do I begin?

Well, firstly, I graduated from college. That was marvelous and terrifying all at once. I thought I was ready to leave the school, and honestly, on my graduation day, I thought, “NO MORE FREAKING PAPERS!” But now…

After I graduated, I went straight to work at Cedar Point for caricatures. I did that all summer and even up through October. I thought I would stay with the caricature company and work with them in various parks after the season. But I realized I wasn’t exactly happy there: true, I got to draw everyday, and there was some flexibility with being myself more so than any other job I worked. However, it wasn’t as rewarding as it used to be. And when I tried to change the situation, it just got worse. Applying for promotion, changing work stations, it didn’t matter, because it didn’t help. Customers became ruder and ruder, the weather became worse and worse, things within the caricatures department and other departments fell apart. Then in September and October, our hours were cut when the manager promised huge benefits and didn’t deliver. So I left, and I don’t plan on going back.

I moved back home and picked up two part-time jobs: one working at Subway and the other working at customer service in the mall. And I thought vacationers at Cedar Point had entitlement issues…they still do. It’s a universal constant: people feel entitled to things they probably don’t deserve, and/or people are too stubborn to understand the other person’s point of view and want things done THEIR way.

But I appreciate being here: I get time to make art, MY art. Not caricatures, not anything else. Just my comics and my character designs and paintings. Things are getting better. I know I can’t stay here forever, and next year, I want to make strides to move forward.

That’s all we can do is keep moving forward. When things turn to shit or plans go awry, pick yourself up and keep moving. Something will come along, even if it’s two months or two years or whatever later.

AND DON’T DO THIS ALONE. Oh sweet zombie Jesus don’t do this alone. Keep talking to your friends and your family. Make new friends. If nothing else, they’ll listen to your ramblings about how you weren’t expecting this crap. Hopefully, though, if you have awesome friends and family like I do, they’ll give you ideas and suggestions that will help you keep moving. It’s thanks to Kia, my little sister, that I became inspired to revise (very deeply, mind you) a graphic novel I wrote a rough draft for this past July. I’m even planning to revise another graphic novel I scripted last year. With any luck I’ll get that one pitch-ready by the end of March.

So this next year, I want to, hope to, and plan to keep making art, get work ready for sale for conventions (because I’m planning on attending three of them next year), revise my graphic novels, and get one of them ready to pitch to publishers. Whether I move to a new town, get a new boyfriend, travel…well, I’ll leave that up to chance. My only big travel destinations this next year are Bowling Green, Columbus, and Sandusky, OH, and New York City for New York Comic Con.

And on a more tragic note, this will be my last post here on Blogger. I’m moving my blog over to Tumblr.

This is something I’ve been thinking of off and on for the last six months. This time, though, I’m making it official. I’m moving the blog to Tumblr. Why? Because I know FAR more artists on Tumblr than on Blogger, sharing posts on Tumblr is much easier, the layouts are simpler and easier to handle, and really, Tumblr is better suited for artists because it’s so visually simple, so it puts more focus on the actual posts you make than on its layouts.

Also, it’s easier and faster to update, and it’s more fun.

You are awesome for sticking with me this long. I hope we can stick together even as I move to a new blog. It’ll be at kelcidcrawford.tumblr.com

I’ll stick around on blogger still. It’ll be a while before I can convince myself to delete this. And besides, if you have comments to leave behind, I want to read those.

Thank you. Really, thank you. And good luck to you.

Howdy! There’s a couple of things I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks that I’m now ready to share with you.

First, a secret project is now no longer secret: my portfolio website is now officially launched. This was designed by Mike Chizmar, a guy I drew a caricature for at the Black Swamp Arts Festival. We’ve been working together on this for a little over 3 months now, and it’s officially finished! You can now see all my most recent art, comics, and caricatures over at www.kelcidcrawford.com. Check it out and let me know what you think! I think this was Mike’s first website and I’m glad I could help him get a web design portfolio started.

Second, I’ve been drawing a new poster. The intent was to have it ready to sell as prints for Christmas, but that is just not happening. The goal this time is to have it finished by New Years at the latest, and get it to the printers before the end of the first week of January. In the meantime, you can see the finished sketch of it here, before I add color to it:

On the easel.

Edited in GIMP.

Now I’m going back to making Christmas art for friends and family, because I have A LOT of it to make.

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!

Whoo! It’s been a while since I wrote to you. Sorry about that. But I’ve been keeping busy:

Firstly, I’ve been painting a Christmas present commissioned by my grandparents, which so far looks a little like this:

It’s still a work in progress, though.

WARNING: This picture and all the rest on this particular post are not going to be the best: since my computer’s broken, I can’t use my scanner, so I have to resort to using my camera phone. It’s a good camera, but the pictures aren’t as sharp as they could be. Sorry about that.

Anyway, my goal is to get the painting done by the end of this week. I think it’s do-able, since all that’s left is details and sharpening up the edges.

I’ve also been working as a studio assistant with one of my old professors from my college. No pictures of that, though, because it’s not too terribly exciting: mostly tracing symbols onto larger sheets of paper for him to paint over later. Getting the pictures trace-ready, though, had been a trouble and a half, but now I can finally get to work on it.

There’s also a drawing I’ve been working on for Jessie and Ashley, two of my college buddies. I haven’t been making a lot of progress on it yet, because I have no reference images for the male character, but I can give you a sneak peak of the picture anyway:

The poster I’ve been planning is finally getting into the concept stages!

You probably can’t see the Moleskin sketch pages very well. Sorry! I tend to draw pretty lightly, mostly out of habit of inking on top of said pencil marks with pens and markers.

With this poster, I’m having a hard time composing it. Thankfully, Framed Ink by Marcos Mateau has been giving me some inspiration and ideas. If you haven’t read that book, it’s practically required reading for anybody who wants to draw comics or storyboards for animation. It’s that good.

I’m putting the “Prologues” compilation on hold for now, until I get some of these projects out of the way.

But don’t think I’ve only been drawing commissioned work! I’ve also been drawing my fair share of character designs. It’s not just for portfolio building, either. I’m drawing them to have references for drawing the characters later on in the projects they’re in.

For The Legend of Jamie Roberts, I got this gentleman done:

He won’t make an appearance until a little after Act 1, but I wanted to flesh him out or else my brain would forget what he looks like.

I also drew this young man for the same comic:

His sheet isn’t finished yet: there’s still the rear-view to ink in, some more faces to draw, and colors to pick. Daniel WILL be appearing in the comic during Act 1, but probably not until chapter 5 or so.

I even drew a character for another project entirely! Her name is Galileya:

This particular reference sheet had been in the works for entirely too long. I’m glad I got her done. I won’t be getting to her story until much, much later, but I wanted to draw her up before she slipped from my mind.

Because of the enormity of projects I have going on and deadlines coming up soon, I unfortunately cannot take commissions at this time. Once I get these projects cleared, I’ll have time to, but that probably won’t happen until Christmas or sometime after. It pains me to say that, though, because I was hoping to have some time to make Christmas presents.

Speaking of holidays, how was your Thanksgiving? Mine was fabulous and relaxing, and I got to see the Macy’s Parade twice (the man who thought to show it a second time after the morning broadcast was a genius). The only thing I don’t like is that this year, Black Friday started THURSDAY NIGHT in many places.

Just……NO. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time where you hang out with your friends and family and you give thanks for what you have. Black Friday needs to GET THE F— OFF MY PROPERTY and spread its propaganda elsewhere.

Sorry. I’m a little extra bitter because I worked at Subway Black Friday morning. NEVER AGAIN.

Speaking of work, I’m going back to work on the painting and drawings I’ve got left.

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome, and I’ll see you again soon!

P.S. There are other exciting developments in the works, too, such as an official release of my portfolio website (that’s not this blog), and a re-release of The Legend of Jamie Roberts on its own site instead of SmackJeeves! Also, expect for there to be BIG layout changes on this blog soon.

I’m very sad about this.

My Toshiba, which I got in May as a graduation gift, for some bizarre reason, needs to go to the manufacturer to get a new hard drive because it won’t work otherwise. I’m a little angry more out of principle of the matter. I can live without a computer (smart phones and bumming mom’s computer makes things a little easier), but really, it’s this: a computer should not break after 6 months of use. All because Toshiba sent a message saying, “We have an update for the hardware! You’ll need to restart your computer for it to take effect!” Then the update makes the “Starting Windows” screen freeze and the hard drive stop spinning. Toshiba, what the hell?

Sadly, this means that I’ll have to hold off on updating The Legend of Jamie Roberts. I HATE to do that because I just released it last week! But my scanner doesn’t like the computer I’m using now, and I didn’t get back-ups of the pages just in case something like this happened. So I have to put the comic on hiatus.

To make up for that, I’m going to keep working on pages for it, so that when it’s back up online, I can update it twice a week instead of just once a week. I’m also going to make some bonus art for the comic, in the form of concept sketches and sneak peeks. That way there will be more eye-candy for you once the comic is back.

Off-topic:

I’m starting a poster! With any luck it will be done before the end of the month, so you can order it in time for Christmas! It’ll be on sale at my Storenvy, but I’ll see if there’s a way I can set up pre-orders for it so you can order one before I release it to the world. Also, expect to see concept sketches for the poster over at the Facebook page. Just don’t be surprised if the picture quality is a little less than expected, because I’ll be using the camera on my phone (again, scanner issues).

With any luck, I’ll be updating this blog more often, too! I just really like to use this as like a public journal. It seems more natural to me than using it as like a marketing tool to persuade people to buy stuff or con somebody into doing something, like what I see a lot of other blogs do. I’m still getting used to blogging, though, so we’ll see what happens later.

I’ll see you again soon, with any luck!