Author: Kelci

Indeed, I spent most of my day decorating my walls, as these super grainy phone pictures shall prove:

I believe a good desk space should have lots of posters around it to inspire you and pin things onto it to keep you interested.

However, I DID also apply for work at the Mall AND got the number of the special services coordinator of the mall: turns out there used to be a guy who drew caricatures there on the weekends, during the holidays, but he hadn’t drawn there for a few years. I believe it’s my time to step in and do that service. :3

I still have to call the guy tomorrow and see what happens.

Also sent emails to peeps. It’s important to follow-up with the pros that you talk to, and this past year I was REALLY bad at that! I want to improve and follow-up IMMEDIATELY from now on.

Cooking dinner now: fried chicken and a baked potato. After that I’ll start drawing the covers for the webcomic and the anthology I’m planning out. No rest for the comic artist.

On the other hand, I hope to skype with some friends this Friday. I’ll start asking around. :3

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome, and I will post again tomorrow!

Man I haven’t updated this blog for a while. But I’ve been up to a lot of projects.

Page 2, on my easel’s scratchboard.

…and Auxaton at the bottom, just for you.

So this evening I had been reading entrepreneurial material and watching Ramit Sethi, one of my personal favorite money people, talk about creative entrepreneurship and ideas and clients and such. And I came across this article on About.com talking about manga-artists in North America, and how thoroughly screwed the industry is.

Simple fact of the matter is, unlike in Japan, the United States or even Canada (as far as I’m aware) have no magazines for aspiring comic artists to submit their short comics to. People who want to get their first work published don’t have anyone to send work to aside from talent searches, and the talent searches are often looking for a specific look. I know Yen Press and Top Cow are both running talent searches right now, but they both cater to exceptionally different art styles.

But as of yet, here in the States, there’s no real way for an aspiring comic artist to get their first work published. I was exceptionally lucky when I got my first story published in IF-X, but IF-X isn’t going to last long: they stayed local to Michigan and Ohio, and they’re down to the last two issues or so before the line is retired completely.

So my brain crack idea was this: what if there was a magazine, on closer to a national scope, that gave comic artists a place to publish their short stories?

There were similar ideas with the Flight anthologies, and that’s admirable, but they kept themselves to a particular group of friends. I would want to reach out to all aspiring comic artists regardless of artistic style: manga or superhero, noir or cartoon, or something else entirely. It would be professional and professional-looking.

But I got a lot of questions in mind about this idea, like…

Who will the magazine be marketed to? The consumers? Which consumers? Or do you market to editors? Or other comic makers?

And how would you pay for printing? Selling ad space in the magazine can be one way, but what other ways can be added to that?

Those are the ideas and questions I came up with tonight. What are some of your ideas, questions, concerns, etc? Let’s talk about it. :D

Boy do I feel bad for not updating sooner.

I have a legitimate excuse, though: I’ve been working on my webcomic.

Here is the first page before blacks and tones were added.

And here it is after…so far.

I’m still trying to figure out the lower two panels, and some adjustments have been made to the top panel since I took this photo. Lettering for this page will be added digitally. There are other technical things I could talk about, but I’ll leave those out for now.

And this comic WILL be hosted on SmackJeeves! I decided to go with SmackJeeves because they have an awesome community of creators and readers and the comics that are on there are fabulous. I wanted to help contribute to their awesomeness.

I’ve also been working on some other projects, too: an old professor of mine is commissioning me to be his assistant for the studio, and I’m painting a mural for my grandparents for Christmas. I want to get started on a commission for some friends of mine, but I have yet to see reference images from one of them. Le grrrrr.

As for the Storenvy: I have taken photos of some new merchandise, but the camera’s being a douche and won’t turn on half the time. Once technical difficulties have been solved, new products will be posted for sale.

That’s all for now. Don’t Forget to Be Awesome, and I will see you soon!

So I was going to make a post about moving back home and building a new shelf because I have entirely too much shit and talking about job hunting and how much easier it is to do here in the south of Ohio than it is in the north (I still don’t know why this is)…but I don’t feel like doing any of that.

Instead, I’m going to overburden you with the tyranny of links.

First, there’s ChrisOatley.com. If you are an aspiring concept artist or animator, you owe it to yourself to check this guy out, because that’s all he talks about. A lot of what he writes is encouragement for artists, but he does have some actually useful videos and digital painting tutorials. I think the more important part to his practice, though, is not so much the “How do you use these tools”, but the “why.” Very thoughtful.

There’s also The Paper Wings Podcast. If you want to make comics (LIKE I DO) or do some other kind of artistic storytelling, you NEED to subscribe to these guys. Chris Oatley is one of the co-hosts, but the other is Lora Innes, creator of the fabulously historical webcomic The Dreamer. The Paper Wings Podcast covers everything from how to actually make money (legitimately) from your webcomic, to gathering an inner circle of supporters and lots of other topics that are really freaking useful.

A fabulous webcomic you should read is It’s A Dead Man’s Party. Not only is the artistic style freaking gorgeous (especially as it goes on), but it’s one of the few webcomics I have found that actually has a kind of mythology incorporated into it, by which I mean it feels like what you’re reading are myths. Each chapter is a story of its own, and follows various characters’ lives that traverse through Purgatory. READ IT.

MangaMagazine.net is a new discovery (for me), and it has a lot of, at least artistically, good manga from independent creators. I’ve only read one story so far, Hell Kitchen, so I can’t attest to the quality of the rest of the comics. What made this stand out to me, though, was that the website touts a strong community and strong creator support, such as being featured on the main page and getting paid via advertising. I don’t know if this works, which is why I’m hesitant to join in this community, though it sounds promising.

And Fancy Owl’s store. Go there. Now. There is ALL THE BEAUTIFUL DIGITAL PAINTINGS. And they’re all ladies. Support them.

And last link to share, I opened a Storenvy store of my own, called We’re Magical Like That. I say “we” in the title because 1) everybody’s magical in some say, 2) my work and characters are mostly fantasy based, so there’s a lot of magic (dur), and 3) just in case any friends would like to share retail space with me, so it won’t be a one-woman operation anymore. So far I have only one thing listed for sale, and that is my “Ghost” mini-comic. For $1. I’ll be posting more things for sale soon, like the IF-X comic and some old prints I need to clear out of my inventory.

So there you go! Check those out, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome, and I will see you all tomorrow!