4 Days

I WILL, get my latest project up, which spontaneously just occured to me to do in a moment of serendipity - largely prompted by something Tim Sale said in his interview with the fantabulous (I can't think of another word to describe him) Bobby Chiu.

It is paraphrased here:

"They say every comic artist has 200 bad pages in him before he produces his first good page... the exact number may vary but its pretty much true. And that either defeats you or you say 'Well I better get to work.'..."

As I said paraphrased so I'm not sure of the masculine personal pronoun usage. Anyway get over it.

I've been largely arrested from starting many a comic project because I just don't have 'throw away ideas' - that is I want to do a project like 'Wish' which is hugely important to me, so I want to do it right... thus I spend most of my time banging my head trying to figure out the storyline whilst studying anatomy and drawing in perspective and shit. I was also reconciled to the fact that I'd probably do a redraw. In 'fowp' (which I did regard as a throwaway idea) if you read through the book (my first 100 bad pages) you can see how steep my learning curve was, my last 10 pages are vastly superior to my first 10 pages (if still tremendously shit).

I don't want that for wish, so I just figured I'd draw it through once, then set those aside and draw it through again. Wish by the way is looking more and more like a 140-160 page epic. I figure I just need to let it be as long as it needs to be.

So anyway, before starting Wish I've been looking for other ideas for comics and could never come up with an idea I didn't want to do 'right'.

Which this sounds bad, getting friends to write comics for me so I don't care enough that I can do a shit job (hopefully learn something) and 'throw them away'.

Well no, I may not be over the steep part of my learning curve but Bobby Chiu also interviewed popular charicature artist Jason Seigler, who illustrates well the professional attitude:

"It doesn't matter if it's a $300 commission or a $3000 commission I'm going to paint it with the same mindset."

Again paraphrased, but basically for me it means, if my friends write a comic strip I'm going to treat it with the same ambition/professionalism/intensity as it was my own 'precious baby' to produce something cool from what they give me.

The first person I asked to contribute for '12 moments' turned around a comic script the next day. Within 4 days I had done the pencils and inking, and not as a rush job. I actually thought about it, bought the right pencils for it and attacked it as if it was my own.

I think it worked out well, I just have to tweak it slightly, (plus learn how to use Wordpress + Comic Press) before you can see it but it proves to me I can A) do a professional job (if not have the professional abilities) and B) do so quickly.

So keep posted, but it is amazing how quickly things can be achieved when you realise you need to get to work.