I finished page 24 last night, I'm officially more than halfway done. Making this comic has become part of my everyday routine and though I don't feel oppressed, I need to keep reminding my brain to get into creative mode when I sit to draw, not work mode.
Another interesting thing about having the comic on my mind a lot is that I find my awareness of how to draw and convey things is improving, not so much due to practice but because of constantly replaying 24 pages worth of artistic choices in my head all day long. I see simple, deceptively simple solutions to a lot of errors I've made in these pages and I kinda look forward to when I'm done with the other 20 and I can go back and retouch, get everything up to my current vision. The end result will be something to be proud of, I hope, condensed vision and also hopefully, a degree of pathos.
When this is done I'll have to think about what more I can do with this blog. I'm torn between strangely disparate options. Either I let the blog mostly rest and update very sporadically with whatever minor (or major?) comic-related pieces I do in the future, or I take the opposite approach and update every single day with creative results on all the fields I maintain an interest in: comics, music, pixel art, videogames, philosophy & science. I wonder which of the two approaches I'll find myself committing to, because I am an extreme person and the middle road of 'post once a week with whatever, meh' will not work for me.
I want to engage in dialogue about a wider scope of items than I am currently, with this blog. As I am in the middle of making a long comic, I don't have time to worry about this too much yet, but when it's done, I'll have to tackle this and hopefully you readers will help me make it into something with a wider focus but not diluted essence. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I do a lot of posting on various forums and blogs about a lot of things, and I put a lot of myself into them. I'd rather have all my thoughts collected here because - besides the obvious benefit of condensed retrospection - I enjoy, how to put it? I'd prefer not being a guest at someone else's house, when it comes to exclaiming opinions in the lengths I usually do. I am an explainer by nature, brevity eludes me, I find facetious one-liners to belong with internet crowds completely outside of my scope and I feel the need to build into even the simplest point I'm trying to make, a number of failsafes and preemptions towards what I feel are easy ways to be construed. So I often write and write and write and I break comment limits on other blogs and I always get this uneasy feeling that this is actually an *abuse* of their comment space, that this is not what is supposed to be going on there, that it's not actually promoting a dialogue to post a novel in the comments, even if I can't help myself but write it every time.
So I want to pull all my writing somehow in a single place, so I am not a guest, so there is no abuse of a function and so I do not feel unwelcome. I don't know how well the diverse amount of stuff I'm into would cohere on the same blog but hey, there'll always be 'sorting by tag' if you've got absolutely no interest in pixel art, or video games, or heavy metal, or biodeterminism or whatever. However I hold this hope that in the end if someone is interested in my comics, they're not just 'interested in my comics'.
Anyway, I'll remember to return to this issue the months from now it will take to finish the comic (I am aiming for March the latest for absolutely everything to be finished and printed).
This is I think, blog post number 98. The blog has been up and running for 13 months. I forgot about the one year flip, so let's pretend hitting blog post 100 is more important. 100 posts in 400 days, 1 post per 4 days average, many comics, myriad thoughts, countless words. Keep reading...
-Helm
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8 comments:
The 'post everything every day' option appeals to me the most of the two. It would fit with how much I visit this site...
I really like hearing people's thoughts on all of "music, pixel art, videogames, philosophy & science", so I hope you pick the second option :)
The small things - seeing stephan smile, the shocking interruptions (the car crash scenes planted between panels)-, *great* stuff helm. I've been meaning to comment for quite a time but I always procrastinate and eventually forget about it. This blog is a small pleasure in my weekly routine, and I think that long format suits you extremely well, bravo!
On the explanatory nature, I personally enjoy it more when you take things with a grain of salt, or with a bit more humour - when people appear too confident, I tend to get sceptical. All these are random thoughts since procrastination is about to kick in so I have to be coherent while I still can!
The time will come and I'll say it again, but your concentration and quality control are small shining beacons on this here thing called Internet, so I hope you finally settle on the "write-too-often" solution for this blog.
Thank you for your posts.
panpap: I used to get a bit skeptical when speakers seem to be completely certain about what they're talking about, but if you'd take a general admittance, I never feel certain about anything I say, I realize it's all just opinions that might change and do not have space in my heart for objective truth. Realizing this about myself as much as about others has helped a lot in letting go of this skepticism. When someone's talking, they're trying to convince themselves of what they're saying just as much as others, and when this tender aspect is brought to light, it has helped me at least to take (even extremely annoying and/or bigoted) opinions more easily.
The only reason I write in a straightforward (and somewhat terse, sometimes) manner is because I no longer have the time to preface any opinion I might endorse that particular day with 'um, it's just my opinion' and other ameliorations. That stuff goes without saying, and when it seems to *not* go without saying for some reader, it's their issue, not mine. If they're still struggling with issues of epistemology and objectivity then they should rightly suffer until they come to some useful conclusion. I won't be changing for them, the world won't be changing for them. Nothing makes sense and nobody is right and people should equip themselves to endure this.
Constant second-guessing when writing makes communication even more difficult. Of course nothing I say is truth but that doesn't mean I should be obsessing over this issue every time I feel like saying something anymore. Everybody's responsible for what they are convinced of.
More straightforward explanatory forms I find encourage dialogue more than a stream of muttered half-thoughts that may or may not hold me at a more secure position against skepticism.
Do such thick, protuding roots actually grow like that on buildings at greece? that and the way the panels arent nearly encased in rectangles sort of makes me feel like the in-comic world is going mad...the street light felt like a car crash at first sight! it actually scares me more than big fangs and claws probably would
"Do such thick, protuding roots actually grow like that on buildings at greece?"
Of course not, nor do they anywhere else.
To the rest of your comment: yes, yes.
Τυχαία άλλαξε η Μαίρη; Δεν ήταν έτσι στις προηγούμενες σελίδες και το λέω με την πιο ρηχή και οπτική έννοια. Κι επειδή δίνεις λεπτομέρεια στα πάντα ήθελα να το ρωτήσω.
Είναι όνειρο το ιντερλούδιο. Γιατί ακριβώς την ονειρεύεται ο Στέφανος με άλλο κούρεμα (πέραν του ότι το όνειρο είναι τοποθετημένο "στο μέλλον") και μαύρα μαλλιά, όπως και 'πιο όμορφη' ίσως, θα εξηγηθεί αργότερα. Δηλαδή, θα εξηγηθεί σε όρους dreamlogic.
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