L7

I received my letter of confirmation letting me know my booth number at the San Diego Comic Con. L7. Check it out.

I am starting to plan my trip to San Diego. I've got to figure out where I'm staying and how I'm getting there and all that. I think I'd like to drive so I can carry a bunch of comics. Giving away free stuff is the best way to get people to come to your booth. I've got a ton of old Xiola comics I might give away, while I may sell my Wanderings book for $1 a pop. That's about how much they cost to print so I'd almost break even on them. I don't think I'm going to get together a preview edition of my new Xiola book ready in time, but there is info about it in the back of Wanderings. I may print up fliers or something to hand out as well.

Convention people need free stuff handed to them or they wander away looking for Vampirella costumed teenagers and Princess Leia in slave outfit girls. They've got short attention spans.

I've got a storyboard gig I've got to do tonight and tomorrow, so I won't be back to Xiola production for a few days.

Digital Test

I didn't end up being able to do any artwork on my camping trip. So now it's back to Xiola production.

I've always planned to do Xiola as a waterclolored book, but I did do one test of computer coloring. It didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked. I understand watercolor so much more than photoshop. Even without the UNDO key, I feel more free with traditional medium. And I love seeing an actual piece of art as a finished product. I'm an old fogey that way.

Here's my digital test of one of Oshiro's messengers being killed outside the Sidian walls. I never really focused on the background, but the rider and mount came out ok. The mount is a six legged tanir, or "sticky mule." They are smaller than horses, but sturdy and can travel well over uneven ground. I've still got to do a final design check, but they mostly will look something like this.

Inspiration

Inspiration is important to creation. In fact, it's pretty darn necessary. Sometimes I don't feel inspired to work on anything related to my comic. At those times, I just work on something else. Anything that comes to mind. I love random thought art. Stream of consciousness stuff. It's therapeutic. A guy at my work, Jess Vickery, is a master at stream of consciusness art. Every day he's got a new piece of paper sitting at his desk with tons of little drawings of weird characters and strange imagery. Great stuff. Reminds me of Shel Silverstein art.

I am going to go camping tomorrow with some friends and I'll be bringing my sketchbook along for some random art fun. I'll be taking a break from production and just being creative for cretivity's sake. If I do anything interesting I'll post it on Sunday.

Slow Progress

I sent in my BOE form to The San Diego Con to secure my spot along with my check for the booth. I'll be sharing the booth with my friend Josh Gorchov who's working on an illustrated book. They only gave us two exhibitor badges. When I used to do the comic con back in the day we had four of us in the company and we each got badges. I was going to see if my little brother Jordan wanted to join us at the con to sell some prints of his work. He's an illustrator of his own right. Check out his work at http://www.jordandomont.com/ But the con is already mostly sold out, so I'm going to have to ask for an extra badge for him and possibly one for Fred Aquino, another of my comic book compatriots. Check out Fred's blog at http://sketchbookofdoom.blogspot.com/

I've been super slow on my comic book production. I've been super tired lately. I think I work best under tight deadlines, and so I'm just postponing my work to make my deadline seem impossible, then I'll crank it into high gear.

Translating from story form to comic book layout doesn't work so well. I keep finding that my dialog is too wordy to fit in the panels, so I'm ripping out anything unnecessary. Also, I'd guesstimated on how many pages I was going to have. Now that I've settled on 24 I'm finding that there are more places I should trim the actions. If I can add two ideas into one and make it play better the one time, I can conserve on pages so I can spread out a few times. I've been cramming a ton of info on each page and I'd like to have a few pages of big panels, especially when you first meet the beasts.

Here's a few of the Sidian councilmen. I like the idea that they've got big tattoos that go along their arms and face, and their fingers are painted black. They'll each be dressed differently, but all have similar tattoos.