Things are going well. Over the last 5 or so days I cranked out a page of Black Snow and 4 pages of Day Camp, so I’m on a bit of a roll. Last Wednesday was my 26 birthday. As with all my birthdays, I took the time to reflect on my life up until this point. Fun, eh? To my shock I find myself creeping towards 30, which I know is relatively young when you look at the average total length of life, but seems pretty damn old to me. Have I had a good life so far? Yes, unequivocally I’ve lived well. Things have never been perfect, but they sure could’ve been a lot worse.
I don’t have too many regrets and generally enjoy my day to day existence. So that parts all good. Am I where I wanted to be at age 26? Have I achieved my goals? Not so much. I’m not rich and famous. I’m not a Hollywood director. My drawings have not achieved anything close to mass popularity. I’ve settled into a sedentary office life that I never would have pictured myself in. I certainly never thought I’d be married with a child at this age!
What I’ve come to realize and accept is that goals are good, but must be malleable and realistic in some respects. Does that mean I’ve given up on fame and fortune? Hell no! It’s still a fine goal, just not a primary one. I won’t measure the success of my life based on it. I think my new goal is to continue doing things that make me happy. Pretty simple and attainable, yet people seem to lose site of it. I’m happy when I draw. I have fun playing video games. I like watching pro-wrestling. I love having pets. To me a great day is just hanging out with my friends and family. These are all easy to do and help bring up my quality of life.
So what does this mean to you, the loyal reader? Hopefully a continued increase in the rate at which I produce content. Perhaps I’ll finish Issue 6 soon! Maybe move on to 7 or 0! I’m pretty sure I can guaranty you’ll see a lot more of Day Camp, as it is fast and fun for me to work on, and Alex can write them very quickly. You can also look forward to continued experimentation in all my work. I’m sure you’ve noticed the stuff I’ve done in Day Camp is pretty different then what you’ve seen so far in Black Snow. Can you tell it was done by the same artist? Probably, they aren’t that different, but different enough that they already have pretty diverse styles. I think working on both will actually help me grow as an artist and push me to work harder on them as they rival for popularity.
If you’ve been following on Twitter or read Alex’s recent Post then you know we are planning to expand beyond our flagship title, Black Snow. Collectively I think we’ll still go under the name Black Snow Comics, but we’re planning on featuring some new comic strips that are not connected to the comic book. Here is an example of a preliminary mock up of our new strip, Day Camp.
So you may think, how will we be able to pull this off when we seem to have trouble delivering one title with any consistency? The answer? I don’t know. We’ll see I guess. Strips are a lot quicker and easier to produce, and as you may have noticed I plan on using a rougher, faster style than I do on Black Snow. BTW, you may see some semblance of a resurrection of the Black Snow comic strip. One thing that will help us start producing more is that I’ve asked my cousin, a Graphic Arts major, to help take over some of the marketing duties that I’ve basically been solely responsible for up until this point. Hopefully that gives me more time to draw, and maybe she’ll be able to help us grow our audience.
Rough mock up of the new Day Camp comic strip
It’s been awhile since I posted and you may be wondering why. Once again I found myself becoming disenchanted with working on the comic, so I took a break. The deadline for any publishers to respond to my submissions came and went, and I found myself forced to do some reflecting. Would I want to continue doing this even if my work never achieves any kind of tangible fame or notoriety? Would I be happy with a moderate web following and nothing else? Is it really worth sacrificing my precious little free time I have between working full time and raising my son with my wife? Not simple questions for me. As you can probably guess from the beginning of these posts my ultimate answer to all these questions was yes. Why? Because I really do love to draw and entertain, so hopefully that comes through in my work. My immediate goal? Finish Issue 6! Onward and upward my friends!
Hey, I’m inserting myself into this blog. We at Black Snow headquarters are pleased to announce that we are gonna divert attention away from this, our chosen flagship title, to branch out (greener pastures) to two comic strips, one about the adventures of some kids we barely knew in summer camp called Day Camp, and the other a buddy comedy about Middle Eastern dictators such as King Abdullah of Jordan (known to his friends as King Playstation), Bashar al-Assad of Syria (the cool guy), Hosni Mubarak (the creepy old guy), as well as that crazy rodent looking guy from Iran (I think his name is an anagram of some sort). In actual Black Snow related news, issue (as in episode, not problems!) 6 and issue (as in episode, not problems?!) 0 are being written and drawn as we type. Seriously though, King PlayStation, you can’t make that shit up.
