Brief Updates

So you may be wonder “What have you been up too lately Michael?”  Well sir (and madam, like any girls read this), I’ll tell you.  Not drawing, though we have many more Day Camps waiting in the queue.  After I finished “Miles” I saw we were missing an opportunity for a couple more good ones if I just moved on to the next one as written.  I pointed it out to Alex and he agreed, but has yet to write these new ones.  I haven’t pressed the issue too much as I’ve been very busy with other things, and didn’t mind a little break.

What other things?  Work, for one.  Work has become very busy, and has started taking up my time after hours when I get home.  Hopefully this is something that won’t continue too long, as it isn’t the most fun way to spend a weekend completing things you just can’t find time for in the office.  Side jobs have also continued to come my way, and being the hard working man that I am I never turn it down.  What can I say, I’ve got a strong work ethic and I like money.  You’ve got to work hard to prosper in these depressing economic times.

I haven’t forgotten Black Snow, though.  As always I’ve worked valiantly to promote both comics all over the net, adding them to directories and featuring them on more websites like Drunk Duck.  I tried to get them on Comic Genesis again, but that site just seems broken and flawed, so I won’t waste anymore effort with them.  I also sent out another small round of submissions to publishers, including Day Camp in the proposal this time.  While doing this I realized that I had already approached many of them back in May, but it never hurts to try again and be persistent.  I have no expectations of even getting a reply from any of them at this point, so part of me began to question the futility of my actions, and I just stopped about halfway through my list.  I’m sure I’ll get back to it soon, but I really just don’t feel like it now.  You hear all these stories about guys like Steven King getting rejected 30 times before someone picked up Carrie and he went on to become the world’s most prolific and published writer, but honestly those stories kind of give the impression of fairy tales created to inspire strong morals and endurance at this point in my life.  Oh well, perhaps my time to shine will come some day.  I’m sure many of you have gone through similar situations where you don’t quite know how to achieve your aspirations and your work is rejected by the authorities in that field.  If so, tell me about your experiences and if you ever overcame them.

What else have I been doing?  Well, I saw Avatar with my cousin, so that took up about 5 days there.  I kid of course, but it was long.  Why does every movie need to run 2 1/2 hours now?  If you are going to make them so long please bring back the intermission, as I have to go to the bathroom every time.  The sodas they sell are huge, how can they not foresee that my bladder will be full in that lengthy time span?  Anyway, the movie was good.  I didn’t have any real expectations and wasn’t eagerly anticipating it like so many nerds on the net seemed to be.  It was pretty straight forward, nothing I couldn’t tell from the lengthy previews, but it was a good story none the less.  The effects were really good and the way they created this alien environment was pretty amazing.  In a lot of ways I’d compare it to District 9, which I thought was an awesome movie.  If you’ve seen either what did you think?

Lastly, in a fairly surprising move I woke up the other morning with a children’s book in my head.  This is always something I thought would be fun but never really tried.  I’ve been asked to do concept art for other people’s children books in the past, and it never really went anywhere.  In my opinion those stories weren’t that good anyway.  I’m very excited for this project though, as it will be done entirely by me.  A few people have been saying I should try writing and drawing something myself, including Alex, so now I am.  I feel that I could easily take over writing Black Snow or Day Camp, as they are both strong and established in my mind and I know I’m a decent writer.  My problem has always been coming up with the initial idea and fleshing it out until it reaches that established point.  Not this time.  I’ve got the outline done and I’m working on the text for each page.  I don’t know what inspired this story, but it just came to me like a bolt of lightning and I had to jot it all down.  I’ll reveal more about it in the near future as work progresses, but for now I’ll just say that it stars a new duck character that I anticipate having multiple adventures in books.