Of course you’re all avid readers of Caanan’s fanatastic Celadore over at Zuda, or were until his arc finished with page sixty in November so what I’m about to say is really superfluous…  However just in case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last year I want to quickly sing it’s praises.

Celadore began to much criticism from readers that Caanan was merely presenting a Buffy rip-off, and to those that only saw the first 8 pages that won him the comp I can see how they’d feel that way. The broad brushstrokes of many classics are eerily similar.  However in no time at all Celadore transformed into a wonderful rich and FULL world.

I think one of the successes of the original Star Wars films was the massive back story hinted at.. It’s the same reason the second trilogy, the prequels failed, it filled out too much without adding more of it’s own depth. Caanan however created a world in which each character hints at a much larger mythology.

So if it’s not a Buffy rip off what is it? Well it’s the story of a young woman (at least in appearance) who after years of fighting monsters has finally been beaten by head Vampire Christian and his soul-eater henchman who rips her soul from her body. However Celadore finds a way around even this major inconvenience by inhabiting the body of a young girl named Evelyn who was in a coma. Something the soul of Evelyn isn’t wild about.

Celadore then has to mount a counter offensive on Christian with a rag-tag band of misfits: Frankenstein, the Wolf-man, the Tooth Fairy and Sam, Evelyn’s best friend.

Man it’s fun!

Remember the Princess Bride? Never Ending Story? The Labyrinth? Well that’s the kind of fun Celadore is!

Anyway all this is way of saying as of November series 1 of Celadore has finished. Since Zuda is relatively new to the world of web nobody is quite sure how a second series gets voted on, IF it gets voted on. So Mr Zuda? If you’re listening… Can we PLEASE have a second series? how about an on-going one?

And for those who want to see what else Caanan is up to make sure you check out his wonderfully named blog

Jen adds – And the art?  Get out of here, it’s gorgeous. This guy’s on his way to comic superstardom.

Putting a book together contains a bunch of steps, most of them painfully dull. Re-formatting pages for print, doing cover art, and fixing the inevitable typos that appeared as we rushed to get a page out every week (ok the cover drawing is a bit fun).  My favourite part of the process is fixing up artwork. It’s a luxury that i’m not often afforded in a webcomic where there’s a weekly deadline and i need to move onto the next page. As we’ve worked through the pages in prep for March’s book launch Jen’s been instrumental in helping me get a bit of clarity and making suggestions as to where we can improve readability.

Below you can see an example of these improvements. The script called for Martin to deftly step out of the way of the fight after being bowled over however the web version doesn’t really make that clear. I hope that in the book it’s a lot clearer and improves the story that we’re so proud of.

Melbourne folk! Block out the 3rd of March for the launch of the last issue of The Time Being as well as a whopping FIFTEEN  other local comics. I’ll have more details closer to the date but this is comics event of the year so you don’t want to miss out.

Meanwhile here’s the final cover to issue 4

2011 was a big year for me, in March I was married, I became an uncle to a handsome boy AND a set of gorgeous twin girls and work had a restructure which saw me doing a lot less fun projects as we found our feet, and the comic was featured a cast of thousands… Throughout this hectic period I overworked myself.

In fact I’ve been taking half my annual holidays for the last few years not even aware I was doing it. There always seemed to be something going on which meant I couldn’t get away.

So towards the end of the year I began to really feel all this and in December began to have a couple of panic attacks (my first ever yay!) and feel a bit depressed, perhaps even with a capital D. I began taking Fridays off and felt thankful it coincided with Arran doing guest strips so i could even rest from the comic for a few weeks.

It’s apparently pretty common with the art community that we can have black spells, I guess going back to Van Gogh’s ear cutting incident, but I’d never really experienced something like this, I’ve always been pretty light hearted.

Then I had a couple of chats. One with Ben Michael Byrne from Kranburn fame and we discussed our art processes and what drove us and he mentioned that on his next project he was putting as much effort into each panel as he does currently for each page and how it was all about pushing himself to be better and how good it felt. The other chat was with Katie Houghton-Ward. I managed to buy an incredible piece of her art as a gift for my wife and while picking it up I watched her work, her fingers never stopping. She spoke of how quickly she got bored and how she loved being creative. You could see she needed art like a drug.

And I picked up the tablet again and began to draw, and write and discovered that even though Arran’s fantastic guest trip meant I didn’t have to draw as much as I do usually, I needed to. Drawing helped clear my mind. I wasn’t stressed about work when I was drawing, in fact I barely thought when drawing, it was all about the next line, the right composition, the right colours. My wife talks to me and is lucky to get a response. The world slips away and my emotions are all about whether THIS panel is right or this page is a success.

Towards the end of 2011 I was considering ending Sawbones. It’s almost six years of drawing and it doesn’t pay my bills and taxes my time and the business/publishing side of it bores the crap out of me but I’ve discovered Sawbones keeps me sane so 2012 is going to see me push myself even harder. It’s already started with me writing this arc but I’ll be trying even further to mess with the formula. It that means occassionally the look of the comic changes for an arc into something you don’t like I sincerely apologise but I hope that the results are a better comic. On the business side this time has also refocused me but more of that later.

Thanks to Ben and Katie for the inspiration. I’m still getting some black days but comics makes EVERYTHING better.

Also, enjoy: