Whelp it’s been few days and i’m somewhat recovered from the illness that crushed me on the weekend so I thought i’d jot down a few notes about the con experience. Firstly thanks to Baden and the guys at Jeffries printing who busted their ass getting the new book ready in time for the con, they looked great, also thanks to Tim McEwen who lugged them down from Sydney for us.

Supanova is the biggest event of the year for Comics in Melbourne, Armageddon is also a good con but last years move to put the panels in the main room where wrestling drowned out Rucka and David really tainted the con for me. In part this was because the venue Armageddon use is prohibatively expensive so they need to be extremely efficient in their use of space. Supanova however is out at the Showgrounds where there’s ample space to expand.

This year the crowd turned out to be over 10,000 people. Everyone was really nice, even the majority who as manga fans had no idea what Sawbones is. The cosplayers were out in force with countless Sailor Moons, Naruto characters and countless people dressed in a way that only be described as naughty maids. There were also a few Batman characters and a great team of Serenity crew members. Special thanks to those guys for dressing as people I knew!

Highlights were hanging out with other local creators like Paul Spencer, Paul Bedford, Jason Franks, Clin Wilson, Brendan Haladay, Luke Andrews and Dylan Horrocks. Luke and I were lucky enough to sit on a panel about with Dylan and he was so captivating Luke and I didn’t want to speak and just keep listening.

Below are some of the pics from the weekend, would you believe I totally forgot to take pictures of our booth?!

Paul Bedford, legend has it there’s never been a smiling photo of him
The shy retiring Jason Franks
Daniel Reed, the brilliant writer artist of the Crumpleton Experiments
Doug Holgate, who’s art is an inspiration for me
Legendary Colin Wilson
Folks sure seemed to enjoy playing on that Wacom technology
A look down the middle of the con floor
Yuri Lowenthal, the voice of Ben 10 was brilliant to the kids
Fear him, respect him, love him. He’s Matt Emery
GEORGE PEREZ! MARV WOLFMAN!
Dylan Horrocks, the man behind Hicksville

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: