Well i’m still slowly chipping away at my Armageddon booty. Kagemono was something I wanted to read first but it’s hefty size scared me. With comicking and work recently I’ve not had much time to read for fun and the 80+ pages took a while to get through.

Kagemono is a horror anthology put together by Jason Franks but under the banner of horror there’s a rich and diverse group of stories. Jason mentions in his foreward how horror is much like comedy, there’s a set up and a punchline, it’s a rule I like to apply to most of my short stories in any genre. But Jason and fellow contributors really have mastered the art of that punchline. Be it in the form of a very gothic horror turned comedy with a deft turn of mood or a mildly scary story which with a reveal punches you right in the guts with it’s darkness.

Jason works with about a dozen collaborators in this effort mostly artists from around the globe interpreting his words each in completely different styles. Some work, some don’t. The most interesting contrast however is between Jason’s writing (he does the bulk of it) and James Andre’s. James contributes a story to the pool and there’s a darker edge to his writing, even with the story of a world bombarded with chocolate James uses language that makes it feel a little bit more macabre. Jason’s writing on the other hand has characters with some really interesting voices. Maybe it’s because horror isn’t my thing or my soft spot for Tarrantino but because of Jason’s bantering dialogue I think I found myself with stronger lasting memories of Jason’s stories.

There’s been a lot said about the iPad since it was announced last week, from comments on it’s functionality to the comical name that begs to be mocked. I won’t say much about it as I fear I’ll be repeating others far too much but I will say that this new tool in combination with the good old automatic sliding door means that we’ve officially entered the future. It may not be this particular iteration but rest assured that technology very much like the iPad will be increasingly the way in which we access information and entertainment to the point that it will become THE dominant way.

The second thing I’ll mention is that on a personal level I don’t have a use for it yet, that doesn’t mean it’s a dud it’s just that I might not be the platforms intended user. I already have multiple laptops and look for high end performance in my tablet technology because I use it for processor intensive work like drawing my comic. Having said that I WILL be looking at ways to optimise this comic for users who want to use the iPad. I suspect that since it allows the user to zoom in and flip through pages far more efficiently higher resolutions will be handy which makes this comickeer who works in 700mb files a happy chap.

Once again. Welcome to the Future. One to beam up.

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: