Navel gazing time.

I'm thinking I'm overthinking my various projects. Specifically my tri-panel comic / pixelart dealio.

It's got a lot of promise, but I think I need to backburner it and let it stew for a while.

Maybe just draw something. I want a way to make stories fast and get them out widely, before refining them and producing them higher quality. The sprite comic is designed to that purpose. But... it feels like there are too many moving parts, and none of them are moving in the same direction.

No biggie.

Building out a Series Bible. Here's a quick doodle of Princess Pluot for said book. I have a couple of notions. Right now, I keep a deck of blank poker cards on my person at all times so I can take notes and make doodles. But in the past I've considered making a 5x8 black and white KDP book specifically designed to serve as a month's journal.

So... for 30 odd years I've been starting projects and not finishing them.

For six months I've been cranking out a new product every other month.

Here's how, along with an assessment of the process. There are two halves to my newfound productivity.

First half: I only undertake projects that I estimate will take me about a month.

Second: a Faustian bargain with my internal flake.

I have three or four different points I think worth making, here.

https://twitter.com/RawleNyanziFTL/status/1172822024768696321

1
Once upon a time, men read pulps as much as women read romance. While we have shifted to a lower literacy culture since then, many contend masculine literacy was attacked rather than organically lost, and the factors that made it feasible are still present.

I'm going to tell you the story of Re-Tail, H/T to @dicrowmatic and @jjgiorgis for bringing it up.

Last year, about Octoberish, I worked a retail job and had been free of depression for the first four months in twenty years. I began to re-evaluate my life and make plans. As a child, I wanted to be an animator. I told my parents this, but didn't know the word for animator and said "cartoonist" since I figured that's who made cartoons.

So they got me books on cartooning, biographies of cartoonists, pens and paper...

Hypothesis: If you want to succeed as an artist financially, you need to do two things:

1) Find a way to lock creativity and consistency in the same room.

2) Get in contact with a thousand people who love your stuff enough to send you money. 1, the marriage of discipline and spontaneity, is the source of the biggest ongoing debate in art circles. @BrianNiemeier occasionally advocates working like a pulp author to achieve this. I defer to his advice for now, though I have thoughts of my own.

I have finished Alphabeasts. That means I am between projects. An exciting time, but it's time for me to pick one and go all in on it.

Also, use my book to teach your kid the Alphabet.

Now it's thinking out loud on Twitter time!

https://twitter.com/logosimian/status/1162439036373536768

There are easily a dozen cool things I want to make, all of them worthy. The trouble is, which to do next.

Once I make a commitment to one, I don't stop, even if it turns out to be suboptimal. An artistic spirit is also often a flaky spirit, and so this is how it has to be.

It is my sacred duty each morning to remind everyone that Everything is better with swords. And @RawleNyanziFTL just made a cartoon with at least one sword in it.

That makes this a felicitous opportunity to unpack my thoughts about it.

rawlenyanzi.com/most-important… I like the brawler perspective. It gives you some of the advantages of both top-down and sidescroller perspectives. If I make my own, I'm likely to steal that.