Con Report -- GeekGirlCon

Well, the Con was a blast, as they always are, because hanging out with my little sister and actually being able to speak to people without panicking too badly.  I drew a couple of things, gave away a billion little sketchcards, and sold a few things.

I spent the few days before the con madly printing things. I made business cards, and sketchcards, and, first and foremost, printed copies of Spilled Wine and the roughbook for chapter one of Basic Training. And, in printing the roughbooks, I realized something about the cover that means I definitely have to redraw it in the Watercolours (That's okay, I had been planning to anyway, because the cover is awful...). Namely, that one of the characters is going invisible.

And then people bought them. Two different people bought a copy of Spilled Wine, one of whom also got a copy of Basic Training. Another person traded me for both. One person who stood and read the entirety of Spilled Wine looked up with awe and said she hopes I get published. I count this con as a success, regardless of the fact that I made a grand total of $25.

On the first day, I dressed as a member of the Imperial Leadership Core, recently graduated from the Academe. This means I was wearing pretty much exactly what Killroy Kestrel is wearing in Spilled Wine. It's green and black. On the second day, I dressed as Gary, who is both my Default Con Costume, and a character from yet another thing I'm working on, with the Little Sis I go to Cons with (Who is also my editor, etc. for Spiader Webs ). This con, I did not get a "nice rack" comment. That was nice. Plenty of people liked the antlers and wanted to know how I held them on (String!).

Spiader Webs seems to have at least a minimal following. About five people see the page every day, which is awesome.

Before Con, I took five copies of Spilled Wine to my local comic shop. I have to go in there and buy more comics check see if any copies of that have sold. The traffic for the website is confusing and exhilarating (18 people looked at the website today. I have no idea why... ).

Actually, all four of the comics that I have on the web currently are getting at least minimal attention at the moment....

This is scary.

I need to stop making new things...

Cyclical Bordom.

I'll admit it. I get bored with the stories I write. I'll be going along fine for months, and then BAM I'm bored. Time for something fresh.

This is why I've constantly got six projects running at once. That way, when the boredom hits, I can always claim productivity. I never have to sit and stare at the wall for weeks. Whether because I've been working on (X) for six months straight and need a change, or because I've hit a brick wall in (X), or because the characters in (X) have all decided to go on vacation and will be back in a few months/weeks/years, I always have SOMETHING I can be working on, even if I can't (X). I can (Y). Or (T). Or (K).

Mind you, sometimes I end up staring at the wall for weeks anyway, but that is usually something entirely different. But this is not a post about my clinical depression. This is a post about BOREDOM.

And damn does it sometimes chose the exact wrong time to hit.

Like the day after I tape seven pages of inking to be done onto my drafting board, only to realize that I'm just not motivated to work on Spiader Webs AT ALL.... Right, Spiader Webs, which I had finished the first volume of?  I had thought I was done, until I realized that there was one chapter left until a dramatic and somewhat lengthy perspective shift, and that one chapter was only sixteen pages long. So I got the pencils slammed out, and taped the pencils to my drafting table and got a couple of pages inked, and then BAM, BORED.

Which is awkward considering I'm inking the last sixteen pages before it can go to print, and need to be a responsible adult with regards to deadlines and dates and things.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I've scanned, lettered, and posted to a site I can share with editors the roughs and completed pages for five chapters of something else entirely, and gotten four new pages written, roughed, and spliced into the first chapter of that... The New Chameleon Story is making a little more sense than it did before, thanks to a few rounds of reading and editing, and I'm nearly done with the roughs for chapter six. The first page is posted to my DeviantArt, and I'm about as engrossed in that storyline as I have been in Spiader Webs and others in the past. My productivity, even if it is not on Spiader Webs, has not been halted. Had I not taken these couple of weeks to work on editing, what is shaping up to be a coherent storyline would be... frustratingly less so.

And now, with a little work on that one out of the way, I feel like the boredom with Spiader Webs is not so oppressive, that I can look at the art and not see awful. I got a page inked day before yesterday, and have lugged the pages back to the Out Of Home Office (Rent is like $5 for a few hours, and comes with gourmet coffee, interesting conversation/being left alone, internet, and whatever music the Barista happens to be playing...) to work on more today. I find myself being a little burnt out on Basic Training, much the way I was burn on Spiader Webs earlier this year.

These cycles of boredom are nothing new. Citrus! hasn't been updated since my Freshman year of college for many reasons (One of which including the need for extensive rewrites/finishing plot threads please), and one of the major ones is this cycle of boredom. However, this cycle is such that I can see the faces of Liv, Dee, Nate, Listra, Nil, Toshi, Gwen, Sean, and all the rest looming on the horizon. Because if I can rewrite that to make it funny to anyone other than those named above and not full of copyright infringement... well, it was funny. And weird enough to be interesting to others, I think. With my leaps and bounds so far as technical skill, I am hazarding a guess that when I can get over the boredom and disgust of "I wrote this drivel in highschool, and the people who thought it was funny have flown to the wind" and actually make THAT a coherent story, we will see the resurgence of Antiscorbutic Goodness. Expect more on this subject in a year or so. I'm already opening the script every once in a while, reading, reviewing, editing... and thinking, every time I do... "Huh. This isn't bad."

I had expected worse out of my First Ever Real Comic.

The art, on the other hand, is a little cringeworthy at this point. The spelling, as well, is awkward. Not awful, just... I can really, really tell that the last time I worked on this was Freshman year. If nothing else, I am going to have to streamline and find a style that I can work in consistently for it.

And that other one, the super copy-pasta one? Pomegranate Seeds? Yeah. That's getting a re-revamp as soon as I can afford/get my mitts on another drawing tablet/find the cord and stylus to my tablet. I have missed having access to my supplies, tools, and writing. (Chances are that the pages already done will remain as-is -- I might naturalize a couple of postures or expressions, but the art will probably remain internally consistent. I will cease using quite so much copy-pasta. Oh the joys of gaining grater technical skill...)

But one thing I've noticed about the boredom? No matter how done I think I am with a thing? It always comes back.

I may even resurrect the first epic that I wrote (Notes for...). I have felt it pushing at the outside edges of my imagination, whispering to me to bring it back and pull it out of the aether and write the story of the princess who decided that if it takes a prince to rescue her kidnapped sister, then she would be that prince. (I still have a hard time believing that my mother had no clue that I was a boy -- every single character that was "mine", perhaps based off of me, my closest character in the story, reflects this transformation in some way. From this first princess who cuts her hair and dons boys clothes and never goes back, to the character I blatantly called my doppleganger, self-insert, "Me," who was consistently mistaken for a man when seen from anything other than three feet in front of her face... and okay with this, to Azrael, who is sexless and fluid from town to town...)

But the boredom is easily overcome. All I have to do is flit on to the next, last, other, alternate thing I have to work on. Which, right now, is Spiader Webs and Basic Training, while writing on the Chameleon War, and... maybe Citrus?

Oh god I'm done...

I've been working on Spiader Webs for five years. I've drawn 79 pages, five pieces of cover art (one of them four or five times), countless studies for future pages, drawn these first four characters hundreds of times...

And now, tonight, I've finished the cover for the first volume. All I have left is to throw some dogging around the moon on that problematic chapter cover.

Four chapters, 79 pages, five years, and a hell of a study in the growth of an artist. The story can stand alone, complete, if it needed to. I have hundreds of pages more sitting ready to transform from words into art.

I am exhausted. I never want to draw Vervain's goddamn vest ever again. I have spent the last two weeks living in the coffee shop, manic and fueled on caffeine and desperation.

But if I get hit by a bus and die tomorrow, I will have died having finished something.

The next few steps belong to my little sister, giving words to my art and correcting my epic failures to colour inside the lines.

I am taking a slight break for the summer now. Now I dive into my summer work, manically cover things in leather and build bags, and trust that by the time summer ends, I will be less exhausted and over it.

Shall we hope the next volume doesn't take five years more?

TEASTAINING!

This morning, with the final two pages of Spiader Webs taped to my lapdesk in the process of colouring, an improperly balanced teacup spilled the better part of a cup of lapsang souchang over the pages.

Well, I was looking for a way to make the inside of the cave look like the inside of a cave....

I'm really hoping that the pages will be clean enough to use, and I won't have to redraw them... Mostly because those are the pages with many dead villagers, which were all a pain to draw.

As of right now, the pages are at home pressing between paper towels. At least I managed to get them to flatten...

Spiader Webs -- Less inactive than it seems.

Last time I mentioned Spiader Webs, I mentioned that I was out of Spiader-coloured ink. Well, I've got that, now, and have finished the last set of pages that I was stuck on, but I do need to do an inventory and go to Blick on the Hill the next time I have access to Seattle. Among the colours that I find myself growing short on is the colour for Lalalie's dress, which is... Well, needed.

As of right now, I have a set of five pages ready for ink, which will finish out the current chapter.

I've got 79 pages, plus covers, and in looking back at the first few pages, I cannot help but cringe. The level of detail I am achieving now is far superior to the detail I was putting into the first few pages. Every time I look at them, I feel like redrawing them, and I might still. For now, however, I am forging ahead with the story, and am finally (finally) getting to the swing of the story.

Now, if you will excuse me, page 75 is mounted and ready to ink.

I've started working on another one.

As mentioned in my last post, I have all the work for The Chameleon War stored on Google.

As it turned out, three of the secondary characters started bivouacking in my head mid-november, and by January I had written out a short (360+ page) comic, and was working on thumbnails. As of now, I'm working on the thumbnails for chapter six (of thirteen), and have actually done watercolour for the first fourteen pages.

It is somewhat exhilarating to have actually finished a story for the first time in years. Even if this story is, in fact, simply an episode in a longer-running storyline, which it is, the fact that I actually have the story itself finished (it has a beginning, a middle, and an end) is exciting to me. The prospect of actually finishing the thumbnails is now within reach (I've made it almost half way. It's all countdown from here), and is terrifying.

The insanity comes from the idea that I'm then working in pen and ink, and then watercolour, and then more pen and ink. Each page takes something in the range of 22 hours to complete. I am detailing down to the stitching in people's clothing.

I wish I knew if anyone else was going to be interested in this story at all...

One of my Back Burner Comics has come to the forefront, by virtue of being written in Google Docs (Drive, I guess, now?).

As I reported last time on Once in a Friggin' Blue Moon, my real computer is dead, and I'm on a loaner, without the sort of photo-editing capabilities I need, and don't have a scanner right now.

Also as reported last time, I am working on many, many pages of Spiader Webs, but my need to do things in the right order has stalled me as I wait to get a bottle of refill ink for my Spiader-coloured pen. It ran out half-way through a battle with Spiaders. Awkward. So, until I can order ink, that's been Percy'd (Percy is my rat. He likes to bury things under other things so you can't see his things) away out of sight so it won't taunt me, and I've turned to something else to fill my Art Hole every day.

Turns out I have everything I have written for the comic currently going under The Chameleon War: A Future History stored on the interwebs, and more than a few bits of concept art I'd drawn over the years socked away in various places.

So now I have a lot more of it written than I did, and have been drawing rather a lot more than I have for the past year or so. This is a link to a few photos of pictures. The password is "Thouvan"

Oh, and the inspiration for Persephone came home from two years in India, which means that a) I've been collecting inspiration by the cartload, as we are now housemates, and 2) I've been able to add pages and pages and pages of plot and character development that had been missing to the beginning of The Chameleon War. 

Wait, what? 

Near the beginning of this comic, the passengers of Taran Transport 6, which consists of about 300 Taran soldiers bound for war on a distant planet, and about a hundred civilians, are stranded on an alien planet for six months, negotiating with the locals for the right to repair their ship and leave. The planet in question, and the characters our intrepid heroes interact with while there, are the BrainChildren of dear miss Persephone.

It really, really helps when your writing partner is on the same continent as you are...

Some time in June, my computer died. Mid July, I was given a loaner, but it has neither any sort of photo-editing capability, nor enough room to install any. Also, the cord to my scanner appears to have been eaten by one of my rats.

Therefore, while I am writing, drawing, colouring and charging ahead, I currently have no way of getting the pages (and pages, and pages) of comic that I've been working on to the internet.

And you know what? At the moment, I'm okay with that. I mean, I am eagerly awaiting the moment I have the money to fix my computer and get everything scanned and lettered and uploaded with buffer to spare.

But until then, I am happy to draw (and draw, and draw) and not worry about getting it out there to the world.

So. Lets look at this not as a long, long period of inactivity (which for others it is), but as a long, long period of stockpiling.

I'll let you know when I've got enough...

Artblock?

I have Functional Artblock about half the time. I say 'Functional' not because I can function with it, but because it's not actually artblock, it just ends up functioning the same way that artblock would -- by keeping me from arting.

In reality, my artblock it more like a Three Stooges routine than anything else. It works like this: Every once in a while, I'll have an overflowing of ideas. When this happens, my head gets so crowded that all the ideas trying to get out at once blocks up the door, and nothing can get out at all, and if anything does, it's simply bits and pieces, fragments that do not make up anything close to a coherent whole. For instance, I currently have a new story circling my brain wanting to come out, but it would just make one more thing on the pile of things I need to get done.

I may start scheduling an actual time in which I comic, and only comic, and only comic on the comics I'm working on now. Once a week, every week, for a set amount of time. For right now? I'm tempted to say 'some time on monday whether you like it or not'.

So. Off to Comic. And make soup. Well, additional soup.

What has Vincent VanGogh got to do with my comics?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

For Spiader Webs, you see, I am using Copic markers. These markers are wonderful, unless you're trying to do something big without any texture. Such as, you know, a sky. In particular, the night sky, since the darker the pen, the more obvious the pen strokes are.

Now, before you tell me that I should use something else to make this comic, probably photoshop, I'm going to say this straight up: No. Half of the point of Spiader Webs is to be completely physically done, so that I know I have accomplished something.

In any case, a week or so ago, I ran into the idea that I was about to have to create the first page of night sky for the comic.

And, walking down the street in front of an expensive boutique that sells Art Umbrellas, inspiration struck, in the form of impressionism. I would be drawing my skies the same way in which Vincent VanGogh painted his... everything. And, possibly, as I run up against more pages of something that doesn't work smoothly, more pages of impressionism will follow.

I'm looking forward to it.

Spiader Webs Updates! All sources say it's a fuckin' miracle!

I've got myself a good long buffer for Spiader Webs, So I've gone ahead and set the comics I have done to update once a week (Tuesdays at noon) until I run out of buffer. As of right now, I've got seven pages, and am working on the eighth page.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

My Meen.

So I had a long and interesting talk with the inspiration behind Persephone today, before the internet bugged so hard that I couldn't get back on until she was probably, hopefully, in bed. During this talk, she brought up an obvious and amusing piece of slapstick that I could -- and should, and probably eventually will -- have used.

"Meen", roughly means "Fish."

There is every chance that the next time we see DeMandy, there will be fish-slapping action going on.

My meen... >.>

Pomegranate Seeds -- Updates!

So. I went on a rampage at some point last week -- I think it was Tuesday -- and drew all the comics for the next few chapters of Pomegranate Seeds. So now there will be a page a week -- unless I go through and shorten the interval -- from now until some time in mid-August. That's a lot of buffer, for me. So. Go ahead and check it out, should you happen to stumble across this.

Slan!

Comics Vs. Graphic Novels -- Why do I say "Comics"?

Alright. Let me say this right now, and if you're offended by it, well, sorry.

Actually, no, I'm not sorry.

I HATE the phrase "Graphic Novel". It just sounds horribly pretentious to me. This is probably because I used it way back in the Early Days of Citrus! when I was young and stupid (it was 2006, I was like seventeen) and everyone said comic books were for kids. This was before I realized what I was making -- A fucking comic book, people! You wouldn't say "A superman graphic novel". That just sounds stupid.

As I got older and wiser I realized something: The only things that I saw around with the phrase "Graphic Novel" were... Well... Boring. Either that or impossibly professional and actually making money. And lets face it, I was a kid with a website. Hell, I still AM a kid with a website, albeit a kid finishing out his senior year of college and writing blogs as a reward for doing homework.

It's gotten to the point that I can't take the term "Graphic Novel" seriously. "Honey, are you reading those silly comics again instead of doing your homework?" "No mom, Geez, it's a Graphic Novel! Come on. It's Literature. See, look, it's a re-imagining of Romeo and Juliet."

... Yeah. It's kinda like that.

So while many of the things I'm working on could in all reality be considered a graphic novel, I just can't call them that. Well...

I suppose it comes down to this: "Graphic Novel" just seems to say "Stuffy, boring, and pretentious", while "Comic" says... Well, if not necessarily funny, then at least fun. There can be sorrow, danger, action, adventure (murdering bastards, soul-stealing, paranoia, homophobia, a whole host of other "Mature" themes) but... It's not... Taking itself too seriously. It doesn't think it's something it isn't.

In any case, I think I'll stop ranting on this now. 

Comic Directory!

These are the Comics that I'm currently drawing:

Citrus! 
 A satirical comic about superheroes, literature, elves, Scurvy, and True Love. Currently on hold until I can rewrite the script so it's not quite so... In-Joke-y.

Pomegranate Seeds
 A slice-of-life comic, about being a Tranny going to college, and soon to take a strange turn. Mostly copy-and-paste so that when I have the time to do anything at all, I can update it relatively regularly.

Spiader Webs
 A fantasy comic about family, honour, and beating the shit out of giant arachnids. Set in a fictional land, and based on This Role-Playing-Game, on a forum. Started as a project for school, continued whenever I have the time to make pages.

***********

These are the Comics I'm still scripting:

The Chameleon War.
Several hundred years into the future, earth has made contact with an alien race, called "Chameleons" by the Tarans. Before long, an asteroid flings an extraterrestrial plague into earth's atmosphere. When the Chameleons offer a vaccine for the plague, it proves to be worse than the plague itself. With only a tenth of earth's former population left alive, war is declared. But things might not be exactly as they seem. When a mad scientist starts bringing the dead back to life, it is only a matter of time before something far darker starts than just a war.

Tory.
England is fighting a war, and need soldiers. A family of airship mechanics on Tory island have lost all but their youngest son to the army, and every one taken has come back in a box. When a recruiting party comes looking for the sixteen-year-old Lillis, his twin sister takes his place. Enter sky pirates, living dolls, cat-girls, telepathic octopi, and a radical religious sect bent on eliminating the "Taint" of magic from the land. And one airship mechanic with a fear of heights.

Diarmud is Grainne.
At the turn of the seventeenth century, Queen Elizabeth the First ordered all the Harpers in Ireland hanged, and their instruments burned. Two hundred years later, there were three harps left in Ireland. This is the fictional account of a harper, her brother, her harp, and how the three survived.

Unagh CosSula.
When a homeless teen is shot, she wakes up not in a hospital, but in bronze-age Scotland, covered in blue tattoos, and wearing leather armour. A bronze-age warrior, shot with a poisoned arrow, falls unconscious and wakes to find herself in a modern hospital. Before long, both women find themselves caught up in more than they bargained for.

Waxwing
A pair of soldiers are shot out of the sky by a pirate, and find themselves more inclined to join him than go back to their army.

Hullo and Welcome -- What's going on here?

My name is Rori O'Neill, and at this point, if you're reading this, you already know that.

I'm a comic artist. I draw comics. As of right now, I have three currently under the pencil (though one has more or less stagnated), and several more in the writing phase.

This is where I will post updates on progress of any comic I'm currently working on, rant about writer's block and the inability to art, post concept art, and sometimes ask for advice.

So here we go.