On page 30 of the last THE SOLAR GRID script & thumbs. Need to wrap everything up in 10 pages or less (I never did abide by corporate comicbook specs, potentially to my own detriment). Feeling good about it though.
Temperatures dropped drastically the other day and hot water still isn't running and I need to drop something off at the post office and also box a bunch of things up in the old garage.
A ways into book 2 of Isaac Asimov's THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY, and enjoying it a great deal. Finding aspects of its ideas to be quite ahead of its time (and in some ways ahead of this time even) except for the fact that it has so far been a big sausage fest. Seriously, not more than one female character appeared in the entirety of the first book, and even then only in a couple pages.
But I do appreciate the long view of the story, unfolding over several hundred years with no character appearing for more than a single chapter or two. Quite unconventional in that way.
#journal
Huge LED artwork I had manufactured just arrived. It feels significantly larger in my small abode than I had anticipated. Between the piece itself, the box it came in, and the plant I knocked over during the unboxing process, the serenity of my space and the writing I have been embarking on have thus been sufficiently disrupted.
Reminder to self not to make or buy anything new at all until I'm done with my godforsaken graphic novel.
#journal
Winds so strong I woke up to find the back door of the house blown wide open. Subzero temperatures expected next week, the annual freak weather incident apparently. Will have to bring all my plants inside, some quite large, and live like a crazy plant daddy for a while.
Scripting/thumbing what may be the most difficult 10 pages of comix I've ever had to conceive of, the last 10 in the very last chapter in THE SOLAR GRID.
I recall upon releasing the very first chapter way back when, and it was considered strange and eccentric. I think this last one will make the first one seem hella conventional (and maybe even boring?) by comparison. Shit gets weird, not because I want it to necessarily, it just kinda happened this way. Will try to wrap these up today, eager to get back to penciling pages.
A few years ago, I was so attracted to the idea of developing comix the same way one might've gone about making a French New Wave film; conceiving of the story as you're working on the actual pages. In essence, thinking of the making of the comix page itself as part and parcel of the writing process. Comix as writing, there's something quite sexy about that. But now I wonder if it might be better to actually write the whole thing out first. Not outline, but properly write the whole thing.
Not so sure about scripting it out though, that might be too boring and time-consuming of an endeavor. Perhaps write it all down in prose like one might go about any prose story. I'm sure there's an argument to be made that if it's a good prose story, it must be good in comix (with necessary adaptive measures employed). Although the opposite isn't necessarily true; can't imagine MAUS or SCOTT PILGRIM or anything by Chris Ware working strictly in prose. And that's a good thing, doing with comix what only comix can do. Which probably means that by going prose first, you're likely to come up with something that may not tap into the full potential of the comix medium.
But it would be the safer thing to do, having your entire story fully locked in before drawing anything.
#journal #work #comix
Another thing that stood out to me from HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT; apparently, a great many films from the silent era were based on plays. That is fascinating, because dialogue tends to be the core story engine of playwriting, whereas silent filmmaking is concerned, you have to do without dialogue altogether, save for a handful of title cards.
It's got me thinking about adapting plays to silent comix and all the different changes one would have to make along the way. Changes that would inevitably alter the plays rather drastically I think.
#reads #journal
Woke up in the middle of the night and decided to crack open the volume of HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT that's been jeering at me unread from my shelf for a while now. A few pages in and I was prompted to beam Mernau's DER LETZTE MANN on the projector, which both Hitchcock and Truffaut express their admiration for. First minute into this 1924 silent film and I was hooked! The framing and shots are just absolutely gorgeous, and the story intense, told entirely without words got me thinking about the big vacuum left unfilled by the absence of silent visual storytelling in today's world. The potential to reach people across borders regardless of language or culture is immense, especially if phones/social-media were to be utilized as the delivery mechanism. But that would necessitate coming up with short ultra-condensed narratives of about one minute or a minute and half tops. Which in itself is something of an attractive limitation.
#journal #reads #film
Have yet to crack how to balance all the things. Managed to boil down all regular tasks into daily, weekly, and monthly, but it's the weekly ones that make maintaining the others particularly difficult. Because sometimes each one of those weekly tasks can take up a full-day, in which case that's an entire week gone right there, leaving little to no room for the dailies or monthlies. And that doesn't even including things like parenting, tidying up, laundry, or a semblance of social life.
I gotta say, being over 40 and still trying to figure out effective time-management is kind of depressing. Certainly the eternal struggle that never ends, and the one thing they never bother to teach you at school.
#journal
What a joy it is to see Deena Mohammed's SHUBEIK LUBEIK end up on so many TCJ contributor's Best-of-2023 Lists! So happy to see that book get the recognition it very much deserves.
#journal #comix
Inboxes zero, and all caught up on my RSS feed as well, just in time for the year ahead.
Dropped the last of the Mythomatic orders at the post office and dragged a bunch of art pieces to my storage unit. Thoughts about turning RESTRICTED FREQUENCY into a weekly column of sorts are now looking wholly unrealistic given all the things. May have to settle for a monthly column instead. Less than ideal, but better 12 well thought out mail blasts than 52 half-assed ones, right?
#journal
Cracking open my first journal of the year and setting the tone for 2024.
Eight filled out suns to represent all completed chapters from my godforsaken graphic novel, only two chapters left to fill. I recall the very first couple of chapters I managed to pump out in 2, maybe 3 months, so I know I have it in me to get these out quick. Still scripting the very last chapter, which I'd like to finish before resuming pencils on the one before the last.
Funny, I was a wide-eyed newly wed working on those first couple of chapters back when. Now I'm newly divorced (a process that ate up most of 2023) working on the last two. Not dwelling on it or anything, but the mood is very different, perhaps aptly so in many ways.
Looks like much of the week will involve mapping out the year ahead, something I should've taken care of in December but there was a home-studio that needed improving and I've only got two hands and one single head, a relatively mediocre one at that.
#journal
And I'm out of paint. Shop doesn't reopen till Monday so it looks like I'm going to have to defer the remainder of my home improvement activities to the new year, something I was hoping to avoid, but alas. I'm not the best multi-tasker, so these past couple weeks of wall-painting have resulted in other house things going unattended to. Will attempt to remedy that today and enter the new year with an adequately operation space.
Albeit a half-painted one.
Inbox(es) at 170, RSS at 39. Ought to look into those as well.
#journal