Artist Notes 1/01/2019:HAPPY NEW YEAR! 😀 😀 😀

First off, I want to say, I’m so happy that we’ve made it to this point in the comic story-wise! This seems like an appropriate opener to the new year! 🙂

In any event, I hope you guys had a good year, though I feel like for a lot of people it was a rough one…

I know it was for me. ^ ^’

I have really mixed feelings about this past year. Having my new companion little Scout is definitely one of the hi-lights of the year, and he’s really defined this last quarter of the year.

But artistically this was a tough one… While I DO feel proud that I finished 52 pages of Mag Na Mell on top of working full time this year (unlike the year I started, when I was still a student), it just doesn’t feel like enough. I found it really hard to do much else art-wise. I had high hopes of doing more illustrations in the world of Mag Na Mell, and outside of it, I wanted to do more pieces in my more clean/flat colored style, I wanted to be making more speed draw videos, and to be more active artistically in general. Furthermore, not being able to do more diverse work really added to my feeling burned out this year.

AND I was so busy I was only squeeze in maybe 3 paid illustration jobs. While I did get to do a fair amount of design work, and incorporate a little bit of illustration at my day job, I’m mostly stuck doing clerical work.

I KNOW that I overcame some real hurtles this year too, we got more characters into the comic that are out of my comfort zone, I learned CSP and that made a positive impact on my work, and for the last quarter of the year I managed to keep up the pace of the comic with a puppy, and in an apartment small enough that I can’t have a dedicated workspace. (We traded space for dog friendliness and a yard. XD Worth it!) And looking back at the pages I did at the beginning of the year, I cringe a little! Looking at how I drew Betha—I’ve always felt good about drawing her, I designed her to BE the definition of my comfort zone—but Guy… holy shit. Looking at the early pages with him I had NO SENSE of the anatomy of his face! Stepping away from the main heroes of the story for a while did me a lot of good. Even in terms of how I draw Sonny, I see improvement upon returning to him. I feel 1000% better about how I draw Guy these days though. I’ll be going back and revising his facial expressions on pages 101 – 120 a bunch before we go to print with Volume 2.

But that just doesn’t feel like enough. I felt really deeply depressed this year about how little art I was able to do. I’m planning to make some MAJOR life changes this year in that regard. I don’t feel like I can talk about those plans publicly yet, but I’ll inform you guys as soon as I can. Just know, change is coming, I need to get out of this rut, and I have plans in place to do so: it’s time.