Not a day without a line
Work on Astoria singles progressing at a steady pace, even though I have dropped everything else to prepare singles in time for MoCCA Art Fest June 6th-7th.
Scaling down from 12″ to 7″ square pagesize freshens up the work, as does the tight schedule. It’s both exciting and counter-productive to work against the clock like this but I often find it a great way of getting stuff out.
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Tags: black sabbath, engine city, jack kirby, mocca 09, singles
Mix Tape, side A
Remember when everybody pirated intellectual property? Sure you do! Who hasn’t owned a battered old tape copy of this CD or that vinyl? Or a lovingly crafted, unique mix tape of favorite songs, given to a best friend or special someone?
Working hard, connecting dots to make this happen: If all goes well I should have a concept mini-sketchbook ready by tomorrow’s SPX in Stockholm, a graphic mix tape from me to you!
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Some time this year I’ll be done with the Astoria artwork, and rather than going Ho-Hum and sit on my hands, I’d like to hit the ground running. I have a couple of mainstream-ish ideas that may work in a serialized online form, and I’m contemplating hosting the things myself, going through the arduous schedule of posting weekly installments of three different comics.
Well, those plans are all blowing in the wind right now, waiting for funding to fall from the sky, but individual concepts are under development.
What I *am* looking into is new ways of promoting a site like that. I am totally oblivious to webcomics in general, and by extension what marketing channels they may use, having more often been struck by “Neh” than “Wow!” reading webbed cartoons.
That’s right, I actually think I can do one better than most, but not immediately reaching the heights of my favorites, American Elf or Anders loves Maria, of course.
So why the “discuss” in the post title? Because I’m asking for advice here. Post a comment if you have a brilliant idea for pushing comics online. What I’m not looking for:
1. Badly spelled “visit my site” comments
2. Encouragements to join this portal or that, unless you’re top dog at Webcomicsnation and can present a viable financial plan. So, allhotnudiecomics.to, don’t bother.
3. Software recommendations. I have that figured out, TYVM.
4. Agency offers: I have my own package, so unless you’ll front me at no profit – don’t post.
Are we good on that subject? Good, I think I just killed all discussion 
Here’s hoping for some input in spite of preemptive rejection!
Tags: alternatives, promotion, webcomics
Sorry, still no shots of my tools ( I *mean* drawing equipment, thank you!).
I’m breaking my wrist to get the Resistansen demo ready for publication, which is good except for the wrist-breaking part. Because it’s going to be a kickass little book, but alas, it also means not so much casual posting this week.
Next week begins my teaching stint at Holbak Art School, which means I might be blogging like crazy while 20+ students are approaching wrist breakage
If there’s time in between, I’ll have some pics from Resistansen up soon. Maybe, I hope.
Tags: busy, resistansen, tools
So, I realised I am spending my time in an altogether inconstructive way. Between payjob, commuting, family, and finally the comicking, I’ve had precious little time to blog about anything.
How did I find the time now? I’m preparing dinner for wifey and the kids, laptop sitting on the sidetable
The Astoria site as nearing a point where I don’t feel too uncomfortable publishing it. I’m figuring it will go online February 1st or so. Keep your eyes peeled on this space for the announcement!
The “Resistansen” installment of Astoria is undergoing a demo treatment for publication in Danish (if that makes any sense talking about a pantomime comic). I’ll tell you more as things are confirmed.
Oh, and we’re just eating sandwiches tonight, with sausages and scrambled eggs in a bizarre confusion of meals.
I’ve been an ass at blogging of late. Meaning ‘since I set up the new site,’ really. Apparently, I had more fun writing on an improvised news module than on this dedicated blog system? Oh, and I landed a steady, expenses-paying job that ate all my blog writing time.
Whichever way, it’s been uphill getting the site to work as I’d like, and to top it off, I just realised that it doesn’t perform well (or at all) on Internet Explorer. Ho-hum, more late night, off-duty labor for me. Fuck you very much, Redmond, VA.
But you know. apart from the fact that the sheepishness of accustomed Windoze users is standing between me and millions of users, I think I’m getting ahead of my game. Lately, I’ve set up a module to automate my sketchbook postings, and if things work out right, this blog will have a little sister within a month or so.
The Astoria project is outgrowing the boundaries of this site, and I wil announce the new place to go for Astoria Goodity shortly (upon verifying IE compatibility, of course :p Did I encourage the Virginia-based browser to sexually interface already?) In fact, I have been withholding new Astoria updates so the new site will explode onto your screen in a caleidoscope of kinetic refinery.
Did you like the sketchbook pages? Did you enjoy the Rabbit King short?
You. Are not. READY! For Astoria.
It is going to be a packed-to-the-brim, sweeter-than-pie, rockin’-yer-ass-off, hunka-hunka-burnin’-love!
That’s about enough hyperbole about one book for today, but suffice to say I am doing my darnedest to make this one a keeper, or at least a singular attempt at sequential narrative ( and I’m using the term in its loosest possible meaning).
More about that later!
Tags: Astoria, update, comic book history!
Since my regular feature, the daily sketches, have been on hiatus for a couple of days, I thought I'd keep you guys updated on my recent goings-on. In less than a month, Ill be starting my working sabbatical, during which the dirty work on Astoria will be done. I am trying to get my stuff at Gimle Studio packed and put into storage while I'm away at Serieskolan (the Malmö Comic School), where I'll be hanging my hat for the next year or so.
I have prepared a little something for the 50th issue of Danish monthly soon-to-be quarterly Free Comics, and that will likely be my last recess before I've finished Astoria. Sketches of the FC50-short may be up soon, or not. Depends, whether I'll have time to scan them.
The kids are vacationing with their grandparents for the next week and a ½, and I try to make the best of the extra time that affords me, work-wise and off duty. I get a lot of reading done, and I think I've reached the bottom of my accumulated comic pile. Finished Kirby's Kamandi recently (a patchy collection of the original magazines, but all goodness), and will soon be digging into a 1875 book by Kersey Graves, entitled "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours" that I found on Sacred-Texts.com. That is research for "Passion" that will be a (brainier) part of Astoria. In short, it treads the same path as Joseph Campbell's "Hero with a 1000 Faces", only focusing on the common traits of, well, sixteen different deities that have suffered on crosses, poles, trees, etc in a rite of transcendence.
Further Astoria research, specifically, for the segment "Great Old Ones", was my attempt to read Edward Tufte's "Envisioning Information", which slowed to a halt after a frustratingly chatty first chapter. Tufte is a widely learned gentleman, to be sure, and his writing (in "Envisioning…") is anecdotical, starting way off center, probably to narrow in on the subject at hand. In my case, looking for hard fact, instruction, and guidance, that method was a bit of a turnoff and ultimately left the book collecting dust on a shelf. I figure his "" may be the actual motherlode that I'll turn to eventually.
For recreation, I am reading the first book of the Danish "Erotikens Historie" by Brusendorff and Henningsen. I'd translate the title, but it hardly seems necessary; it means exactly what you think it does. This short volume tackles eroticism in ancient Greece and Rome, as handed down in prose, poetry, and art, delivered through the culturally (and sexually) liberated intellectual circles of Europe in the 30ies (1st edition) and 60ies (2nd ed.). A little reminder that the current, Puritan era has only lasted for a couple hundred years; before that, sexual 'politics' were not only less restrained, but also wholly different from what is generally accepted today.
And the music, not to be ignored! Lately, I have been listening A LOT to "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull" by Earth, who inspired the mighty SunnO))) as wellas a dirge of less inspired drone/doom-bands. On this and previous album, "HEX (or Printing in the Infernal Method)", the band have taken on a much "cleaner", more melodic sound, painting a prairie of resounding experience with their instrumental compositions. Quietly, calmly psychedelic, like eating sweet peaches in the sun.
Also playing are Gallhammer, the evilest little Japanese girls I have yet to hear, and Black Dahlia Murder, who just kick ass, and don't mince words about it.
That's it for now – I'll get some sketches up again once I've accustomed myself to being temporarily without children
Tags: Astoria, comic, currently reading, heavy metal, update
While construction of the main site is crawling along at a geological pace, work on the Astoria segments is going swimmingly. As in butter, the Danish idiom goes; swimming in butter? Yeah, that fits the bill just fine
I’m still putting down uncommitting sketches, but I am making great progress in the concept department. The various pieces are coming into their own in ways that carry the corpus of the book to new, well, places if not heights
For the “Great Old Ones” piece, I will be working in information graphics, as described by Edward Tufte in his books “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” and “Envisioning Information”. The clarity of his theories juxtaposed with the multivocal theme of “G.O.O.” will work pretty well, or at least confuse the reader enough to make him/her think. That is an ulterior goal, of course.
For “Our Lady of Centuries”, I am looking at dada and art concréte, and a director I worked with last year introduced me to some incredibly dense collage/scribble/paranoic delusive artwork that apparently were being left for strangers to find in the Copenhagen commuter trains, some years back (in photocopy, as I understand). The sprawling, occasional symmetry of these pieces have inspired me to work from strict grids in composing the spreads.
I spend a lot of time on the train each day, and I work through sketchbooks like a powerdrill. That works quite well with some of the more intuitive installemnts of the book, like “Brainfeeeders” [If anybody has a better title, I'm open to suggestions. The working title was filled in, rather than actuallly selected, when I needed a headline on the late website]. I am currently reworking and expanding upon the original piece, and it is essentially growing in all directions at the same time. As usual with that sort of piece, the hardest thing will be weeding out the weaker saplings.
The problem with working in the sketchbook is that I don’t have any time to scan from it right now. My sparse freetime is spent wrapping up the site :/