A – B – C
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Work
So I figure now’s as good a time as any to wrap up the 2009 set of entries to this thing. Maybe in a year or so I can look back and marvel at how much (or how little) I got done. Hopefully the latter, by comparison of course. Don’t begrudge me my optimism, it is Winter Time in my Summertown Country.
As with the year prior, 2009 saw me taking on more indies as a promise to myself to build a semblance of discipline for the grind, as well as take as many shots as I humanly could. Learning how many chambers my pistol’s got, as it were. How much I learn and retain remains a work in progress. That said, DAMN that was a busy year.
JENNY STRANGE is on hold as Justin and I scout for a colorist. SOVENA RED got shopped around and may yet continue with Scholastic. Taking Christmas breather from game design gig as suits prepare second ongoing contract. Might shelf it or bow out if other ongoing book projects begin to pick up steam. Speaking of which…
JUDAH trudges on in healthy machine gun spurts. I am convinced Will is trying to see how much more he can shock me with every five-page set.
HARBINGER WAR concept art is steadily taking shape as Jad and I have poured over Moebius, Frazetta, and Ash Wood art books to see how much writing we can get done with just visuals. If that didn’t make sense, trust us… it will.
PLUCK scripts are beginning to pour in just as I do concept sketches for characters who may or may not be little more than cannon fodder. Yes, Gabe is keeping it THAT close to his chest since he knows I’ll reveal just about anything if I’m not careful. The Brothers White and myself look forward to pissing on D&D tropes on ZUDA next year!
1888 is in retool mode as Wolfgang and I are streamlining that beast of a book into a prestige-format monster and I gotta say… just because artists need to read scripts and put pencil to paper before anyone else gets to see anything, doesn’t mean all the twistedness only comes from him. Damn it, WP.
And 2010 will see me dipping my toes into new properties CLOSETWORLD — a planned webcomic much akin to Little Nemo, with Matt Yocum; and GEEK GODS — a contemporary fantasy combining sword and sorcery with the familiar charm of Archie, with Wade Alan Steele.
There’s a couple of other exciting things I really want to share but can’t yet, but suffice it to say that the ol’ work journal is thankfully going to be regularly updated for the next few months at least. It seems like a ton of work… and it’s certainly not a walk in the park. But I always take the Zen of Glengarry Glen Ross with me, and it helps to simplify what would otherwise very easily cause me to burst into flames. It’s the closest I’ll get to a mantra when trying to simply get things done — A — B — C.
Always Be Closing, Baldwin said. And as far as I’m concerned, it keeps you focused enough to not look back as you try to keep moving forward in a narrow and tricky road.
Always, all ways, be closing.
Gleep gloop, 2010. Gleep motherfucking gloop.
Tags: 2009, 2010, looking ahead, taking stock, work ethic, year ender
Work Journal 2.0
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Trash
I know it’s only been an hour or so since the last entry, but I can’t seem to doze off and this last slice of anchovy pizza won’t eat itself. Six days to go till Christmas hits, so it’s time for wrap-up posts and preemptive upgrades before I get crushed by babies. I’m not even kidding.
So the site’s gone through a very subtle face-lift. I don’t really plan to change the theme anytime soon, but I thought it could use a bit of color. Plus green really brings out my eyes.
The real sprucing up happened on the sidebar though, if everyone in the bus will direct their attention to the left:
By hitting the Subscribe button, which takes you to a simple registration form, you easily sign up to receive email alerts from the site every time I update. I upload trash, you hear about it. Everybody wins.
Below the Recent Comments table, I added a nifty little thing that shows posts from One Year Ago. Nothing warms my heart more than the reminder that I’ve been a pretty lucky asshole for over a year now.
Right below that douche time machine is a Pickle Player loaded with the most recent episodes of my comic review podcast with three geek friends. Hit play and TRES KOMIKEROS will assault your senses as you try your best to read and understand what’s written on the blog.
Lastly, for anyone who doesn’t particularly like responding to a blog entry but feels the need to share about gastrointestinal problems, there’s the Message Box right below the Twitter Feed.
Cool? Aside from all that extra bloggy crap, everything is exactly the same. All I need now is a real-time feed of all the porn links I get from Alex Cipriano and I’ll be all set. Get to it, Google Wave!
Tags: blogging, journal, online presence, widgets, wordpress
Avatarded
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Rants, Work
Warren Sanchez is a 3-D animator. A damn good one at that. Warren Sanchez and I used to work together at an advertising/animation studio. He knows I like to read a lot of comics and watch a lot of effects-heavy films.
Warren Sanchez knows I like to curse a lot.
Warren Sanchez has never heard me curse out of sheer awe of a movie’s visuals.
And then we saw Avatar.
2009 in Film is a closed book as far as I’m concerned. Thanks, Jim. After the Star Wars prequels, Transformers, and G.I. fucking Joe… I badly needed that.
:::: :::: :::: ::::
On the other side of the bowl of awesome sauce, I was at first worried about a project Jad and I were working on that was superficially similar. HARBINGER WAR is a sci-fi tale pivoting on the premise of cavemen battling an extra-terrestrial threat. The parallels are all there, but then I thankfully unclenched when I realized Lucas had beat Cameron to the punch with Phantom Menace, and Burroughs spanked them both with the Barsoom books decades before.
So yes, I’m good. This, as they say, is fuel for a hopeful and mighty fire. A movie hasn’t thrilled me like that in a long time, and if nothing else… it felt amazing being a wide-eyed kid again.
Tags: artist, avatar, inspiration, james cameron
Horny Chicks
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Art, Work
Here’s a page from JUDAH. Immortal undead. Fallen angels. Shady dealings. And of course, boobies.
Tags: boobs, comic art, demon, harem, pen and ink, pitch, sequentials, sexy, Will Prince
All in the Family
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Art, Trash
This is actually a few months old, but I didn’t realize till now that I never posted it on the journal. It’s a rough concept of the Wayne Family seal or emblem… It was totally just one of those ideas that came to me when I had a little too much time on my hands. Hope you guys dig it anyway.
Tags: Batman, bruce wayne, DC, insignia, wayne manor, word art
I Know a Place…
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Rants, Work
This is the thing with me. And it’s rung true (present perfect tense… what.) for as long as I’ve cared to notice — I do my best work at night. Set my workstation up in a brightly lit room and I will get nothing done. I don’t know how you weirdos do it. I’m like a raccoon, I’m very easily attracted to and distracted by shiny things… so a well-lit area just leeches off my productivity.
I come alive in total darkness. Oh yes. Like Batman, minus a butler bringing me vichyssoise. (What kind of idiot brings you cold soup when you’re working in a dank cave in the middle of the night anyway?) And as if I were in a cave, I like my work area to be illuminated by a singular light source, so that I am surrounded by darkness and thus almost shrouded in a cloak of indistractibility.
I don’t know if it’s an emo thing, or an eyestrain thing, or an ADD thing, or a headspace thing, or a body clock thing, or even a mixture of all of those eccentricities… but it is what it is.
And as I get ready for bed around half past four in the morning, I wait until that sliver of time between when the street lamps die and when the sun starts to rear its ugly head. And for just long enough, I find myself in complete darkness… and it stops being a moment and starts being a place. And it is a place no one can infect. Because it is nowhere. And here I revel in the lost silence of dreaming.
Tags: insomnia, night owl, work ethic
Year of the Bastard
Posted by johnamor | Filed under Photos, Trash
Tags: casting, comics, jim carrey, movies, spider jerusalem, transmetropolitan, warren ellis
