The Work Journal of Artist John Amor

Just Say No

Scripts.  I have to admit to at least one thing I hadn’t prepared for when building my doomed comics career over the past year and a half or so, and that is the amount of script reading I’d actually have to do.  I mean… that’s precisely why a handful of us drawhappy types become artists in the first place, yeah? So we don’t need to read? Hehah! Welcome to the half-movie, half-book medium… care for a brain smothering with miles of text? No. Ellis was once asked at a con about how Darrick came up with the idea for Spider’s glasses, after which Warren explained that most artists can actually only express themselves in pictures and grunts.  “…guhh… colors… STAR WARS!”  Hilarious business, that.  Sad part is I know exactly what he meant.

But yeah, I’ve had to read.  And I don’t just mean reading so I can put it on paper… I mean reading to find out if I even want to put it on paper.  Know what I mean?  I get a healthy stack of scripts to choose from every couple of months, and I get my next project from this pile.

But I need to be smart about it… because if I’m not, I’m gonna be stuck with something I don’t love for what will seem like too fucking long.  Whore yourself out just a bit too much and you risk committing to something you’re not sure your creative attention span can handle.

Son, when choosing a gig — big or small — you gotta be excited about it, because if you aren’t it will show in the pages, and that will make the book an ugly part of your portfolio… assuming you even manage to finish it.

It’s the irony of ironies, really — having worked so hard to get to a place where you don’t need to kill yourself pimping anymore, just to learn how to turn things down.

-

Bowing out of a project is easily one of my least favorite things about working freelance, because not a lot of writers take it very gracefully.  Too many assume that the reason why a project is declined owes a lot to the story’s quality… even when you make it clear that you just don’t feel you’re right for it.  Comes with the territory, I guess… an insensitive writer probably isn’t really much of one, I’m inclined to imagine.  But what do I know?

All the same, it all boils down to decision making and having the balls to stick to it.  Gladly grown a pair, hoping it lasts through harsh winters.

Grid Talk 4

These are collected ongoing conversations via the interwebs about work experience, professional opinion, and unabashed foolishness.  Here are excerpts from a talk with one of my local heroes and long-time comics vet Gerry Alanguilan.

Continued from Grid Talk 3.

Amor: It’s interesting that you brought up Watchmen though because though I do still feel that it’s essentially unfilmable, the movie did seem like a decent enough adaptation. But yeah, I see your point about the crazy special effects… I’ve come to accept that it’s only a matter of time before the limitations of CGI will become so miniscule that even Sinestro Corps-level space battles will be no challenge. That being said, Moore was onto something when he didn’t just play with the story and his characters, but even the format of the medium itself — in reference of course to Watchmen #5, Fearful Symmetry.

Gerry: I thought Watchmen was a terrific film. The opening montage alone was one of the most awesome things I’ve seen in film for quite a long time. I wouldn’t say it’s Alan Moore’s Watchmen, but rather an alternate reality version of Watchmen that was good on its own. I felt it suffered from some weak acting and some over exposition though. Rorschach droning on about dog carcasses as he went to investigate Blake’s apartment got a bit tedious. It works in the comics, but in film it just didn’t translate well. Much of that would go over the heads of the audiences. In comics, you can at least slow it down and ponder the words. In film where pacing is fixed, all you get is Rorschach rambling on about nonsense because you don’t get the time to think about what he’s saying.

Amor: Pacing issues.  Relating that to our original talk on discipline, I sometimes find myself feeling a bit bored with my pace on a certain page I’m working on that I skip to another page in the book and distract myself by cutting loose over there. Know what I mean? And sure it’s possible that the page was just horribly laid out or whatever and that I’m a total hack (ah crap), but I’m mostly alluding to just creative ADD, y’know? Like a conversation between Peter and Aunt May on page 5 is just so boring that every few panels you finish, you skip to page 10 where Spidey is fighting Venom.  I don’t know if that counts as a discipline issue as much as a problem with focus, but I just wanna put it out there.  It certainly doesn’t bode well for my wanting to make pages interesting enough to grab attention and keep it.

Gerry: I remember reading the original Spiderman issues of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko many years ago, and the strange thing is I was so fascinated by all the personal stuff. You know, those bits about Peter and the girls and the relationships he had. I was so fascinated by it that I skipped the bits with Spiderman fighting the baddies. I wanted to know if he’s going to go out with Betty or not. Yes, I’m kind of a freak that way. I’m not sure if it’s a discipline thing rather than “I’ll read what I want” thing. As comic book creators, it is perhaps part of our job to keep things like this from happening. I know how difficult that can be, so I’m always amazed when I see such storytelling problems solved spectacularly well by other artists.  I would see how David Mazzucchelli or Alex Niño solve those problems and I’m always scratching my head. “So THAT’s how you do it!” I’d think to myself. And then I would try it myself and I still have a hard time doing it. It’s a skill that I have yet to learn..

Amor: Well I gotta say it’s refreshing to hear a veteran like yourself saying that some things are still a challenge to pull off.  I like to think my storytelling and pacing skills are decent, or at least passable, but my biggest flaw is really the inability to pay attention to just one thing for too long… which brings us full circle to what this talk is really about… discipline.  Any closing remarks, gems of wisdom, or verbal bitch slaps for a fledgling artist trying to make it in the field?

Gerry: Storytelling is actually one of the most underdeveloped talents that our artists have, even the popular established ones. I look at their comics and I go, “What the fuck is going on in this page?” More often than not, storytelling is sacrificed for flash, but I believe you can achieve both. In fact, if storytelling is done right, flash becomes an important tool for telling the story.  For others, storytelling means a whole bunch of words, which defeats the purpose of the medium..  I think all of us doing comics here in the Philippines need a serious seminar on storytelling from someone like say, Wally Wood or Alex Toth, but they’re dead. But you get my point.

Discipline really just takes a lot of will power. You really just have to find ways to make yourself sit and finish that page. Make little deadlines for yourself. You promise not to go and do stuff until you finished that panel. And when you come back, you make a deal with yourself not to get up until you finish that panel. And you have to stick to that.

But keep in mind if you have to keep forcing yourself to work on these pages all the time, you really have to start thinking if this is what you really want to do. Believe me, you don’t want to be stuck in a job that you have to force yourself to do.

Amor: I sorta live by this saying a heard a long time ago: “Find a job that you love, and you won’t have to work a single day of your life.”  Now more than ever, it is exceedingly relevant and has almost taken on a weight of it’s own.  I definitely love what I do.  I love the process of taking a script and visually composing scenes.  I love playing with character expression and body language and making them relate to one another.  I love controlling the pace of a story with panel design.  I love tweaking the effect of a scene with camera placement and lighting. I can’t imagine myself being happy doing anything else.  But I’ve also added like, an addendum to that mantra… “but stop ignoring deadlines or it’ll be cup ramen for the next few months, you dumb fuck.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: sure you’re an artist if you can draw, but you ain’t a comic artist till you can learn to churn out pages and hit deadlines.  I love this thing Kelley Jones mentioned in a podcast once, and it was told to him by a past Batman artist, Marshal Rogers I believe, one of the old guard… he said, “The last issue of your run, without missing your deadline, that’s how good a comic artist you are.”  And when I heard that a couple of weeks ago it sank its teeth so deep into my jugular and made me wish so bad that I had heard it much sooner.  That saying is getting tossed into the train’s furnace for sure. Now it’s a matter of working… and living by it.

Grid Talk 3

These are collected ongoing conversations via the interwebs about work experience, professional opinion, and unabashed foolishness.  Here are excerpts from a talk with one of my local heroes and long-time comics vet Gerry Alanguilan.  We cut out the first part of the convo where we were still… getting to know each other… physically.

Amor: See I don’t know if you, as a veteran in the business, still have this problem… but I find it hard to keep my attention on a page for several hours at a time, no matter how interesting the project.  As I’m drawing, I’ll watch a movie, read a book, or even hit random people up on chats just to give myself information overload so that certain aspects of the work just don’t seem very tedious.

Gerry: Yes, I still get that problem.  I have a rather problematic discipline problem.  But you are not required to give attention to a page for several hours at a time.  Take short breaks just to stretch your muscles, relax your eyes, get a drink, piss, shit, eat, fornicate, whatever.  I too get distracted by Internet stuff from time to time, especially when I’m in a heated discussion with someone else.  Right now I’m up in arms about Carlo Caparas being given the title of National Artist that I can’t help but write about it and discuss/argue about it with people online.

But I have enough experience to know what happens when you don’t get your work done on time — your work is given to someone else, that’s what. And there you are, a hole burning in your pocket as you stare at all these Internet discussions you wasted so much time on.  I keep that image in mind and it keeps me going.  It’s not that I always have to force myself, because what good is that?  Don’t I love this job enough to keep doing it without having to motivate myself?  Of course I love it.  There just comes a time, once in a while when all the work starts to get you down.  And you need a break.  You just have to work through it, and deal with it.

Amor: I know how you feel, man.  I mean, I don’t mean to polish our knobs or anything, but I think we have pretty cool jobs… and how big of an asshole am I if I can’t even sit down and do it?  I was sitting at a coffee shop a coupla weeks back and having a late lunch, and I saw these construction workers pass by — hard hats, tool vests, the works — and it was a hot day.  It was about half past one in the afternoon and they were trudging their asses back to work for their afternoon shift.  And I looked at them and thought to myself, “These guys don’t wanna waltz back in there after lunch.  But they do.”  And then I looked at the page I brought with me that day and marvelled at the empty panels.

Gerry: Keep your polish-happy hands off my knob, Amor.  But yes, we have one of the greatest jobs in the world.  But believe me, what we’re feeling is not a rare thing.  Whilce Portacio told a story of how the Homage Studios guys, after a long stretch of intense work, just had to go off somewhere and relax where work wouldn’t be done and comics never mentioned.  Be wary though if this funk continues for longer than it should. As much as the work stresses me out once in a while, for the most part it’s glorious to be working on these comic pages.  As worlds are created under my pen, I sit here amazed at how utterly fantastic this job is, and I would just literally die if for some reason I couldn’t do it anymore.

Amor: Amen, brother.

Gerry: So how about it?  You’re the new kid on the block… are you insane or are you just a glutton for punishment for pursuing this job in the first place?  What is it about comics that you love doing? What is it that makes you excited about drawing and creating?

Amor: See to answer that, I first need to bring up Terminator…  I know it’s out of left field but bear with me.  Remember the beginning of the first or second movie?  When they showed the future war with the armies of robots and sentient war machines and stuff?  When we saw th actual war in the future?  Remember feeling disappointed that the rest of the movie was set in the present and we couldn’t see the rest of that war?  And we all knew the reason why that war wasn’t in the movie (until recently in Salvation, almost 20 years later) was because the visual effects and budget couldn’t handle it.

I love doing comics because there is no budget.  No idea is too fast, too big, too bright, too new, or too loud.  In comics, your head is the budget.  And I’m sure you agree that’s unbelievably satisfying.

Gerry: There’s nothing left field about Terminator, dude!  As soon as you said Terminator, I’m there, man.  You got me at “Terminator”! I get what you’re saying.  This is the reason why a lot of comic book people love doing comics.  For many years we could go places movies couldn’t. But I think we have to step it up because movies are catching up to us.  Because of CGI and shit, previously unfilmable sequences can now be easily done.  The new Star Wars movies?  Never mind the stories, but holy shit man, did you see the effects in those things?  It’s like mind orgasm from our most imaginative comic book creators.  Our wildest imaginations right up there on the screen.  Comic book people need to find new ways to offer something that film can’t.

In spite of what Zach Snyder says, I still believe Watchmen to be an unfilmable comic book because of the comic book conventions and storytelling innovations it made that are impossible to replicate with moving pictures.

To be continued…

Thumbnails

Can’t quite recall if it was Sears or Capullo who said it, but I’m pretty sure I gleaned it off one of those How to Draw Comics features in an issue of Wizard (yeah, yeah) — someone who knew what he was talking about said the true function of the thumbnail is to let you take in the entirety of a page in one quick look.  Sure it sounds sensible enough, but it didn’t really make sense to me until I actually pulled my head outta my ass and started doing thumbnails myself for the first time, which was in high school.

See, when I drew comics as a kid I would just jump right into the page without any regard for panel flow and whatnot.  It wasn’t until I read that all-powerful Kubert School Cliffnote (heh) that I actually understood the importance of — wait for it — Planning.  So fine, my kiddy shit was awful, but it helped me realize that the layout process is simply too sensitive to do on the actual page (read: when Johnny’s already working on whatever Johnny’s working on), and the comic page being as big as it is, the occasional loss of perspective just doesn’t help.

And so I make sure I take the time to whip out the straightedge and actually put down some mock pages and play with page designs and fuck around with layouts and experiment with self-assuredly clever paneling and yeah, maybe even Read The Scripts from time to time, because that’s usually a good idea.

I work on thumbnails about one-eighth the size of an 11×17 sheet.  Don’t ask about specific dimensions because numbers choke up my brain veins and when I write I like to… not die.  One-eighth.  Half of a quarter.  Ouch.  Anyway some friends tell me them numbers dance a bit on the big side for “thumbnails,” but my headspace being the slut that it is, I like things being clear.  Thumbnails are mental notes for me, so I make sure everything reads as clearly as possible lest I forget.  As a comic fan myself, I have me as my first audience to please.

I find that having solid and thought-out thumbnails pays you back three-fold.  Firstly, writer and editor get to work out story kinks with you in this phase, so if you do this well enough, an email with the subject “Revision Needed, Asshole, Eat My Fuck” will be unlikely.  Second, you get to flex your artsy fartsy mojo and tackle composition without having to worry about style just yet.  Feel like dropping a Ringo grid? Do it.  A Madureira splash?  Fuckin’ A, bring that shit.  This is your story still raw and malleable, play when you can.  And third, you can take comfort in the fact that most of the hard work is done.  You literally already have the comic drawn… now it’s just a matter of making it look good enough to print.

On the whole, the layout process will eat up its own precious chunk of time, but it’s indispensable if anyone wants the finished product to be halfway decent.  When it gets tedious, I remind myself that Mignola said in a Two Morrows interview that it was his favorite part of the comic creating process.  So I say be like Mike.  Eat your greens.  Do your thumbnails.

The Zuda Challenge (Part II)

If you’re just blowing in, this is the second in a series of posts documenting the tribulations I went through in adapting to a widescreen-format comic.  Co-conspirator Justin Jordan discusses the writing aspect of the challenge here.

So I’ve been dissecting some of the most recent and highly effective double-page spreads I’ve seen to try and decipher what logic the artists might’ve been operating on.  Reverse-engineering, if you will.  I figure if I stare at these babies long enough I may be able to extract remnants of whatever special cut of LSD the penciller was on when thumbnailing, and use then-acquired zen state on projects such as JENNY STRANGE.

Because hey… like Thomas Edison probably always said, “When in doubt, steal from the best.”

In Ultimate Spider-Man #124, Immonen uses the top half of the page to establish the environment and mood of the scene, taking full advantage of the panoramic view.  The tall narrow panels of the lower half splits the events into tense, almost choking, moments.

Similarly, in Crossed #1 Jacen Burrows splits the spread into a top and bottom half.  The top however is employed as an illustrative piece to essentially convey a definitive shot of the story’s backdrop, whereas the smaller panels below shows us the actual characters and pushes the story forward.

In Secret Invasion #1, Leinil Yu went with a three-tier spread to initially wow you with a shot just packed with characters.  The second tier features mostly talking heads, whereas the final tier is pretty much gravy to just tense you up for whatever comes first on the next page.

So without getting too technical and shit, what strikes me the most as the widescreen format’s strength is the panoramic advantage as the splashes just look more cinematic, allowing the reader’s eye to wander more and discover things.  Never doubt the power of Where’s Waldo.

Something to think about.

This series of posts concludes with me showing my JENNY STRANGE pages, which I did as I studied the above artists.  So it’ll be a healthy exercise in accepting my apparent density.  No doubt my girl would have a thing or two to add about that.  Fun for the whole family, I guess.

Snowball

Takeout.  Bought this bacon-raped cheeseburger thing at close to midnight, coz I usually get real hungry right around that time and it gets harder and harder to stay at the desk when my stomach begins to fuse with my spine.  But now that I have this sexy chunk of food in front of me, I’m not feelin’ it.  Not the least bit hungry.  Feel more like I’ve been pantsed by the Irony Fairy and she’s pointing and laughing at my wiener.  Eat big sandwich anyway.  Large fries.  Large coke.  Double patty.

Now happy as a pig in shit.  Pretty sure I look the part too.

Comics are glamorous.

::: ::: ::: ::: :::

Work’s been hectic.  As mentioned in previous posts, OVERTHROW and 1888 are out of my hands (crosses fingers, toes, and all other crossable appendages), so I’m diving into some new things to keep me afloat as I wait for word.  JENNY STRANGE is cruising along, and I’m finally in the final lap of what, I must say, has been a real challenge to my page-orientation ethic.  I’m taking much, much longer than I would have liked though, and I humbly admit to a noobish ineptitude on my part regarding the proper adoption of the landscape comic format.  Never been more aware of the horizontal page flow than I am now.  Curse you, Zuda!

In concurrence with that (thanks, Word of the Day Cereal), I’m juuust starting pencil work on some pages that’ll hopefully make their way into a European mangazine-anthology-type book.  So I’m thinking JUMP, but with a Le in front of it.  I don’t know.  Alexis Nolte has written a sonuvabitch of a detailed period piece — a French 17th century detective comedy, to be exact.  And quite frankly… I don’t know what I’m spending more time on — all the wigs, or all the corset cleavage shots.

Penis Canals.

Good times.

…And still in the page-layout-and-script-munching stages is an also unnameable project with William Prince.  Not much to say about that until I bang some real stuff out, but I will say that fantasy-oriented existentialist themes always suck me in, especially when they don’t just feel like they’ve  been hammered into a comic-shaped chunk of pretense.  Things like this just give my inner Caulfield a hug and a handjob every now and then, and that never hurts.

So yeah… that’s going on.  Plus the cross-country trips.  Plus the podcast shenanigans beginning to snowball.  But in a good way.

Fairly confident I can get all these projects out of the way before the month ends.

Oh stop laughing.

Strange Days

First official post at the new site?  Should come as no surprise that the first blab is about a new project, yeah?  But first!

OVERTHROW, what I like to think of as mine and Justin Jordan’s love letter to NEXT WAVE (stylistically anyway), is looking to be headed to full-on pitch stages pretty soon, so I’ve still got my manties in a bunch waiting on that.  He got to be a whore at the NY con about the project, so that’s pretty sweet.

Anyway… not being completely sick of each other just yet, Justin and I are working on a new comic entitled JENNY STRANGE.  It’s pretty much my first attempt at doing something ZUDA-worthy; and to be totally honest, the landscape format to the page took quite a bit of getting used to.  For those of you who’ve been under a rock this whole time, Zuda is DC’s virtual slush pile.  That probably makes it sound dirtier than what it actually is, but suffice it to say it’s a webcomic… monitor-conscious… page browser… thing.  (It’s two in the fucking morning, give me a break… and no, I’m obviously not the writer in the tandem) Buncha guys get weblished, buncha other guys vote for who gets to stay online and finish their story.  Bam.

I’m pretty excited about JENNY coz I’ve been jonesing for a strictly pulp book for a while now.  That and GEN13’s vibe had a pretty huge impact on me as I was getting serious about comics in the 90s (yeah, I know).  Little bit of Doc Savage thrown in there as well.  Aesthetically speaking, I’ve been pouring over some recent Ultimate Spider-Man stuff and even some BRIT to harness the right vibe I want to wrap my art in for the project, but that coupled with the landscape format is taking a bit of doing.  Anyway, that’s all on that for now.  I plan to go into gory details about the zuda page orientation and the attendant storytelling mindfucks, but that’s for another post.  Till then, keep ‘em warm, ladies.

Try Everything Once

I get bored really easily.  Call it Attention Deficit, Creative Promiscuity, or even just pure, plain ol’ idiocy — I can’t sit still and only do one thing for very long.  Can’t focus.  I’m a racoon.  And the fact that I’m developing a tolerance over my preferred brand of coffee isn’t helping my case much, coz when I can’t focus and can’t muster up some energy… I just lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.

So I try something new.

I-Doser Labs is the leading producer of Binaural Brainwave CDs and computer applications. Using proven, scientific, and safe methods of synchronizing your brainwaves; a simulated state can be achieved through the use of our advanced audio CDs, or the I-Doser Application, and a pair of high quality stereo headphones.

Digital Brainwave Narcotics.  Sounds pretty safe, right?  I can’t find an audio file called “Work, You Piece of Shit,” so I try out a dose called “Content.”  I figure that’ll help me be happy doing one thing at a time and thus not have to rush and lose focus — also, yes, I’m aware that this whole thing could be nothing more than a glorified placebo with fancy techy shit and a slick interface, but I’m desperate —  and it actually feels like it worked… maybe a little better than it should have though.  I end up just wanting to stay in bed for longer than I’d like to admit.

But then I think of something else I can do.  Another dose is called Lucid Dream.  Huh.  I roll that around on my braintongue for a while and decide it tastes like a Subconscious Stimulant.  So I figure that if I use that but don’t sleep and drink coffee on top of it all, I’d be more awake than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

::: ::: ::: ::: :::

I have a mild bit of the shakes now.  Not exactly tremors, but when I stick my hand in the air, it starts to fidget.  I’ve been at the desk maybe five hours straight though.  I’ll just say that’s a good thing.  I’ll say it worked.

Project updates to follow.

OGN

Everyone tries to write Watchmen the first time around. Cop to it, kids. We all want our first foray into the world of comics to be loud. To be a hit. And I don’t blame you. Who doesn’t want to be the guy who came out of nowhere and just punched everyone in the face with something awesome? It’s not wrong to want that, but it is harmful to hope for it and, by extension, pin your tragically fragile comic creator self-esteem on what may very well be a shitty Original Graphic Novel.

My friend Matt and I are currently bringing a year’s worth of scripts for INSTRUMENTS to a close. The process is done via skype… with beers… so it’s not the smoothest of creative processes. I currently have about 90% of the first issue completely drawn and toned (we’re planning to release it black and white), so all that’s needed for a proper pitch is the clean script for the first year’s worth of monthly issues. You read that right: the first year. And therein lies the rub — What are the odds of a coupla nobodies getting a publisher to commit to an entire year’s worth of monthlies? Granted of course that our story is mind-numbingly awesome (Who else is gonna say it, asshole?), our operation can’t exactly hinge on the script alone when Image, Boom, Avatar, or whoever else can’t tell us apart from a dead dog’s cock now can it? They don’t know who the hell we are.

So I start small.

I’ve got a bunch of solos I’ve been meaning to start fleshing out, script-wise. I can’t pull off ICELANDER with less than eight issues, so that’s out. JOHNNY BEASTLING only needs six for the first arc, but I really really really don’t want to have to use it until I know I can write it well. THREE BLIND MICE needs more research. So that just leaves the pirate story…

Let’s call it ALL HANDS for now. And let’s say it’s what Lovecraft wanted to see when he watched Pirates of the Caribbean, and Harryhausen was right beside him, stealing his popcorn. (I draw comics, were you really looking for a profound metaphor there?)  But the best part is it works as a one-shot.  An oversized one-shot, sure, but much easier to sell than a twelve-issue maxi-series written by two drunken nerds.

So that’s going on. I wish I could say I arrived at this decision to write a pirate story via logical reasoning, but the fact is it’s nothing but what I’m calling a resultant… I don’t know… mental state? Gestalt?… of a series of strange coincidences. Take from that what you will.

::: ::: ::: Keeping it Relevant Department ::: ::: :::

MASK of MANOLO #2 is experiencing logistical hitches. More on that as I get news.

Page layouts for HORROR PROJECT are coming along nicely. Thumbnails are being a bit of a challenge, but live and learn I suppose.

Tomorrow will be about reading JENNY STRANGE scripts for Zuda.

OVERTHROW #1 is done and done. All that’s left is the cover concepts before we take it to pitch. Justin suggested I study some old posters and go all Soviet Propaganda on everyone’s asses, so that should be fun. See?

Typicality

Was chatting with a friend into the next dawn’s embryonic stages the other day.  And awed by my deceptive lucidity at such an hour, she asked me just what my regular schedule was like.  So I replied with as honest an answer as I could give under the circumstances — I laughed.

Since I started doing this comic-drawing-thing professionally (and I use the term professionally as loosely as possible), my body clock has gone to shit.  Especially now, since I’m in the homestretch of Overthrow #1.

But anyway… for no other reason than to shut Rey Siasar up (the fuckface who has been asking me to update the site), here’s what a typical workday is like, schedule-wise, but minus specific time brackets… coz that’s just silly.  This was Wednesday:

• Wake up at 10 a.m. and stare blankly into ceiling for half an hour, asking the Forces That Control All why I’m not Mike Mignola and Reon Kadena isn’t to my immediate left reading one of my Hellboy trades and loving it.
• Wander into the living room for coffee, what’s left of breakfast, and some CNN.  Because I’m mature like that.
• (Toggle MTV)

• Play with the dog before lunch, since this is the only time of day we’re equally filthy.  Then I go back in the house, hit the bathroom, and get all clean and relatively civilized.  Dog maintains his freedom.
• Afternoon work sees me checking favorite forums, blogs, and comic news sites, but not before  I check my blog stats and Deviant Art comments so that my frail artist ego can have its daily handjob.  Then I read a coupla comic books to swipe from just to warm my shit up and pop a movie in to watch while I work.  Tweet.

*** Wednesday had me re-reading a Transmet trade with Carlito’s Way as background noise.  The combo was strangely therapeutic.

• Emails.
• Mid-afternoon sees me reviewing scripts, thumbnailing some pages, and pacing around my room figuring shit out, asking myself what I’ve gotten myself into.  Laughing from time to time at the fact that I’ve fooled them all.
• Walk the dog and do some loose sketching with the nephew.  Hands down my favorite part of the day, especially since that Spanish girl down the road started walking her beagles.
• She has nice puppies.  BAM!
• When I get over my hate for the blank page (yes, I still do), drawing the panel borders in helps me breathe a little easier, and actual work starts.  By dinner time I usually have a comic-looking page with some sketchy figures drawn in.
• After dinner to early dawn hours = real work.

And the cycle begins anew the following day (or later that same day).  None can match the absolute glam of it.

Someone send me some strippers.