Well as rappers would say I’m back in the lab again! Time to make comics and get to work. It was really refreshing to take a few days off, sleep and look forward to the small period of rest I have set up for myself for once the book is done. It’s obviously taking a bit longer than I expected, but I am still on pace to be done by September or October at the latest. I’ve been trying to step up my production speed a tad without sacrificing quality. This week I managed to ink through two pages a night, but I don’t expect that to be a pace I will be able to keep rolling, but we will see.
Doing the math on the process I think it’s all feisible it’s just a question of energy and resolve at this point. I’m gonna give it my all knowing I will get there eventually. I can’t show much of what is happening because it’s pretty spoilery at this point and I don’t want to ruin the fun. 🙂 I think you’re all going to dig the way this book ends.
One other note I really wanted to talk about is that there have been some great interviews with some of my favorite artists and friends that I think would be really beneficial for others out there.
Two of them are from Kazu Kibuishi, who has had such a huge impact on my art, work ethic and given me so many tools in my tool belt. Without it sounding too sentimental, Kazu’s work was literally life changing to me. I remember vividly sitting in front of my computer desk and seeing the first poster image from Amulet of the house on a rock and just staring at it for like thirty minutes wondering what I was doing with my comics and life really.
I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but it was a very clarifying event for me. I knew what I wanted to do and what was possible having seen that image. Since then I’ve had the plesasure of working on the Amulet series and learned so much about making a book as a result of that. Well Kazu has been making the podcast circuit lately and two great interviews recently came up. Give them a listen!
Kids Comics Are Great – Kazu Interview
Making Comics w/ Jason Brubaker – Kazu and Jason Interview part 1
Another comics artist that I really admire and philosophically just find a lot of common ground with things on story wise is Doug TenNapel. He also did a couple of fantatsic interviews with Jason over at Making Comics along with Ethan Nicole of Axe Cop.
Making Comics w/ Jason Brubaker – TenNapel and Nicole interview part 1
Part 2
And finally, one of my bestest friends and just all around great guy and cartoonist Stephen McCranie did an interview with Scott King of Holiday Wars fame for Scott’s college course on comics. It’s an open forum q&a and a lot fun stuff comes up. And you get to see Stephen working on a page of Mal and Chad! Well worth a watch.
Kazu’s studio pics from his website is the first time I actually realized how a working comic artist functions. He also talked about his process a lot and I just remember reading (back when all I could do was sketch fan comics) MAN, what would it take for me to get to his level of professionalism? (1. Have a decent website/blog. ) XD
I enjoyed all these interviews! Haven’t heard Stephen’s yet so I’m bookmarking that. Keep up the awesome, Michael!
Thanks, Laur! I plan to! 🙂 Yeah I always loved seeing those pictures of the Kazu’s old studio and work place, especially at night time (like my above studio shot ) just really gave me this feeling of like man… I want to go to there. It’s fun carving a place for yourself and focusing on a product first and not the business. His advice took me a long time to internalize and now I really see the fruits of it in my life and personal goals.