Yeah, yeah, yeah... I should make a post, I know. I know...
So, what's up in the world of Cliff? Depends on how much I want to talk about, really, I suppose. For those of you curious about work, this is officially all I'm going to say about work: It's worklike.
Now, onto more interesting and more pressing matters... Let me hint at several projects and tell you about one. Joe and I have begun work on a new idea that we think is going to be pretty cool. It's preliminary stuff right now, but I'll probably say more about it eventually. We'll see. I want to give it time to blossom and come to fruiton, but I will tell you I bought another web domain name (you know that's three I own now?) -- it should be cool if/when it's ready. More about that eventually.
This weekend is going to be the first studio meeting. What studio, you ask? Glad you asked -- I've always wanted to be a writer for a living. I've got stories coming out of my eyes, and getting them down onto paper will help a great deal. So about a year and a half ago, Joe and I decided to start trying to break into comic books. We made a pitch last year and got a lot of favorable commentary, but the main response was "Not yet." That's good, in my opinion, because most people just get "No" but we got "Not yet." So we had the potential, but weren't able to execute it quite yet... so Joe and I both went on creative hiatus to recover our energies and regroup.
Now cut to about four or five months ago. Joe and I are ready to regroup, as soon as Joe gets his wedding out of the way. There's only a few small problems. First off, we've lost our inker (tracer!) and I've kinda come to the conclusion that I won't be able to do everything else I'm going to need to and still letter, without breaking my legs. See, originally, Joe was pencilling, Joe's now-brother-in-law Wes was inking and I was writing/lettering. I also handled the proposals/business and Joe and I were splitting coloring duties for the front/back cover (he'd do the base colors and I'd go and do the digital finishes/touchups). Quite frankly, Joe didn't particularly want to ink for himself and the lettering was just too much for me on top of everything else I was doing. So we decided we were going to start thinking about what to do.
A few months later, solutions presented themselves. Greg and I talked about it a bit, and he was eager to take a shot at inking for us. I'm not sure if I talked him into it or if I just suggested the idea and he jumped at it. My memory of the whole process isn't that good. Likewise, I don't remember how Erin and I broached the subject of her lettering, but I do remember she was also eager to get a chance to work on this project. On top of all of this, we've been trying to con Liz into taking a shot at doing the colors for the cover, which means Joe is free to basically just take his time on the pencils and get them just how we want them, but I'm also free to actually take time to craft scripts and characters and dialogue and whatnot. (I'd like to think I'm pretty good at dialogue, actually. I mean, I've written a couple of plays, even if they've never been put on, and they were written several years ago. I'd like to think I've gotten much better since then...)
Cut forward to now. Right now, actually. I've been banging on story ideas and will probably have three or four sets of 5-pages to show at our first official studio meeting this weekend. It'll be a chance for everyone to meet Joe and for Joe to meet everyone, and we'll get to do all sorts of other fun studio stuff. We'll discuss and decide on a studio name, we'll kick around vague logo concepts, we'll look through the various pages and see what interests people and what people want to work on. The studio is a collaborative effort. I don't want this to be me coming down off the mount with these holy pages and handing out edicts. I also don't want everyone totally doing their own thing and ignoring everyone else. I want Joe, Greg, Erin, Liz and I to all be working on a project we're proud of. I want us to put out a comic that we'll all be proud of and that will be entertaining and interesting to read, as well as gorgeous to look at. I know, I know... I have very, very, very high and lofty expectations, but if you shoot for the moon, you'll be content when you get into outerspace.
I honestly believe that we have all the talent we need right here and that this group of people will be able to achieve whatever we want, as long as we work together and work hard. I will be a hardass about the work hard bit, but someone has to be the slave driver of the bunch, as artistic types are, on the whole, quite lazy. And hey, I'm including myself in that. But laying about won't get us anything (except a killer tan, but no time for that now...) and I want to be able to go to the next San Diego Comic Convention with something in my hands that WE made, that WE put out, that WE are getting profits back from... I want people to read what we're working on and go "Hey! That kicks ass!" I want to get asked for an autograph. But most of all, I want to hear someone say "I really enjoy your work," so I can know I'm giving back for all the comics I've been enjoying for years. I, the critic, want to put something new into the world. And that's just me. I imagine everyone else working for the studio has their own ideas on why they're doing it...
Man, I really can drone on, can't I? Let me change subjects quickly to keep people interested. So the pictures I took of Erin turned out pretty well, actually, and I had some prints made. One's hanging in my living room right now, one's going to my mother for her birthday and of the other two, Erin gets one and I'm keeping the other to either put on my desk here at work or hang somewhere else at home. I'll probably take Liz's headshot this weekend, and maybe a few of Greg as well, and even some of Joe and Lara, plus I'd like to get at least one of the whole studio together (though that will be a REAL pain in the ass, so maybe I'll do one of everyone but me or something...) My 35 mm film scanner should arrive this week, I hope. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get it to work with my PC yet, but I'll figure it out sooner or later. It'll just take some weird balancing act, but I should be okay. Maybe I'll even post an image or two up here from time to time. We'll see. As it turns out, it's much cheaper to just get 35mm film developed and worry about large-size prints only than getting a bunch of the small prints that I may or may not ever do anything with.
Oh, and in another story that should give a lot of you a good laugh, Lara needed to raise some money (because they don't want to just bum money off me) so she asked if there was anything she could do around the apartment for $20. I have thusly handed to her THE GREAT REORGANIZATION... that's right. I've gotten about 100 CDs that I haven't filed into my Big-Ass Collection™®, so I've got Lara working on it now. They're all in alphabetical order and I had to buy another 264 CD binder so that things would be okay. Supposedly she's starting this morning. I can't say I envy her. It's not gonna be an easy project -- usually I take a whole weekend to do it -- but I can't just GIVE them $20 when they're demanding they work for it. Still, it'll give them something to do so they're not just sitting around the apartment all day. I think they're both starting to go a little stir crazy. And with Joe starting to work on our other Non-Disclosed Project©, as well as developing a healthy addiction to match mine to Magic: The Gathering Online (yeah, I do go by Devinoch there...), we've all got things to do with our time. But I'll start posting daily again, promise... most of the time, anyway. *grins*
In one final note, I'm carrying over something I used to do on my old blog to here... I used to post what I was listening to all the time, and I stopped that for a while, mostly because I wasn't listening to music in the office when I first got to Maxis, but now that I've got my own cube and I'm listening to more music at home, I can do this again. So you'll get a bit of lyrics, the band name (with link to their site) and the song name...
NOW PLAYING: Dave Matthews Band - "Where Are You Going?"
Lyrics: "Where are you going, where do you go?/ Are you looking for answers, to questions under the stars?/ If along the way you are growing weary, you can rest with me until a brighter day/ It’s okay, where are you going, where do you go?"
So, what's up in the world of Cliff? Depends on how much I want to talk about, really, I suppose. For those of you curious about work, this is officially all I'm going to say about work: It's worklike.
Now, onto more interesting and more pressing matters... Let me hint at several projects and tell you about one. Joe and I have begun work on a new idea that we think is going to be pretty cool. It's preliminary stuff right now, but I'll probably say more about it eventually. We'll see. I want to give it time to blossom and come to fruiton, but I will tell you I bought another web domain name (you know that's three I own now?) -- it should be cool if/when it's ready. More about that eventually.
This weekend is going to be the first studio meeting. What studio, you ask? Glad you asked -- I've always wanted to be a writer for a living. I've got stories coming out of my eyes, and getting them down onto paper will help a great deal. So about a year and a half ago, Joe and I decided to start trying to break into comic books. We made a pitch last year and got a lot of favorable commentary, but the main response was "Not yet." That's good, in my opinion, because most people just get "No" but we got "Not yet." So we had the potential, but weren't able to execute it quite yet... so Joe and I both went on creative hiatus to recover our energies and regroup.
Now cut to about four or five months ago. Joe and I are ready to regroup, as soon as Joe gets his wedding out of the way. There's only a few small problems. First off, we've lost our inker (tracer!) and I've kinda come to the conclusion that I won't be able to do everything else I'm going to need to and still letter, without breaking my legs. See, originally, Joe was pencilling, Joe's now-brother-in-law Wes was inking and I was writing/lettering. I also handled the proposals/business and Joe and I were splitting coloring duties for the front/back cover (he'd do the base colors and I'd go and do the digital finishes/touchups). Quite frankly, Joe didn't particularly want to ink for himself and the lettering was just too much for me on top of everything else I was doing. So we decided we were going to start thinking about what to do.
A few months later, solutions presented themselves. Greg and I talked about it a bit, and he was eager to take a shot at inking for us. I'm not sure if I talked him into it or if I just suggested the idea and he jumped at it. My memory of the whole process isn't that good. Likewise, I don't remember how Erin and I broached the subject of her lettering, but I do remember she was also eager to get a chance to work on this project. On top of all of this, we've been trying to con Liz into taking a shot at doing the colors for the cover, which means Joe is free to basically just take his time on the pencils and get them just how we want them, but I'm also free to actually take time to craft scripts and characters and dialogue and whatnot. (I'd like to think I'm pretty good at dialogue, actually. I mean, I've written a couple of plays, even if they've never been put on, and they were written several years ago. I'd like to think I've gotten much better since then...)
Cut forward to now. Right now, actually. I've been banging on story ideas and will probably have three or four sets of 5-pages to show at our first official studio meeting this weekend. It'll be a chance for everyone to meet Joe and for Joe to meet everyone, and we'll get to do all sorts of other fun studio stuff. We'll discuss and decide on a studio name, we'll kick around vague logo concepts, we'll look through the various pages and see what interests people and what people want to work on. The studio is a collaborative effort. I don't want this to be me coming down off the mount with these holy pages and handing out edicts. I also don't want everyone totally doing their own thing and ignoring everyone else. I want Joe, Greg, Erin, Liz and I to all be working on a project we're proud of. I want us to put out a comic that we'll all be proud of and that will be entertaining and interesting to read, as well as gorgeous to look at. I know, I know... I have very, very, very high and lofty expectations, but if you shoot for the moon, you'll be content when you get into outerspace.
I honestly believe that we have all the talent we need right here and that this group of people will be able to achieve whatever we want, as long as we work together and work hard. I will be a hardass about the work hard bit, but someone has to be the slave driver of the bunch, as artistic types are, on the whole, quite lazy. And hey, I'm including myself in that. But laying about won't get us anything (except a killer tan, but no time for that now...) and I want to be able to go to the next San Diego Comic Convention with something in my hands that WE made, that WE put out, that WE are getting profits back from... I want people to read what we're working on and go "Hey! That kicks ass!" I want to get asked for an autograph. But most of all, I want to hear someone say "I really enjoy your work," so I can know I'm giving back for all the comics I've been enjoying for years. I, the critic, want to put something new into the world. And that's just me. I imagine everyone else working for the studio has their own ideas on why they're doing it...
Man, I really can drone on, can't I? Let me change subjects quickly to keep people interested. So the pictures I took of Erin turned out pretty well, actually, and I had some prints made. One's hanging in my living room right now, one's going to my mother for her birthday and of the other two, Erin gets one and I'm keeping the other to either put on my desk here at work or hang somewhere else at home. I'll probably take Liz's headshot this weekend, and maybe a few of Greg as well, and even some of Joe and Lara, plus I'd like to get at least one of the whole studio together (though that will be a REAL pain in the ass, so maybe I'll do one of everyone but me or something...) My 35 mm film scanner should arrive this week, I hope. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get it to work with my PC yet, but I'll figure it out sooner or later. It'll just take some weird balancing act, but I should be okay. Maybe I'll even post an image or two up here from time to time. We'll see. As it turns out, it's much cheaper to just get 35mm film developed and worry about large-size prints only than getting a bunch of the small prints that I may or may not ever do anything with.
Oh, and in another story that should give a lot of you a good laugh, Lara needed to raise some money (because they don't want to just bum money off me) so she asked if there was anything she could do around the apartment for $20. I have thusly handed to her THE GREAT REORGANIZATION... that's right. I've gotten about 100 CDs that I haven't filed into my Big-Ass Collection™®, so I've got Lara working on it now. They're all in alphabetical order and I had to buy another 264 CD binder so that things would be okay. Supposedly she's starting this morning. I can't say I envy her. It's not gonna be an easy project -- usually I take a whole weekend to do it -- but I can't just GIVE them $20 when they're demanding they work for it. Still, it'll give them something to do so they're not just sitting around the apartment all day. I think they're both starting to go a little stir crazy. And with Joe starting to work on our other Non-Disclosed Project©, as well as developing a healthy addiction to match mine to Magic: The Gathering Online (yeah, I do go by Devinoch there...), we've all got things to do with our time. But I'll start posting daily again, promise... most of the time, anyway. *grins*
In one final note, I'm carrying over something I used to do on my old blog to here... I used to post what I was listening to all the time, and I stopped that for a while, mostly because I wasn't listening to music in the office when I first got to Maxis, but now that I've got my own cube and I'm listening to more music at home, I can do this again. So you'll get a bit of lyrics, the band name (with link to their site) and the song name...
NOW PLAYING: Dave Matthews Band - "Where Are You Going?"
Lyrics: "Where are you going, where do you go?/ Are you looking for answers, to questions under the stars?/ If along the way you are growing weary, you can rest with me until a brighter day/ It’s okay, where are you going, where do you go?"
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