Goals, and News, and Non-Standard Stuff
on March 8, 2010 at 5:45 pmHi, Folks!
These last few weeks have been, shall we say, “non-standard” around here. I’d like to think that we are back in the saddle and gearing up for some big stuff. (Ah, the joy of mixed metaphors!)
At the moment, plans to put “Johnny Saturn” out for the Kindle have been halted. It seemed like a great idea, but a full “Johnny Saturn” page on the Kindle screen is just illegible. It is my hope that this can be figured out, but at the moment this push has stalled out.
I’m working on putting a new transcription plugin on the site, John Coswell’s “What Did They Say” plugin. This has all the potential of being really fun for reader and creator, and helping out our traffic. Unfortunately, I’ve run into problems with it, and I can’t get it to work right. I’ve got a post on John’s forum asking for help, so perhaps he can get us up and running.
I have a huge artistic goal for the rest of this year, and it’s not the standard “draw better” or “study anatomy” type of goal. Essentially, I want to be able to draw at my top level no matter what my mood or energy level is like. The way it currently stands is that I draw pages in silence at my art table in my art nook. If I’m sick, or someone stresses me out, or I’m really tired, then I no longer draw with inspiration, but get by on learned skills and memory.
Perhaps I should explain. When we learn a skill like art or music, we practice a great deal to learn patterns and processes and build muscle memory. When we start drawing, then we purposely forget all those rules and set out on inspiration. You don’t really forget all the rules, of course—they are still there and hard at work in your subconscious.
A comparison might be a master guitarist—he learned all those chords and scales and modes and so on, but when he bends his mind to playing he thinks of none of that. The technical aspects drop out of conscious thought, and there is a direct conduit between the musician and the music.
Well, musicians always play, no matter what’s going on. The generally don’t skip concerts because they are in the wrong mood, or suddenly switch to playing only rhythm guitar because playing lead guitar feels clumsy. Well, that’s how I want to be with my art. The show must go on.
Scott.
I understand you exactly, Scott. In fact I was just thinking the same of myself, not only with my line art but my video work as well. I’m wanting to start a new web comic series just to pull myself back into the habit. For me, doing this is what helps keep me from getting depressed and stressed. However, I’m already in the stressed out/depression mode. Need to pull out of it.
AND.. I wouldn’t worry about the Kindle thing too much. I’m sure the iTunes COLOR version of Johnny Saturn looks great on the iPhone, iPodTouch and iPad.
It does indeed look good on those formats. But I am just trying to cover all my bases. It looked for a while like Kindle might corner the market on e-readers, but once the iPad showed up all bets are off.
“unprecented”? “second in commend”?
Mispelling of “unprecedented”
I’m planning on putting John’s plugin to use too. I had to recently re-install everything and it was mentioned on the Comicpress site.
I hear you about working on “auto-pilot” Life gets in the way, but you still have to try and stick to the schedule, so sometimes things just get done by routine instead of from the heart.
Hi, Scott! Unfortunately, I was never able to get the plugin to work right, so I’m not going to be using it, I’m afraid. This is not to say it won’t work for other Comicpress setups, but it didn’t with mine, and I didn’t have the technical expertise to make the code changes he suggested.
As for using the the transcript function that came with comicpress, I entered transcripts for issue 1, so you can see how that looks.