The Future: "Mayflower"

Originally titled "Over 70,000 profile views... And Beyond" on my DeviantArt Journal. Going to try and keep that and the blog unified from now on.

I thought I'd update everyone on my projects and prospects.

2012 was a terrible year. Besides two deaths in the family, and dealing with extended-family drug problems, I had a lot of promising career outlooks fall through. Every month things got crappier, to the point where it affected my outlook on my art-making ability. And this meant a lot of staring at paper or the screen, trying to start something and then deleting it, etc. Eventually it meant I wasn't even doing that, and just staying away from the pen and pencil altogether.

But I've now gotten another 'day' job and finally moved out of the parent's house after college. While this means I have less time to do art, it also means I now have a little room dedicated to art-making (I'm looking forward to hanging up some whiteboards and corkboards on the wall soon to cultivate more creativity). It's helped things.

I've been able to do art a bit more consistently now - especially the main project that was intimidating me for so long: Mayflower. I want it to be exactly what I've been envisioning, but it never felt like I could get there last year. In the last month, I feel like I'm getting a little closer, at least. Enough time has passed since the the worst of last year that my brain now throws a few encouraging thoughts at me from time to time.

Mayflower: The Seeker did not win that contest that I posted about last time in my journal. We got REALLY close. In fact, we actually DID get in the top 5 who would win grant money. But then oddly enough, a few of our votes were disqualified after the contest ended and we fell from 4th to 6th place, leaving space for a team who paid for their votes, and a team who magically got votes after the contest ended, and even more oddly, had team members who were involved in the running of the contest itself. As one might imagine, me and my friend, Mike, who's doing all the programming, were not happy campers.

The positive note though? Since we didn't pay for out votes - we saw that we had managed to scrounge together a huge heap of earnest, kickass support from people, like the person reading this right now. That's really encouraging! So The Seeker is still quietly being toiled on at the moment, despite our loss and lack of resources. Expect more on that front in the future!

Until then you'll have to deal with Mayflower the comic! I've been planning this universe for 3 and a half years now, and now the first story within it is finally becoming a reality. I'll be posting preview pages in the coming weeks on my DeviantArt and this blog, and I hope to have a printed and digital copy for sale in April, when I'll begin setting up shop at a few nearby comic conventions. I hope I'll have your support in this new venture, or better yet, I hope Mayflower will earn your support.

More to come...

A Year In Review, Another To Come

This image pretty much sums up the highlights of what I've accomplished in the 1.5 years since graduating college. I think I'm most proud of finishing Halo: A Fistful of Arrows, the largest project I've ever embarked on. Anything that could spawn such rabid support, petitions, soundtracks, etc, is something to be satisfied with, I think.

Of course those jobs that actually paid weren't too shabby either. :)

Anubis can now be added to that list... well, at least for my part. The art is all complete, the actual comic won't be released till the spring, though.

We'll be starting up a Kickstarter project soon to help fund the initial print run.

Next, I've got to work on...

-Re-doing my (this) website
-Various jobs and commissions I need to do
-Halo: Shield and Sword
-The Mayflower Project

Too many ideas, too many things to work on, not enough time... :)

The Origins of 'Halo: A Fistful of Arrows'

I've been creating a Halo: Reach-inspired web-comic in my free time for the last few months.  Recently, I just posted page 23, which should be around the halfway mark (at the least, I hope).

The comic had started out as something I was doodling while waiting for the next Halo multiplayer match to start.  Originally, it was going to be between 10 and 15 pages long (around the same length as an older Halo fan-comic I had done some time ago) and was going to just be a fun little story showing a super-soldier named Jun and Dr. Halsey, an important scientist, getting to a secret base.  It was a loose end that the game did not tie up... so I thought I should try my hand at it.

It was going to be simple, really, more an excuse to doodle spaceships blowing up and super-soldiers shooting at aliens than anything.  I was also going to try and make this real quick, with a hasty-but-pretty style.  I originally felt that I had already made too much Halo fan art - I needed to spend my free time doing other things, perhaps (something that could get me a job, for example) so this would be might last, great, Halo-fanart farewell...  So I sat my sketches down next to the computer and opened Photoshop and started to draw/paint

And then I made this:

Which is NOT a simple or quick style, nor the first few pages I had sketched and planned, nor pertaining to the story I had originally set out to do. Nope, I had created a monster...

Now 23 pages later, I'm still only halfway done with a story that 'grew in the telling' and now encompasses flashbacks and flashforwards (thank you past-Levi for watching hours and hours of Lost), main plots and subplots, themes of sympathy and honor in warfare, and personal character development delving into guilt and cases of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder... Yep. What the hell is wrong with me?

... But I'm just having too much fun. :)

I'll be posting again sometime soon about the process of making these pages, going into the planning and thumbnailing, to getting references and then the actual digital-painting.