Manual Override

I did some more digging around on the Internet and found a solution to the problem I was having on the Surface Pro with the Wacom drivers and my mouse.
It actually ended up being something that I had considered trying, though I hadn’t, as I’d just gotten sick of dealing with it and uninstalled the Wacom drivers.  I decided to give it a shot after seeing that someone else had done it and, confirming my suspicions, gotten it to work.
As I thought, the problem was that for some reason the Wacom drivers overwrote the drivers for the mouse, which caused the mouse to not work, as it isn’t a Wacom device.
The solution was to open up Device Manager, right-click on the “Wacom Device” that showed an error, choose to update the driver, then manually browse to the correct driver file.
Boom.
I’m still annoyed, however.

****

Confused Jon Is Confused Department:
This morning when I got up, after getting dressed in my workout clothes and brushing my teeth, I went out to start my car, as, despite the eventual warmth of the day, the early morning hours are still chilly, and then headed back inside, so that I could go back outside to the patio and smoke a cigarette while the car warmed up.  On the way back in I noticed that there was a package next to my door.
”That wasn’t there when I got home yesterday,” I thought.  Then, “Did I order something?”
I remembered that I had, but the thing I had ordered was a T-shirt, and while I’ve encountered my share of excessive packaging, this rather large box seemed especially excessive.
”Maybe it was left here by mistake,” I thought, but upon bringing it inside and inspecting it – determining that it was too heavy to be a shirt – I confirmed that it was, in fact, addressed to me.
”The hell…?”
I opened it up and discovered that it was this statue of Batgirl.
I stared at it in confusion for a while – in fairness to me, keep in mind that I was still pretty groggy, as it was still hours and hours before sunrise – and then thought, “Did…did I order this?  Have I been sleepshopping?”
Then, somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought occurred to me.  “Isn’t it my birthday soon?  Is this a…present?”
Why, I wondered, as he was the most likely suspect, would Scott have my present shipped to me, rather than just giving it to me in person on my birthday?
The whole thing was rather baffling, and was made moreso by the fact that I couldn’t find any sort of packing slip indicating who had bought this for me.
Finally, after digging through all of the packing material, I found the slip and discovered that it was a gift from the (former) Boss Lady, and at that point grateful Jon was grateful…and especially glad that, since it’s the “New 52” version, that she selected a character whose costume redesign I actually like.
So…thanks, (former) Boss Lady!

There Is No Try

Oh, hey, this thing is still around.
Yes, I’ve been neglecting the place more than usual.
No, I don’t have a good reason for it.
Well, in theory I do, but in practice…
Given that it’s November, one might assume that I’ve been neglecting this blog because I’ve been busy working on my novel for National Novel Writing Month.
That’s not the case this year.  For one thing, November kind of managed to sneak up on me, so I wasn’t at all prepared to dive into writing a novel, as I hadn’t spent any time coming up with an idea for one.
However, I did start out the month deciding that I would take the diligence that I normally apply to novel writing and apply it to another project entirely.
That hasn’t really yielded any results.
I suppose that one could say that writing a novel has never really yielded any results either, but at least by the end of the month I had something to show for my efforts.
With this other project?  Not so much.
So what is this mysterious NaNoWriMo replacement, you didn’t ask, because you already got bored and have moved on to look at cat pictures or something?
Well, when I was working on the comic book birthday present for the (former) boss lady, in the interest of time – and laziness – there were some scenes that I cut from the final product, scenes that added to the narrative, but weren’t essential, and which would have required additional pages.
Additionally, in the pages that I did produce I introduced a character whose backstory is hinted at, but not told, and after it was all over I found myself thinking, “I kind of want to tell her story.”
And finally, the limited page count forced me to do a considerable amount of compression, which led to there being pages that were literally filled to overflowing with expository dialogue.
So with all of that in mind I thought, “I should expand this to tell the full story that I’d originally imagined, give the pages some breathing room, tell the backstories, eliminate some of the sillier, in-joke elements, and turn it into a proper comic book that’s available for all the world to see.  Or more likely, ignore, but still, it’d be out there in some fashion.”
So that’s what I’ve been doing all month?
Well, kind of.
In adapting the story for a wider audience, one of the things I need to do is redesign the main character, the one based on the (former) boss lady.
The reasons for this are twofold:

I have a lot of pictures of her to use as references, but not enough to cover the full gamut of expressions and poses, and given that I’m not great at extrapolating things like expressions from a reference image, I need to come up with my own character design to eliminate the need for photo references.

As part of the joke in the birthday gift comic, there are several instances in which the main character appears nude, but some element – someone’s elbow, a word balloon, etc. – obscures it, a la “Austin Powers.”  In the proper comic, those obstructions would be removed, and, given that there would be a wider audience (potentially), if I’m going to draw the main character nude without obstructions, I don’t feel comfortable having her look exactly like the (former) boss lady.

Beyond that, I wanted to try to develop a consistent, simple, and streamlined style for the art, and when I’m engaging in portraiture, the resulting image can be too heavily-influenced by the reference, which – as was the case with the birthday gift – results in inconsistent styles.
So that was the challenge:  coming up with a simplified, consistent style, and designing a character who looks enough like the (former) boss lady for it to be clear that she was the inspiration, but doesn’t look exactly like her, and to develop, for the first time in all the years that I’ve been drawing, a consistent style.
That’s the keep word:  try.
We remember what Yoda said about “try,” don’t we?
It hasn’t been going well.  All attempts at a character redesign have either looked too much like her or not enough like her, and, of course, there’s no consistency to the style.
It doesn’t help that I’m not sure exactly what style I’m shooting for.  On the one hand, I want something pretty simple and clean, but on the other, I don’t want it to look too cartoony.
So basically while I really like their styles, I don’t want to go for the full Bruce Timm or Darwyn Cooke route, thinking that maybe I’d try to compromise with something a little more like the style of Amanda Conner.
However, that doesn’t really suit the tone of the story, so I’ve found myself leaning more towards the style of Terry Dodson.  After all, as I’ve mentioned many times before, when I look at people I can see the “styles” of various comic book artists.  “He’s a Gil Kane,” I’ll say, or “She’s totally an Art Adams.”  The (former) boss lady is a total Dodson.
But then I think about some of the other works that have influenced the idea behind the character and the story, such as Fatale by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and I think that the noir style of Phillips might be a good fit as well.
And then I think about Brubaker’s latest – the advanced ads for which, by the way, were part of what pushed me to go ahead and try to do the birthday comic in the first place, as it appeared to be tapping a similar vein – Velvet, and the amazing work of Steve Epting…
So, yeah.  Even setting aside issues of talent and ability – which are significant issues – there’s the problem of just not being able to make up my mind.  It doesn’t help that for some reason my own style – or what passes for it – has kind of atrophied over the years as I’ve spent so much time drawing what I see rather than what I imagine, and for some reason the elements of it that show up in my sketches don’t really survive the process of inking and coloring.
In any case, that’s what I’ve been doing.  Or, you know, not doing, as Yoda would say.

The Process Part 3

So with the comic drawn and lettered, the fake letter page, bonus cover, and “ad” assembled, it was time to put it all together into one document and prepare it for printing.
Given that I used to make my living putting documents together and preparing them for printing, this should have been the easiest part.
Should have been.
Unfortunately, it had been a while.  So much of a while, in fact, that I found that I could no longer do pagination – that is, figure out how to late out the pages for printing so that once the document was printed and bound they were in the correct order – in my head, and I was forced to actually grab paper, fold it and assemble it all as if it were the finished product, and write down the page numbers.
Shameful.
Even with that, I screwed up the page order in my first attempt at printing out a proof.
Once I had that figured out, though, it was a matter of deciding just how I was going to actually print the thing.
I’d found a company online that specializes in printing comic books, but they typically take up to twenty-eight days, and the fastest turnaround time they could offer was ten days – and that was only if I paid a 175% markup.
By the time I was actually ready to print, I had about nine days left before her birthday.
Still, the site was useful in that its FAQ gave me the specific dimensions I needed to reduce everything to and the trim and bleed settings I needed in order for my comic to have a final trimmed size that matched that of a standard modern comic book.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I bought a stapler that would allow me to properly saddle-stich the comic if I printed it myself, and I have a high-quality large format printer, so I took a crack at printing it out myself.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find paper of a suitable quality to get the slick, professional look I was hoping for.
I wanted glossy paper, at least for the cover, but the only glossy paper I could find was glossy on one side and matte on the other.  That wouldn’t have been so bad, but as it was photo paper, the matte side also had a watermark of the manufacturer’s name, and I’ve found – via mistakenly putting the paper into my printer incorrectly – that even setting aside the issue of the watermark, the matte side will not properly accept ink.
The other issue was that no matter how hard I tried the pages either printed crooked, or ended up crooked after I trimmed them with my crappy paper cutter.
Ultimately I decided to go with Staples.
I finished putting everything together in Adobe InDesign – which was an application I rarely used, as it was still new and unproven back then, in my desktop publishing days, so there was a bit of a learning curve to accompany my rustiness – and created a print-ready PDF, complete with printer’s marks to indicate bleed and trim.  (This will be important in a bit.)
I had dropped off the file after work, then sat at home eagerly awaiting their call to let me know that it was ready, a call that seemed increasingly unlikely to come as it got closer and closer to their closing time.  So, with only about 45 minutes left until they closed, I headed back over and was pleased to find that it was ready (though I was annoyed that they hadn’t called me).
When I got home I texted Scott to let him know that Giddy Jon Was Giddy.  He said, “Pics or it didn’t happen,” so I sent him a picture of myself holding my masterpiece and looking giddy.  Not pictured:  my dorky little “Jon is giddy” clap or my giggling.
I was not able to get glossy paper, unfortunately, but I did at least get a cardstock cover, and the interior pages were a decent stock.
I did notice that a couple of halftone pattern elements on the cover kind of faded into the background – having one shade of red over a different shade of red is a bit beyond their printer’s capabilities, apparently – but it wasn’t a big deal, and everything else looked great, so I let it slide.
I ordered a display case for the comic so that I could send her a signed and sealed copy to keep in addition to a copy to read.
When I got the case I was dismayed to find that comic didn’t actually fit in it properly, being about a quarter inch smaller all around.  I tried one of the imperfect copies I had printed, and it fit properly, so I was confused.  Then I remembered something that had happened when I printed out a proof earlier.
The trim marks fell slightly outside the printable area on a tabloid-sized piece of paper, and Adobe Acrobat automatically did a “shrink to fit” with the PDF, reducing the size of the image by 6%.
On a subsequent proof I unchecked that, and just used a ruler to guide my trimming on the sides that weren’t displaying the trim marks.
Even though I told them what the final dimensions should be at Staples, I didn’t think to tell them to uncheck “shrink to fit.”
I didn’t want to go through the expense of having it reprinted, though, so instead I printed out my own copy of the cover, on glossy paper, signed it, and put it in the display case in front of the copy of the comic.
With that done, I sent the final product off to the (Former) Boss Lady, and that’s where our story began.
Now that I managed to get the comic to her in time for her birthday, I have considered sending it off to that online company for printing just to see what the results are like, and to provide her with a proper signed copy, but I’m still mulling that one over.
So anyway, that’s that.
I did something that I didn’t think I could do, and I did it much more quickly than I would have ever thought possible even if I assumed I could do it at all, and the end result is actually…well, acceptable, certainly, at least from my perspective, and the coolest fucking thing ever from her perspective.
Generally I give my own opinion more weight than anyone else’s, but in this case, I’m going to have to agree with the (Former) Boss Lady.
What?  It’s just because I respect her.  I’m totally not being egotistical.
At this point, given that I’ve successfully created a comic book, what, if anything, does that mean for the future?
I don’t know, honestly.  I can tell you that at one point working on it made me think that I should just give up on drawing entirely.  Possibly after amputating my useless Frankenstein hands.
I’m frankly rather amazed that I didn’t completely burn out the “undo” button on my Cintiq.
Or throw my Cintiq out the window.
I mean, seriously, the window is right there…
In the end, though, I didn’t give up, and after the fact I discovered something that will be the basis for another post.
At some point I need to actually finish that page that Jamie requested years ago…
I’ve also been toying with the notion of making some changes to the basic story and the character designs of the comic, and expanding on it to create a webcomic, but even with this comic under my belt, that prospect still seems rather daunting, and experience has taught me that just because I did something once that doesn’t always mean I can do it again.
But we’ll see, I guess.
Anyway, thanks for indulging me in my self-indulgence.
I also want to give a special thanks to my friend Renee, who didn’t bat an eye when I sent her this message:

Two quick questions (I'll explain later):

1  What is your handwriting like?  Is it legible and recognizably feminine?
2.  Do you have a scanner?

Or at least as far as I can tell she didn’t bat an eye, and after I explained why – I needed some handwritten text for the comic – she quickly provided me exactly what I needed.  So…thanks!
And, of course, I have to thank the (Former) Boss Lady for inspiring me to give this whole crazy thing a shot, and also for her general awesomeness.

The Process Part 2

Having finally committed to the idea of doing the comic, with just a little over a month in which to do so, I attempted to take at least a semi-organized approach, by setting to work on page one.
I had drawn a few random images that could be used in the comic on various pages, but I knew I couldn’t take an entirely haphazard approach.
I also knew that completing the first page would be a big deal, as it would mark the first time I had ever produced a complete comic page.
I had spent some time working on character design, but hadn’t had much luck beyond developing a vague notion of what I wanted the characters to look like.
The main character’s look was already set, of course, given that she was based on the (Former) Boss Lady, and between the pictures of her that I had taken and her Facebook photos, I had plenty of reference material.
Plus, given how many times I’ve drawn her you would think that I could draw her with my eyes closed.  You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.  They say that practice makes perfect, but for me it often seems that practice rarely even enters into it, and every time I draw something it’s as if I’m drawing it for the first time.
In any case, apart from the main character, there was really only one other character who would appear frequently throughout the comic, the main POV character.  I did manage to settle on a design for him ahead of time, but that didn’t really matter, as it wasn’t as though I could actually draw him with a wholly consistent appearance anyway, as I just don’t seem to be able to do that.
But once I set to work on page one I actually managed to complete it relatively quickly.
I was, naturally, very pleased with myself.
Page two would have gone even faster, but I kind of wandered down a blind alley by trying to get “fancy” and include a panel in which there was a rather detailed background.  That didn’t work out so well, and ultimately I scrapped it and pared the page down.
It was just as well – initially I had planned to do a full eight pages of art and story, but somewhere along the line it occurred to me that I should throw in a fake “letter page,” which I could use to include a special birthday message.  If I did eight pages of story that would have meant having to put the letter page on one of the inside covers, and I didn’t want to do that, as I’d intended to use one inside cover for a credits and title page, and the other for either the fake ad or the bonus cover.
I decided that there were some superfluous scenes that I could cut, and that the last two pages could be condensed down to one, and so I pared it back to seven pages of story.
That was probably a mistake – in order for the story to actually make sense, that meant that I had to just load up several pages with captions and dialogue, and also try to cram in as many panels in as possible.  The last page actually has 14 panels, which is kind of unheard of.
There was no “decompression” in this comic.
I really do think that paring it down was a mistake, though, not just because of the pages jam-packed with word balloons, but because some of what I had to cut really would have added depth to the story.
And that’s the thing to keep in mind – I knew that regardless of how it turned out she would love it anyway just because of the effort involved and the general coolness of it, and, I would like to think, because it was from me, but I didn’t want to rely on that.  I wanted to make something that was actually good, and while there was only so much I could do in that regard as far as the art goes, I could do a lot more in terms of the writing.
Still, more pages would have meant more drawing, and…well, that was the biggest obstacle already.
I did consider making it longer than eight pages, but by that time I was too far into it to add any pages, as doing so would have meant that the double-page spread I had done for pages four and five would no longer be the centerpiece, and I really wanted it to be in the center, because those pages were probably my crowning achievement.  I came up with a really creative layout for the center spread that just works really well.  I’m certainly not J.H. Williams III, who is amazing, but…it’s really cool, and definitely needs to be at the center of it all.
(The version that exists only in my head is much cooler, but all things considered, I can’t complain about how the actual pages turned out.)
Initially I had been drawing each panel as its own separate file in Manga Studio, then bringing them all together to form the final page in Photoshop.  Ultimately, I decided that wasn’t the best approach, and began drawing complete pages in MS.
I still think that doing the complete page as one file is the best approach, but it did cause me some headaches when I started putting the pages onto an actual template and had to resize and rearrange the panels.  That was easier on the pages where the panels were separate files, and much more of a hassle on the pages that were a single file.
The other hardship that accompanied my layout blunder was that I had to re-letter the whole thing.  I’d been lettering each page as I went along before moving on the next one, but once I had to reduce the size of some of the pages to fit in the “safe” area there was no easy way to get the captions and balloons to fit without just starting over again, especially as I had to trim some of the dialogue even further.
That was probably just as well, though, as I was able to pick up the book about lettering before I got to that point, which definitely helped.
Ultimately, obviously, I finished it, and I forced myself to remember a concept that Jack “King” Kirby lived by:  sometimes done is better than perfect.
Because while it was definitely done, it was very, very far from perfect.
In my final installment I’ll tell you about putting the whole thing together and creating the final finished product (and all of the attendant headaches).

The Process Part 1

As mentioned in my last post, I made a comic book.
It was a lot of work, and it ate up pretty much all of my available, non-work time.  If I wasn’t working on it, I was busy finding something – anything – to do in order to avoid working on it.
All told, from initial concept to holding a printed copy in my hand, the process took just under two months, and the end result was an eight page, full-color comic.
I say that it has eight pages, but only seven of those pages are actual story pages, while the eighth page was a fake “letter page.”
And of course, the actual total number of pages, counting the front, back, and inside covers, which I also had to produce, was twelve.
Here, I’ll dive into the details of what was involved in that journey and what I learned along the way.
I’ll start by simply listing, at a high level, what I learned and some of the things I acquired.

It’s a lot of work.
Any one of the tasks required to create a comic book involves a lot of work, whether it’s the writing, the pencilling, the inking, the coloring, the lettering, or the final composition.  I had to perform each of those tasks myself.

Manga Studio 5 is awesome.
I still love Photoshop, but man…Manga Studio 5 rocks my world.  As great as Photoshop is, and as amazing as its vast array of tools is, when it comes to creating comic book-specific art, it just can’t compete.  Even with my Cintiq, drawing in Photoshop still feels somewhat unnatural, and the results, while impressive, are still quite distinct from something produced non-digitally.  That’s just not the case in Manga Studio.  Sketching in MS looks – and feels – almost exactly like sketching on paper.  Factor in all of the comic-specific tools and settings, and you’ve got a winner.  Best 80 bucks I ever spent.  I had tried the previous version of MS years ago after hearing about it during a panel at Baltimore Comic-Con and hadn’t been completely impressed, but this version improves on it in every way imaginable.  I can’t say enough good things about it.

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Production.
Rather than contend with my keyboard issue, I simply set aside writing the script and kind of did it on the fly in an approximation of what used to be the “Marvel Method” of creating comics.  At one point the way Marvel created comics went something like this:

A “Plotter” would come up with the overall plot of the story, maybe elaborating on some specific scenes and details, and providing information on the characters – physical descriptions and so forth – who would be appearing in the comic as well as locations and so forth.  The plot could sometimes be as short as a single paragraph.  This was often done in collaboration with the Artist.
The Artist would then transform the plot into panels and pages.
A “Scripter,” who might or might not be the “Plotter,” would take those pages and write the dialogue and captions that expounded upon the action contained in the panels.  This was part of why you so often had dialogue that would tell you exactly what you were seeing in the panel.  (Someone might say, “Oh!  Someone hit me on the head!  I’m losing consciousness!” while the art clearly shows said person being hit on the head.)
There was more to it than that, of course, particularly if someone other than the Penciller did the inking, or in some cases if there was an artist who only provided breakdowns – rough sketches of varying amounts of detail – and some other Artist came along to finish the rough pencils, and, of course, there was the pivotal role of the Editor – though often the Plotter/Scripter would also serve as Editor – and there would be the actual coloring and lettering, but that was the basic approach.
In my case, not having a completed script, I drew panels based on the plot, then made up the dialogue and captions on the fly.  This didn’t work out so well, as I often hadn’t left enough room in a particular panel for all of the text.
A better approach would have been the more modern method of writing a full script ahead of time, detailing the exact number and type of panels per page, explaining the action presented in each, and containing all of the dialogue, captions, and sound effects.
Now, given that I was drawing it, I didn’t necessarily need to get into the kind of level of detailed descriptions for each panel that, say, Alan Moore does when he writes a comic, but I definitely would have benefited from having everything planned out ahead of time instead of making much of it up as I went along.

Layouts really need to be planned in advance.
Related to the previous lesson.  I had to “cut” several planned sequences because I just couldn’t fit them in.  I might have had more luck if I had worked out the overall layout of the whole thing in advance.

Similarly, using templates at the start saves heartache and headaches later.
As I was finishing up the last page, I bit the bullet and bought a set of page templates for MS that were set to the correct dimensions and had all of the appropriate guide and trim lines included.  Why didn’t I do that first?  Because I’m dumb, apparently.
I was working with a page layout that was the correct dimensions – most comic book artists work on tabloid-sized paper, and the final product is generally reduced to a size that’s about 67% of that.
However, once I had the template and began transferring the finished art to it, I found that my attempts at estimating the limits of the “safe” area – those parts of the page that would not be trimmed in the final product – were way, way off.

The more you try to make someone not look like he was drawn by late-period Keith Giffen, the more he will look like he was drawn by late-period Keith Giffen.
Okay, this one is, perhaps, a bit too specific.  For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have minded if my work looked like early-period Keith Giffen, when he had a very clean, minimalist style.  Not that I dislike his later work, it’s just not the kind of look I was shooting for.  And this leads to my final lesson…

The artists I admire most and consider my biggest influences don’t appear to manifest an influence in my style.
One of my biggest issues is that my “style” is inconsistent.  So inconsistent that I don’t know that I can be said to have a style at all.  Throughout the process I could see hints of the styles of various artists, many of whom I not only don’t consider influences, I actually don’t like their styles at all.  I won’t name any names on that front, but I will say that as I looked at what I had wrought, I saw very little evidence of the styles of people like Adam Hughes, George Perez, Amanda Conner, or Alan Davis, or even Terry Dodson or Kevin Nowlan, whose styles I actually was trying to emulate to a certain extent.  Not that I was trying to make something that looked like it was done by them, but I wanted something that showed that was reminiscent.  I did, at least, get one image in there that looked comparable to the work of Phil Jimenenez…

So those were the biggest lessons I learned.  Here are some of the material things I acquired.

Bristol paper, illustration pens, and markers.
At one point, I thought that I might have better luck working in traditional, non-digital media.
Not so much.  Still, they’re good to have.

Books.  Lots of books.
I purchased the following books:
Understanding Comics
Reinventing Comics – I used to own both of these years ago, but sold them when I was strapped for cash.  I was glad to have them once again.
Comics and Sequential Art – I’ve always meant to buy this.
The DC Comics Guide To Digitally Drawing Comics – While geared towards working in Photoshop, this one would have been a godsend…if I had bought it before I was two-thirds of the way through drawing the comic…
The DC Comics Guide To Pencilling Comics
The DC Comics Guide To Inking Comics
The DC Comics Guide To Coloring And Lettering Comics – I got this one in time to put to use before I lettered the comic.
Master Digital Color

Software.
As mentioned, Manga Studio 5.  I didn’t go the professional – and much more expensive – Manga Studio 5 EX route, but if I get more serious about trying to make my own comics, I might do so one day.
Celtx – A word processing program designed specifically for writing various types of scripts, including comic book scripts.

Fonts.
I picked up several free comic book fonts, and considered buying some, but sheesh, those suckers are expensive.
My favorite acquisition, though, is a font called Redacted, which renders text that looks like the kind of blacked out, redacted text you’d see in some classified document.  This was the perfect solution for the multiple instances in which I needed clear, readable text in the midst of blacked out text.  Also, as the primary character, based on the (Former) Boss Lady, is something of a mysterious cipher, her name is redacted whenever it appears.

A big-ass stapler.
A stapler designed to be used on paper up to 25” long/wide.  At one point I had considered printing, trimming, and binding the comic myself, so this was an essential purchase for that.  I’ll get into why that didn’t work out in another post, when I list out some of the obstacles I encountered.  Still, it can’t hurt to have a big-ass stapler.

Lots of practical lessons in how to do things, and even more in how not to do things.
’Nuff said.

“Coolest F&%!ing Thing Ever.”

I don’t think it comes as a surprise to anyone to hear that the woman I refer to as the (Fomer) Boss Lady ranks pretty high on the (mostly theoretical) list of Jon’s Favorite People.
One of my favorite things about her is that she’s a very enthusiastic fan of my assorted artistic endeavors, particularly when she’s the subject of them.
This complementary narcissism works out very well for both of us.
Today is her birthday, and it’s usually the case that when there’s an occasion upon which I can present her with a gift at least part of that gift will be a new picture of her.
Some time ago, in a conversation relating to the TV show Archer the two of us essentially wrote a piece of fan fiction featuring a character based on her, with said character being your typical sexy femme fatale (who is also a spy).
Back in August I began thinking about gift ideas for her upcoming birthday, and my mind kept going back to that conversation and a gift idea occurred to me:  a comic book featuring that character.
It seemed like the perfect idea, except for one thing:  I would have to actually write and draw the thing.
The writing part wasn’t the challenge, as I pretty quickly came up with a basic plotline.
No, the problem was with the drawing of it.
Over the years I’ve made various attempts at producing a comic book, whether for print or for the Web, and every attempt met with failure.  And not just, “Oh, that doesn’t look as good as I would like,” levels of failure, but complete and utter abject failure.  As my friend Jamie – whose birthday is also today – can attest*, I’ve had no luck in even completing a single page of finished art.  And that’s not even taking into account the actual quality of the art.  Hell, I haven’t even managed to complete a single page of bad art, or even just stick figure-style thumbnails, let alone an entire story’s worth of art that even comes close to approaching what I would consider acceptable quality.
I’m not giving in to false modesty here; I will go on record as saying that for certain things, I am often a very good artist.  However, my skill at portraiture, or drawing what I see, at least when it comes to people, doesn’t really extend to things like backgrounds, or groups of people, or, really anything that would be necessary for producing anything beyond the cover of a comic book.
So I was inclined to set the idea aside.  There was no way I could do it.
Except…well, she would love it, I knew.  it would honestly make her day, and I knew that I would like that very much (cf. ranking high on the list of Jon’s Favorite People).
Beyond that, there would be the whole sense of…what’s that thing that’s the opposite of shame?  Oh yeah, pride.  The sense of pride in accomplishing something that I had heretofore proven incapable of accomplishing.
So I went back and forth on the idea, deciding that I just didn’t have enough time to do it – especially with all of the time wasted trying to decide whether or not I should even bother trying – before finally deciding that I would give it a shot.
I started out by writing the script, having downloaded software that was designed specifically for things like writing comic book scripts, and was immediately stymied by my previously-mentioned keyboard issues.
So I decided to set that aside for a bit and move on to the art, producing a cover that was some of my best work ever, and making an attempt, in Photoshop, to start sketching out the interiors.
That didn’t go so well, and Illustrator was no better.  Ultimately, I bought a copy of Manga Studio 5, a program designed specifically for drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering comic books digitally, and I began to make actual progress.
To make a long story less long, after working pretty tirelessly on it, I finished it.  I’m no Jack Kriby – hell, I’m no Jack Chick – but in the end it was amazing and unprecedented that I finished it at all, so it turned out better than I could have ever hoped.
I’ll write a follow-up post getting into the details of producing it, including the things I learned, the (many, many, MANY) mistakes I made, and what it potentially means for the future (if anything), but for now, we’ll get to the point.
In the end, I had a printed, bound, and trimmed comic book, with time to spare to get it sent to her for her birthday.
She received it yesterday and opened it today.  She had this to say via text:  “OMG.  I have my own comic book.  Coolest fucking thing ever.”
To which I say, all the work, self-doubt, and frustration was totally fucking worth it.
I’m not going to post it here for the world to see – after all, I didn’t make it for you – but I will give you a look at two of my favorite parts of it.
The first is a “Bonus Flashback Cover,” included on the inside back cover in much the same way that an actual comic might include a bonus pin-up image, or a galley of variant covers.
I went for an old-school, retro look – as opposed to the very modern front cover – and while I couldn’t find a way to incorporate a gorilla, I did at least feature a character crying and the color purple**:

*Choke!*

And to ensure that she always remembers who gave her this amazing present, because, you never know, she might forget, I included this full-page “ad” on the back cover:

Also:  The sky is blue.

*Years ago she asked me to put together a single comic book page featuring a character of her creation.  I got to work on it pretty quickly, then hit a snag in the form of having to draw panels that include, you know, backgrounds, and more than one person, so…  It’s always been my intention to finish it, but other, easier things have kept me distracted.  With Manga Studio, and my newfound confidence, the odds of me actually finishing it for her, finally, have improved.


**During the Silver Age of comics, which is the era into which this bonus cover would fit, there was a common belief that covers that featured either a gorilla, a character crying, and/or the color purple would sell better than they would if their covers did not have those elements.

Twofer

Here are two drawings for the price* of one:

They have a "rocky" relationship!  ...I'll show myself out.

First up is a picture of Blok and the White Witch from the Legion of Super-Heroes.  One of the things I’ve always liked about LoSH has been the unlikely romances between Legionnaires, such as the one seen above between a very fragile carbon-based woman and an incredibly dense and nigh-indestructible silicon-based…well, not a man, exactly, but he is the male of his species.
In a similar vein LoSH had the unlikely pairing of Dawnstar with Wildfire, the latter of which is a bundle of sentient “anti-energy” who inhabits a vaguely human-shaped containment suit.
I guess that unlikely romances appeal to me, given that any romance, whether with someone composed of carbon, silicon, or anti-energy, seems increasingly unlikely for me...
In any case, I’m not entirely pleased with how the picture turned out – the Witch’s face is just…odd – but it’s not as though putting any more work into it would have really improved it, so there it is.
I’ve had the idea for the image in mind for a while, but I was finally prompted to draw it by a post on Legion World, a LoSH fan page on Facebook.
One of the things that makes me indescribably happy is that Legion World actually has an album dedicated to my artwork.  As difficult as it is to believe, I have fans! 
The album primarily consists of my Ladies of the Legion series, but on Friday the image from this post showed up on Legion World’s timeline with the caption “Legion World needs more Jon Maki!”
How could I do anything but oblige?
I do think, though, that "needs more Jon Maki" is a phrase that someone would use to activate or deactivate a doomsday device, given that it's the sort of thing you wouldn't expect anyone to say in a million years.

Yep, it's a picture, all right.

Then there’s this picture of Scarlett Johansson, which I did as kind of an experiment.
Overall, I’m pleased with it, but as is always the case, it didn’t quite turn out the way I saw it in my head.  Oh well.
(I won’t bore you with the details of what makes it an “experiment.”  Content yourself with knowing that in drawing it I deviated from my usual technique.)

Bonus Birthday Department:
Today is my brother Brad’s birthday.  He’s 50.  That…that just kind of blows my mind.  I remember when my dad turned 50.
Speaking of my dad, April 3rd would have been his 78th birthday.
On April 1st, my sister Kim turned 46.
And, of course, my 41st birthday was this past Saturday.
…
It wasn’t a terribly exciting day.  I spent most of it working on the Legion picture, then went out for a nice dinner with Scott, Stacy, the twins – who were so well-behaved in the restaurant that some other patron felt compelled to compliment Stacy on it before leaving – and Jamie and Casey.
Then I came home and went for a walk to work off some of the food I ate.  In particular, this:

I probably didn't actually walk long or far enough.

Then I sat around for a while, and did some more work on the picture.
Exciting stuff.
While we were waiting for the others to arrive, Jamie mentioned that’s she a bit behind on reading this blog.  I told her she wasn’t missing much, and then she, somewhat sheepishly, said that she and Scott had been discussing my blog and how most likely the two of them and my mom are probably the only people who actually read it.
I said that’s not true.  After all, my mom very rarely reads it these days…
As for the birthday gifts, I got a set of wrist weights from Jamie and Casey, and a card telling me that I was, in the short term, getting a whole lotta nothing from Scott and Stacy, as my gift had not yet been delivered.  At least that’s the story they went with…
While I was sitting around late that evening, I got a text from the (former) boss lady, who was finally getting around to responding to a text I sent her on Thursday, as she’s been extremely busy with the new gig.
So busy, I noted, that she seemed to have forgotten my birthday.  As she wasn’t making any references to it in her messages, I said, “My birthday today, btw.”
She responded, “I have it on my calendar.  Your card is sitting on my kitchen table and I am an asshole.”
I told her that I wasn’t going to disagree with her assessment.
I did actually take some time off from work in honor – or something – of my birthday, including today, but now my time is nearly up and I can guarantee that the next four days are not going to go by as rapidly as the past five did.  *Sigh*

*Yes, seeing my drawings is free, but even that price is probably too high.

Underappreciated

VP:  Somebody or other possibly wants you to maybe do something.  Maybe. (Note:  I’m paraphrasing, but what he actually said wasn’t much more specific than that.)
Me:  Umm, okay…

After some extensive investigation, I finally figured out the who and the what, and met with my VP to provide something of an update.

Me:  By the way, maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I don’t feel like I should have to crack the Da Vinci Code just to figure out what someone is asking me to do.  I mean, I’m trying to work in operations support here, not prevent the Riddler from robbing a bank.
VP:  Well, some of that was my fault…(continues on apologetically explaining the weird office politics of the situation)
Me:  (Thinking)  You’re not even going to crack a smile?  Come on; that was funny.  I worked in a reference to the Riddler for…*okay*

TL; DR:  My VP doesn’t appreciate my sarcasm as much as the (former) boss lady did.*

*And does.  I texted her to tell her about the exchange and she said it made her day.

Christmas Wrap-Up

Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot, And Never Brought To Mind? Department:
One of the things I was looking forward to the most about my time off from work - I've been off since the Friday before Christmas and won't return until the 2nd - apart from just plain not being at work, was having the opportunity to meet up with the (former) boss lady while she was in the area visiting for the holidays.
We had plans to meet for lunch the day after Christmas, but the weather decided that it had no intention of letting that happen, starting out the day with freezing rain, followed by snow, followed by more freezing rain.
So we made plans for the next day, but had to reschedule yet again for today.
I knew that she would have a lot of demands on her time while she was here.  As I put it in the text I sent her prior to her return to NoVA:

I realize I'm all the way at the back of the long line of people who want to see you while you're here, and it'll probably turn out that I'm in the wrong line, like the line to get a fishing license or something, but I am in line.  Just FYI.  Also:  Christmas presents.

After I arrived at the place we were meeting - early, of course - I laid the odds as being about 50/50 that I would be getting a text or phone call telling me that we would have to either reschedule again, or call it a miss entirely.  The odds went to 99/1 when I noticed that I had gotten a text from her.
Fortunately she was only letting me know that she was slightly delayed, which, honestly, I had pretty much thought was a given.
Always being on time is not, after all, among the many positive character traits she can lay claim to.
Sometime shortly thereafter I got a text asking me where I was - she had assumed I'd gone inside, but I was outside waiting in my car.
With that confusion out of the way, we commenced to having a nice lunch and spent time getting caught up, and I gave her the aforementioned Christmas presents, which included a Christmas pin-up picture I did for her.  As I put it, "I drew you a Christmas picture because of course I did."

Vintage style, complete with torpedo boob bikini top.

It was, of course, good to see her again, but the visit was too short, and it made me sad to think that, at best, it will probably be a year before I see her again.

The Nightmare After Christmas Department:
Among the presents I received on Christmas was Walmart gift card from Jamie and Casey.  I don't often go to Walmart, as I hate the one in Leesburg and seldom go to the one in Sterling, but, as it was on my way after I parted ways with the (former) boss lady, I decided to stop there and put it to use.
...
I knew it was a bad move as soon as I saw the parking lot, but I was committed to getting it over with.
Fortunately I only ended up standing in a line that wasn't moving at all for about ten minutes - after having claimed a space at the end of another very long line, only to discover that, in fact, I had cut in to the middle of a line that was even longer than I thought.  Oops. - before another register opened up and I was able to make my way out of there, with only minimal levels of PTSD.

Light Week Department:
My present from the (former) boss lady was a gift certificate for the comic shop.  In our original lunch plans, we were going to meet at a restaurant right across from the comic shop, as she was going to be in the vicinity anyway, and so, it being a Wednesday, meeting there seemed like a win-win.
Given the reschedule, going there would have been much more of a trek for her, so we had decided on another location.
In any case, because I didn't go there on Wednesday, or yesterday, for that matter, I decided I'd swing by the comic shop on the way home today and put the gift certificate to use.
Because that's the way things go, it turned out that this was the one week of the year in which nothing I actually read shipped, and I couldn't find any old reprints or anything else I wanted, so the gift went unused for now.
She had said that she wanted to buy me a statue for my collection - my gift from Scott and Stacy, by the way, was a Raven statue, which completes my set of the ladies of the original line up of The New Teen Titans - but she didn't know which ones I have.  It's probably just as well; I mean no offense, but I wouldn't trust anyone other than Scott to actually pick out something like that for me.
Also, they don't currently have anything in stock that I actually want anyway.

Wonder Girl (Donna Troy), Raven, Starfire

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is?

As I've mentioned/complained about many times before, whenever people see my artwork I'm greeted with some variation of, "You're in the wrong line of work."
Given that I actually make money in the line of work I'm in - far, far more than I've ever made, or likely ever will make - from my artwork, I have to dispute that claim.
After all, most of my work isn't exactly original, consisting of me merely drawing/painting my own version of a photograph of a famous or semi-famous person that someone else took, so my ability to profit from them is dubious at best, given the issue of copyright and whatnot.
However, as mentioned some time back, as a going away/housewarming present for my (former) boss, I took some pictures of her to use as references for a series of portraits.
While the final collage of (seven) portraits is going to be one-of-a-kind and will serve its intended purpose as a gift to her, I actually own the copyright on the images, and have her permission to do with them what I will, so with that in mind, I'm going to give this whole "making money" thing a shot with one of my favorites of the series:





So here's your chance to prove me wrong about the validity of my life choices and the correctness of my existing line of work, and buy a pretty picture of a pretty lady.
There are also prints available via my Zazzle store, though I'll make more money if you buy from the site linked above...

From Beyond The Grave….Distance Between Us

Text exchanges with the (former) boss:

T(F)B:  I found it.  It pops up differently.
Me:  K, good.
T(F)B:  Geez.  I am an idiot.
Me:  No comment.
T(F)B: Shut it.  This is your fault.
Me:  Of course it is.

*****
Me:  Also, enough with the encouragement to get mouthy with [my VP], Captain No Longer Here
T(F)B:  Whatever.  Man up, Maki!
Me:  I am manning up; I’m bending over and taking it like a man.
T(F)B: Debatable.
Me:  Whatever, quitter.

*****

Me:  I’m going to surrender – I’ll shove a crayon in my brain or something.
Me:  Make myself dumb.
T(F)B: Use a steel rod.  Make it all stop.
Me:  Why are you always so keen on having me kill myself?
T(F)B: It’s what I would do.
T(F)B: There should still be a rod in my office.  In one of the drawers.
Me:  Old Lady Sullivan’s Place?  No one goes near there.  They say it’s haunted.
Me:  By failure and the Spirit of Quitting.

****

T(F)B: It’s ok.  I figured it out.
T(F)B: Thx tho.  U Rick
T(F)B: Rick
T(F)B: Rock
T(F)B: Geez

So Long, Farewell…

So the (former) boss was originally supposed to start her new job this past Monday, but because that would have meant driving into Florida just as a hurricane approaches – and it’s just like her to move to a hurricane-prone area in the midst of hurricane season; I think it’s a harbinger of what her new employer about to receive – her new boss told her to hold off until the 4th.
As a going-away present – which, given the timing, will ultimately end up being a housewarming present – I told her that I wanted to do a proper, non-Heroic, portrait of her.
Towards that end, we had to set up some time for me to take some pictures of her.
Originally we were planning to do it last Friday, after her last day, but her last day ended up being longer than expected, and so there was no time.
We then decided that she would come to my house on the Saturday while her condo was being shown to prospective buyers, but early Saturday morning she texted me to say that we needed to reschedule, as she had forgotten about other plans.  Sunday wouldn’t work, as she was going to be out of town.
Based on my schedule, I let her know that Tuesday or Wednesday evening would work best, and ultimately we decided that there was a perfect opportunity on Wednesday afternoon, as I had no meetings scheduled, and she had to drop her car off at a garage to get some work done, and that way she wouldn’t have to sit around there waiting.
So I picked her up and we headed off to her place.  We were nearly there when she realized she’d left her house key back at the garage…
After a quick U-turn, we retrieved her key we finally made it to her place.
I’ve never really worked with a model before, apart from that one “open draw” I went to several years ago, and one time when I asked my ex-wife to pose for me.  The latter experience was never repeated again, because it had not gone well, as she was a total bitch about it for some reason and did nothing but complain the whole time.
Anyway, while there was nothing at all risqué about the pictures I took of the (former) boss, it still felt pretty awkward.  Just trying to explain how I wanted her to pose felt weird in a way that I can’t quite articulate.
Still, it was fun, and it was nice to be able to see her one last time and for us to be able to say our goodbyes.
…
To be honest – and, I think, to the surprise of no one – there was a lot more I could have, and maybe should have, said to her than just goodbye, but…well, let’s just leave that where it is.
In any case, the boss is gone, but won’t be forgotten, and somewhere along the line I’ll have to get to work on painting a portrait that will do her justice, and hopefully it won’t be too long before she has a place to hang it.
So long, Boss Lady.