20160305 - Back from Japan Next Project: BOOK (Patreon)

Wow it's amazing how much faster videos upload with a nice connection, I missed u interbutts

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Angela May - Patreon vlog 05/03/16

Emerald City comicon: http://www.emeraldcitycomicon.com/

Okay everyone, it's Saturday and I am back in Vancouver! Oh my gosh, it's so beautiful and warm here in Vancouver. I had a lot of fun traveling around. It was good to go on a break and get some time off of work, but, man, I am pretty happy to be back. It's been raining all week, but, like, today it's gorgeous, I should, maybe, go outside. But...I scheduled a live stream, so I guess it's not gonna happen.

I did some work on this travelogue last week, I wanted to get it off my plate as soon as possible, because I wanted the travelogue to be, you know, very connected to while I was traveling and not to bleed into the rest of the time that I should be using for normal work. So all of the incs and colors are done now and I've spent a good amount of time last night just scanning that all in. I also made a little cover for it which needs a little bit more work, but I made the primary illustration for the cover. And I scanned in a bunch of ticket stops, that I am hoping to do some collage, and I am hoping to do maybe one or two extra pages of epilogue, but that's pretty much done, I'm hoping to get that out this weekend, and start sending it to patreons and then promoting it later on.

So, yay, I wasn't sure to be able to pull that together, because making a comic while you're actually traveling is quite challenging, but I figured if I could do it for “Burning Man”, and it would be like the most challenging thing, then I should be able to do it for something like a casual trip to Japan.

It's really funny how even a “Burning Man” was like so challenging, like the environment was really tough, like my fingers were always just completely dry and caked up, and I was exhausted, and I was like, cranky all the time at “Burning Man”. I had an easier time keeping up to date with the blog, because I had a good chunk of time in the morning where I could just sit and focus and I think the other big difference is that I was never changing places.

So we had probably ten cities in Japan...I didn't quite keep track, I am going to add it all up, when I make a map later on today. But we went to a lot of different places in Japan and so was always like: wake up, move somewhere, do your thing, go to sleep, wake up, move somewhere, you know, do your thing, go to sleep. And it was a very frenetic pace that made it hard to sit and draw. And the other thing: the trains, like I mentioned in a previous vlog. I expected to be able to draw on the trains. I mean, if I've always heard that the Shinkansen is very smooth, and it's true: it really blew my mind how Trevor and I were able to walk onto a Shinkansen while it was accelerating out of the station and walk very easily down like nothing was happening, like the acceleration was so smooth. But it was just this very-very slight under vibration, that made it impossible to put a solid line down in ink. I can't ink on ferries either, so, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but I was disappointed.

I can ink on planes, for whatever reason! And I did a good junk of these on the plane as well. And especially in airport terminals, where it's really easy to do a lot of work... in airport terminals - as long as you have everything you need in front of you.

So that's that project, I came back to work and immediately got thrown back into a lot of hectic stuff, so I am going on a business trip...Tuesday, and it's like: Hey, welcome back, this project's on fire, you need to go NOW”. So it's like: “Okay, get right back on a plane, right after I've just got back.”

It's a pretty cool project, but it's gonna be really-really intense. It's going to be so intense that I am now stressed out that I may have to pull out of “Emerald City.”. I don't wanna have to do that, will play it by ear, but I might have to cut my appearance at Emerald City at least down to one or two days instead of four days. You know, I never really want to go four days in the first place, this whole trend of four day conventions makes it next to impossible for people like me, who are trying to keep down a full time job. And Emerald City in general has been getting less and less friendly towards indie and amateurs. So it's an end of a new “Runaway”, I really liked that show and it's so close by being in Seattle, but...we'll see. I have to decide if I'm gonna ship books or not pretty quickly, like in the next day or two. So, one way or another, I might gonna do my best to get there or I have to bail out last minute, which will be sad, but I will try.

The next major push for me is going to be getting “Book 4” together, so I've done a lot of work on “Book 4” already: all the comics are finished, at least all the primary comics were finished a long time ago; I've done all my cataloguing and re-scanning. So, occasionally, because I am traveling, I've scanned something in a different place, where the file gets moved or lost. So I've relocated all those files, I've put together my InDesign structure and I've made a list of all the things that I need to do to bring the book to completion. And, really leaning into that, it's going to be my next major project, so you'll be seeing more of that in the upcoming weeks and otherwise I am just going to do my best to survive. Okay, I think that's all I'm gonna say. Have a good weekend everyone, I am going to enjoy the last weekend I am probably gonna have of peace for the next while. I might actually be working next weekend, so we'll see how that goes, I might post my update from work, but...hopefully not! Alright, have a good one!