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Another short J&C to lead me back into the habit of getting them done.

Every August there is a slump in my productivity. In 07 it was when I deviated from my Ozimaar script, in 08 it was an inspiration meltdown shortly before a holiday. This year it’s… well, an inspiration meltdown coupled with an artistic melt down. I’ve not been working on anything creative recently, even my novel which I think about all the time has barely had a thought devoted to it for over a week. It’s as if all my creative energy budget was eaten.

There is also the question of Where is Jayden and Crusader going? Is it going down the gag-strip route or the story route? Or is it trying toe the line between them both, becoming a Friends-esque sit com. (Don’t worry, I won’t ever let it become anything like Friends (double parentheses! The first person to make a Friends/O Fortuna video and post it to youtube gets a prize. A real prize, not a fake prize like I often promise. A TV shirt or a piece of artwork or something. More likely the artwork as I don’t know if Kirrus would part with our spare shirt over something so silly. But definitely at least custom artwork) sorry it links to an AMV, it was the best quality version of O fortuna I found). Right now I think Jayden and Crusader lacks direction, that it lacks a purpose, a plot, some… intangible thing that I can’t figure out. The storyline ideas I had drift further and further away. For example, there was supposed to be a hobo entering into J&C over a year ago, I have dozens of concept sketches of him. Crusader’s parents, Hannah’s parents, Professor Von Doom, the Return of Ozimaar, the return of the original computer (that one involved parallel universes ) the Ginger, the crossover with another comic book I wrote (but was never drawn), the return of Jayden’s parents, the adventures of Sir Reginald Derby: Time Detective, all characters or storylines that I had planned to occur this year and which didn’t.

It depresses me I have all these ideas I think you would enjoy if I could just put them to page. But truth be told, I don’t actually like making a comic. After writing, every task is a chore. Sketching always looks horrible, inking always looks bland and then colouring takes forever. The finished article looks nice enough and I am proud of it, and if I didn’t technically enjoy it I wouldn’t do it. But that said, once I write it all the interest in my brain switches off, after that it’s just away to present it to you readers.

Worse, my artistic capabilities hold back what I can do in Jayden and Crusader while Jayden and Crusader holds back my capacity to grow as an artist. I purposefully do simple-ish scripts so I can draw them well which means I never improve. I don’t know how to get around this. I suppose if I got sworn affidavits from you all saying you’d continue to read even after the odd horrible page it might help… but really I feel like I’ve been bashing my head against a brick wall for a year now.

In April last year there was a massive surge in the quality of my art work because I was free to experiment, to try new things, to work long and hard on certain pieces of work. I don’t have that freedom any more because I do J&C again. April last year I wasn’t doing any J&C, so my drawing time was spent on other things. Sure, I’ve got better since this time last year, but not by as much as the difference between August 08 and August 07.

Words words words words words. You’d think I was a novelist, oh wait, I am. (I’ve written 4)

Don’t pay any attention to Crusader’s chart it is meaningless. I’ve forgotten how to write a decent flow chart so it’s just random shapes with random words like Reagan and British Neo-Imperialism.

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.