It's been a while since you last blogged.  People say you should blog everyday for promotional purposes, and you get that, but you rarely have the time nor the inclination. Really you do this when you need the outlet, which is not exactly helpful in your career. 

Last night was the second Nemion show of the year, and first in Austin for 2012.  It was at Headhunters and you felt good throughout the entire show, but ironically afterwards you found out that the first three songs sounded like shit.  You knew you fucked up "Comfort" ( some how the piano patch changed mid-song into something completely inappropriate ) and some on "Flesheater", but you didn't realize at the time they were that bad. A lot of it was technical with the drum mix volume disrupting things, but you apparently sounded rushed as well.   The crowd was good over all, better than most, and there were several people who responded positively to the performance, but you still haven't really hit on what needs to be hit on to inspire people to support you materially.   The exception possibly being with the song "Puppets" - that song always has a strong response, but it's not even on the album Nemion just released.  Why is this you wonder.  What makes this track more interesting than the others? For one it's simpler. It's basically one part played in different ways throughout the song. Simpler songs are easier to get into, especially when they're unfamiliar to the listener.

Simplicity.  It's something you purposefully avoided when writing most of the songs on Flesheater.  It's only recently that you've started exploring minimalism in your arrangements.  Perhaps simplifying your stage rig further is in order.  You'd have to rewrite a lot of live versions of your songs, but the current level of complexity contributes to a lot of fuckups and sound issues, and it could free you up to enhance your performances.  Not to mention it might be easier on your back - maybe. But then there's so much sonically that you would not be able to do on stage.

The other bands of the night, Buzz n Bangs, Death Ray, and Arrowstrike kept their shit so simple.  Guitar/Drums, Guitar/Guitar/Drum Sequence, Guitar/Drums respectively.  And they were totally free to put on some badass performances.  Something else of note is the stage presence that a lot of them had. They're personalities were forceful and energetic.  You have yet to really reach that level of comfort with yourself.

Then there's the ever present question of earning substantive income doing this sort of thing.....

You're running out of juice for this post, but you ought to talk a bit about Enrod The Clockman before you bring it to a close.  You made your update schedule this past Sunday, but not with the next installment of the comic - for which you fell dramatically behind because of your recent move as well as going to a politcal convention and maybe some other things.  So instead you just posted some sketches and concept art as filler to share with your readers.

You're getting impatient again.  Impatient with growth of the comic.  You've put a lot of money into the album release so you're not willing to buy any advertising to promote the comic right now, so that's slowing it down, but you're also discouraged by Facebook's change in policies, especially when you feel like they do such a shitty job explaining to you the changes.  Needless to say, if you want people to see your page's posts on their walls, you have to pay FB extra to make sure they do.  The price of going public and they want their advertisers to pay for it.

You're thinking that you want to eventually try the conventional model for distributing your comic.  You're planning an ongoing series ( which you had been doing since the beginning ) and you're thinking that once you get the trilogy completed you'll put the website on temporary hiatus and see about getting the necessary first 3 issues in the can before you solicit a publisher.  At you're current rate that's about a year and half of work.  We'll see.  You have to remind yourself that you still need to put all you can into promoting Nemion and Flesheater, as you've only scratched the surface.  You need to continue to improve on syncing up Nemion and the Clockman so that they cross-market each other.

You should look into Anime cons again.  You're not going to any this year.  Artist alley tables have been selling out before you even think to register for them.  But next year, you have to try and make it down to Houston, specifically because you owe somebody down there a drawing.

That's all for now.   Go organize your recording studio and do some drawing.

-

http://www.enrodx.com
http://www.facebook.com/enrodx
http://nemion.ginckmedia.com
http://www.facebook.com/nemion
http://nemion.bandcamp.com

It's can't-get-any-sleep-time!

You need to be in bed as you have obligations at 7am, but your sleep schedule is so jacked up that you can't sleep right now, so your up and making a long overdue update on your blog.

You're behind on ETC.  You still have three pages of digital work to do, as well as the digital part of the lettering for all 8 pages and the two "news" pages on top of that.  Then you have to update the website files.  All by Thursday.  Fortunately, you have vacation time from the dayjob, so you should be able to get that all done on time.  But it's frustrating to have lost the two week lead time you had with previous updates.  But there is a reason for that. 

You've also been working on the mixes for the debut Nemion album, which is what you spent most of your waking time today doing.  Originally you'd planned to rehearse with T-Bone, but he ended up getting booked up to work security for SxSW.

SxSW.  You can't help but wish you were a part of that somehow.  At least on the inside so that you can promote your own work. It helps to face the reality that you are simply not ready for it.  You need to have the album completed.  You need to have a couple tours under your belt.  You need a fanbase.  The last you are growing to some extent thanks to NumberOneMusic.com. 

While you ate dinner this evening you watched a BBC documentary online about Mobius:

In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud clip1/3 by foivosloxias

Just about every sci-fi/cyberpunk visual that ever inspired you was either a part of, or derived from, that man's work.  A lot of times without you even being conscious of the connection. You have a copy of Dark Horse Presents somewhere that you picked up years ago that had a very well written and well illustrated story-installment in it that you like a lot that was by Moebius.  Austin Books carries the hardcover of the completed work and you want to get it someday. You recall when seeing Fifth Element in the theatre for the first time, you were actually kind of disappointed by what you then considered to be "cliche" design elements, not realizing that they were done by the same guy who had done all the stuff you thought it was ripping off. 

Still not sleepy.  Maybe you should get an apple out of the fridge and munch on that.

Last night you went to a friend's birthday party.  It was a good one.  Good because you were surrounded by people that liked to discuss things that you find interesting.  And good because you all hold similar, or at least relateable, world views, which is a rarity. 

You have all kinds of ideas in your head.  Bouncing and zipping around.  You need to make a poster for Droid Soldiers to post around town advertising that copies are at Austin Books.  You wonder if doing a traditional serial comic of Enrod The Clockman would be worth the expense of printing, as it's something you want to do in the future.  You need to fix EnrodX.com so that people can more easily sign up for the mailing list.  You need to create character profiles for the website.  You need to once again totally revamp the Nemion website and move it onto the EnrodX server.  You need to put a photo gallery up on the website instead of using Facebook all the damn time. You need to earn some money.

On the upside, you got your ancient car to pass inspection.  You'd been tweaking out different things on it all last week trying to get it's exhaust output clean enough to pass.  Part of why you haven't been updating the blog since Staple!. 

Oh damn!  You totally forgot! You got to meet Kevin Eastman, one of the creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  He was the special guest at Staple! and you got to see him speak at his panel, which inspired you to buy the new hardcover collection of the first 7 issues of the original series that he and Peter Laird wrote and drew and have him sign it.  Seeing him speak totally reminded you of how much of a fan you were of that cartoon and the characters overall as a kid, and how much they impacted you and your work.   It seems you'd been actively trying to distance yourself from them in order to keep your work from being seen as similar, which is why you had all but forgotten about what they were to you.  You really geeked out when you got to meet and shake Kevin Eastman's hand as he signed your fresh copy of the hardcover collection.  You almost wanted to cry.  He was gracious enough to receive a copy  of both Tales From Planet Aeruen and Droid Soldiers: Chapter One.  You downed your artwork in TFPA, which was stupid, but you hope he has the time and energy at some point to actually read and get something out of them anyway.  You hope. 

You have a headache.  Goto: Place.Bed;

To Consign, Or To Get A Discount

You are sleep deprived, so you're not going to be particularly productive today other than what you did to earn cash today and finally posting an update to your blog ( you should update your Deviant Art account too ).  You did manage to get copies of Droid Soldiers #1 consigned at Austin Books & Comics today ( your brain is so muddled, you forgot the name of the customer-friendly woman in charge of consignment there, and you kind of feel bad about that, especially since she's also going to have a table at Staple! - not good form, but as stated, you are lacking sleep, which you will remedy shortly ).  Unfortunately, you were unable to get copies of DS #1 into Dragon's Lair as they are currently doing a mass inventory count in preparation for Tax-Day.  You wonder about their business model, as Austin Books doesn't seem to do anything like that, but the upside is that during this time of year Dragon's Lair starts have massive discounts on select inventory. So today, with a 70% discount, you paid $18+ for graphic novels totalling $70 retail. Included in this booty is Artesia Afield: The Second Book of Dooms ( Hardcover ); NYC Mech Volume 2: Beta Love, and The Mice Templar: Destiny Part Two ( Hardcover ).  All excellent finds at 70% off.

While you had previously acquired the first volumes of both Artesia and NYC Mech, you don't have any of  the previous volumes of Mice Templar, but it was worth it to get none-the-less.  The production quality on that book is some of the nicest you've come accross, complete with a red ribbon bookmark.   It also has a nice prologue to get you up to speed on the setting and where the story is at  Indeed, it's a beautiful book throughout and you expect it to take a least a couple weeks for you to get through it all, especially with the Afterward and text-heavy extras at the end.  You do have some nitpicking criticisms in the digital lettering being a bit cold to your eyes - maybe it's just that you prefer the irreplaceable organic feel of hand-lettering in your comics - but it doesn't really work for you.  The art style, while cool and very well executed, also leaves you desiring something, the way Mike Mignola does in his Hellboy comics, which uses similar hard and thick-lined approach to the inking.  It's very minimilistic, which would translate very well to animation, but doesn't exactly gel with your tastes.  But again, this one is definitely a treasure and you plan on keeping it your library and collecting the other hardcovers in due time.

Artesia is one of the most brilliant series in the graphic novel medium.  It deserves every award it gets.  The detailed world and mythology, believable story and characters, simple lines, accurate forms, and the deliciously warm water colors. However, in it's successful efforts at realism in character responses and military culture, it lacks an element of fun.  Like a healthy and hardy meal with only hints of paprika to add flavor only at key points.  This can be either good or bad depending on one's mood or taste.  These days you're more often looking for tasty fun with your hardy meal, but you none-the-less enjoy and respect it for, as well as inspired by, it's craftsmanship.

NYC Mech is a series you have always found intriguing, being into robots, but lost interest in when it was first serialized.  The writing and art are all great and the stories were equally clever.  But the problem you had with it was that, far from being a story about robots, it felt like a story about humans who were drawn to look like robots.  One of things you think you find fascinating about robots is the contrast between the condition of being human and the condition of being an autonomous robot.  If a community of autonomous robots emerged, you're pretty certain that their culture would have some marked differences from that of humans.  But these are essentially just stories about life on the street, except every being is made out of metal and circuitry.  You had your suspicions as to what the real angle was, but in that first story arc, there was not a hint of explaination as to how New York, and the rest of the world, became populated by robotic equivalents of every living thing on earth. This botherd you enough to not buy past the first issue.  In spite of this, you bought the first volume in collected form, along with 24/7 ( a robot anthology edited by the author of NYC Mech ) to study the art, also to give it all a second chance, and you're glad you did, especially after reading this second volume, as it finally gave you the hint that you wanted it to have to make the fact that it was all robots interesting to you again.

It's time to go to bed.  You should try to write about the Bunny Incident next time.

J.

Working Past/Present/Future & The Record

This week is music week for you and Nemion.  You spent the majority of the past week penciling the next installment of Enrod The Clockman. so now you are going to focus your energies on the album, Flesheater.  You just spent the better part of the late-afternoon/evening tweaking the mixes of the songs Flesheater and Pain Of Loss.  Neither are 100%, but both are now close.  There's some clipping in Pain of Loss to fix, and some samples that need fixing in Flesheater, but you'll get back to them later, hopefully next week.  Time has run out for the day, so you've got to start preparing for bed.  Tomorrow you plan to focus on two other songs, following the tweak-notes that you've written for them, along with all the other tracks.

Unforturnately, you didn't manage to get your car to the shop today.  It's something you're going to need to get taken care of very soon.  That squeeling sound when you first apply the gas after starting it up from sitting for several hours is concerning.  You're told that normally signals that the belts need to be changed out.  You also need to get the oxygen sensor changed, or else you probably won't pass the Travis County environmental test during inspection, which your car is due for come March.  At least you managed to fix the burned out brake light.

You had a good conversation with your girlfriend's writer-friend yesterday evening.  He's working on a graphic novel himself in collaboration with an artist, and he wanted some insight on the comic book industry in general since he wasn't very familiar with it.  Interesting how knowledge you've come to take for granted over the years would have so much value to someone else.  You're reminded of your senior-year high school English teacher giving you insight on how teaching isn't just the giving away of knowledge, but is a process of learning in and of itself as well.  The process puts things in perspective, sometimes a variety of perspectives, which can lead to new levels of understanding.  It was a fruitful experience, both intellectually and materially as he also gave you the download link for the scripting software he was using, which looked very robust and useful to your own endeavors.  You're looking forward to trying out the software, possibly writing the final draft of Droid Soldiers chapter four in it.

Later that evening you met with your girlfriend at a karaoke bar where old friends of hers were celebrating birthdays.  You both had agreed that after flaking out of going out on Saturday night, that you both needed to get out and socialize after having stayed in all week working on respective projects.  At the karaoke bar, one of her friends you met was a government employee.  You seemed to forget yourself, because you immediately started talking to him about the inefficiency and immorality of the state, though not in those words.  You never used the word "libertarian", but you later found out he pegged you for one and decided he didn't have the patience for the discussion that he was foreseeing, especially since it was his birthday.  You regret this social faux pas; you've done it many times in the past, but you've since become more sympathetic to the desire of others to just enjoy being and not discuss anything serious, especially politics.

For the record, you don't label yourself as "libertarian".  If you do take a label, it's "voluntaryist"; at least for now.  At this point, you currently organize your position as follows:

"LIMITS

FOR ALL 

HUMAN VIOLENCE"

1. No one can legitimately initiate a threat or act of bodily harm or control against another human being without direct consent ( which can be withdrawn at will ).

2. No one can legitimately enter, possess, damage, or consume either directly or remotely, another human being's property without direct consent ( which can be withdrawn at will ) from that human being.

  2a. No human being can legitimately be property.

  2b. Nothing intangible can legitimately be property.

3. Violence cannot legitimately be employed against human beings who are not currently in violation of Law 1 and/or Law 2.

You didn't create these concepts.  This is just your own personal wording for what is called the Zero Aggression Principle.  or more commonly the Non-Aggression Principle or Non-Aggression Axiom.  This doesn't directly account for dispute resolution rules, but really, any can be applied so long as they don't violate the above.  Not all agree with your wording.  But that's fine.  Besides, you've already stayed up too late.

http://www.EnrodX.com

http://nemion.ginckmedia.com

Guts and Lawsuits

Your right half of your gut feels like it's been coated with metallic spray paint.  You're not worrying about it though, at least not too much.  What are you worrying about?  Well, it's getting late again and you still have work to do on Enrod The Clockman.  At least you don't have to work the day-job tomorrow or Monday.  Time to focus on those things, though plans for social interaction have been made for this evening.  Birthday parties abound.  So many dang Aquariuses in this town.

You picked up volume 2 of Biomega today. Visually and narratively inspiring like all of Tsutomu Nihei's work. You would like to have it in a bigger hardcover format, though you know you can't afford it.  If you were to nitpick about the work ( well you're going to ), there were some moments of exposition that came off as unrealistic for you, which you find to be typical in most manga and anime. Why would a grunt explain to his superior the newest protocol?  Wouldn't the superior already be aware of the latest protocols?  Disrupted the reading experience like a skip on a record or cd.

In the news of American comics, one of your favorite illustartors, Tony Moore, is suing one of your favorite writers, Robert Kirkman, over obligations regarding the work he did on the first 6 issues of The Walking Dead, which you've been collecting since issue one was first printed.   Moore is accusing Kirkman of defrauding him. 

Something more chilling is the court ruling with the Gary Friedrich case, a man who attempted to sue Marvel for additional rights as the co-creator of Ghost Rider, despite it being work-for-hire, only to have it backfire and have the court award Marvel with 17,000 dollars from Friedrich for selling his own Ghost Rider merch at cons without their permission.  This concerns you because of the speculation that this could put an end to the "gentleman's" agreement where Marvel and DC don't sue artists for selling sketches and commissions of Marvel and DC characters, the bread and butter of  comic and anime convention artists.  It's how you pay for your booths and other expenses when at a con promoting ETC.

You might discuss this some more later, but it's time to go.

http://www.enrodx.com
http://nemion.ginckmedia.com

Quick Tidbit

This:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwEKiFHDvpM&feature=endscreen&NR=1
is wrong.

Nobody should have the right to do this.  But unfortunately, this: seems like it is coming to dominate the world.  These people are effectively thug-gangsters, and are a natural consequence of a society allotting a monopoly on security services to a single group within a given area.

It's getting late, so you don't a lot of time for tonight's blog.  You need some sleep, but you've got to get down South and deal with traffic.  But before you go, you should leave this for the people's consideration:


http://www.enrodx.com
http://nemion.ginckmedia.com

You've gotten a lot of pencil work done for the next Enrod The Clockman installment.  This is good.  A minute ago you were working on some outline notes for the graphic novel that will follow the one you're working on now.  You're very excited about the ideas you have for it. But you still need to get faster, you still need to get more focused and increase your page turn-out without decreasing the quality of your artwork. You have so many stories to tell, but with the necessity of a day joy you only have so much time.

In other news, you went to the Specialist yesterday.  Interestingly enough, the problem you were dealing with got resolved for the day right before your appointment.  But it could come back. The Specialist told you in all likelihood that what you were experiencing was stress related. This is the second, though entirely separate, stress-related bodily issue you've had to deal with in the past six month.  The first was when your had rupture underneath of the macula of your left eye, which has since gone away but left a probably permanent distortion in that eye's vision.  Before now, you never really thought of yourself as being under any stress, but maybe you are.  Maybe this feeling that you often try to maintain, this sense of being busy and not lazy, maybe this is stress.  There's so much to do and keep up with, and maybe your constant thinking and worrying about them is causing you stress and you need to learn to rebalance these things.  It's not like you don't take breaks, but maybe they're the wrong kind of breaks, or maybe you're not taking actually takeing a break, since you never stop thinking.  Even last night when you watched several episodes of the Witchblade anime on YouTube you were studying it more than you were actually watching it.

About Witchblade: You never let yourself get into the comic.  When you were reading comics growing up, you were always insulted by a lot of the stuff that was coming out of Image during the 90's ( as you've addressed in the forwards of both Tales From Planet Aeruen, and Guns, Robots and Talking Animals. ), and a big part of that was because of the way they made all the women look like porn stars, and Witchblade was/is a primo example of that era.  You do like the concept of the weapon and the mythology, but overall, it never grabbed your interest enough to collect it, especially since you'd already wrote it off as a wank-off comic.  And really, whenever you did try to read it, you just never were able to get into the characters.  The writing was probably the problem.  Lately though, you've tempted to start buying the collected eBooks from DriveThruComics.com, especially at nearly half off the print price.

Speaking of that site, you're very happy that both GRTA and Headhunter are now available as eBooks on there as well. Now you just hope people will buy them. You've discounted GRTA down to .95 cents, but maybe you should make it free.  Or maybe you should upload TFPA and The Clockman short story and offer them for free instead.  After all, GRTA is good enough that it shouldn't be free.


It's getting late.  Post this and go to bed - you need your sleep for when you go over to your girlfriends to draw tomorrow.

http://www.enrodx.com
http://nemion.ginckmedia.com

The Furry

It seems you have a million things to do.  You start to feel like you can't keep up with it all. You have to do the layouts for the next installment of Enrod The Clockman, but you also need to get your earlier works formatted for DriveThruComics.com.  There are so many formats to mess with.  The easiest are .pdf and .cbz. You've got Guns, Robots, and Talking Animals and Headhunter uploaded, but only in .pdf format.  You haven't taken the time to get .cbz files for them made because it took you twenty hours to get them rebuilt and tested for .pdf.  Droid Soldiers Chapter One was a bit easier, less pages.  You still have some page edits to make on the .cbz file; so you're not going to upload it yet.  You also want to get them formated for both Kindle and Nook, but both are going to be a lot of work because you want them to be readable on the small black and white eInk devices, which means you're going to need to cut the pages up into individual panels and arrange in an eye-pleasing manner.  Based on your research, you're likely going to have to do this twice, once for each device, as both have different screen capacities.  You need to figure out how to stream line this process.  You're also still waiting for what you have uploaded to be approved by DriveThruComics for their online store.  You hope it's sooner than later, so that you can start promoting them.

The other thing on your head is a digestive disorder that you're not keen to talk about in public, but man is that taking up your time researching and trying to find homeopathic remedies for.  When you think back, this problem has probably been going on for years, but in the last couple of weeks it's finally starting to come to a head.  So you've finally made an appointment to see a doctor.  You have insurance through your day job, but the costs after are still very high, all money you would rather be putting into Enrod The Clockman and Nemion.

That's another thing.  Finishing the Nemion album is getting more challenging.  You're so close but you've keep finding ways to make it better.  In fact, you know there are things wrong with almost every song that you have to fix, and thinking about it all and everything else you've got on your plate makes your head spin.  Nemion didn't get accepted into SxSW but you knew you wouldn't, so it's okay.  Your putting getting into shows on hold until you get this album done.  Nobody wants to hire a band that doesn't have a cd-release.

Then the social distractions, you can't forget about them.  They abound. They frustrated. You have no time for them.  Hold on a sec, you need to check on dinner....

Almost ready. Another experiment for your digestive issue.

Oh hey, you forgot to talk about your website/PHP issues.  You're trying to figure out how to fix up an email form for EnrodX.com, but goddamn if you can't get the generated code from your webbuilder software, the software you used to build ALL your websites, to work on your effing server.  You're trying to figure out how to use WordPress so that your sites can be dynamic. 

One thing at a time...but time seems to be what is lacking.  You only have so much life, yet you have a few thousand graphic novel pages of Enrod's life you want to tell, and at the rate your going you'll be lucky to tell another 1200 or so before your old and decrepit.  So you need to figure out how to make this thing good enough that people want to support you financially for it.  You need to make it easier for them to do just that than what you've already done.  The same goes with Nemion, though thanks to NumberOneMusic.com you're doing a hell of a lot better at acquiring emails from people.



Was going to end here, but you don't want to leave on that last note.  Okay, that's good enough.

Go eat dinner before it gets cold.


http://www.enrodx.com
http://nemion.ginckmedia.com