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;

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