Accountable to only myself...

Catching up with all my old Patreon and Mailchimp list folks

Hi folks, posted a new Processpod, here’s an update about all the other things…

The Box pt 2 page 1 ; a short story slated for Mind Engine

Welcome!! It’s been a minute, I shut down my Patreon this past winter and planed to shift over to using this platform for all the things but been kept pretty busy with the day job at the animation studio so it’s taken me a while to do it.

I don’t plan to use the paid subscriptions feature here for a little while, when I have new comics to post I’ll probably start to then and make some of my work paywalled. But for now this is going to be a blog to share my WIP on comics and other personal projects, talk about day job things a little, publish my podcasts and vodcasts/livefeeds, and when I have a new book you could order I’ll post news of it here of course with links to get it digitally and in print.

Main motive for this is I like the functionality of substack. The combo of a mailing list and a blog, with the Patreon style features for when that’s needed, while still letting me have free subscription posts. So it’s replacing my old Mailchimp and Patreon, a Medium blog and my site blog, with one platform.

For everyone who’s been added here from my old platforms, you’ll find a link at the bottom of these messages if you want to unsub, and it’s possible to also just not get emails while still following me via the app or site, if you have a substack account. Feel free to do either.

Page 9 art from Dream Life | a late coming of age, Book Two.

So what have I been up to eh?

Well a lot of it is stuff I’m not at liberty to share publicly, I tried to get clearance to post some of my props work from the last two years here but was sent around in circles for a few months only to be told no. One of the downsides to corporate animation work.

For me the job has been mainly good, and I’m finding it relatively easy work compared to the challenges I give myself in my personal stuff. And my very diverse background with everything from graphic design and typesetting, to live action set and prop work, means I often have a leg up on the work and I’m able to do things a lot of folks with a narrow animation arts background struggle with too.

F is for Family was definitely a really fun gig to get back into the animation business with. The satire of many of the things I grew up with spoke to my soul! LoL. A rare pleasure, thanks to all for the opportunity. Since that I got to do two weeks on Red Ketchup too, but mainly been doing kids shows. Those aren’t quite as much of a blast to work on? But still pretty enjoyable, and a LOT simpler often work wise so it goes fast for me.

This appears to be my main advantage as an animation designer. I’m used to being slow as hell on my comics these days. Largely that’s my own fault. I like to go deep with the rendering and let my desire to push my work with every story in new directions style and technique wise. But, that means they take a LOT more work than I’m asked to do by clients ever.

And the contrast with what’s wanted for animation is stark, there we need a simple style, and something that will be clean up and rigging friendly. So it ends up being a bit like I’ve been training in a pool with ankle weights and for the studio work they just want me to pick up feathers. No complaints here, and my bosses on the job seem very happy about my speed.

WIP on the wordless pandemic inspired story ‘bloom’

However I have found that drawing every day even if the work isn’t too demanding of me, still can leave my batteries drained so the last month and a bit I’ve not been keeping up with work on my own things as much as I’d like. I learned years ago to let it go and not beat myself up over that. It just spirals and makes it worse if you do that.

But still, need to get back in the saddle soon, it would be too easy to only draw for the job if I don’t. That happens to a lot of folks doing studio work. And no judgment here, but I really don’t want to let myself just give into that urge. I’m illuminating this post with some of the pages I’ve been working on up until the recent fallow period, all things I need to get back to soon.

I see a lot of artists talk about fear of letting down an audience, but mostly it’s just me I don’t want to bail on. I mean aside from the fact that I don’t seem to get a lot of verbal or demonstrative support from my readers, I’ve also mostly always just been motivated by my own desire to do these things. So if I really stopped wanting that i’d be ok with letting it go. But right now I’m in the middle of stories and i want to see them done. And I’m ALWAYS in the middle of some, so I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like throwing in the towel?

Tricky part is to keep being productive on personal work, doing the day job, all while still being physically active enough to stay healthy and stay on top of my diabetes though. This remains my main daily challenge lately and I wish I could say I’m killing it, but I’m not and after a bout of covid a few months back I feel weaker than I ever have these days.

I mentioned this in the new pocesspod, going to look for motivational excuses to walk more. I like doing it, but after a day of sitting on my ass drawing props it’s hard to muster the steam. Want to take more morning walks, and use things like sticking my extra old zines in local free libraries as things to trick myself into doing it more often. Might make my process pods walk and talks more often too, have the gear to do it with so no reason not to. I talk to myself anyway a lot of the time! LoL. I often snap photos as well and use that already as a motivational device.

So yeah, things to work on. I’ve been at this being a professional artist for 30 years now! Learning to pace yourself while still getting all the things you want to done is one of the many constant challenges.

SO, where are things at for Mind Engine? Here’s a screen cap of the guts of it I keep to look at when I need motivation, a slideshow of them plays on my studio casting screen too.

The photos and poems are my fathers, I’ll be publishing some of his work along with A Bastards Tale as companion pieces. The photos will be two or three a page along side the writing.

Also expect to use this blog to workshop some lessons distilling elements of my old syn studio courses to add in the back of Mind Engine volumes too. Both comics specific and general art oriented stuff. It’s going to be a series of pretty thick B&W books. In a perfect world annually published but I’ve kind of given up on trying to hold to a schedule for my comics. If it sells well maybe that’ll change, I’d have to be able to go back to making them full time with no day job to pull it off.

Hope you enjoy this peek and stick around for more!

cheers

max