Jan 1 2026 Workblog update
Update from the first day of the year in the studio. Some notes from the desk on getting refocused and remembering old processes.
This is a cross post from my site blog FYI
I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about in the past how I decided I needed to work in the personal anthology format, even though it was not particularly economically viable…
…when I’d shopped the idea of Revolver around most publishers winced and said let them know when the stuff in serial is ready to be put out as stand alone books. They always say they found them hard to sell. At least in the past before selling anything at all got hard…
Some notes from the desk, getting refocused and remembering old processes.
Thing is after doing a few Graphic Novels, 60 – 160 pages I confirmed doing the same thing a long time – working on just one long story for more than a couple months – had a greater negative impact on my mental and physical well-being than I cared to tolerate. I needed to facilitate the itch to refresh with something else for a bit or just feel ground to a halt.
But there’s no free lunch or perfect scenario.
The catch with working on multiple stories at the same time though, or in sequence? Is when your attention gets pulled away for whatever reason, feeling my way back into them as interest shifts between, or onto other tasks can be difficult. There’s inertia and uncertainties about what’s next, where the attention should flow sometimes.
My challenges with Channel shifting
What I always called it – they were one of the early red flags for me as I learned about the improved understanding of ASD and ADHD in my 30s-40s. I don’t love some of the pathologizing I’ve seen, in the past or recently. But I hear many echoes of myself in a lot of what I read around that as a common problem shared by others in the ND family.
I’ve never really multitasked, don’t have the bands – it’s always been serialized singular things getting done. Sometimes when there is competing priorities and intentions I’ll get stuck for a bit. A version of task paralysis. Once I recognize it I’ll find ways to break the stall, and reinitiate the creative cycle. Often the same strategies I use to swing out of the lows often that follow getting something big done.
I often used music for this but that was disrupted for a while while working in animation.
The last few months have been about getting a lot of other things sorted while on layoff, but looking to re focus on the comics now. Those were both tools for getting these and other things done. Right now that means sitting with the scripts and thumbs, the WIP for two of them so far – The Box & Nuts – with music I respond to well, finding the vibes.
Randomly I reconnected my player to this again, so you can see what’s playing in the studio. It’s kind of a reminder to myself to play music more. Been using a news heavy feed of YouTube too much lately, but I don’t find that inspiring to draw to at all. This is all my local system player, stuff in my own collection.
Not a new years resolution or something. But setting to do a bit more each day for the next two months. Remembering music helps me get into that a LOT easier. If music is a big part of your studio practice, what are your favorites? Have any recommendations?
To help as well, I need to have things out. I’ve hung Blue lines for good number of the two main stories pages [see top image], more to go as I think about thumbs and pencils. Those on the line are all ready for inking now. Printed on smooth Bristol 11×14 pad sheets. I use a few brands.
Always need to get them up where I’ll see them so they get done. If it’s in a stack anywhere it’s just a stack, not a thing to do.
In the past I built momentum by starting the day with ink. Will be bringing that back. Reconnecting with old paterns that did work when I had more creative soloing time. Seems like a plan but it bugs me a bit, to be doing any of this imitating of new needed changes, around new years. Do not like them being even randomly adjacent to ‘resolutions’…Grumble.
Happy New Year everyone!
Hope this next orbit is a lot more positive in many ways, but not waiting on that when it comes to my own things, make it true by doing it!
