Hey gang! I’m away on the East Coast this week, but fortunately you can pretend I’m not on a boat by listening to my dulcet tones on The New Disruptors, a delightful podcast run by Mr. Glenn Fleishman, editor of The Magazine.
We sat down and had a fabulous talk about…well, all sorts of stuff. Careers and Kickstarter and Periscope and being a young kid in a professional life that feels like it’s moving a million miles a minute. It was a real pleasure talking with Glenn, and I highly recommend the rest of the people he’s nabbed for the podcast. Diverse, compelling discussions about new media, freelancing, and other topics near and dear to my heart.
Hi gang! First off: big thanks to all of you who came out last month to say hello at Emerald City Comicon. It was incredibly cool to see so many familiar faces and get comics into returning hands. I promise I’ll keep cranking ’em out so you’ll have more to enjoy in 2015.
Now: I have a whole bundle of audiovisual treats for you today, taken from various panels and speaking gigs I’ve done in the past few weeks.
First up is It’s Not Too Dangerous to Go Alone, a great panel run by Kenna Conklin of Geek Portland on having the guts to make your creative career happen. I got to speak alongside Erika Moen, Dylan Meconis, and Angela Webber, which was a treat in and of itself, but I also feel like we hit some great points about motivation and starting from scratch.
Second is Erika’s Freelance Like a Rockstar panel, with Steve Lieber, Dylan Meconis, and Amy Falcone. (I nabbed this recording on my phone, so the quality is a little less spectacular, but you can still hear everyone!) We discuss all the juicy freelancer topics like finding jobs, self promotion, pricing strategies, and *gulp* contracts. Valuable fun for the whole freelance family.
Finally, I got to participate in a panel on Setting Realistic Goals as part of the MakingComics.com Massive Open Online Course last week. I really enjoyed getting to digitally discuss project management, scheduling, and work/life balance with Jared Cullum, Jen Vaughn, Damon Gentry, Eric Shanower, Christina Blanch, and Patrick Yurik. Plus this one has video so you can see all our weird facial expressions while we talk.
Phew. That’s all from me for now — I hope these discussions are useful to you all!
If you’re looking for some good audio material for your Thursday afternoon, I recently did an interview with Mr. Dave Convery of the ConSequential podcast all about everyone’s favorite topic: Kickstarter! We discuss the merits and pitfalls of crowdfunding for comics, as well as some other nonsense. In their own words, the episode boasts:
More comics! More jokes! More interviews! More inexplicable digressions about cauliflower. These people got mad brassica love, yo.
I had the immense pleasure of returning to the Happy Go Lucky Podcast this week to talk about my time away in the Grand Canyon. Our theme was “Escape” which led to a lot of talk about how we can create space for making things in our day-to-day routine without running away to the woods. Or maybe you’ve gotta run away to the woods. Or Ireland. There are lots of options on the table.
Anyway, tune in here for an hour of titillating discussion about the creative process and, as always, boats.
Greetings, dear readers! I write to you from somewhere in the mountainous Utah desert, surrounded by the chaos of packing and provisioning for an important voyage. This will be my last online appearance before a 21-day rafting trip down all 287 miles of the Grand Canyon. I’ve been planning this adventure in one form or another for the past 15 years with my best friend and partner in crime (pictured below) and now our hard work is finally coming to fruition.
Of course since this is primarily a work blog, it bears mentioning that this trip will represent my longest hiatus from the Internet since, well, since the Internet became a thing. This is pretty staggering for me to think about, especially considering how much of my livelihood depends on this beast now. However, I have to admit that I’m really excited. It can be so hard to truly switch off and disconnect when you’re constantly tethered to your work via digital communication. So despite my anxieties about missing out on online excitements, I’m ready.
Before I go, though, there are a couple things I wanted to make sure you all got wind of.
First! The Cartozia Tales Kickstarter is still going strong, and we’ve added some really excellent rewards that I think you’ll all appreciate. We now have prints of our incredible cover art and, more importantly, DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS! This is a great, affordable option for those of you who live abroad and can’t commit to the hefty shipping bill (I know, it’s a pain), or folks who just don’t own that many physical comics.
Just a few of the many characters from Cartozia Tales Issues 1 & 2
More importantly, Isaac has just released a complete PDF of Issue 1 to ALL BACKERS, regardless of pledge level. Furthermore, he’ll be adding a complete PDF of Issue 2 sometime in the next couple weeks! This means that if you back the project at any level, even for just a dollar, you get access to the content we’ve produced so far. I think this is a great move since it allows you all to see what we’re really about, and if you like what you see, you can up your pledge to a digital or physical half or whole subscription and help us produce a year’s worth of really excellent comics.
Yes, I’m a bundle of nerves about leaving the campaign for three weeks, but I trust you all to keep the momentum and enthusiasm going while I’m away. I’ll be back to cheer on the final 7 days at the end of September. A quick reminder of some easy things you can do to support us in the meantime:
If you’re having major Lucy Withdrawal while I’m away, here are a couple things to keep you occupied:
I was delighted to return to the Happy Go Lucky podcast a few weeks ago to discuss a topic near and dear to my heart: artistic insecurity! In Episode 26, otherwise known as “These Hands Look Weird“, Leia, Ben, Jesse and I all talk about our deepest fears and anxieties, spanning writing, graphic design, illustration, comics, and more. If you struggle with feeling like a fake, or constantly find yourself diffusing other’s compliments about your work, this is probably the podcast for you.
You can follow the Happy Go Lucky Podcast team on Twitter and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes if you’re looking for more.
In addition to Leia’s podcast, Alex Dueben was kind enough to post this lengthy interview with yours truly over on Comic Book Resources last week. We talk all about my work in the past year, including Baggywrinkles, Cartozia, my guest strip for Oh Joy, Sex Toy, working at Periscope, and what the future holds. It was a great opportunity to think about all the stuff that’s happened in the past year. So much drawing! So many new faces! So much excitement! I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
SO MUCH ART.
And I think that’s it for media news, which means it’s time to say goodbye. I’ll be back online at the end of September with lots of photos and stories to share (I’m trying to keep a daily diary comic going on the trip. We’ll find out how well that goes).
So much news this week! I had the delightful pleasure of being a guest on the Happy Go Lucky Podcast last weekend. The show is hosted by three of my favorite Portland people: Leia Weathington, Ben Coleman, and Jesse David Morgan, who deliver an hour or so of witty and (occasionally) enlightening banter every week. As Leia puts it in her (very accurate) episode summary:
Y’all gonna learn some shit about boats and what it’s like to be on a boat wearing canvas pants and what it’s like to draw comics about being on a boat in canvas pants.
We also cover my favorite bird of the moment (the potoo), the realities of plank-walking, sexual tension in Master and Commander, pirate re-enactors, pelicans on Portland transit, and purchasing expensive steak after having too much to drink on a Saturday night.
Hey gang! I’m away on the East Coast this week, but fortunately you can pretend I’m not on a boat by listening to my dulcet tones on The New Disruptors, a delightful podcast run by Mr. Glenn Fleishman, editor of The Magazine.
