Times they are a crazing.
Fell off the wagon HARD last thursday i guess. Because I barely worked on anything until late Friday night. Ended up scrawling out three quick (rough art) pages and slapping text into everything – and then printing all 21 pages – so i could show the first cut of the comic to some stranger at a group meet up on Saturday night. But being a stranger, i never figured out to ask him to look at it and seek feedback. So I ended up asking my girlfriend to read it, after he left. But i warned her that it was really rough and probably wouldn’t make sense, and she could only read it if she’d promise to read the final version too, and i wanted feedback. I suspect she was simply too trained in positive feedback technique to know what to say, because i don’t believe she’s ever critiqued any part of it. ouch.
On sunday, Jonason took a look, and suggested we have his girlfriend read it all the way through – out loud, while we watched. This turned out to be priceless feedback. Incredibly interesting to see what parts were confusing, weird, and funny. Interesting to hear why she found somethings funny. fascinating experience.
Anywho. now i have pages of notes on things to tweak and outright change. Morale plummetted monday because i was looking at several more days of work (at least) instead of finally sending off to print – in time for the upcoming show. Spent the last couple days mostly wandering around in a daze trying not to think about it. Spent a lot of brain power debating the merits of dropping the comic for a while to focus on creating something i could sell at a profit. Designed a board game (80% at least, and sent the pitch/rules to a friend for thoughts) (so far: nothing).
In related news, I went in and set up the banking portion of Solid Fuel today, so it’s now time to finally explore selling some things on the website. my god! I suppose i’ll only pimp such things here if they’re directly vidHero related. (which seems a catch 22 at this point. vidHERO MAKES NO MONEY!)
Today I chatted with my folks a bit, and it became clear that i was coming up with many cool ideas, but totally failing at making hard decisions, and sticking to them.
sooo,
currently planning to: create a mini comic for Olympia fest (for the selling), and have issue one done by the fest (for the displaying/feedbacking at the fest) so i can decide whether to print directly after. Mini comics must be cranked out on a regular basis for feedback, so i can learn without ruining the core 3 issue arc/dream. Planning to sell a variety of T-shirts asap, and as many more as inspiration offers (currently have 3 solid ideas, all vitreous Humor related. and one shitty idea for vidHero. soo. the vidHero shirt is on hold, pending more manic obsessive overthinking!).
It strikes me as monumentally important that each and every thing be created as the Übermensch for it’s respective genre/medium/industry. ie, why bother to sell a shirt unless you’d eagerly buy it yourself? I feel like this is some sort of core life living principle of incredible importance. Is there a trixy humorous word for this? “sellbuy”? should i spend the next 5 hours trying to think of one??!?!?!
anywho. i feel a bit less… panicky. now.
it is time to get back to work. and worry less about fucking up. and pinch more pennies.
oh, and it’s time to go buy the penny arcade game.
bleh. sitting here without motivation to work. too damned hot and muggy. perhaps i am dehydrated.
Carrie’s cute three legged cat is laying on some old notebooks. so cute. will post picture here.