It’s only been a month since my last post. Somehow though, it feels like it’s been forever. We’re only a month into the year and as usual, things have been a little busy. It’s been a bit difficult to keep up with the workload I’ve created for myself. The fact that I insist each page have a fully detailed environment in it could have something to do with. I could be wrong, though. After all, I’m also forced to work a full time job to keep my family out of poverty. With something like that weighing on me, it’s difficult to scrounge the time and energy that I need. Thankfully, I’ll be taking a short vacation from work next week. I’ll be able to use that extra time to finish more Mage Punk related work.
It’s a bit depressing if you think about it. A vacation for more free time to work.
Thanks, Capitalism.
If I had a whole month, who knows how much I could get done?
I’m trying to introduce readers to a fictional world that my partner and I are building from the ground up. It feels important to me that there be environments that can help anchor this world as a believable place. Early on, I want introduce readers to more of Chaos City and Orbyss in general. Later, I can take it easier on the environments as readers become more accustomed to how this world is built. This’ll leave me with room to focus on more character focused pages which are easier to draw.
Not that I don’t love doing the environmental drawings. It’s just kind’ve daunting trying to tell a story while bogged down by the time spent meticulously detailing every page. Especially when I have so little time as it is. The next page after the one coming up has one more big set piece in it. After, that the rest of this chapter will be mostly character interactions.
Seven days of not a real vacation.
As mentioned, next week I’ll be going on a short vacation from work. I’ll be using this time to focus on Mage Punk and another project: the main Orbyss Archives website. This’ll include converting Mage Punk into a networked site and making it easier to create other sub-sites. I want to do less labor intensive side-projects that I can use as a way of publishing content more frequently. One of these projects being the chronicles of shenanigans one encounter while working retail in a large magic shop. It feels like a great way to introduce readers to the kind of people you might meet in Orbyss.
Another of these side-projects is building a proper portfolio site for myself. I want a place to publish and display anything I might do that isn’t related to Orbyss Archives. Although it’ll still be linked on the main Orbyss Archives website.
In the meantime I think I do a fairly decent job of staying active on social media. I’ve been absent here but I don’t neglect the internet at my finger tips. I just recently started bombarding Instagram with sketches from old sketchbooks that I started since graduating from college. You can catch the links to those below:
I’m not patient enough for the pace I work. Anyway…
’til next time,
Thanks for reading
