Project Waldo

It has been nearly a year since I posted here. Holy canolis. It feels like it's been about three weeks. Fatherhood, amirite? So, you are maybe wondering (or maybe not wondering) where things stand with Nonplayer right now. Shockingly, the second issue is not yet complete. I have continued to wake up between the hours of 3 and 4 in the morning to place art-pebbles on the pile, and that pile is now looking very much like a complete book. There is some polish yet to do, but I'm far enough along that an untrained, partially-blind observer might think it was done. It has seemed at times like my toddler is not a fan of this book, because the closer I get to finishing it, the more he plays Old Harry with my scant sleep allotment. Drawing your dream comic is a wonderful gift, but it turns out that drawing your dream comic on zero sleep is kind of burdensome. That said, I have decided not to give myself too much leeway in this matter, as I fear that a prolonged recess may result in ...

Nonplayer #2 has passed another milestone -- both linework and first-pass color are now in place, and I'm doing the polish pass now (adding shadows, gradients, highlights, and other atmospheric stuff). It's far enough along that I've been able to show it to a few compatriots, and the response so far has been a unanimous "it's better than the first one." Assuming they're not just telling me what I want to hear (and there are quite a few really mean people in the bunch, so I think I'm getting good data), all this toil may not have been in vain after all. Building cathedrals over a span of centuries is all well and good, and I look forward to jumping right into bricklaying for #3. That said, I have been nurturing a second story in my spare (ha!) time, and it looks like all the pieces are in place to launch a new web comic around the end of the year. This one is going to be a lot faster than Nonplayer, chiefly because I'm not drawing it! I've fo...

The last several months have been a blur of diaper changes and burping accidents -- it's weird how early parenthood compresses the flow of time. I last posted here in February? That is a hard pill to swallow. Well, let's do a quick update. I am still getting up at 4am every morning to work on Nonplayer #2. It may be more accurate to say that I am just not attempting to go back to sleep when baby Ian has his early-morning spaz-attack. I have so much respect for the HOVD parents now-- it is very, very difficult to maintain productivity when you've got both a kid and a day job vying for bandwidth. I would be lying if I said that NP #2 was progressing quickly, but you probably already guessed that after waiting two years for it. That said, I am making steady progress and nearing a big milestone, and I hope that things will accelerate a bit after I cross that threshold. I have showed the unfinished book to a few people now, and the reaction seems pretty positive. Hope...

Man, this Holy Order of Viking Draftspeople thing is really taking off. There's some beautiful stuff being made by my horn-helmeted brethren and sisteren. Like this, by Gail Buschman : And this by Zack Pangborn : And this, by Chad Hindahl (who has excellent taste in paperweights): Nonplayer #2 is chugging along at full chat now, and I look forward to someday being able to once again walk past my neighborhood comic shop with my head held high. Why, I might even briefly go inside! Helping things go even faster is my new trusty sidekick, intern Matt Harding! Matt's helping out with flatting right now, and I ask all of you to give him a warm welcome. It is my fervent hope that he not be driven to suicide by my noodliness, or that he is at least kind enough to postpone the deed until after we're finished. Matt's currently a student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Here's a cool thing he made: Kids these days, with their talent and...

Week one of the Holy Order of Viking Draftspeople was a smashing success. Every morning at 4, the Twittersphere rang with the yeolps of mighty Warriors of Pen and Stylus. I especially enjoyed reading the check-in posts of Vikings from other parts of the world (including at least one who, being from Scandinavia, may literally be a Viking). Special props to those who made it all the way through the first week. The first couple of days were a bit of a trial, but I was happy to see so many people make it over the hump, eventually to sing the praises of their new, more productive routine. It's never too late to join our ranks. #HOVD on Twitter. I'm not at my home computer right now, so I can't post any images from my week of drawing right now. I'll stick something here later when I get home. In the meantime, it would be lovely if my fellow Vikings could post links to the work they accomplished this week down in the comments. For my part, it was a record-breaking week th...

I've had a breakthrough. I've found a way to make serious progress on my book while holding down a full-time job. My stress levels have dropped dramatically, my productivity has soared, and I have more leisure time to share with my family and friends. Not only that, this technique should be sustainable even through fatherhood! It's nuts! All I have to do, it turns out, is wake up at 4 a.m. every day! This is not a joke, though I was half-joking when I first proposed the idea. Just the words "4 o'clock" -- they give you a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. I think that's why more of us haven't attempted this. But here's the secret about 4 o'clock: it's not that hard! The only tricky bit is getting to bed by 9. Not because you won't be sleepy (because you will if you're getting up at 4), but because nobody else in your life will be sleepy. This ties in with what I said last week about learning to say "no....

2012 was a hard, heartbreaking year. But here comes 2013. Sounds like a good year to finish a comic book.  Here's page 2 (lots more coloring to do on this one): I've got about 3.5 pages to finish inking, and there's still quite a lot of coloring to do. And the clock is definitely ticking louder now due to the mid-May arrival of this little fellow: I don't know how I will continue Nonplayer after he arrives, but I can't imagine that quitting will set a very good example for him. So that leaves "not quitting," which means it's time to search for some new tricks. Step one: start having fun again. It's amazing how different it feels to work on something because you can, rather than because you feel you have to. And in comics, as with most things, the amount of fun you're having correlates directly with the amount of radness that shows up in the final product. So how do I find the fun? I don't really know the answe...