Oh boy.
Ok, let’s get stuff out of the way – this week got weird and it’s gonna get weirder. And sadly, not in a “I’ve an exciting project I can’t talk about yet” more in a “oh so, this is how civilisation ends”.
As much as my attention was entirely focused on brexit as it was happening, post election I turned the news off and decided I couldnt fight that fight any more (not that I did, I mostly sat and waited to either make funny jokes on twitter or to vote with my conscience.) And then the corono virus. I’ve been aware of it for a while, because my younger brother was in China teaching English as a forign language when it all got weird out there, and he came home (four months into a year long job).
Slowly but surely the UK following the path of china and italy and the rest of europe, we’re now at the beginning of it. Personally, I don’t think the world is gonna work the same after wards. It’s as close as a world wide existential threat as I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime (And I’ve lived through the troubles, 9/11, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the rise of the idiocracy)
It’s meant, I’ve got work done, but it’s been hard to get anything started.
So, that all said, let’s review last week:
FIRSTLY: NO Stomach Pains. Phew. A week off.
Workwise, finished a war thing for Alex De Campi’s War related charity book (this is Gulf War period). Did a few touch ups on another war thing (this is a near future war thing, not for comics) and got roped into doing some pitch art for a tv thing (that’s always a fun little side gig, when it happens).
Had planned on starting DK, the new thing for 2000AD. But that didn’t happen and I didn’t even get a look at Channel Hex.
I’m not gonna beat myself up. Channel Hex may have to go on hold, while I concentrate on getting as much paid work done as possible, because I think we’re in for some bumpy ride ahead (and by we – I mean all of us).
Next week, my plans are:
Mon-Fri : DK 2 pages of pencils per day.
It’s a 10 page strip, so 2 pages per day is very doable.
The current government advice is that schools in the UK will stay open. The Irish government order is schools should shut. I’m in Northern Ireland, and there’s a very obvious disconnect between these two things (yes, we’re in the UK, but we’re on the island of Ireland, so having two rules for two chunks of the same Ireland is odd. Especially if you’re on the border where schools intermingle)
In NI, lots of schools are moving teacher training days around to do their training days early in the week in anticipation of the UK Govt advice changing and schools having to teach remotely.
Should that happen (and I think it’s pretty certain, our kids are due back to school as normal on Wednesday and I doubt very much they’ll be back in) I’m gonna be working from home with the kids trying to do remote schoolwork (how that works I have no idea). And, possibly, my wife will be here too.
We’ve already started figuring out what room each of us will work in – I have my studio. Our bedroom as a nice chair set up in it, maybe needs a table, but Annette can work from there. Thomas can work from the living room and Nathan from his bedroom.
Of course, that plan probably won’t survive the first day. But it’s a start.
Look, it’s going to be rough, and I have a stupid job where sometimes the only thing keeping me going is the knowledge that when I grew up in Belfast and the news was full of awful, terrible grim things, reading comics kept me going. So that’s why I draw comics. Sometimes it’s what you need.
