I love twitter, I’ve been there since 2006 -so just over 13 years. In that time a lot’s changed about the quality of discourse on there (driven in part by the wider world, and in part by twitter userbase growing unfathomably big) but I still largely love it. I love the curated list of people I follow (just over 4k as of right now, though that list could really be only be about a hundred since they’re the ones I mainly see in my feed) and I love the list of people that follow me (many of whom have become real life friends, but there’s 11k of you now, and I’m sure some follow me for reasons I’ll never be able to fathom).
Anyway, I think though, we’ve chucked some stuff away that was good about the pre twitter days. Specifically blogging, newsletters and linked lists.
Newsletters are starting to make a come back – every writer I know now has started building a newsletter. Many artists are following suit. And they make a great deal of sense. There’s no gatekeeping there, your audience sees what you say (well, assuming they don’t just bin it or it gets buried under a ton of other stuff).
Blogs, too, make a lot of sense. You can expand your thinking, really open it up, but also you can get a good historical record of everything that you’ve said. And while that’s sort of true with twitter, twitter is also somewhere where you can go to just sort of vent (I mean, the ideal twitter situation is you say something and once you’ve read it it disappears in a cloud of logic, vented into the digital ether). So, finding something you’ve said that really is worth rereading is almost impossible (in fact, I ended up creating a separate twitter account purely for my Clip Studio Tips as I wanted it to be just good sensible useful information instead of the normal brain farts I sully my own twitter with)
Anyway, newsletter – check (subscribe to mine: http://www.tinyletter.com/pjholden – new newsletter coming next week)
Blog – check.
Linked list. Well, I’m rebuilding it. If you want to be added to my linked list (which will also go out with my newsletter) please get in touch here or on my twitter feed.
So, last week, my schedule went like this (day in bold, plans in italics) I try and keep my plans manageable, working within deadlines. 2000AD Work tends to grant you two weeks for six pages (If pushed I can do a page a day, but if I keep it light, I can do other things…)
Mon : Dredd Layouts
Did layouts and I ended up pencilling a page and a half as well. But, of course, I felt like I could’ve done more, which is why I should’ve stuck to my original plan of only doing things I’ve written down (and if I do extra make sure they’re unrelated)
Tue: Pay Tax. Pencil two pages (1,2)
Ugh paying tax always a headache, this was sorted though. I need a lie down afterwards, but it’s down. In the end I got nothing pencilled either (well, I finished the half page from Monday) so basically back on track.
Wed: Pencils two pages (3,4)
Woops, I think I also ended up drawing another folklore thursday tale here (pencils/inks/colours), because they rejigged their themes and we needed to get back to their current theme (so we banked the one I drew for this week). Honestly can’t remember if I did any pencils of Dredd here… but I think I must have done because…
Thur: Pencils (5,6)
Finished! It was a hard slog, lots of crowd scenes (and I KNOW I’m gonna need to rethink some of the pencils when I ink it, but sometimes you just need to finish) Pages 1-5 felt like I’d forgotten to draw, page 6 went like a charm then I realised page 6 didn’t have any crowds on it. So that tells me I should avoid crowds…
Fri: Channel Hex Day.
Still waiting on script revisions, but Spent the Thursday night/Friday morning with stomach pain (didn’t get to sleep til around 5am friday), which left me out of commission all day. (I get this on a regular basis, docs have narrowed it down to IBS with a WHEAT trigger, but that doesn’t do much good, I avoid all wheat/gluten which helped some, and it’s not as fearsome agony as it has been but it’s still pretty sore and regular)
Sat: Project D pencils 1,2
Got nothing done. Was another bad night (though not as bad) unusual in that I don’t normally get two bad days in a row, so this completely keel hauled me for the day. And a bit on Sunday.
Sun: Project D pencils 3,4
Nothing done here either. Still recovering lost sleep. DID this thursday’s folklore Thursday though, so that’s something. Plus some of the day left and gonna sit and do some work right now.
Ok, bit ambitious maybe (esp given these are all crowd scenes, but I do sometimes find them easier to ink than pencil)
Thursday I’ll be catching up on people I owe emails to, and maybe .. maybe sending some submissions out further than my own network (these are more than likely just going to land and get nothing back, but you’ve got to cast if you want to catch)
Friday I’ll be sending out my monthly newsletter, and then catching up with the channel hex stuff, I’m rejigging the paper size I’m working at, so it’s a bit easier on old man Holden and my biggest struggle is finding the right art style. Normally I have a vision in mind but it can be hard to hold on to that when you’re doing something piecemeal.
Anyway, look if you’re enjoying the blog, please let me know in the comments.
Yesterday I’d planned out my week, then rejigged it. It was all based on the first week I did this, where I laid out the foundations for doing six pages of pencils in a week (which is, honestly, about half my normal speed) but gave me time to relax and do other things. The following week six pages of inks (again I’m capabale of six pages pencilled and inked in a week) which left me time to do other stuff.
This week I thought, ok, let’s ramp it up – which was idiotic because the point was to avoid that feeling I get to every night where I’ve done a decent amount of work and yet, it still feels like I could do more. Where the targets are undefined and so you always fall short.
Defining nice easy to achieve targets meant I’d get stuff done and then have time to relax and play in other fields, as it were.
Today, for example, I did some layouts, did a pitch image, did a page of pencils and that’s it. My plan was to do layouts (even for six pages I find this exhausting) and pencil two pages – the last layout day I planned to do layouts and nothing else.
So now, I feel like I should either spend the rest of the night frantically drawing another page of pencils (doable, but I’ll be working til 1) and still feel like a lazy pos, or I should just not bother and feel like I missed my target.
Goddammit.
Anyway, tomorrow I try and go back to my original first steps, got some tax to pay and will sort that out, and maybe get one page pencilled.
UPDATE: Yikes. Rethought it, next week’s got too much on. Pairing it back. If I get more done, brilliant, but it’s gonna look a lot like the last couple of weeks instead.
Ok, I think this is gonna be a regular series, life inside comics, I suppose.
Plan last week was to ink 6 pages of Dredd, pay my tax, and take three days to do some other things. Project D and Channel Hex stuff.
WHAT HAPPENED:
Ok, in the plus column. Inked six pages of Dredd. And pencilled, inked, coloured and lettered a folklore thursday strip. In the negative column, put off tax til next week (honestly, I find this draining, but it’s literally just paying tax), and Project D and Channel Hex got short shift as my wife and I took ourselves away for the night. We had babysitters, and so, off we went to the Galgorm hotel and Spa. As ever, when I think I’m going to relax, I start hyperventilating and have a panic about what I could be doing instead. (When I’m working I’m wonderfully relaxed). But we haven’t had a break away with just the two of us for over a year, so off we went.
Channel Hex and Project D will still get some time, but probably next week. Inking is more time consuming than pencils (certainly the way I do it) and next week is gonna be a pencil day.
Ok, so there’s a LOT more going on in this week. I’m faster pencilling, so gonna see if I can hit three pages per day pencils, Project D is 8 pages and will require some futzing in 3d software too, so these pencils will be very rough in some areas and detailed in others. But it means come
Have reconsidered, and scaled back. Far better to plan for less and get more done. Part of the point of all this is to not leave a day feeling like I could’ve done more when I’d already done plenty. Better to feel like “Yup, I did what I had to do, PLUS I DID SOME EXTRA.”
Seymour Roger Cray was an American supercomputer engineer. Beneath his suburban home he constructed a series of tunnels. When Cray reached a creative impasse he would retire below. “While I’m digging, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem”
I’m fairly sure: Cray was messing around. And I think we’re only just getting by with this as a folklore tale by the skin of our teeth. THAT said, having slept, ate, and breathed computers from an early age and always ALWAYS been fascinated by Cray super computers, I’m not gonna argue the point. If Elves are what he said, Elves is what I’m drawing.
Reading John’s tweets usually fairly quickly pops an idea into my head, and this idea appeared fully formed. Initially though, I drew the supercomputer in Cray’s head with a whole bunch of Elves working away at it, but then it felt wrong – we don’t hear mention of the elves until later in the tweet and so I didn’t want to spoil that fun surprise too early. If anything I regret not making the direction of Cray’s walk follow the reading direction, if I had time I’d redo it (and if a publisher comes along and wants to print the entire run of these things, I’ll certainly look at them all again…)
I can’t remember when I first heard or say a Cray supercomputer, but it was fairly formative. Look at that weird part alien, part Henge computer design (it’s actually more of a C shape, with a gap, but I stuck that in the rear view on this drawing). She’s a beaut. And, as time wears on and Moore’s law keeps progressing, she’s now only about a fraction of the power of whatever device you’re currently reading this on. Ain’t technology grand?
(Now If I can just convince John that Turing got his ideas from pixies, Ada Lovelace from Gnomes, and Steve Jobs consulted with swamp monsters then we could have a full set of technological folklorist…)
Part of a regular cut-out-and-keep collection of Blogposts about well… process.
(I mean I say regular, the thing that really distinguishes my processes are they’re constantly in flux so it’s less a bunch of steps you should take as a bunch of things I’ve tried that have sometimes worked, sometimes not, but might spark a notion…)
I have a weekly whiteboard and I’ve been using a bullet journal the past three months. The bullet journal got a lot of use in its first two months, largely as I started writing thoughts down in it. But now my week is getting back in to a semi regular shape, so I thought I’d share it with you (and I write it all on my white board)
I’m trying to have reasonable targets for a day – nothing major, but enough to get stuff down and progress, and leave me spare time to do other things.
This week, for example:
Monday: read and layout a dredd script. – This is pretty light, layouts are exhausting, but this is the start of the new school term so the days still a little chaotic. (And, as it happened, I had time to pitch a short – four page – strip to a small press magazine and then write it up, at some point I’ll be drawing it [For the sake of talking about it, let’s call it “J”)
Tuesday – pencil two pages of the Dredd strip. My pencils are pretty loose, so in theory this is doable, but equally wife back at work, kids will be out of school, so there’s some big family to-dos in between times.
Wednesday – pencil two pages of Dredd. Tuesday and Wednesdays have similair structures. The biggest obstacle is usually me. Inertia and other things. Trying to keep other things to a minimum. (But sometimes they impose, like they’re already doing this week, but it’s ok! SLACK BUILT IN!)
Thursday – Pencils two pages of Dredd. No obligations on Thursday, and this should see Dredd pencilled. And I can start prepping for Friday.
Friday – Channel Hex day! Getting back to channel hex. Waiting on script revisions, so if they’re not here I’ll probably go back and redesign some characters and rethink the look of it.
Saturday / Sunday – I’ve another strip (waiting script) and I’ve set aside Saturday and Sunday as research days for it (that’s a light load, but family stuff may end up wiping me out at the weekend)
And that’s this week! Next week I’ll move on to the dredd inks, and try and up the ante.
On the run up to the New Year, I was thinking about some of the things that worked and didn’t work for me in the past. I’d spent over a year drawing WWII books, which was great fun, well paid, and I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity, but it did push me into obscurity a little and I need to make sure I’m visible both to the reading public and to editors.
So, I thought, I should try and think of big two books I could work on and do good work on. And then, from that, I should try and get some art of those characters in to my portfolio and online. And, to give me a bit of focus, I should take one big two property every month and just try and focus some fan art, some samples, and maybe even send to an editor or two.
January is Batman.
When I think Batman I think “nope, not for you Paul, that’s for artists that are better” and that’s pretty much my thought process when I think of literally any big two property. But that’s pretty defeatist. It’s also nonsense. Digging deeper in to it, I think there’s a slew of Batman adventures I could kill on – including, but not limited to, a Batman horror series (monsters? are you kidding? I’d be a perfect fit). Noir (heavy shadows? Yes please!) Comedy (come on, this is easy) and er… well, if I’m not a perfect fit on Batman, I dunno who is*
Anyway, that’s the thing. I’ll spend this month between paying work, and other projects trying to find things Batman related to draw – that may include mock covers, some sample art or just generally sketching.
This could all fizzle out by tomorrow, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, and this is it.
*Ok, the truth is given the right project I think I could do a specatuclar Batman, but equally, I could be bobbins – but you get nowhere thinking you’ll fail, right?
Ok, let’s try and figure out what the hell I did last year. Things can be broadly divided into things I got paid to do, but I can’t talk about and things I got paid to do ages ago and are now out. (And I’m sure I’ll miss loads, but as best as I can remember, here we go…)
January
I was probably drawing stringbags. No… wait… I think I was flagging a bit and accidentally went off and did some cool VR/3d Work that ate up a bit of time. Trying to produce 20 pages of comics per month plus that was nuts.
The problem with committing to a long long graphic novel is it’s several months of knowing you’ll have money (hurrah!) but also several months of not having anything out on the shelves.
February
The VR stuff took up a big chunk of the month, still finishing stringbags though. (the book was divided into three chunks and right here, I think I was in the middle of part 2)
We launched the VR experience I helped build. That was fun.
And that led me to start exploring starting a business around VR stuff. But… things soon went off the rails.
March
Stringbags, Stringbags, Stringbags…
April
FLINCH! The TV show I storyboarded for came out on netflix (it’s stupid, and bonkers but it can be very funny) and I went and saw a screening in the cinema. Most of that work was done a couple of years ago (but hey, I got a screen credit!)
(also still drawing stringbags)
May
2000AD Prog 2131, Noam Chimpsky – I did the cover too. Cool. Bringing my 2000Ad cover total up to a gob smacking … 4.
Thomas, my 11 year old son, decided to write and draw his own comic – and amazingly he did just that – he’s done three issues of Why Not!? (a fun anthology comic, bursting with ideas) and a whole issue of Monkey Arms (one of the main characters from why not!?) mostly drawn over the summer school down time. Like an idiot though I offered to help, assuming his interest would flag or he’d burn out. Neither thing happened. So I ended up lettering and inking and printing his comics. You can download them here.
So, comics, the biggest thing, I think, is I FINALLY FINISHED the 174(176? it’s a LOT) page graphic novel that had been eating up most of my drawing time over most of the year.
That’s coming out in May, please please please go and order it and buy it and read it and leave me nice reviews.
I think around here my Father-in-law went in to hospital, and bar a six week period where he was returned home to recover (he didn’t) he’s been in hospital since. At time of writing we’re doing hospital visits every day. This has taken a lot of thinking/processing time and it’s occasionally a wonder anything creative is happening at all.
June
Started thinking about what’s next, after Stringbags (still drawing it at this point). Decided I’d like to do a kickstarter starblazer style book (digest sized, 64 pages, b&w) I’m coming back to this – I had to let it slide for various reasons, but I’m definitely coming back to it.
My brother John went into hospital, and came out paralysed from his waist down. Up until this time he’d no back problems to speak of (or at least none I was aware of) and suddenly, his life is radically altered. For the next couple of months we ended up dealing with this and my father-in-law – visiting two hospitals, sometimes on the same day. I think at my peak I ended up visiting two hospitals twice each.
July
I had some downtime and so I cast around for something to occupy me that wouldn’t be too strenous. And I find twitter comics. Just taking someone’s tweet and adapting it into a comic. That was so much fun that I partnered with John Reppion to produce comics every thursday as part of folklore Thursday. Partly this was just about making sure people know I exist (get some free comics on twitter, hope they get seen) and partly it was an exercise in writing – basically every tweet I’m adapting into a comic, and even though I’m drawing it I have to write it as an adaptation of a tweet.
Anyway. Still drawing Stringbags. And from this month on, folklore Thursday a one page strip every single Thursday. Yikes.
August
Finally! Savage Dragon came out – the issue I drew a short (6 page strip for). I drew this… maybe over a year ago? But it finally came out. Hurrah for being on a shelf!
And .. what’s this… I’m nearly finished Stringbags? Holy moley gaucamole! Hurrah for finally finishing this. Time to do something else!
(I mean I loved doing it, but you really do go through a whole “EXCITED! excited! working! getting.. near… end… oh god.. please let this be over” thing when you’re doing any work, but especially something this long)
Sept
Got me a three part Dredd for the Judge Dredd Megazine! Whoo hoo! Unfortunately it was paired with those words no artists ever wants to hear “just finish it in when you’re ready” NOOOOOO! That’s a passion killer! Firstly what usually happens is it starts to take forever – I CAN do 25 pages per month (god, I’ve done 49 pages in some months) but megazine dredd dips to 12 pages per month as is, without having a big open deadline. But the real problem is… well, basically I’m only paid for finished work. So the longer the work takes the less money I make. Oh well, I’m getting my dream gig of drawing Dredd so churlish to complain in any way.
You’ll see this strip in the new year.
Oct
Took on a day job! Well, sort of. Hub Games needed an in house artist and asked me if I was available for month of so. Like a idiot I thought – “HAH! Those fools won’t know I’ll do this during the day and go home and draw my comics! I’ll be RICH!”
Reader. That is NOT what happened. I worked full time hours every day, and was knackered. Not only that, but some days I was dropping wife to work and picking her up and looking after kids, and so was just shattered and barely able to function. Dredd got put on hold (which is what happens when you’re told “when you’re ready”) and I got no comics drawn.
Well, except for this very silly frankendredd story.
Nov
Finishing off the three part dredd. Did a fun little story board for tv (can’t talk about it) and started a five parter for 2000AD! Hurrah. Again “When it’s ready” (MURDEROUS!) Decided to pitch a cover for the dredd I’m drawing – it’ll be the cover for the third and final part. Classic Dredd type stuff. Bringing my cover count now to FIVE!
Dec
And here we are… Been drawing the new Dredd, thought why not pitch a cover and I did and I got it accepted and I really like it and now my 2000AD/Megazine cover count is SIX! (turns out I can just ask and sometimes they’ll say yes!)
Finished drawing part one, pencilled part two, took a break over xmas, went a bit bonkers and drew a Dredd script I’d written some time ago. Took it out of a drawer, blew the dust off it and just went “Sod it, PJ, you’re never submitting this, you might as well draw it yourself…” and I did. And I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much.
Flushed with that success (of sorts) I then wrote and drew and coloured a silly one page fan strip of The Mandalorian. Which went down really well with fans of the Mandalorian. So pleased with that.
Sometimes you’ve got to just DO and never mind sitting back and worrying about how people will respond to the thing. And that’s a lesson I need to take with me into 2020. Just DO.
The story of the Chryslids goes back something like 10 years. I know, I know. I’ve a few story ideas that never got beyond a seed – it always felt like I could lay my hand on a dozen smarter writers than I could ever hope to be, so it felt pointless trying.
Last year though, I decided it was time to script some things. So I wrote it (and a few others) up into full scripts.
I fancied this was a good shoe-in for actually being worth pitching to Matt Smith (2000AD editor / Tharg’s represenatative on planet Earth.
So I sent it to a few pals, writers/editors/etc.
But I’m always wary that, well, honestly, I’m a decent comic artist role playing being a writer. So I got some good feedback (Rob William’s, in particular was very helpful – Cheers Rob!) and then… well, this last year really got away from me, in a way I wasn’t expecting it to.
So the story sat and sat and sat.
I drew a couple of Dredds back-to-back (for the Megazine, next year – with Arthur Wyatt, and for 2000AD also next year with Kenneth Neimand) and Christmas was coming and I decided to down tools over the holiday, but it’s hard to stop that motor running, then I remembered the script…
Originally it was called Midwhich Cuckoo Block – which is too on the nose for a title, but explains the premise really well, I thought “what if midwhich cuckoo’s but in dredd’s world” and went from there. It was also an excuse (and I will make no bones about this) to draw a bunch of characters I’d never ever get the chance to draw, I’m not gonna be the go-to guy for a Judge Death strip, sadly. (Well, maybe) so I tried to figure a way to include big name bad guys in there.
In hindsight there’s some obvious plot holes, and I didn’t get the facetime with any of the bad guys I originally wanted – but, I think, the pacing of it is so fast and the ending (which I really like – though it divided the readers I sent it to) feels weighty to me. Felt like something, so I was content to ignore them (I mean, the obvious one to me is: does no-one account for how many bullets dredd fires?)
Anyway, here’s the script (below), and the art is here and you can compare them and see just how much artist-me got fed up with writer-me writing rubbish. Hopefully I’m a good enough artist that even in this sketchy unfinished form the storytelling works and I could paper over the worst bits of my kack-handed scripting.
And there we have it. I’m gonna blog an almost redundant post after this one, that just puts all six pages together (including corrections I’ve done along the way – mostly minor things, but they all count). In the end, I’m fairly happy with it. Esp that last panel, it feels right to me. I might be wrong, but you know, whatcha gonna do?
I’d sent the script to a number of writer friends, back when I’d harboured ideas of pitching it to Tharg, and I got two responses about that end: dredd shouldn’t lose, this feels like dredd losing and the other (from a dredd writer) I like that dredd loses.
In the end, my gut tells me the ending with Dredd forgetting is the one that works.
I’ll post the script in a few days so you can see how much I varied it after the fact.
“But, PJ, Why DIDN’T you submit it to Tharg?”
Well, reader, I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel I had the chops neccessary to get a Dredd script accepted – even if it was brilliant (which I might not be, I dunno…) it felt like I needed to write a bunch of stories – of any sort – before I could expect to waste Matt’s time with a read of my script. Esp since I’m only playing at being a writer, I may never write again (though, maybe — I’ve two other Dredd story ideas that, like this one, have sat in the back of my brain for a long time, that maybe could do with a spit and a polish and some pencils… maybe NEXT christmas… we’ll see…)
Anyway, hope you liked it, please let me know – I’m not being paid for this, so the only positive I get is feedback…!
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