I love to create worlds. I wish my power to finish things was more expansive so I could put more of these ideas down into some kind of form. But I have very little free time to do so.

I noticed that ComiXpress has dramatically improved their services and lowered the price point for printed comics. This is awesome. It inspires me to do more stuff intended for print. Which is sort of related to the first point of this post, building worlds.

I was thinking it would be cool to just allow myself to create complete, but short, stories in various worlds and settings with the intention of putting them into print, albeit for a very limited run.

Thought I might start with my dear friend Arzra.

Well, Zyn Dweomer is up to about 51 episodes. That’s a record for me! Starting out I wanted to be all hardcore and balls to the wall with it, having a tight schedule and all that. But it’s been 10 months and I’ve learned that tight schedules and me do not mix very well. I’m a loose cannon, I guess.

So the schedule is totally random, which is what I need. I know it makes it harder for readers but you can’t force a round peg into a square hole without doing some cutting and I’m not in the mood to be cut on. Right now I just need to explore, draw, create.

Liberty is grand.

Working on a few other ideas too. I’ve been posting some elf images because frankly I’m obsessed with doing a sexy elf comic.

We’ll see what shakes out.

Re-launched http://www.bloodredcomics.com - which is all about the "heavily armored" femmes of fantasy. Having a lot of fun drawing this stuff. I guess this is what I was destined to do.

Comics are going great. New child on the way. Except for the crap economic environment things are fantastic right now.

Got an itch to do some different kind of work, though. Need to flex a bit. I don't know how the really prolific artists manage it. Just not enough time or energy to do everything I want to do.

Rock on.

Zyn Dweomer is on page 18 and going strong. In the past I've lost steam before this point, usually because I dive into epic projects without really knowing them. Kind of like jumping into long term relationships with people you don't know that well. I've been married for @ 18 years, so I got that part covered. Just the comics I've had trouble with.

But no more. We're tooling along at a brisk 2-pages-per-week pace and I'm not looking back. The comic is only growing in my mind, maturing into a real world full of real people. I hope to reveal that page-by-page and week-by-week.

One big challenge coming up is the impending birth of my daughter. I'm incredibly excited about this event in my life. From a comics perspective, it will be daunting to keep the update schedule unchanged while changing diapers and working a full time job. But from the outset of Zyn Dweomer I said the schedule might change at that point. I will try to avoid it, though.

Contest: Page eighteen has a quote from a famous movie (as best as I can remember the quote). First person to post the name of the movie on the Zyn Dweomer Shoutbox gets a free sketch of any character of their choice (not just related to my comics). Rock on.

http://www.zyndweomer.com

I started posting pages from the new comic today. Official launch date is 12-31-08, but I wanted to get started with a bang so I'm doing a "7-days-of" thingie.

I noodled and doodled this comic for the past few months trying to come to a decision on format, story, setting. Most of it came very easily. I had the name picked out in 2006 and I knew it was going to be a riff on the classic FRPG genre that I cut my teeth on (starting with the D&D red box, Mentzer edition, c. 1984). But it wasn't until just very, very recently (like a couple of weeks) that I settled on the opening storyline and characters and the fact that I would populate this fantasy city with anthropomorphic animal characters.

I don't know if I'm a typical fan of the "funny animal" genre. I supposed just citing that term pretty much establishes where I'm coming from. My entry to this approach to comics (not really a "genre", is it?) was of course through a combination of classic cartoons like Warner Bros. and many of the old Hanna-Barbera characters, but also via certain comic books. Most notably was Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew by Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw (!). I discovered CCaHAZC purely by accident as a wee lad of maybe 14 years in a flea market 25-cent box. The owner of the market got discarded/unsold comics from local stores for cheap and sold them for a quarter each. I'd swindle my mother out of a couple of quarters each time we went there (we were sellers) and I just happened up on CC one day. For the next few months in that magical summer I hit that quarter box as often as possible and managed to put together a collection of the first 6 or 7 issues. I spent many, many hours re-reading them over and over.

Later I discovered Usagi Yojimbo and a few other titles but I don't think it's possible to over-state how magical and meaningful an impact CC had on me. Now I'm not doing superhero stuff at this point, but I'm wedding that great love of "funny animals" to my great love of old FRPGs and trying to produce a good, enjoyable, and hopefully sustainable comic series.

Take care all!

Been quiet for a bit. I started a new job and haven't had much free time for art. But soon...very soon...my robot minions of swankiness will spread across the earth and sky like black ink of goodliness.

Well, I'm up to page ten of Arzra. Not a milestone by any means, but it tells me a few things. First of all, since this is a weekly comic, it tells me I can hold interest in it over a longer period of time. This is important because I have a very bad case of Burnout Fever Repeat (BFR).

Arzra's been in my head for maybe a year and a half. He hit me one day when I was trying to come up with a new idea that could address some of the frustration I was feeling about the world. I was a new father and I was on a journey to learn and understand this crazy place. Arzra was meant to be a character who could move in and out of situations and environments and be a sort of neutral party observing a lot of different things and responding to them in his own way. This was supposed to allow me to explore stuff like social issues, alternate political systems, religion, sex, etc.

And I'm pleased its off to a good start. I've had a few bumps in terms of regular updates but that's ok, I expect as much. The website design is not perfect either, and that's ok too. I'll tweak as I go. Maybe a year from now I'll have the design where I want it and a good, healthy archive of cool pages.

Right now I'm in the infancy stage of this comic. I'm still feeling it out. The format is nice and I'm allowing myself a ton of room creatively to shift the setting around and play with different techniques but I'm keeping a few things standard. First, the format should not change. I draw in a 10" x 10" live area using brush pens, markers, and colored pencils. I often use cotton swabs, watercolor pencils, and spit. I want this to be a very raw comic, so when I scan it I don't do any kind of digital FX. What you see is what you get. That's why you can see all the brush strokes and little imperfections. I draw as rapidly as possible, letting myself enjoy the mark making and building of mood, texture, and character.

Thanks to the folks who are reading. I'll try my best to give you a good page to look at every Sunday. I shoot for early morning but in many cases (last night, for example) the update comes late.

I hope Arzra stays with me over the long haul. I'd like to see him reveal more of himself while exploring his crazy world.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be completely free. In art I am free. I am beholden to no one. There is no human being standing over my shoulder telling me what to draw. I draw what I like, when I like, and how I like. And I love it when others do the same.

It feels very good to be creative. All my life I've felt like doing art - comics in particular - was my religion. And so it is.

I worship the gods of the enduring spirit of life itself and I'm always in the temple doing funky stuff.

Have a terrific Sunday, everyone.

Got a few images up now. Most of the finished pieces are also up at catgirlmojo.com, but the sketches in the "Scraps" section have mostly never been seen anywhere else. I have a bunch more to post, but I gotta do it as time permits. It's fun though. I like communities where there is a genuine appreciation for the work and people are not shy about commenting.

I'm sure all the other artists on here will back me up when I say that feedback is both rare and greatly appreciated.

Nice place!