Ladies and gentlemen, today’s blog post is more of a personal one. I’d like to talk more about what my plans are for the coming year for myself and my comics work, Sunnyville Stories.
As I write this, I’m finishing up the inking on the fifth episode, “Dance Hall Days” and I’m still waiting to hear from Steven Martin regarding the cover. (Refer back to the last post for more details.)
Once I finish the fifth story, I’m going to take a break from drawing Sunnyville Stories. That’s right. I do not expect to start drawing more Sunnyville comics until at least the start of next year.
Please hold off on the sighs. I am NOT quitting. There are some reasons I’m doing this.
The first one is a more practical reason. I have story treatments written for episodes six, seven, and eight of Sunnyville Stories. Unfortunately, I have no scripts for any of these stories as of yet. I need time to write these stories. I also plan to develop reference files of stock background characters. Since Sunnyville is (at least in my mind) a real world, I have to make it look like it’s inhabited by all kinds of people that have been living there for years. In addition, I plan to finish the series bible for my own reference. For those of you not familiar with the term, a bible is a book that contains backstory, major characters, plots and episodes, rules for that universe, and so on. I heard the term used with film and animation, but decided to use the concept for Sunnyville Stories. That’s how I originally started up the series – by writing a bible. I plan to not only finish that bible, but put down all the planned stories I do through to the end of the series.
That brings me to some advice I want to share with any other comics creators: if you’re doing a continuing series, it’s good to have a specific ending in mind.
Professionally speaking, I very much want to take my work to the next level by working on it as a full-time profession as opposed to a part-time hobby. I still need to improve my drafting skills some more. I’ll be taking yet another course at the School of Visual Arts called “Inking Comics” taught by Nelson Decastro. The class is designed to practice techniques with pens and brushes used with ink. I’ve already improved my coloring skills thanks to a painting class I took over the summer. Now I have to improve my drawing some more.
As I said before, I want to turn this passion into a full-time business. This is easier said than done. This requires all sorts of research into business, taxes, marketing, and promotion. I’ve decided to make like Dave Sim (of Cerebus fame) and go the self-publishing route. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a bigger challenge. I’m in the state of New York right now and within the famous metropolis known as New York City. This locale isn’t exactly conducive to business. The cost of living is not only high, but taxes are killers.
I’m debating a possible relocation to the state of New Hampshire. The state is quite tax friendly (there’s no sales tax or personal income tax). It’s a small state though and has a small yet tight-knit comics community. According to my research, there’s only two real comics conventions (both one day in length), one anime convention, and at the time of this writing, no furry or science fiction related events. I plan to take a trip up to Concord, New Hampshire this Columbus Day weekend to investigate and scout out the area.
On top of all that, there’s the issue of what to do with the planned Sunnyville Stories Volume 1 trade paperback I plan to do. My plan was to work on it after I finished the fifth episode and have it out by January 2012. I may have to delay it until mid-2012 as I have not planned out what I’ll do for that year as of yet.
I still haven’t made final decisions about what conventions I’ll be attending other than Anthrocon 2012.
Stay tuned to this blog. I’ll have some more reviews up of books useful for those making comics and I’ll have a short series about how my comics came to be. Until next time, friends! I have much to think about in looking ahead to 2012.
