Year Odds and Ends

A few things while I imbibe caffeine and wake up:

- No changes in Zuda's last rankings. If things are as close as they say, it could be any of the top three winning even though the zombie comic, Aeon of the Dead remained in 1st place.

- I'm drawing a really strange and wide variety of things right now; a Swords and Sorcery anti-hero, an anthropomorphic hero sandwich, an old-style football player, ALIENS-style gritty space marines, lovecraftian space colonists and superheroes.

- I'm casting about for what I would consider doing as a Zuda strip. I'm thinking about this within the context of how the process works; 8-page beginning followed by 52 weekly installments. It would have to be something best digested in 1-page increments and be fully wrapped up in the 60 total "screens". I find I'm thinking that typical web comics aren't the model to run with here and that I want to make a "promise" with the first 8 pages that will pay off by the end. I'm looking at what would make for a great three-issue series, essentially, but the first act ends at page 8.

- I've decided I have to make some room in my studio. I moved into a smaller space over a year ago and I've found that my original art collection has essentially been buried in storage ever since. I'd rather someone who'd have the artwork out and enjoy it have the pages, so I'm winnowing the collection a bit. For those interested in some great Garcia Lopez or Chris Bachalo pages take a look here. I'm trying to decide on the best way to store and care for the artwork I'm not selling, which might result in more auctions later.

- I start teaching in a little over a week at Durham College. Just the one class one day a week, but it'll feel good to be actively teaching again.

- In addition to the real basic drawing exercises I've started doing, I'm thinking a more advanced series of entries might be a good idea, time permitting. Right now I'm thinking about some basic anatomy tips, skipping around the body at whim, or something more like an online teaching resource for a readily available book or e-book. The front runners for the latter would either be George Bridgman's books (either in the smaller Dover editions or the complete book) or Andrew Loomis's Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. Figure Drawing is out of print in English, but there are a number of sites with it available as a free PDF download. Let me know what you guys would prefer.

Like many, I wish someone would put all of the man's books back in print.

- When I started this blog, the first picture was a zombie Baby New Year, I managed to draw another zombie early last January. That close enough to some sort of tradition for me! So I'm gonna try to make the first post of the new year a zombie for as long as I keep blogging.

Time to go draw!

~R