Just messing around………I may never use him,..but I kinda had fun designing him.

I will be sitting down during the 3rd week of June to do one last edit of the book before sending it off to a few publishers and agents in July.  The stress that I have begun to feel during these last few months will undoubtedly pale in comparison to what awaits me with the publishers.  At this point,….I don’t care. Bring it on. I’m ready!

As I sit here at my cubicle where I work,…. listening to a fellow worker on the other side of this paper thin “pod” wall trying to blow his nose and clear his throat for the last hour,…I have come to the strange realization about something.

This fellow employee will NEVER get whatever it is that is lodged in his throat and nose cleared from the passage ways.  You see,…what my poor old fellow workmate suffers from is purely habitual.  He struggles to clear his throat and nose EVERY day he is in the office.  This has continued for over a year now since I was sentenced moved to this part of the office building.

I must listen to this EVERY day that I too am in the office.  Many of us who sit beside him have agreed that if we ever hear that one burst of clearing where he reaches the top of the mountain and actually frees his passage ways from whatever it is that has been plaguing him since birth,…we will hold a huge celebration!!!!! Somehow we know that the day his throat and nose are free from blockage will never come.

What does this have to do with anything that I’m doing creatively? If I ever can free myself from the self doubt, lack of confidence and creative blockades that have plagued me since my childhood,….I will maybe finally produce art that I like enough to want to share! There will be a real celebration too!!!! I’m beginning to wonder if my hatred for my own work is real or habitual? It sure feels real! I mean, I draw a cartoon,…I put it away for a few days,…look back at it and HATE it!!!! I wonder if I’ll ever like anything I do…

Until then,…….

Uhummmm…excuse me…I had something stuck in my throat.

OK,..here’s the way I see this happening. The list of strips that I will try out here are as follows, but not necessarily in the order in which they will appear.

FLEA “a really stupid comic about a really stupid dog”

FINK

I Talk To Togo

The Boy and the Bintarong

The DingBats

Tar N’ Feathers

GULP!

Sammy and the SeaLion

Peter and the Pangolin

GROG

Drip N’ Drop

It occurred to me the other night as I  poured through a boatload of past character designs in my studio cabinet (I tossed out a ton of paper) that I have a bunch of potential cartoon characters just waiting to be brought to life in  comic book or strip form.   That indeed has always been my problem….I have a bunch of “potential” strips in me just waiting to come out!!! Seems like every time I sit down to bring one of these funny looking characters to life,  I come up with a few more!

I have finally decided to STOP!!! What I need to do now in the coming weeks is to start to produce a strip or two with these guys and see if any take hold and run off on their own!  It’s that first week of strips that seems to be really difficult for me to get off the ground that MUST happen before a “second” or “third” week can begin to materialize.

When I was working on my book, I remember how the story began to take on a life of its own once I got to about the third chapter and it was then a blast to write!

Sure,..I had my outline and I kind of knew how I wanted it to begin and end,…but the middle became a work of passion once I found the groove and became one with the characters.  I believe that this phenomenon will also hold true for me with a comic book, comic strip or animated feature.

So….you may see a strip or two appear up here and then POOF!!….disappear as I realize that the potential really was never there to begin with. The result of this exercise will hopefully be a strip that I can be proud of and faithful to as I press on through the years.  Time will tell.

As for a countless number of pieces of art that made it to my trash can over this past weekend,…goodbye and good riddance! It feels good to weed out the bad for the sake of the “not so bad!”

Yes,….I’m drawing again.  Many new characters in the ol’ master files of my brain have been shared amongst my closest peers and friends and now I’m refining them and testing them out in strip form and different styles.  This is the fun part of character design and story development; not to mention drawing.  It’s good to be drawing again.