First off, thanks to my girlfriend Rachel for filling in with last week’s blog entry! She’s an avid sci-fi & fantasy reader and will probably chime in from time to time with a book review or another sort of blog-type thingy on top of helping me write and edit Variables behind the scenes.

A few months ago, I decided if I was going to go full-steam ahead with this comic, I was going to need a new home workspace for the digital side of things. I vacillated between waiting for a new iMac, buying a Mini as a stop-gap, or eliminating both of my computers and going with one powerful laptop for everything. My two computers were a 2006 era iMac and a 2009 13″ Macbook Pro, both of which were pretty long in the tooth and/or were too small for a truly heavy Photoshop workload.

I started by buying a 27″ monitor, later added an Intuos4 to replace my Graphire Wireless, and finally bought a new 15″ Macbook Pro to replace both of my old computers. All of this was done to increase my productivity. The faster I can finish a comic, the less likely I am to burn out as the weekly weight of turning out a page entirely by myself starts to drag on me. So far, so good. Last night, I flew through coloring page eight and I’m ready to get started on page nine tonight. This setup has also allowed me to start exploring more color options and I’m pretty set on drastically changing how Variables is colored beginning with the second issue. I still need to experiment more with the style but I’m leaning more toward a painter-ly style for the book every day. Whether I retain inks at all remains to be seen.

I’m back on  schedule with Variables and even though I barely met this week’s deadline, I’m confident that my two weeks off recharged me enough to finish the first issue strong and on time. If I’m really ambitious, I’ll be able to get ahead so that the book won’t need to take a summer hiatus as I attend San Diego Comic Con, CONvergence in Minneapolis, and then the Pitchfork Music Festival, all within three or four weeks. It’s going to be a hectic July. Right now, I’m planning to slot a short story between issues one and two but that could change as I approach the end of the first issue.

Well, that’s about it for today. Excelsior, or whatever.

 

Oh, and no, I did not draw my desktop image. It’s a lovely rendering of Ms. Hepburn that I swiped off the internet and placed over another background. Artist unknown.

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