Showing posts with label mcblack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mcblack. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Productivity and Motivation: Jason Franks and Paul Mason
Part three of talking with self-publishing/small press cartoonists about productivity and motivation.
Do you experience a drop in productivity upon completing a comic? Have you developed methods to deal with creative lulls? What do you consider the primary obstructions of your productivity?
Because I am principally a writer, it usually takes months or years for any given piece that I write to see print--so I'm already well into the next project. In fact the converse is probably true: depending on the publisher, pushing a book through the lettering/production process might interrupt my writing schedule for a period, so my productivity usually goes up right after a book comes out when I can settle down and get back to creative work.
After spending maybe 4-6 months solid on a book writing, drawing, colouring, lettering, assembling/pre print etc, especially ruining my body clock in the process, I can’t help but blow off a few days doing very little creatively as I recover. Read a favourite book, stare at the idiot box, dust off the Playstation for my twice a year game session etc, and maybe sleep longer than 5 hours.
But no method is better to beat this than the next pending deadline/task on the list. I remind myself “Don’t be an amateur”- This applies not only to my comic tasks, but also my sports or work practices. A pro would tough out the pending tasks and get it done. I figure I can’t reach my goals screwing about, and not bringing out new stuff. Not much of a method, berating myself mentally, but it’s true. It’s the same when I have to find the time to train for a world championship or tournament while working, studying and comicing- I might have worked all day at the day job, sat through peak hour traffic, get home to more work, an empty kitchen that needs groceries, sort a meal out, prep for the next day etc. and think the last thing I want to do is exercise. “Would an amateur relax? What would a champion do?”. There’s my answer. That comic page needs to be done by the end of the evening. “Would a pro watch TV and play video games instead?”
The fact that I hate one of my day jobs, and I have a doctoral degree to complete soon is a motivation. Improvement should always be an answer to procrastination. Don’t just “exist” in life. Accomplish things.
The enemy- Social media. A necessary evil in terms of keeping in touch, promotion etc, but you can easily get caught up looking at nothing important at all, chatting to people etc. A great time-swallower. Really though, the enemy is me. The TV or internet doesn’t turn itself on. It’s a battle, since comics can be a solitary pursuit, and the social media contact can be an alluring time-waster. But my main drive? Reminding myself that I don’t have much time; every minute wasted is potential sleep time disappearing, and that book down the track might not get done on time.
Do you experience a drop in productivity upon completing a comic? Have you developed methods to deal with creative lulls? What do you consider the primary obstructions of your productivity?
Nope.
After spending maybe 4-6 months solid on a book writing, drawing, colouring, lettering, assembling/pre print etc, especially ruining my body clock in the process, I can’t help but blow off a few days doing very little creatively as I recover. Read a favourite book, stare at the idiot box, dust off the Playstation for my twice a year game session etc, and maybe sleep longer than 5 hours.
But no method is better to beat this than the next pending deadline/task on the list. I remind myself “Don’t be an amateur”- This applies not only to my comic tasks, but also my sports or work practices. A pro would tough out the pending tasks and get it done. I figure I can’t reach my goals screwing about, and not bringing out new stuff. Not much of a method, berating myself mentally, but it’s true. It’s the same when I have to find the time to train for a world championship or tournament while working, studying and comicing- I might have worked all day at the day job, sat through peak hour traffic, get home to more work, an empty kitchen that needs groceries, sort a meal out, prep for the next day etc. and think the last thing I want to do is exercise. “Would an amateur relax? What would a champion do?”. There’s my answer. That comic page needs to be done by the end of the evening. “Would a pro watch TV and play video games instead?”
The fact that I hate one of my day jobs, and I have a doctoral degree to complete soon is a motivation. Improvement should always be an answer to procrastination. Don’t just “exist” in life. Accomplish things.
The enemy- Social media. A necessary evil in terms of keeping in touch, promotion etc, but you can easily get caught up looking at nothing important at all, chatting to people etc. A great time-swallower. Really though, the enemy is me. The TV or internet doesn’t turn itself on. It’s a battle, since comics can be a solitary pursuit, and the social media contact can be an alluring time-waster. But my main drive? Reminding myself that I don’t have much time; every minute wasted is potential sleep time disappearing, and that book down the track might not get done on time.
Monday, December 3, 2012
2012 in Review: Jason Franks
Over December I'll be running some brief year in review interviews with Australian and New Zealand cartoonists and comic folk. Kicking things off today with a good friend of mine, Melbourne writer/cartoonist Jason Franks.
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
Jason Franks
What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2012?
Without question, the highlight for my own
work has been McBLACK TWO SHOT. It's not the first time I've worked with
Bruce Mutard but it's the first of our work together that's seen print.
Putting his highly polished and traditional art style next to Luke Pickett's brilliant crayon-and-notepad sequence, then Rhys James'
super-modern digital painting and J. Stew's atmospheric, underground
nightmares... I am ridiculously proud of this combination of artists.
Who are some of the comics creators that you've discovered and enjoyed for the
first time in 2012?
This
year has been all about Image for me. I've been mates with Justin Jordan
for many years, so Luther Strode probably doesn't count, but a lot of
my favourite new mainstream books have been Image stablemates. Green
Wake by Wiebe and Rossmo. Who Is Jake Ellis? by Edmondson and Zonjic.
Also this is the year I finally cottoned onto Locke and Key by Hill and
Rodriguez.
My other big find has been Naoki Urasawa. I tried Pluto a couple of
years ago and it wasn't my cup of tea; but this year I discovered that
three of the manga books I was most interested in (old and new) are by
Urasawa. Monster and 20th Century Boys are every bit as good as they are
reputed to be, and I'm dying to get my hands of an English version of
Billy Bat.
What is something non-comics that you have
enjoyed this year?
I've probably found
myself reading more prose than I have for the last few years. This year
it's been a lot of Richard Morgan, John Steinbeck, Greg Palast, Evan
Wright, China Mieville and Richard Stark. Some of these are old
favourites, some are something new. On TV the only thing I've really
cared for has been Breaking Bad.
Have you implemented any significant changes to your working methods this year?
I'm trying to put out a bit more prose fiction than I have in the last
few years. Publishing my first novel has sort of opened my eyes to the
opportunities in that world and the comics business is a bit sickly
right now. I mean, when using Kickstarter to avoid the entire
traditional marketplace is the great white hope for original comics you
know there are problems. That said, I have a LOT of comics projects in
the works and hopefully a lot more of them will drop in 2013 than we've
seen in the last 2 years. I'm focusing on longer work--graphic novels
and miniseries, as opposed to short stories and anthologies--and it
takes a lot of time to get these bigger projects up and running.
What are you looking forward to in 2013?
Putting
out more comics. There should be more McBlack and more Sixsmiths, but
also, if things go well, a bunch of completely new stuff in a variety of
genres. Hope to sell my second novel, too. I'm also looking forward to
watching the continued growth of the local scene and to reading awesome
new comics from local publishers.
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