Where I've Been

I can't believe that November is already almost over. This month has really flown by and the blog has taken a hit because of how busy I've been. But, I have started a new piece of art to put up on the December header so I figured it was about time to start writing again.

When I went to Maine in October I made sure I had room in my luggage to bring some of my old artwork from high school and college back to Colorado with me. I found a lot of pieces I had done of Keith Howard and Exit 6. Getting those pieces back to Colorado and scanning them into the computer got me back on track to really finish up the collected Exit 6 book.

As I've said in the blog before, the collected book will not only feature the Exit 6 comic books I originally published in the late nineties but will also have a lot of production art and work I was doing on the idea back in college. If the Exit 6 story did end it would have been easy to put all the books under one cover and simply put it out as a collectection. But, because I only got half of the story done when I first self published I am looking at the collected book as not only a collection of the art but also a story of how I came up with Exit 6, what I did to publish the book, and what happened when I had to stop production.

In the end, it will be an interesting story of what I went through to self publish a comic book in the late nineties.

So, I've been writing this last month and getting the text for the book finished. I wrote a quick, messy, first draft last year and have let it sit for far too long. Since being back I've been going through that draft, filling in stories, and making sure everything is grammatically correct. Right now I'm a little more than seventy five percent done with an official first draft. And, right now the text alone is about ninety pages. I figure once I format it the text pages will be about a hundred and twenty pages long.

And, the art for the book?

I printed out all the art I have scanned for the book so far and put it into a three ring binder so I could move pages around when I start laying out the book. Right now the art alone is about two inches thick.

When all is said and done the collected book should be between 350-400 pages long. I am hoping to get it all done and printed before the next Denver Comicon in June.

So, working on this has taken away a lot of my need to write anywhere else this month. And that is why the blog has been a bit barren. That, and, once you stop writing a blog, it's so hard to get back into the groove again. Unfortunately, I've also stopped doing the "Back To The Drawing Board" podcast for a bit. I'm not sure if I'll ever do another one but I'd like to try and get it back up and running at some point. It was becoming a job trying to get one done every week when I was doing it all myself.

But, the OilCan Drive webcomic is still going strong and, thankfully, I've set it up so, even if I fall off the face of the Earth, it should update itself three times a week until some time in April of 2013. So, if you ever miss me, head on over there and see what new pages show up.

I hope you all are doing great and had a great month. I'll see you soon with some new art for December's header. With all the client work and writing I've been doing it's really been nice to draw something for myself again.

Have a good one!