jklind

Just Chillin'

As my boss would say, "there are irons in the fire"...  though I wish I was sitting near that fire, right about now. I'm back in Michigan for a few weeks, helping my friend as he recovers from surgery. It's a bit nippy out, and his dogs are every bit as distracting as they were over the summer.

The next section of the comic is scripted out, though I haven't yet decided how many pages it'll be broken up into. Three might work, but so could one page with a single panel. I have refere...

The Next Day pg 7

It took over a year, but this part of Daisy's long weekend is FINALLY finished! The rest of her weekend, though... that's something for me to worry about later. There's more to tell, but my desire to draw in general has taken some massive hits over the past few years.

Progress, at last!

Yesterday, I'd finally decided that I had no excuse to not work on the next comic page. Smoking a turkey all day kept me meant that I couldn't do much else, since every hour I'd need to check the smoker.

I still have no timetable for when the full page will be finished, but at least 1/4 of it is now drawn.

Plans & whatnot

Something I bring up from time to time, is my desire to work on a VR recreation of Disney's America Sings. Such a project WAS actually happening, for a time (during the pandemic shutdown), but unfortunately seems to have fizzled out. So I'm back to wanting to put my own spin on it, rather than trying to create it exactly as it was.

I'd actually drawn a model sheet of these guys a while back, but I think that was a bit premature. First I need to experiment, a little - I'd like to do some...

Franken-Daisy alts

Happy Halloween!

The variants might have to wait until tomorrow, but I at least wanted to get this version finished today!

Workspaces

Something a little different - I thought I'd show my current options for where I can draw (and how things tend to go sideways).

My first option was by the river, 1000 ft away from the house. It's a small clearing on undeveloped land, and the surrounding vegetation does a good job at filtering out a lot of unwanted noise. Plus that feeling of being out in nature, with the breeze coming off the river, it's just (chefs' kiss).

The other day, I definitely needed a change of scenery to...

Franken-Daisy progress

While there's still two days left to get her costume drawn and then ink and/or color this, the question is will I be able to do so.  The brain-fog is still fairly thick.  After settling on the pose, it took me most of the week to sit down and draw her base figure. After that I'd spend maybe 15 minutes adding details or adjusting other bits, and then feel spent for the rest of the day...

On the bright side, I CAN still draw Daisy after a year away, it's just taking me a while!<...

Peace and quiet apparently IS too much to ask...

I don't think I can properly convey just how fragile my ability or desire to draw is, right now. It's been over a year since I've drawn anything beyond quick thumbnail sketches, so I'm rusty. But on top of that, I fear interruptions. However much time it takes me to finally sit down and will myself to draw anything, all it takes to end that is the tiniest disruption.

As I type this, I've had enough disruptions in the past couple of hours, that I'm pretty sure it will only continue for t...

'tis the season (to be spooky)

It's been a couple of weeks, so what have I been cooking up?

...not a whole lot. Unfortunately the art side of my brain isn't something I can just switch on whenever I want. The changing seasons and my annual tug-of-war with caffeine aren't helping either. Or maybe I just needed some time off of everything, and to work on some of the smaller items on my to-do list.

One thing I've been struggling with lately, is a potential Halloween idea. I've had something specific in mind for Ma...

Flashing back and walking on egg shells

Lately I've been having some ideas that would flash back to when Daisy was younger, so we could see her, Mary, and Mimi as kids, and also may see how the animosity from Candice came about.  One potential bit would have the girls go their separate ways for summer vacation, and the next time they see each other, Daisy has... grown.

Since this would be when Daisy's about 12-13, to say I'll need to tread carefully is an understatement. The first rules that come to mind - no cleavage or...

FREE!

As of this evening, my contract is complete, and I am a free agent once again!

After taking some time to clear my head, the first thing I may work on should be the next comic page, so I can finally wrap up that chapter after a year. After that...  I have ideas - too many, in fact - it's just a question of what I'll have time for, before the next job comes along.

In the meantime, billing is still paused for at least this next cycle, while I figure things out.

Monique Intro

Recently I was asked for a short story, as a response to the 100th question on my CuriousCat page. I started thinking of what stories I could tell, that for one reason or another I either wouldn't enjoy drawing as a comic, or simply might never have time for. Candice confronting her father was one possibility, but I'd decided Monique's intro might be a better test run.

While the story is out there for all to read, I hesitate to call it final. There are ideas and details I didn't have ro...

Pending Freedom

I've just been informed that my contract will not be extended past the end of September. While I will miss the income, it'll be nice to be able to work on my own ideas again. And as usual, I have a too-long list of things to pick from.

First and foremost, I'll want to hammer out the next comic page, so that Alice's visit can finally be capped off after a year of waiting. There's more story to tell after that, but I'm toying with the idea of doing some of it more as lightly-illustrated n...

Gallery Building

The online landscape has changed quite a bit, over the past year, in ways that've made me glad that I haven't really needed to keep up with them. NTFs and AI? One already crashed & burned, so maybe the other will as well, by time my contract is up. Twitter getting bought & rebranded? Also may crash & burn, so hopefully one of its challengers becomes a worthy successor by then.

One casualty of my "I don't have time for this crap" attitude towards AI, is I deleted my DeviantAr...

Winds of Metamorphoses

Lately I've been coming up with new side-projects to obsess over, but the problem with all of them is having to wait until my contract is done before starting any of them. I've no desire to work in 3D in my free time, when I'm already doing 3D work throughout the week...

And then I stumbled upon a widescreen version of Metamorphoses/Winds of Change/Hoshi no Orpheus on Youtube.

First, a b...

Checking In

Nothing new to report as far as Daisy is concerned, unfortunately.

The Friday before July 4th, I was looking forward to having a 4-day weekend, though I wasn't sure that that would be the case. If I DID have 2 extra days, I was going to use them to work on the next comic page. That Saturday, I needed to relax from another stressful week, but did some thumbnail sketching. Sunday, all I did was shoot some photo reference. I was too anxious about whether or not I would have Monday off. On ...

Amazing

It's almost July, and I've been thinking about sweaters for at least a week...

Also the sweater will NOT be orange. Or pink. Haven't decided, beyond that.

Velma analysis & critique

Yup. THAT show that everyone dogpiled on, and said was the worst thing ever... I watched it each week (no subscription), at first to see if it was as bad as people were saying. They've been wrong and biased before, so maybe the show would actually be okay?

It wasn't.

I've seen my share of terrible things, even enjoyed some of them sincerely, but Velma left me baffled and otherwise at a loss. Words can't fully convey just how bad the show is... it kind of has to be seen to be belie...

Waiting

Every time I think my seasonal brain-fog is lifting, a thought pops into my head that confirms that nope, it hasn't. One thing affecting my mood is that I'm not just waiting for this to pass, I'm waiting to have enough free time and energy to work on anything for myself. And while I'm waiting, I'm watching the world pass by...

In the past few months, AI has become the latest bogeyman of the creative world. I'm not particularly worried just yet, because I don't need to be. Until my contr...

Scribblings from the road

Between driving from Florida to Arizona and dealing with crappy hotel wifi for a week, I've been getting some ideas.

Still Alive!

I may be busy, but the creative side of my brain is slowly waking up. That could be a problem, because for me there are few things worse than having ideas and no time to work on them...

On the bright side, my annual caffeine purge started about 3 weeks back, which has greatly improved my mood.

Unrelated to my mood - or at least, 50/50 - after watching HBO's Velma series, I've had ideas for a video analysis that by now I'd hoped any of the reviewers on Youtube would've done so I wo...

Paused

Work has me feeling drained again, lately, so I think it's best that I hit the pause button and try to clear my head.

Update - work still has me busy/drained, so I've hit the pause button again for the March 1st billing cycle.

Kicking Up Dust

This week I'm back to work, and stuck between not having much to actively work on, while also having to babysit some mostly-automated but CPU-intensive tasks.  So while I arguably have time to work on the "Breast Friends" pic, I'm also too distracted to do so.  So in the meantime I'm working on another request thing - a Mega archive of my older images. It's slow-going, because my folders are a mess.

Breast Friends Pajama Party wip

This one took way too long to get started on. Being rusty, sitting down to draw is a challenge, and the slightest interruption can pull me out of it. And time off from work seems to signal to everyone around me that I'm free to help them with anything and everything at a moment's notice...

But anyway, progress! Though now I can't decide what sort of pajamas Mary would wear.

Update - some progress!  I'm not entirely happy with Daisy's hair, so I may tweak that a bit more when ...

More for the pile

Work is intruding on my time off...  All day today, any time I'd sit down to clear my head, I get a ping that I'd really rather not have to deal with until next week.

Getting the next comic page done this week is not going to happen, and making any progress on the "Breast Friends" pinup may mean unplugging and hiding in the woods. So of course I think of how to expand it beyond a pinup...

December catch-up

I think I'm officially on vacation for the rest of the month, so next week I'd like to do some catch-up drawing!  It would be nice to get the next comic page out of the way, and maybe a pinup or two.  But which ones?

Going into the new year, I may need to start pausing my campaign again, as it's already looking like it may be a busy year. My current contract expires at the end of Janu...

These are probably the last sketches I'll ever do...

...on my Galaxy S3 tablet, because I upgraded to a S8 Ultra. I'd been thinking about its bigger screen for a while, so the Cyber Monday deal made it even more tempting. Once I have time to refine it, I'll be able to fit the entire "boob blanket" pinup on the screen at my preferred drawing resolution, and probably still have extra space!

Moving from one tablet to another should be easy at this point, but sadly isn't. Samsung's Smart Switch app is designed specifically for this, but I had...

Suddenly - IDEAS!

Earlier I was sitting in my chair, feeling somewhat recharged after the past two days, and wanting to draw. But what? Then some ideas started trickling in!  The Mimi one could be part of a series, because this isn't the first time I've scribble Daisy between her boobs and mentioning how warm they are...

It sounded better in my head

"Crop-top hoodie" didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped... I mean, part of the idea was that it wouldn't work, but to really have fun with that, I'd have to do at least a single-page comic, when I'm having trouble finding the time to even do thumbnails. Something for later, perhaps, but for now I think Daisy in a normal hoodie works better.  That cat-ears beanie can stay, though.