Countdown to Kickstarter

Kickstarter is revolutionary. Clearly. Have there been financial studies made of it? Predicting models? No. Not like the kind that that would do me any good. Like the kind that come with handy-dandy "do this and you're sure to get $XX,XXX.XX within your first week" instructions. If there were, I'm sure the analysis itself is a link leading to the capitol of PhishTown, on the corner of Spam Blvd & Hehe Gotcha Rd. But I guess I have a sense of what helps a Kickstarter campaign get funded. People going to the project page have to want the product on some level, for one. I know it's possible to just give money without receiving anything, but that only leads me to the next likely reason for a project's success. People just like the project builder.

What a fearful quandary.

A majority of the people I like, like me back. It's a very wonderful feeling. We trade Internet messageboard posts, tweets, Skype calls, private messages, Facebook pokes ... and a very few times out of the year, we travel hundreds of miles to hug each other. I have friends within public transportation-reaching distance who I don't communicate with as much as I do these people I have found on the Internet. How does that happen? It seems that my friends want what I want. They want to share themselves; their thoughts, the sights and sounds that give them good feelings, their anger, their desires... all from the safe buffer provided by the Internet. There's never been a community like this. There's never been access to this type of technology. It's all brand new.

And here I go screwing it all up by introducing Kickstarter.

Feels like I'm trying to capitalize on these friendships by now asking for their money. Like I'm THAT GUY. And I am kind of That Guy. I let my ass drag for about as long as many of my friends have been alive. On a virtual quest in search of myself perpetually. What was I going to be when I grew up? How about a cartoonist? Great! No, wait... How about a post office employee? Nah. I know... a preacher, brother!! Whoops. No longer qualified. Okay then a husband and a therapist, living in the Midwest! Wrong again. Back to New York I go. Oops, didn't quite make it. Okay, New Jersey it is then! But oh hey! New York is *right* *THERE* dude. Okay! Back to New York, then!

Back in New York. Ooooooookay. And how about that therapist's licence? Let's do something with that! Okay! And now? Check the calendar. Check the clock. Holy good God, is THAT how old I am?!?

Okay.

So.

What am I going to be when I grow up?

Well ... let's just start where we began. I want to be a cartoonist.

I'll need your help.

Thank you.

Distinguished Company

I neglected to mention that the first issue was solicited in this publication. It was kind of a big deal.

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #157

On pg 175, POWER PACK was solicited, mentioning HILARY BARTA as an artist in #45. Hey, I know people who knows that guy!

Turn the page, and there's me. I wrote all that copy, by the way. I think. I didn't write the snarky caption under Dale's agonized face however.:-D

Comment Allez Vous!

That's French, right?

So guess who has two thumbs & just figured out how to enable comments for everyone, and not just Registered Users?

So. THAT happened.

So my roommate comes home and asks if the stacked 11 x 17 originals that I had aside my drawing table, ready to scan in, were the art pieces that I had been telling him about months ago.

"Yeah."

"They are really good."

"Yeah?"

"They are really good, yeah."

"... This was my art 20 years ago."

"Those are really good. Why did you stop?"

"Life and a bunch of things."

"I never knew I was living with such an artist!"

"... um ..."

Because I didn't know how to take a compliment from a Juliard-graduate world orchestral violin & baroque professor musician?  Because I want to believe him too badly to refuse it? Because I'm happy with it too, and hey ... THAT can't be right, right?

I have too much of a sad sack history to bore you with, gentle readers, but I gotta tell ya -- what I'm looking for has been a lonnnnnnnng time coming. A LONNNNNNNNNG effing time.  And I do mean like so-long-you-don't-think-it'll-ever-really-happen-time.

But I'm doing it. I'm starting. Soon to be KICKstarting.

And we'll just see what's what.

So that's all right then.

Oh, and I told my roommate "Thanks."  Because, I did appreciate him saying so.

It's no Adam Hughes ... but who is?

The thing is, Jeff Lemire does it professionally every day. He doesn't seem to worry about proportional form or the aesthetic beauty of his faces. He has a story to tell and drawing is his means to telling it.  I've never heard anyone report that he hates his own style.  I mean, he's drawn frikin BATMAN for DC at this point.

So my goal is to stop whining about how i wish my stuff resembled Adam Hughes' stuff.  But even having said that, I know the next two issues that I'll be posting will have different and advanced art from the one I've just completed posting.  I discover from reading my second issue's inside cover that it took me a year to get to it. So between issues, I figured out how to do some stuff differently.  I think I found some inspirations in Paul Smith.

Paul Smith art found at the blog, "Storm Sunday"

So here's a preview of what I became in 1990;

Langston gets his gripe on.

It makes my eye happier than when I looked on the first issue. And on we go.

Hey Ya, Neil Gaiman!

My buddy Ryan King tweeted a link at me and a bunch of his friends tonight who, like himself, are trying to make our art matter for something. Those of you who already know me, know that I discovered Ryan before I ever knew him, and then knew him before I ever discovered that I'd already met him, because HE'S the one who made this world-famous video

CollegeHumor’s Favorite Funny Videos

Which I'd loved for years MADLY, even after knowing Ryan, and then finding out a year into it that HE had been the same Ryan King that's in the credits all along! So it's fitting that he would wind up sending me the following inspirational commencement speech by Neil Gaiman on the timely subject of "Making Good Art."

Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

Thanks, Ryan!

Learning sommore!

Sketch Card set #2 started. As it turns out, I'm not so slow at the pencils! Got this much done in about 40 minutes. Or maybe that is slow.