I'M FREEEE (not really)
I FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED THE FOUR PAGE COMIC I WAS WORKING ON FOR MONTHS... i feel really terrible about taking such a long time LOL. i promise i'm usually pretty quick with these things, but the character was super difficult for me to draw due to the shapes being different to what i'm used to and procreate being an absolute bitch that can't handle more than like 10 layers with big files. it's useless for drawing comics. i don't have the hand-eye coordination to draw on my computer tablet anymore though NGL. still have that longass genbaro comic to go, but i've set up a better system for managing text and frames in CSP so it should be easy to just do lineart in procreate and then transfer it over for grayscale toning (the deadline for that has been extended, so i'm also making a risoprint! offered locally by the online printer. my first time doing riso! i'm so excited!)
lately i've been feeling pretty mid so i think i have no choice but to just lock in and quit using social media after mid-july. i also don't think i participate in many zine-esque projects to begin with but no... no it's seriously eats up too much of my spare time. so it's quite enough. not starting anymore, not joining any unless i get asked to directly. unless...
this year i ran two as the only/main organizer and participated in five as an artist (though one i completed the artwork for in december). i don't think that's a lot, but my problem is more that i keep doing stupidly long comics... it's rough to do on top of being a full-time worker who finds it difficult to concentrate during work hours either way.
actually, my problem is more that i'm addicted to scrolling reddit instead of drawing.
anyway, comics in fanzines aren't worth it at all hahaha. it's still one piece of work, so you get the same payout even if you're doing 4× the amount of pages. not to mention that within those 4 pages you're drawing even more characters inside even more panels. the lack of comic artists in zine communities isn't just because people here don't really draw comics but because even if you do it's too much time for something that you ultimately aren't going to get much in return for. which is part of why i'm always trying to push for B/W anthologies, since 1) they're not in color, so it's quicker for the artist and cheaper to print more pages, giving the artists more room for their stories as well, and 2) the art quality is usually allowed to be lower since the focus is more on the story.
personally, i just do comics in fanzines to fulfill a fantasy of being a professionally published comic artist. for someone who tries to hide my aspirations of working in art out of cringe, i think that that kind of dream is so farfetched that it's not even embarrassing to admit. since it's never going to happen in my real life, i'll put in the 4× work to act it out here.
i hope that mort walker is looking down on me in heaven, moved that i'm using him as my lifelong inspiration to draw comics (yaoi).... checking his wikipedia page just now, i always knew mort published his first comic at 11 years old. that's why beetle bailey made such a big impression on me as an 8 year old, making me believe that i could publish a comic in the paper at that age too. what i didn't know was that his mom was a fucking newspaper staff illustrator? oh i am never going to match the nepobabies of the art world.
gonna finish some more art for another thing when i wake up, i guess.