Rabbit Holes

in which our hero goes down… wait, that didn't come out right

Dear Reader,

This week I went down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole and fell in love with the videos of illustrator J. Holt. He’s got an ongoing web-based comic called Theseus, his next project will apparently be set in Anglo-Saxon England, and he’s just a damn good educator. I’ve learned so much about what I could be doing differently (and better) by watching his videos about comics-making this week.

Trouble is that I’m in the middle of an issue right now (The Blood of Seven Queens #5), I’m frustrated with how elements of the art are going, and now I’m having to fight off the urge to destroy it all and start over.

Interestingly, Mr. Holt addresses that very subject in one of the videos I watched this week. Somewhere, in one of them, he talks about being comfortable with your style evolving over time and about resisting the urge to go back and update it all to match at some later date. Of course, because I’ve watched so many of his videos this week, I can’t remember which one that bit was in. And so, I can’t go back and listen to his soothing voice tell me, essentially, that everything is going to be fine.

If someone else is willing to tell me that, that’d be great. And if you have a mellow, mellifluous voice with just a hint of southern twang to it, even better.

In other news, I’m nearly done with the third week of World Anvil’s worldbuilding Summer Camp. You can see all the stuff I’ve made so far here. I’m having a blast with the prompts they give us each week, and I suspect that many of the things I’m thinking up this month will eventually make their way into the pages of The Blood of Seven Queens.

I also had a major breakthrough during yesterday’s drive home from work. I’ve been thinking about a second comics project that might scratch the itch to make something naughtier than BSQ, and I think I finally cracked it. My friend Chris Lontok once described my work as “like Pratchett, but hornier,” but I’ve kinda-sorta been neglecting that part of myself and my creativity for a while now. I’ve got lots of thoughts on why that is, but I’ll leave those for next week (or never, since I’ll probably get embarrassed and not want to share, which is part of why I used a pen name the last time I did something like this).

And that’s that for now. See you again soon.

Yours,
Chris