Doubt

I posted in my last entry that I would be doing a oneshot, but this is no longer the case since my personal life has gotten a bit rocky again and none of my drawings or ideas seem to be flowing.

This has happened once before and I always seem to stop at a certain point making me even doubt if I can do a full serialization, a 10 year one for that matter, which is probably how long Spoon will be.

During my student teaching internship, I started to realize how much of a lazy human being I am and how hard my cooperating teacher works. Teaching was never my dream goal, but I do not even work diligently on drawing. Always at a certain point, I get lazy and just doodle away...or drop a project simply because "I do not feel like it".

The more I think about it, the more I realize I cannot accomplish my dreams and it terrifies me.

I've been reading about self publishing comic artists like Terry Moore (Echo, Strangers in Paradise) and Jeff Smith (Bone) and they have been drawing a series for 10 years...how do they do it????

I feel as the older I get, the more I do not believe in myself simply because perhaps I am seeing the reality of things and how the world is changing. I have posted about this before where I see so many people with dreams trying to achieve their goals and yet nothing happens. Nothing.

We only hear about those who succeed, yet we never hear about the millions who do not, or more like we do NOT want to hear about them. I am so afraid that will happen to me.

Yet I spend most of my nights with friends or drinking. And I have read so many stories that this is NOT the life of a true artists or mangaka for that matter. I know I am a naturally social being who loves being with friends and enjoying the good life talking about my dreams and aspirations, yet here I am not going anywhere....fast.

Already I am 23 and before you know it, I'll be 30 and I'll say, "Wow..I never even published Spoon yet..have I?"

I know I will have to make sacrifices, but I'm really afraid of WHAT sacrifices I will make...

Frogilic Chronicles

Frogilic Chronicles:
"A young man named Katsuyo was once a frog and was kissed by a beautiful queen, but an evil sorceror interfered, so the spell was only half complete. Now Katsuyo is on a quest to find the queen and either become a full frog or a full human...what will he choose?"


This is the the title of my oneshot for the Yenpress contest and I have penciled in about half of it, so I hope to pencil in the rest by the end of the week...

I've shown this design to various people and they have all said the same thing:
"It looks like Naruto". LOL.

I am determined to finish it though and submit and get some sort of reaction, but in the meantime, I am still diligently training...wish me luck.

:)

Progress

This is an attempt at a self protrait of me and my girlfriend, Betty. :)

As you can tell , my skills still need a lot of work, but I am practicing, so this is proof, lol.

On the other hand though...

I finished drawing my basic shapes (well my instructer helped me a lot, but I am getting there by understanding how to shade), so I will continue to take classes and hopefully get tons better with time....In other news...

I will not be doing Spoon for the Yen Press contest, but rather a different one shot.. I will unveil it soon, so I hope I can manage to finish it admist how busy I have gotten with student teaching..and as for Spoon, I might do it in monthly releases rather than biweekly, so we will see what happens.

:)

23

I know, I know.

There was suppose to be a new chapter and there isn't. I do not know when the next chapter will be out or I will even continue. I briefly went over reasons why last post, but more details:

I made a promise to myself a year ago saying how when I turn 23, I would dedicate my next 3 years to drawing and learning techniques so I can publish Spoon for real by the time I turn 26. Which means going back to the basics and learning how to draw from scratch, basically.

When I went to comicon earlier in October, I saw how small I was. It felt like how anime characters feel when they feel stronger and then they get completely owned. They all told me the same thing, I need to learn from the basics. I told myself that I would not go back to another convention until I got much better.

This is a story that I have redone numerous times and there are a few fans who have read everyone, which I am thankful for, but it seems somehow, I always run into a wall, not a roadblock where I wrote myself into a corner, because I can definitely finish the story I have now until completion, but I feel like I made a mistake with the way I executed the earlier chapters.

I do want Spoon to be perfect and to last for years, but as of right now, I realized I have A LOT of training to do and am also in the middle of grad school, which requires a HUGE amount of time from me, and I will need to have a fulltime job, so this poses numerous obstacles for me until I can get myself into that world, so for now, I will train.

I have started to take classes at a place near for an hour a week, which isn ot nearly enough, but it is better than nothing and I will also be doing my own training. But this blog and the facebook page will not be deactivated, as I still plan to draw and will post up my progress. i will also start become more active with my deviant art account. In fact right now, I am in the middle of redrawing Spoon chapter 1 to submit to Yen Press. So I will definitely post that once i finish it, expect it sometime in January.

Til next time.

:)

News

long time no talk, haha.

So I know for chapter 15, I am suppose to have 16 out by November 23rd, but I have come to a wall, meaning as of now, I am losing steam and simply cannot produce.

there are things I am unsatisfied with in the story right now (which will be fixed for the final final version, lol). As of right now, I don't plan to quit, but take a break until I get some kind of fire back and ONTOP OF THAT , I do plan on entering a contest for yen press, which I probably will not win...

http://www.yenpress.com/new-talent-search/

I'm sorry for people who are waiting, but remember, I want to perfect this story and as of now, I actually am able to take art classes 10 minutes away from me and am working towards drawing better...and I am caught up in student teaching, so I will call this a hiatus.

Please bear with me. I will update however I can though.

The aftermath...

So let's start off with the bad news...NOTHING HAPPENED! =)

I met up with my friend, Huxley at Penn Station and we got in line for comicon, which was very long. As soon as we entered, we sat down and stapled my business cards to the flyers. I saw 3 editors, one of them, Interverse Comics, gave me praise. So that was off to a good start and said he would keep in touch (which he has not, lol). The others, not so well. I was able to meet Terry Moore, the author of "Strangers in Paradise" and "Echo". I asked him about his whole process and he told me how he did everything from beginning to end without ANY use of computers. I always thought people used computers to fill in the black parts....O__O

I went onto the anime floor and there, I started to pass out flyers to cosplayers and random people.

As expected, I passed out a lot of flyers and my fan count did NOT go up, but that is ok.

The rest of the day, I explored and tried to go to more portfolio reviews, such as ONIPRESS (publishers of Scott Pilgrim). A lot of them, I simply dropped off my stuff.

I was able to meet the creator of "Paradigm Shift", Dirk L. Tiede. He gave me a lot of pointers on where to go from my level. He was a very nice guy. He told me what all the other editors told me..that my basics needed work, meaning I should take some life skills. With a class and another year, I would level up...

Then the rest of the day, I went to the artist's alley and saw some AMAZING art...very amazing. Now I finally know it feels like when an anime character thinks he's become strong and than gets his ass KICKED by another character...

It really made me know where I was...now onto the GOOD NEWS!

While touring the anime part of comicon, I saw a man passing out flyers and low and behold they were for an art school! I asked my dad if I could take these classes since they would be every Sunday and would be $250 for 10 classes! AND HE AGREED! =DDD

So after my birthday extravaganza, my awesome friends drove me there for me to have an appointment and they offered me a deal where I would spend half the time in a fine arts class and the other half working on manga! I checked out their stuff..and WOW!
http://nillia.deviantart.com/gallery/

This is the chance I have been waiting for and am VERY VERY excited...I will be working with not one...but TWO teachers....so essentially I will be going back to the basics and relearning how to draw from scratch.

FUTURE OF SPOON:

I will keep on drawing Spoon and continue to get better, but releases may become slower since I have a lot on my plate, but along with this, my drawings might get EXPONENTIALLY BETTER! =D

We will see...as of now...things are looking up! (knock on wood)

EXPECT CHAPTER 14 TOMORROW!!!

COMICON!

hi everyone!

so tomorrow is finally the day (well comicon started today but I had work, lol).

The two images above are the pictures I will be showing to the editors...so I hope they will AT LEAST notice me, haha.

I'm almost certain nothing great will happen, but it's the effort that counts, right?

So wish me luck! Maybe I'll see some of you readers there??? haha.