Sunday, February 22, 2009

Re-creating


A great mouse once expounded upon the idea of 'recreation' being a re-creating of one's self... a chance to take a break from the usual and to explore other venues just for fun, and hopefully in the process reinvent oneself or expand one's creativity. Taking a vacation is a good example, or just getting out of a rut by doing something different. That laboratory mouse named Brain knew what he was talking about!

With this in mind, I have taken a break from The Inquiring Minds in The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake. Yes, it is very risky to take a break in the middle of an adventure because readers may not have the patience to wait. On the other hand, since I have not found a publisher yet for the project, taking some recreation time can help me to assure that the story is the best it can be.

Facebook is having a comic con next month, and I am planning on attending a convention in physical space this year, so my thoughts turned to creating some fun promotional pieces. The first is the drawing above, of The Inquiring Minds as my favorite superhero group, the Fantastic Four.

The second is a piece I drew of The Inquiring Minds to celebrate this year being the 40th anniversary of Disney's Haunted Mansion ride... an amazing achievement of creativity and engineering. This piece should be appearing soon at the Fan Gallery page of DoomBuggies.com, a fantastic site created by Jeff Baham in tribute to the Haunted Mansion ride. I'm very happy with it.



If you are on Facebook, you can join our group at the facebook comic con, or check out the special things I have set up for the convention, such as the video in my last post. At Facebook I currently have two videos of me sketching, and plan more. The second video shows how I came up with the idea for the above-mentioned Haunted Mansion illustration, and it's a talkie! Yes, you can hear me laugh nervously and tell bad jokes while I draw in blair witch quality graphics. :0)

There is a lot going on right now, including an entire overhaul of our website, and how we do business. The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake will return soon, though, so stay tooned!

Cheers, JOHN :0)

3 comments:

Brian Hughes said...

Good to see you're keeping busy.

Sujatha Bagal said...

Good luck John! May the break be all that you want it to be!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Sujatha!

The break's just about over, but I'm truly happy with the two drawings I did above. Unfortunatley, a part of me won't allow me to rest too long. :0)

Brian,

Yes, busy, but not really in the good way. :0)

I've brought a lot of extra work upon myself because I've got so much on my plate that it's driving me nuts. I need to refocus on how I do things, and once again simplify the website and business, so I hopefully get more return for my investment of time.

I know, that's not entirely clear, but needles to say, I want my Cartooning side to do as well as the Freelancing side, so I've got to work smarter, not harder.

Cheers, JOHN :0)