HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2018! aka I’m Still Trying to Get My Shit Together

January 25, 2018

Ugh! I hate everything!

Well, okay. Not everything…

I’m just frustrated because so many bad habits I have are so ingrained in me. And I don’t realize it sometimes until after the fact. For instance: recently I bought some batteries for our bathroom scale. They’re these disc format batteries and for the longest time we (my wife and I) have been intending to get these batteries. A couple times we’d go to Walmart to get them and they’d be out of the ones we needed. My wife finally ordered some online only to realize when they arrived that she ordered the wrong ones. They’re number CR 2032 and she got something else.

Well, in my travels, back in late 2017 (November?) when I was running around trying to film scenes for my impulsive film* featuring John Karyus (before he moved back to L.A.), I was at Walgreen’s buying a memory card for the video camera I was using (and borrowing) and, coincidentally, I saw the batteries we needed for the bathroom scale. However, I barely had enough money for buying the memory card so I couldn’t buy the bathroom scale batteries at the time as well. Finally, weeks later I made a point of buying these damn batteries.

I went to Walgreen’s. They still had them. I got them.

YAY!

I brought them home, I told my wife, and I was a conquering hero (yes, apparently there’s a lot of leeway in the definition of “conquering hero”). I put the batteries somewhere to be dealt with later. Now it’s later and I HAVE NO CLUE WHERE I PUT THOSE FREAKING BATTERIES.

ARGHHHH!!!

Typical Kimmel situation. No organized manner of putting things anywhere. I just… put them down… somewhere.

Hence, my mature Ugh-ing and Arghhh-ing here.

January 27

Still haven’t found those damn batteries (of course, I really did only a cursory search of them).

Meanwhile: Holy crap, only a few days left in January!

Time waits for no man.

January 28

I still hate everything.

But I got a couple things done today.

Well, one thing, so far. I moved the little fridge out of the far corner of the basement and moved it closer to my bed. Yes, I live in the basement of our new house. This clears space for the other three file cabinets to come from our old house (we moved in August but still have to finish moving crap out of the old house and getting it ready for sale). Also, I now have a side table (aka small fridge) for my bed! I also moved my dad’s telescope (actually my telescope when I was a kid, but I never really used it) out of the far section of the basement as well and stuck it in another corner of the basement, but a corner which I’ve cleared up a little to accommodate this damn dusty astronomical instrument and where it’s a little more conveniently situated in terms of being actually out of the way now. It’s just some re-organizing and a little bit of actual organizing some of my junk where it’s supposed to go. Although, to be honest, really not that much and there’s so much more to do. But moving this fridge was something I meant to do for at least a week and I kept putting it off. So, that’s one less thing…

I’m trying to better appreciate the fact that I have a much more convenient situation conducive to creating art than Pam does and I should embrace that advantage and run with it. Oh! Who’s Pam? Have I mentioned her before? Pam and I have been supposedly working on a comic book for well over a decade (!) with no comic book to show for it yet (!!!). We call ourselves the Apple Corps Comic Book Club. She lives at home with her parents and an older sister who has two kids and Pam has far less space available to her in order to create. So, I have no excuse to be wasting time is what I’m saying.

So, I’m trying to enjoy this luxury of having my own living space and, therefore, my own creative space.

I SHOULD BE MAKING ART.

God, I hate me.

January 30

Alright, this post is all over the place, so let me attempt to wrap things up here.

Tomorrow is one of my rare work days where I start in the afternoon and get out in the evening. So, I’m going to take advantage of not having to work tomorrow morning by watching at least one of the several movies I’ve DVRed tonight. Our DVR queue is at over 30% full and I’m continuing my (bad) habit from our old house of impulsively recording movies and never seeming to actually getting around to watching them. So, I want to try and address that.

I’m also suppose to re-read a chapter of FROZEN fan fiction that my friend Laszlo sent me in order to send him feedback. I already offered him some comments and then he addressed those comments, so now I want to re-read the chapter with that in mind.

I’m also supposed to be doing this drawing as a challenge that me and a guy from work are doing. The work dude’s name is Tim and we showed each other some drawings we did. He has some ambitions to be a tattoo artist. We decided to try and do some drawing together, so to speak. This is our first attempt. Right now, we’re alternating who suggests what to draw and Tim got the first choice. Channeling my days at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (AIP)(and ca. 1978-1980 – cripes, I’m old!), I’m considering these challenges as “assignments” as I try to get into a mindset and routine of drawing and ultimately re-doing my art portfolio.

Everything in my portfolio is really from decades ago and for good reason: pretty much everything I created of any value to show anybody was from decades ago. Except for an unexpected epic drawing I did as a poster for a local film, MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, by writer/director Rhonda Parker, a friend of mine. I did that at the end of last summer, finishing it in September, barely in time for the film’s premiere. But, seriously, that’s it! Everything else in my portfolio is from the 80s or 90s. It’s pathetic!

Anyway, our first drawing “assignment,” courtesy of Tim, was to create an alien landscape. Well, we talked about this almost two weeks ago, like, Monday, Jan. 22. We gave ourselves a week, so theoretically, finishing these drawings by Monday, Jan. 29.

Well, I didn’t get mine done at all. The most I did was actually draw the outline of the box on the paper to define how big my drawing was going to be. Then I lightly penciled a couple lines horizontally to supposedly indicate where my horizon line was going to be and then maybe half a dozen words scribbled in around the page (and in the box) where I thought some things and details should be. That was the extent of my “drawing.” I finally showed Tim this on Tuesday and he said, “Well, you did more than me.” He then admitted that he rather impulsively suggested this “alien landscape” subject, that it was the first thing that popped in his head. I admitted landscapes are not really my thing, that I was focusing on aliens foremost and sticking them in a supposedly alien landscape. But I do have some specific ideas. I just have to see how it translates in the execution.

February 2, Groundhog’s Day

SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER!?

Ah, nuts to you, ya chubby rodent! NOTE: Specifically, the chubby rodent in Pennsylvania, a groundhog named Punxutawney Phil. Apparently, there are almost half a dozen other meteorologically-minded mammals who have achieved some sort of regional celebrity status in North America who predicted an early Spring, so who knows?

Getting back to drawing.

I started off this post annoyed and with good reason: every New Year’s day I am hopeful for a new start to re-invent myself as someone with less foibles or downright character flaws and also to have made some more creative accomplishments. It usually seems a futile ambition.

But having said that…

As of this writing, I have been to work on time 13 days straight, something I’m proud of and also rather astonished I was able to pull off. And believe me, there were a handful of days that were really close calls. But still, I have a solid streak going on here.

As I mentioned above, I did do a brand new piece of artwork last summer. Considering the stressful circumstances it was created under (i.e. our move into a new house), there was no way that piece of artwork should have come into being, but it did; and on top of that, it turned out to be one of my better and detailed drawings. It isn’t perfect and it still seems somewhat unfinished to me, but only in terms of my original ambitions, so that is also a positive accomplishment by me.

So, those are two specific items I can list (and somehow have pulled off!) in terms of both creating better routines/habits and also achieving some creative goals. I just want to be more consistent at maintaining both and achieving even more in each category.

Is that so much to ask for?

Hahahaha!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

(to be continued...)

DAY 19: UPDATE - Work and Art Project Status

When I got laid off Feb. 5, one of the things I wanted to do was kind of overhaul my blogs in an attempt to get back into some sort of regular posting. Seeing it's been two damn weeks since I last posted anything here, I can see it's easier said than done.
So, that's why I'm here now.

WORK UPDATE:
Actually, this is a good day to post a work update because... I'm going back to work tomorrow!
I got a call last week from one of the managers in the Distribution Dept. where I used to work. I got laid off from our Maintenance Dept. Well, some of the personnel and hour cuts I knew were going to happen after I got laid off (conceptually speaking, I didn't know who was actually going to be cut) finally happened in Distribution. Two people were laid off outright, and at least a couple positions were cut down from full-time to part-time (2 days = 16 hours). Well, one of the guys who got cut to 16 hours decided to just leave, that part-time wasn't going to work for him. So, that's why they called me, to see if I was interested in working only part-time. In my case I was, but my situation was different than the other dude's. Part of me was interested in trying to make money creatively via freelance/self-employment, although you wouldn't know it by anything I've done since being laid off, other than cleaning up some blog infrastructure among my three Blogger blogs and posting a couple times here. But, I still am interested in trying to pursue that avenue. However, the possibility of having some stable source of income was very attractive compared to having zero income, so I said yes. So, I'm going back to my old company, but I'm working part-time and in a different department. Meanwhile, I have also filed for unemployment and will be theoretically collecting a portion of that as well.

ART UPDATE:
Meanwhile, as I described in a previous post, I hoped to create a mini-comic as one of my first art projects. Thus, in typical Kimmel fashion, I'm not focused on working on one story but I'm actually juggling two different comic stories. In addition, part of me wants to publish these stories in a mini-comic format, but part of me also wants to send it to Ka-Blam Digital Publishing so I can hold a genuine comic book in my hands that I can say I created.
Ugh! I can't fucking decide! (what else is new)
Which is also why I'm working on two stories.

FIRST: There's one very strange story that I'm doing for a comic book title I'm impulsively calling:
A FISTFUL OF THIS!
I've been toying with this story for the last month (or two-- hell, maybe longer! Time has no meaning for me, even when I was working full-time, but even moreso now...). It seems to be a pseudo-Superman parody but then it goes... elsewhere. Originally I was thinking it was going to be a one-off sort of deal-- my attempt to just crap out an 8 page mini-comic and get that off my back. But as usual, once I started thinking about it, I could see how I'd be able to continue the story into a series or even a multiple series. And that notion segued into me remembering Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown's YUMMY FUR. YUMMY FUR was this very strange 80s comic of odd tales that after a couple issues, the tales started connecting into a more deliberately longer and continuous narrative which became ED THE HAPPY CLOWN (and if you're unfamiliar with this book, believe me, the adjective "happy" is ironic). Stories that originally seemed to stand alone in early issues of Brown's comic as short, absurd, non-sequitor sort of ridiculous things (such as "The Man Who Couldn't Stop" where a man is shown sitting on a toilet, and then after a few panels of the same image he finally thinks, "I don't seem to be stopping.") started to actually be part of the narrative continuity of the other stories. Until, soon, each issue was focused on telling this bizarre story with Ed as one of the main characters. So, with that thought in mind, I'm toying with using this first FISTFUL story as a springboard into other tales. I guess I'm envisioning FISTFUL as a loose anthology of strangely related tales, for lack of a better term.
Meanwhile, a few days ago another artist friend of mine linked me to one of the products she was selling on Society 6, a website I was unfamiliar with. I had heard of the online Etsy store, and I actually thought she was selling stuff through there, but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, I took a look at some of the things she was selling and, looking to support her, I decided to sign up to the site as well and then "like" her various designs. Check them out yourself (she goes by Lady Tanya Bleudragon). I like this design in particular.

SECOND: After looking at the S6 site and signing on, I wondered about submitting a design myself. My first idea was to use something old, something I've already done, simply to expedite things. I started considering comics or illustrations for concepts I originally began in college. I went to Buff State (Buffalo State College, part of the SUNY system), and although I never finished my degree, one of the great experiences I had was working on the Buffalo State RECORD, the school newspaper, for a couple years. The last year I was there I was Co-Graphics Editor with Joe Wocjik. Anyway, there was this weird sci-fi romance parody I had done to fill up a big space on the comic page one day and it was a personal artistic highpoint for me, not only in terms of creative accomplishment but also because I finished it in time for the deadline. It worked on it 11 hours straight from blank page to finished product. Yeah, I was a totally different person back then!
Getting back to this Society 6 site and coming up with design ideas to sell, the idea of selling T-shirts with my comic designs has been very seductive to me as a goal for a while. What the hell. I'm going to give it a shot. You get a small commission for everything you sell, but you don't have to create the products ahead of time, the site creates the products (art prints, T-shirts, tote bags, etc.). They're the investor.  So, I'm going to do a re-make of this one page comic story and try to make a T-shirt design out of it.
The initial idea is to do a full 10 x 15 page of the comic artwork that stands on its own story-wise. The original story was a square image because that was the space I had to fill for the paper. Here it is:

Photocopied from the Buffalo State College RECORD circa... uh... early 80s, maybe 1983? The direct inspiration for this comic was there was an unexpected snowstorm in early spring that year, and while I was home (snow day!), all I did was read my Silver Age FANTASTIC FOUR issues by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I was so energized by reading them that it directly led to me creating this comic story at a single sitting when the opportunity presented itself. Okay, the same day deadline I had bearing down on me also forced me to finish in a single sitting as well.

My decision to remake this story as a T-shirt design was also inspired by a few favorite T-shirts I own. One is an off-white T-shirt that I got from Walmart which has great B&W line art by Leinil Yu depicting a visually busy collection of various Marvel heroes engaged in battle, with Spider-man in the center. Also, I have this amazing Paul Pope shirt that has various panels of his artwork on the front and a single character drawing on the back. So, with these brilliant examples guiding me, I'm plunging into this damn enterprise.
Right now, I'm in the re-writing stage of remaking the above little comic story. The title's already been changed from KAREN'S DILEMMA to PATSY'S PASSIONATE PREDICAMENT and I'm creating a "host" character to introduce the story, a la the Cryptkeeper, etc. Part of this overhaul is to improve/update the artwork. Plus, fix up the writing. Like, make the Victorian romance elements in the story a little more obvious (or actually existent), and especially strengthen the end of the story which shouldn't be hard because it's ridiculously inane. Even from the viewpoint of using absurdity as a means to getting a laugh -- the ending is rather stupid and disposable.
Also I'm trying to think/develop other possibilities for designs/self-marketing, like using this host character as a mascot in at least a couple ways: 1) as a recognizable character from an anticipated portfolio of my work; and 2) to also promote the possible existence of an infrequently published series of a space romance comics anthology, which may or may not still be called INTERPLANETARY ROMANCES. I keep going back and forth as to how good or bad a title that is. "Interplanetary" seems like a big, clunky word, but I don't know. Big and clunky is part of my verbose charm...
Meanwhile, in the original comic (above), the story is presented as the concluding segment, but I only did this one installment. For the remake I intend to make the story complete (beginning, middle and end) but if that's the case, I really won't be able to contain it on one page. From a comic book story perspective, multiple pages is fine. From a T-shirt perspective, well, no. But, I think I can work with that, too. Once it's done, I'm thinking I'll just "cut up" the various panels and make a 10 x 15 collage of the story with perhaps the coolest images, etc, in the mix. And maybe I'll draw a new image of the hostess character to superimpose over the whole collage and that might make a cool T-shirt design. So, I got some ideas here...

All I need to freaking do is clear off my drawing table, be able to WALK comfortably in my "workroom" to get to my drawing table, and start drawing.

*takes deep breath*

BUT, I'm going to eat something first.