2008 is here, and I’ve gotten caught up enough with work, and taken enough time off to enjoy family and relaxation here, that I can look back on the great things that 2007 brought to me, and look forward to what this year has in store. I’m not a big list guy, but there will be lists in this post just to make it shorter. 
Get ready to scroll down!!! So first up, last year.
2007
Family wise we had a great year here really I think. We accomplished a lot on the home front such as: a new stone patio in the backyard, retaining walls around the burms behind our waterfall/pond area, put in a fire pit off the patio, planted more trees in the yard, got our basement almost finished, got the pool table set up and re-felted in the basement, painted both of the kids bedrooms (which involved a lot of hand painted silohettes and things on the walls, an entire wall of giant Kracken tentacles and a treasure map in my sons room, tiny little stars, custom shelving, borders and 4 different colors of paint in my daughters room) watched both the kids play baseball and softball and be successful, found time to fit in a real family vacation for the first time in a couple years, and generally just really made this house start to feel like it’s our home now instead of just being the “new house”. So in that regard things were hectic and busy as ever, but also fun and even relaxing at times.
I met a few people in 2007, that I’ve come to regard as friends as well. GOOD people first and foremost, and all of that has nothing to do with them working in comics, but everything to do with them just being real people without any sort of agendas or anything. Hard workers, and people that share a lot of things in common with me. People like Dan Forcey, Rob Richardson, Jason Maranto, Dale Mitchell (a.k.a Adam Black), Carly Wagner.
And lest I not forget my long time buddy DJ Coffman. DJ and I have known each other for a long time, but this last year I think we really started to become not only better friends, but a sort of Batman and Robin type of act. We share a lot of the same philosophies on life and family, politics and spirituality, and of course comics. I honestly probably owe a large part of my current happiness and success in comics to DJ. I was working as a colorist in the industry before I started coloring his Hero By Night book, doing various things at Image including a stint on Shadowhawk right before, but having him ask me to color HBN was probably what really solidified my financial situation enough for me to hone my craft, make more connections, and become good and fast enough to make a living coloring comics all day. I have had an immeasurable amount of fun working with him over the last year, creating an enormous body of Hero work, talking shop, bitching about things that seem lame and petty, and as stupid as it sounds…..looking to the future and dreaming. He has a lot of big ideas, and big goals, as do I, and I think I’ve seen enough of this industry at this point, to know that we have a real chance of making those things come to life some day.
In terms of work, 2007 was really a breakthrough type of year for me. This was the year where I really transitioned into coloring comics full time. The year started with wrapping up colors on the successful Hero By Night mini-series, started coloring the new KISS comic KISS 4K, which also allowed me to color the Guiness World Record largest comic book ever, doing some digital painting commissions, creating some card art for Fantasy Flight Games, working with some extremely talented creators on various projects…..Also starting with Wizard World LA, where Hero By Night debuted, where the KISS comic debuted, where I signed a lot of autographs and such, went to dinner with Scott Rosenberg (who was a real genuine and nice guy) and had a great time. I went to all of the Wizard World conventions this year, met some other great creators, publishers, fans and people in general. I met a lot of cool people and generally had a blast.
By the time summer rolled around I was busier than ever here. In May I started as the VP of Creative Development over at the new publisher Big City Comics. I had met Jeff Kaufman in LA, signed up to color one of his books shortly after, and then as his plans changed and we talked more and more, I decided to come onboard and help him coordinate things, find talent, and make the comics he was producing the best they could be. So here I was, trying to coordinate things with Diamond, design ads and promotional materials, color 2 Big City books, as well as the KISS 4K comic. It was a great experience, I learned even more about the comic industry, met even MORE great people, but I realized after a couple months I was really stretching myself pretty thin trying to be a colorist AND be on the editorial/administrative end of things for a publisher, and it was having a negative impact in my life (and on my health) I decided to step aside and continue just coloring for them after a period of a few months, and really focused myself on doing some outstanding coloring work on their Dragon Cross title, providing near painted pages at times for that first issue. Literally the week I finished the last page of Dragon Cross #1, a series of things happened rather quickly: first, my lucky 3 legged chinese frog who holds in i-Ching coin in his mouth and sits on the top of my desk had the coin drop out while I was dusting. THAT DAY, I got a call from my editor on the KISS comic, and was informed I had been let go as had then entire creative team on the book. Well, evidently I hadn’t put the right side of the coin back in the frogs mouth, so I immediately rotated that coin. I’m not sure which happened next, but I know that a check I had been expecting to come the week before, and NEEDED to get to me that week, didn’t show up. So THAT wasn’t a lot of fun, and again, the coin got rotated in my lucky frog. The next day, I had gotten offered enough work for the next 6 months here, and that frog hasn’t been TOUCHED since. All of that happened some time towards the end of August/beginning of September I think.
So as September got underway I now had several things going once again, had gotten back into a much saner schedule work wise, and the quality of life started to improve dramatically for me here. DJ and I were working on the new Hero By Night webcomic coming out 3 times a week, had started planning for the upcoming ongoing HBN series launching in December, I was starting work on an 88 page graphic novel, and things were going fairly well. October and November were much of the same thing, with a trip of WW Texas thrown in. As November close, I found myself finishing colors on HBN 1, steadily working on my graphic novel, and ignorant of what December was about to blow into the studio. One day, early in the month, I had just finished putting in about 8 hours here, it was around 4pm I got a call from my EIC over at Platinum, and was asked how many pages I could get one overnight for the KISS one-shot KISSmas special book, written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by Tone Rodriguez, I guess they had some problems with scheduling and stuff or whatever, and the book had to go to print the next day. Well I thought about it some, told them I could do 6 pages, hung up, thought about it some more, talked to my wife, talked to DJ, decided I could in fact probably do 13 of the 15 pages they needed for the right price. So I called back 15 minutes later and agreed to do 13 pages. I then proceeded to knock out all 13 pages, with the help of some VERY wonderful and reliable people who were able to flat for me, and low and behold from 5pm to 11:45 am the next day, I did indeed to get all 13 pages done, after which I proceeded to eat lunch, lay down long enough for the phone to ring 3 times, the dogs to go crazy and get absolutely NO sleep before heading up to the gym and coaching my daughters basketball practice for almost 2 hours. So I took the next weekend off basically, then did another 11 pages of my graphic novel, wrapped up the HBN webcomic for the month, started issue 2 of the HBN series, heard from an author in Ireland that I had colored a book for in late 2006 that my services may be needed for the remaining 5 issues of her story as she was working out the kinks in a deal with a major BOOK publisher and distributor for her series, then around the 18th got a call from my buddy Rob who informed me his book was going to be late if it wasn’t done by the 4th of January because they had a colorist drop out after issue 2. This was the Dragon Cross book I had to leave to take all the work I had signed on for at Platinum. Rob is such a good guy, I saw how issue 2 had turned out, I had just done essentially half a book overnight a week or so earlier, I still felt bad for HAVING to leave his book, so I agreed. Lo and behold it’s January 2nd, I was able to take time off to spend with family on Xmas and New Years, and I only have 3 1/2 pages left of issue 3 of Dragon Cross, and the whirlwind that closed 2007 will have come to an end. WHEW!!!!!!
Which leads us to….2008
I’m not sure about doing resolutions this year, life is a spontaneous, ever changing thing. But I do have some goals for this year though, which if you want to think of as resolutions I guess they could be seen that way. In no particular order:
1- Find more time to create art for just me. I have a couple of projects I’m working on right now of my own that I would really like to find time to develop and produce. I also would like to find time to set aside for working in my sketchbook every day, for throwing around some colors in a traditional way (i.e. with markers or real paint)
2- Finish losing the weight I wanted to lose last year. I lost 15 lbs in 2007, I have about 10 more lbs to lose to get to where I wanted to be in 2008. I think I’ll get there by the end of the year though.
3- Become a better digital painter. I made some great strides this year, I really did. From taking 2nd in a Gnomon School of Visual Effects monthly digital art contest and winning lots of great training DVD’s, to painting my first comic cover (Dragon Cross issue 4) I have a vast amount of potential for growth, more than I EVER saw for coloring comics when I started. So I really want to take the steps to become an even better painter this year.
4- Learn a new software program. The likely candidate will be Painter X, however getting my hands on Maya or a similar 3D app would be nice.
5- Paint the elvish script around the decorative ceiling shelf in our living room for my wife, and include a large celtic/elvish design motif painted on the ceiling for her. I told her that I didn’t want to do anything this year but mow the lawn, however if this is ALL I have to do extra, then I can count myself lucky!
6- I have a comic coloring related goal I don’t want to mention really. I’ve established myself this past year as being undeniably GOOD and reliable. IF I can make as much progress this year as I did the last year and a half, I can approach being great I think. I know that may sound selfish, but I think all artists want to be more than just good, it’s in your nature as an artist. That’s all part of it though.
7- Make more connections. I made some great connections in the comic industry this past year, as well as in the digital art community, the concept art and gaming industries, and I want to further those connections this coming year. Being a freelancer isn’t easy, but having a larger pool of editors, publishers and potential employers that know your name is always a good thing.
8- I want to start to step back a bit and give my kids more freedom. NOT an easy goal, and hard to explain, but my wife and I have always been VERY involved in our kids lives, making decisions, coaching sports teams etc….. I’ve come to the realization though, especially as my daughter is in that pre-teen stage now, that we really need to start letting the kids, mostly HER, start to become more independent, and either succeed or fail on their own. I think we’ve done what we can to make them strong enough to handle things, and we’ll obviously still be guiding them, but the only real way to learn some things is through adversity, and learning to deal with that adversity on your own (especially when you get to be a teenager) They are both at the absolute top of their classes in school academically, they both have reading levels that are FAR beyond their grade level, and they both are good athletically as well. It’s hard being a parent, but I think if we don’t start to step back a little bit, that what will happen is that the kids will start to RELY on us to be there for them at all times, and the fact is, as a parent you CAN’T solve all the problems.
9- Relax more. Deadlines can be stressful. I need to actually eliminate some things from my daily routine here, and add some others in order to accomplish this. I’ve moved away from meditation a lot in the last year or so with how busy things have been, but I really feel I need to get back to that a lot more. I also need to do things like read more, find more time for family and doing brainless activities like watching TV, and playing some video games now and again, playing pool. Sadly deadlines drive your life as a freelancer, and living in the state with probably the WORST economy in the nation right now….you take whatever work you can, when it’s there. I’m extremely blessed to do what I do for a living, but I can’t be content. If I were to have to go FIND a job out in the “real world” right now, there is NO WAY I could find something that would pay me as much as I’m making now (which is kind of sad) There are just no good jobs to be had, so for me to be able to work from home, remotely, and for employers that are from all over the world, is really something of a miracle.
10- Become a better person. Don’t get me wrong, regardless of the few people out there that may think I’m a jerk, I’m really a good person. There are certain things I want to work on though for sure. I think we probably ALL have this goal somewhere deep down, for some it might be buried in their sub-conscious, but the bottomline is just being the best person you can be. A better dad, a better husband, a better friend, a better brother, a better son, a better artist, a better citizen….that’s a lot of hats for any of us to where, and yet finding the BALANCE is the key. At 31 I think I’m just starting to get the right weights on each side of the scales, now it’s just a matter of adjusting the scales until they’re balanced.
Whew. That’s it I guess, probably some other things I want to do I’m not mentioning, I’m probably forgetting some things too. But in a nutshell, that’s pretty much it. I’d like to look back NEXT year at this time, and say that I was able to make progress on each and every one of those goals if not accomplish them outright. Hopefully everyone else can think of at least 10 things they can work on or strive for in the coming year. I’d like to throw world peace on there somewhere, as a lot of us would I’m sure, but working on being a better person will have to suffice as a write in for that one. Happy New Year everyone!!!
The world is an evil place no matter what we do, so the less beers I have to buy OTHER people, the better in my book.