we who are about to die salute you

no best-of lists because my memory for what happened this year and what was before is apalling. and many of the things i’m most excited about, that i’ve been excited about all year, aren’t even out yet. such as halo 3. and the sigma six ninjas with double jointed knees and elbows. and ekidona. yes, her jacket is removable. it’s awful, i know. you probably also wouldn’t like the book she’s from.

anyways.

best of the year

the best thing to happen this year was warren ellis announcing his intention to start a webcomics collective, and my failing to get my shit together to meet his deadline.

because that finally smacked me in the head enough to get my shit together. i’ve got the ideas, now i need to put in the time to show them off, because for lack of going to art school which i can neither afford nor dedicate myself to, i have to do this in my spare time. and i don’t want to be sketching in my notebook in my spare time and hating my job in ten years.

i just got back from ikea, literally a few hours ago, with a mountain of furniture to assemble, foremost among those two large tables which will become my new triad workstation, a big l-shaped desk next to my computer tower which will spend half it’s time in the future playing music and powering a scanner and an art tablet.

a wacom is next, and once THAT is here, i’ll be doing a vastly increased amount of artwork fit for posting online, as well as (finally) starting one of my damned webcomics.

i’d meant to get cthulhu and pals up and running in prototype for mr. ellis, but failed, but it got me seriously thinking about doing it ‘for realz’, and now i still have ideas for that, but less than i did when i initially developed the concept. even though the concept is stronger now, and the characters more fully developed.

that will probably end up being one of a series of pilots i want to do. no idea how or when i’d have time for that, but the ideas are there and won’t go away, so i need to do something with them. it may be nothing more than some concept art and a few paragraphs of ideas.

or maybe i’ll learn flash animation and go through with my idea of (badly animated) trailers for stories i don’t have the time to make a full movie/graphic novel out of. probably not. probably just concept art, at best a side project.

the main project will be space cube. it was originally going to be simply an office comedy in space, but i’ve found i can’t not write epic shit. for example, i could never write galactica. not without writing in casshern.

so how knows how long that will be. i’ve got plots but no real idea how long they’ll run. i’m not even entirely sure of format, that’ll be an experiment i’ve been wanting to try. how well it works, can’t say. can’t say much right now. i may post some character designs on deviantart, or i may just jump in and leave the character design work for other projects. side projects. a series of pilots.

anyways, timeline looks roughly like this…

next three months — acquire art tablet, overhaul nyarlo, lock down a few domains, finalize some story details, start up space cube, side posting with character designs for a great many things
st. patricks day — probable birthdate of zoe, my second niece
summer — spiderman 3, pirates 3, ikea portland, much rejoicing
fall — see how space cube is going vs free time, evaluate side projects and pilots
christmas — the cthulu and pals christmas story i couldn’t get ready for this christmas, possibly more after that
early 2008 — pay off credit card, possibly abuse for laptop/palmtop
winter 2010 — travel to vancouver bc for the winter olympics
five years from now — finish space cube, start one or more other Main Ideas, write a novel and/or screenplay, side projects, who knows
five to ten years from now — publishing deal with dark horse or oni, financial independance via webcomics, even if it’s not a glamorous amount of money
ten to twenty years from now — a glamorous amount of money
twenty to thirty years from now — zeppelin