ranma-tim

After struggling to maintain the Draw Every Day habit properly, I finally found the right reinforcement mechanism - Tumblr. It's a very light, easy way to put pictures up (especially with the smartphone app, although I don't like the quality of the photos), and to track my progress. Just knowing it is there (even if nobody ever looks at it) is enough to keep me on the rails.

The intent isn't really to publicise this stream, but if you're interested it's going up here:
sleepordraw.tumblr.com/

Hmm, three years with no journal posts.

Hopefully things will pick up a bit now, as I've so far successfully kept up my new year's resolution for 2010 to draw every day, some of which I should probably at least put up here as scraps.

I'm also building up steam for two major new projects at the same time as maintaining my webcomic Devil May Dance. That said, I realised I tend to overanalyse before getting right down to it - "Less Talk, More Rock" ought to apply here I think:
boingboing.net/features/morero…

If I sort myself out, rocking should begin soon.

So the plan didn't quite work. I couldn't quite get the PhD finished before starting my cool but time- and energy-devouring Real Job. Being creative is now quite far down the priority list, although updating my webcomic (Devil May Dance) every week at least forces me to keep my hand in.

So for now I'll just be periodically going through my archives and seeing what else is worth submitting here. There's a few nice things I'd forgotten about!

Also I won NaNoWriMo again in November, despite trying for something much more ambitious than last time (i.e. a non-linear narrative - a total disaster for ease of making-it-up-as-you-go-along). Only got half way through the actual story this time though, so finishing it might have to wait until Novemeber this year.

After a period of great uncertainty, the shape of my future has come in to focus. Over the next month I will be working hard to finish my PhD; I then have a job that starts in January. This leaves a gap of roughly 3 months in which I am poor, but freeeee!

This should mean I can do all the things I've been wanting to do: get ahead on my webcomic, learn how to colour properly using Photoshop, draft and edit my Nanowrimo novel (and I guess possibly do another one!), do a 24 hour comic... generally go nuts in a creative way. Woohoo!

After months of ever more intense preparation, my 10,000th day celebration event is over!

It really was pretty awesome. 22 friends from all different parts of my life came, and most of them had a great time - some I think were a bit bemused, but on the other hand a few had an absolutely fantastic time, so the average was pretty good.

Stage one was a photo-based scavenger hunt; stage two the full-on treasure hunt, stage 3 was dinner at a Chinese buffet followed by going home to enjoy the chocolate fountain. It was exhausting, totally nuts, and I loved it!

Also as a direct result it gave me a deadline to finally produce a printed comic and get a web domain for it -  Devil May Dance.

I've just put up four deviations that were a direct result of all the madness.

Those of you reading this that were there, thanks for coming and making it a great day!