Hi folks - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Yep, it's been THAT long - longer in fact; I only realised a week or two back that I'd last posted here way back on October 27th LAST YEAR, so I guess I need to add a much-belated MERRY CHRISTMAS (Happy Holidays, for you US of A orientated types). And I trust you all DID have a merry Christmas and are enjoying a happy new year thus far and hope 2017 continues to to bring all you might hope for.
We all like to set new goals for the new year, and among mine is the determination to get all five of the projects I have on the go at the moment (and for the last couple of years in the case of four of them) finished, edited and 'out there' in some form or other. Another goal I have - as I have fairly recently declared within the comments section of my last, October 27th offering - is to update this blog at least once per week minimum but generally twice as from February 1st (as declared in that comment I posted).
Well February 1st was yesterday - and I very nearly fell at the first fence as it were. I'd decided I wanted to do something specifically and especially for this 'comeback' post. I'd also decided it was time to finish off my white coated doctor / psychotherapist figure (which the observant among you will remember I unveiled a while back (last year of course) but minus the white coat and which was criticised by some for possessing a somewhat distorted head). But when it came down to the nitty-gritty it ended up taking a whole lot longer than I'd allowed for, mainly when I got down to the stage of providing the think bubble and annotation and so on.
In the final book form I plan to use illustrations such as these with the captions outside the image itself and with the only text (other than perhaps for the title in some cases) being kept within 'speech' or 'think' bubbles or within a single small block within quotation marks and limited to a few words only, since otherwise where text is allowed to get too dense (as it is in the version below) it tends to get too small for easy reading on a hand-held device, say.
In this case I wanted to provide something of the taste of the storyline within the image itself because I wanted it to be able to hold up and be intelligible when also posted to such platforms as Tumblr and Pinterest, where there is not the space to write the story around the image and from where other bloggers and 'Pinteresterists' often like to 'reblog' or 'repin' to their own favourite platforms which would of course result in the story caption being left behind. In the end. as I said, it ended up using up all the time I had available (I had to rush to take one of my kids to dance class) but rather than COMPLETELY collapse at the first hurdle I decided to limp over it and just stumble a bit and quickly post up the two versions I present here and write up the rest of the post later (ie, today).
I'd be grateful for any comments you might have - good OR bad. I'll tell you more of this year's aims and what to expect and look forward to next time (which MIGHT be as early as tomorrow - Friday - but most likely will be Tuesday next week, by which time I might also have another pic for your critical evaluation and, hopefully, delight) and also elucidate the details of the different projects I am involved in (and also the pressures which have delayed things recently). Bye for now! Have a good one!
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5 comments:
Glad to see something more from you! The new project looks great - any more hints about it?
Howdy there Das Flute. Seems eons since we shared a pint or ten (I continued after you left - and then went home to my 'local' and continued some more). It seems even longer since we were swapping story inspirations and that 'red letter day' idea surfaced (I don't want to be more specific for fear of giving too much awsy, but Im sure you remember what I am refering to). As you know, I started work on that while on holiday in (on?) Sardinia way back in 2014 and had written a hell of a lot by the time we met up. Well I've not given uo on that one (though I still have difficulties starting it off and now have around 5 opening chapters. But that is not what today's thing is all about (although I've suddenly realised while writing this I could cobble together some pics for it from some of the artwork I have)...
...continued... One of the things which sidelined much of my written output was a project I undertook with Roger Benson which basicaly came down to a book of his art featuring many variations on his originals created by yours truely and Angela Fox (who was commisioned to recreate some of the good Mr Benson's clasics in modern computer generated form as well as one or too variations on the theme to extend the cannon). In addition I was to create a few brand new 'Bensons' using elements taken from his existing work reassembled in different ways. Basicaly it was a long, involved and often difficult project which swallowed up around 18 months of my (and Angela's) life...
...continued... And all went well (I was being assured continualy this book of Benson's was about to be published) until the point he began having me publish all those daft (and dare I say, childish-sounding) 'polls' (if you remember) and I reworded one in a manner he didn't like (I was forever having to remind him that Blogger's poll 'widgit' has a strict character limit and would not support his long, rambling questions) and he was grossly rude in an email, calling me just about every name under the sun, saying I was 'incompetant' and 'stupid' and so on. At that point I dropped both him and his project like a hot potato (sorry about spelling incidently. I'm using my phone and the spell check doesn't work). It later transpired that by that stage he had also suddenly stopped communicating with Angela Fox, despite all the hours she had put in for him, and was no longer responding to Angela's emails with narry a word of explanation (she has never heard from him since) which makes me wonder if Mr Benson's actions were calculated and deliberate. But all that being said; my understanding was that all the artwork had been completed; but I for one have never had sight of this book of his (the final deadline was supposed to have been some 18 months ago), a VERY thorough search (and I undertake desk research work for a living nowadays) failed to turn up his supposed literary agent or his publishers and neither Angela or myself were ever sent any artwork which has not been up on the internet and widely available for practicaly as long as the internet in its modern form has been in existance - at least since the late 1990s early 2000s - which makes one wonder. It kind of suggests he has for some reason long ago published everything he has ever done on the web and has done nothing fresh since - for the past what...15-16 years?...
...continued... Well, I'll be damned if I am going to have wasted a year and a half (or more) for no return or reward. So I'm sure you get the idea. I have all the stuff I did for him and all the stuff Angela Fox did and some stuff I've since done of my own back to sort of glue it all together and I intend putting out the entire collection my self in some form or other (if comercialy then I'll be setting aside one third of any procedes for Angela and Mr Benson, since the original aggreement was for a three way split). That's project one. Project two is for an illustrated version of an abridged version of the INSTITUTIONALISED trilogy utilizing artwork based on originals by Angela fox and project 3 (though actualy the first likely to be completed) is a story written by and illustrated by Angela Fox which I am presently editing, colating, rewriting here and there, extending and adapting various elements of Ms Fox's artwork and also writing an opening section and extra middle section to develop the storyline. Now this one was supposed to have been completed way before Christmas (I promised Angela as much - and I hate to let people down) but stuff happened at my end, so this one is my present priority.
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