Publishing BRAVE

I started writing the actual story in September. Filling up 24 pages in the form of a comic would’ve been easy, but as a novel? Not quite that so easy. Things like word count, spacing, formatting in general, etc. play a big role in how much text goes on a page. I had come up with a plot that seemed like it would work, but had to stretch it to meet the page minimum. I spent about 3-4 months working on things until I came up with something that reached the page minimum.

That was when I was ready to get a test print done, known as a proof copy. I had written the story using Microsoft OneNote, then created the actual book files using publishing software. My tool of choice was Affinity Publisher as its basically the same as Adobe InDesign, though no subscription license is required. The uploaded process was a bit difficult to figure out because KDP wouldn't allow me to do any printing until the page margins were correctly sized. The same applied to the cover file.

Once I got the margins correctly sized I uploaded it and ran into another problem: I didn't have enough pages.

I didn’t understand how this was the case because I had over 24 pages. After doing some research from other KDP authors who ran into this issue I learned the problem was when KDP said 24 pages, they were referring to 24 sheets. A sheet refers to a sheet of paper thats double sided, meaning the actual page count needed for printing is 48.

That was a bit of a gut-wrenching moment because it took months of effort just to come up with 24+ pages of content. How in the world was I going to add another 20 pages or so without greatly expanding the plot well beyond what I wanted it to be? Well since I wasn’t willing to give up on it, that meant some changes were in order. I redesigned the plot to be longer to allow more depth. I changed how I formatted the story by breaking it down into chapters which helped to add to the page count. I also decided to add in illustrations as I figured it actually might be beneficial to add to the story given the ones I was thinking of doing would help to give the reader some idea of what that world looked like. Doing all of this allowed me to hit the minimum page count needed and I was finally able to get my first proof copy.

Overall that day marked a turning point for the book because once I had discovered how to go from just an idea to a printed book, my confidence began to grow and I knew then my dream of being able to create published stories was possible.

I spent the next seven months reworking the book making changes to the story, attempting to perfect it through many more rewrites, as well as getting a few more proofs ordered. I showed the proofs to family members, friends and several coworkers from job at NOMA whom all helped out with proofreading. I figured I had finally reached a point of completion in August when realizing another rewrite just wasn't going to improve things. At that point I decided to go through with publishing the book.

Comic Con 2022

Its been 3 years since Comic Con has last hosted itself so like a lot of people, I was itching to go back and when I did, I have to say it turned out to be one of the best years period for it. I’ve also not done a blog post on Comic Con before, so I thought I’d make my first blog post on it.

The actual convention was pretty much the same as last time although it wasn’t quite as many people and of course most people had on masks. perhaps a smaller less noticeable change was that there wasn’t as many cosplayers. I did some walking around to explore the floor and checked out a few booths. What caught my eye first while exploring were the Funko booths. I was like nah, I’ll probably pass on them since I wasn’t a fan and didn’t want to have to bring back a bunch of stuff on the plane, but my mind changed the moment I saw Pokémon (I profess, I’m still a big nerd over it). What a surprise that turned out to be because I ended up spending not only a good amount of time basically studying the booth with a few hundred funkos there, but I ended up purchasing 4 of them! For those wondering, it was Lapras, Caterpie, Pikachu and Piplup.

Now funny enough I’ve owned BB-8’s Funko for a few years when I worked for EA Games and it was the first Funko I’ve owned, although I didn’t think anything of it at the time besides it just being some weird bobble headed looking toy that people liked collecting. When I saw the Pokemon ones, I then understood why people are so into collecting them haha. I would’ve brought more surprisingly, but I only had so much cash on me as I wasn’t planning to buy much of anything and I prefer not to give my credit card info right there on the spot considering just the sheer amount of unknown people walking past you.

Often times when I’m at Comic Con I like to attend to the portfolio review. Getting a job at one of those events is pretty much the main goal of everyone who attends them although there are some reviewers I go to sheerly for an actual review. The advice tends to be pretty good most of the time and it gives me a chance to connect with other creatives whether I end up with a job out of it or not.

Back on the convention floor, I noticed this year they had a lot of sculptures that were pretty life like. I’m not sure how they did it although I assume Zbrush played a role just because of how prevalent it is when it comes to sculpting. I probably took more snapshots of those sculptures than everything else I did on vacation combined. The Chun Li and Captian America ones in particular were pretty striking because of how realistic they looked. I overheard a few people next to me wondering what was the point of the sculpts as if to say they had no real purpose beyond just to look at. I kind of wondered that one myself, although I suppose its art and that’s all the purpose it really needs. Its not that different from going to a museum and looking at a sculpture someone made. Sure Chun Li might not have any historic importance unlike a typical museum sculpture, but its still a work of art.

Additionally, I got to meet/see some famous artists. Stephen Silver is one of them which was surprising and of course I had to chat for a bit first, then get some feedback on my work since I’m also into doing character design. I also got to see RossDraws in person which was a huge unexpected shocker. Granted I’ve checked out his YouTube channel a lot, but I had no idea he went to Comic Con or if this was his first time setting up there. I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself as he was busy selling products, but atleast I got to say I seen an artist who I followed on YouTube in person. The last artist I noticed there was an even bigger shock and it was Jim Lee. He was busy doing commission art and signing work, though it was still neat to see him in person. Its these types of moments that make me want to push harder so maybe I’ll get to be in a similar spot.

Beyond that I got to walk around in the Gas Lamp Quarter a bit and grabbed a bite to eat, explored the Grand Marina hotel and a few other places. As always I tend to get so many freebies that half the time I forget I have them until I get home to unpack. For the most part it pretty much continued on like it always has before although I had a lot more fun this time.

Move to Squarespace!

A little while back, I decided to leave Weebly and move on to Squarespace. Between its various quirks and just in general being tired of the same stagnant website which I felt like was designed as good as it was going to get, I wanted something new and began to look for a new alternative.

I’ve been wanting to move on from Weebly for a while now actually, but held off on doing it because I didn’t know of an alternative that was better. Wix was my first option as I’ve had a site with them before and while their editor has improved, its still lacking and the page container issue is still present. Thats when I thought about Squarespace which, admittingly, I thought was overrated and rather confusing to use. Well after giving it a bit of time, I discovered that while it is a bit harder to use than Weebly, it actually works much better.

It provides a lot of flexibility in terms of features and templates that Weebly as well as Wix to some degree can’t match. The number of gallery options to display your work, taking full advantage of screen space, a better content storing system, general professional feel to the way each template is designed, etc and its easy to see why its recommended over the other two. I’ve only tested the ecommerce option surface deep for now, but even then that seems to have more depth to it than Weeblys system in its entirety even though Weebly has recently partnered up with Square.

Its taken several weeks to map out and setup the new site from both the content to the technical details like domain transfers, but its been worth it. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to get the site the way I want it, but its slowly getting there. If I had to recommend a website builder, I couldn’t recommend Squarespace enough.

Changes for 2022

Its been quite a while since I did a blog post and I figured what better one to do than changes for 2022!

There's been a couple of things I've been looking forward to this year when it comes to art. For one I'm a fan of going to conventions and this year I'll be getting the chance to go back to San Diego Comic Con again which had been cancelled due to the pandemic 2 years ago. Although I like a lot of things about comic con, artist alley is one of the best parts (but of course!). I've met a number of artists there, most of which I didn't know about beforehand although I have met a few who I've discovered online. This year there's gonna be an artist or two who'll show up that I'm really looking forward to meeting as I'm a fan of their work. It'd be neat to get a table myself one day and get to meet some fans of my own work. Perhaps I'll blog about the convention later on this year? It would give me another topic to blog on which brings me to my next thing:

More blog posts! I've had my blog going for a few years now and thins have been slowly building up, but I feel like it could use more oomph and variety in what I blog about. This year I'd like to make some different topics I haven't done and more of them in general.

Another would be making some progress when it comes to doing personal projects. I've been saying for a while now that I was going to get on some personal projects although have yet to do it since I got focused on other things like doing illustrations and family life. Well this year marks a change as there's definitely some stuff I want to get to and I'll make it an effort to prioritize things. I can't say what the projects are just yet in case they don't pan out haha, but things should pan out if I put my mind to it. There'll definitely be a blog post about it so stay tuned in the coming months!

One other thing would be to get better at understanding what a personal brand is and building one. Although this not necessarily a long term goal like the above stuff, its still a big goal of mines that I want to make some headway with. If you've ever seen some graphic designer websites you'll know what I'm talking about. Although I'm not much into the graphic design world, I do think they know what they're doing when it comes to making a solid personal brand that stands out. Maybe there's some cues I can borrow from them to improve my own brand? Maybe doing something with my blogs would be a good start haha.

While the last 2 years since the pandemic began have been rougher than sandpaper, I think 2022 is going to be a good year. It has been so far so I'm hoping it stays this way. Anyhow, here's for 2022!

RBY Portraits

I came up with an awesome idea I think that would be fun. So a couple of days back, I started to get back into sketching after going through a dry period of no ideas and while in the process, I started to get inspired looking at other artists work. That's when I came up with the idea of working on some portraits which I do miss doing, though rather than just doing a portrait, I thought why not do a set of them? That'd be a lot more fun and I could use the extra practice anyways to get better at making portraits.

I haven't fully decided yet on how I'll go about it, but I think its going to center on 3 female portraits. I know I want them to work together as a group and since I've not really done anything like this, it should be interesting to see how this turns out.

COMPLETED June 25

I finished working on the three of them. There’s some areas I’m not too thrilled with, but overall I’m happy with how they turned out. and I like the idea of having a portrait set. Who knows, maybe I’ll do more of this type of thing later on?

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