Issue 12, pages 14 & 15

Okay, I've finally gotten pages fourteen and fifteen sketched up, and the rest of the issue mapped out. So let's see... six pages in this scene, three back in the ballroom, and the final two with Max and the prince.





Inking and lettering tomorrow. Oh, and straightening things up a bit around the house. We've an assessor coming in Friday. Which... is New Year's Eve. I'll need to remember to change the copyright dates on things next week. Time to start using 2011.


"The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found."
-- Calvin Trillin

RCSI credit card system has been fixed

Seems there have been some problems over the last few weeks with the RCSI credit card system. Namely that it wasn't accepting accounts. As Matt explained it on the site earlier...

Apparently, the Credit Card Processing that 'Code Name: Hunter' (and the rest of RCSI Publishing) uses had been "switched off" since December 17th. If you've tried to start or renew a supporter account since 12/17/2010 and were getting back an "Account not active" error message, that was because of our processor's fault, and not the fault of anyone else. The problem has been fixed for now, but we do have a trouble ticket in the works looking for the cause of the switch-off.

We apologize for the downtime. If any similar problems pop up in the future, please let us know so we can correct the issue right away. We weren't aware there even was an issue until this last weekend. We lost a lot of sales because of this. And with December always being our leanest month, loosing sales right now is not a good thing. So please, feel free to let us know and sorry for any inconvenience. Thanks, guys!


"Charge less, but charge. Otherwise, you will not be taken seriously, and you do your fellow artists no favors if you undercut the market."
-- Elizabeth Aston

Yes, cartoonists get stage fright

How do I know? Because it's happening right now. It's not an artistic or writer's block. I know what I want to write, I just can't seem to get to it. It's like, this overwhelming fear that I'm going to screw the story up, somehow. Which, when you think about it, is foolish. I mean, I'm the one creating it. So thereby, what I write and create can't actually be wrong, because I'm the one bringing it to life. This isn't art by committee or a commission, this is me telling my story. No one else aside from Matt really has a say in its creation.

You know, I never use to have these fears of creating. True, I didn't like being around while people looked over my work (art shows always made me so uncomfortable) but that was more of a 'leave me alone and let me work' thing. With the net, I feel like I'm constantly in an art show. And I'm not talking one of those shows where you put up the work and leave. No, it's more like one of those shows where you have to stand around and try to "explain" your work to people when there's nothing more behind an image than the fact that you 'just felt like drawing a horse that day.' It's the Paul B. Sharar Foundation show all over again!

Now, before anyone gets upset, I'm not trying to be mean, disrespectful, or any of that jazz. I've just never been comfortable with the end product being scrutinized so. It tends to make me paranoid about said end product, which eats away at my enjoyment of the process. Leaving me, quite frankly, wanting to do anything but drawing.

What it comes down to is each artist is different. Some artists love being the center of attention and get upset if they don't receive comments, good or bad. Others, like me, want to be free to work. We like hearing comments now and then, but sometimes they make us feel like a bug under a magnifying glass.

In the end, I suppose it all comes down to the environment in which you learned to draw. Many people, especially now, are learning while sharing their work online. It's almost as if they have this expectation that comments will come no matter what they make. Because comments and opinions thrive on the net. On the other hand, I got into drawing long before the net hit. Furthermore, while my parents were supportive, they had other concerns in their lives. My mother didn't treat everything I made as a masterpiece. In fact, she hardly noticed. Drawings were things that just happened. That's the expectation I grew up with. And, when the results of our actions conflict with our expectations, we tend to be confused and a bit uneasy. Hell, sometimes we even get angry. People are people, these things happen.

So, yeah, I'm rambling. I know I'm rambling because I'm procrastinating when I should be sketching. I've eleven more pages in Issue 12 to do and at the moment, a whole lot of nervousness when I think about doing them. So, I'm going to go see if I can't find a cure for the jitters in the bottom of a bowl of soup and a few reruns of Daria. They say laughter is the best medicine after all. Later.


Daria: "You're really bursting out of the picture plane here."
Jane: "Oh, yeah. That particular model was quite bursty. I think she had her bursts done."
-- Daria

The Dunning-Kruger effect

Ugh! My brain's fried this week. All I can think about is the upcoming trip to visit Matt's family. We're leaving Thursday morning and as a result, I think my mind has shut down for the week. All it wants to do is read and wander off down strange, new paths. Not the useful, comic related paths I want it to.

Unfortunately - or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it - I've learned that letting my brain get this out of its system leads to a much faster return to comic-ing. Trying to fight it... not so much.

So, it looks like I'll be spending the next few days letting my mind get into mischief. I'll try to coax it back down the CN:H path with some notebook paper next week. While this brings work on the comic pages to a halt, it does tend to lead to fixing little hiccups in the story line and, in my opinion, a slightly stronger plot. So, perhaps it's for the best.

One of the things my mind's been turning over is this disconnect I've run across a few times online and at cons... namely people who really have no clue about how to do something yet, believe they excel at doing said thing. Meanwhile, on the flip side, you have people who excel at a skill believing that they are, in fact, inadequate.

Personally, as someone who often lacks confidence despite others' belief that I 'know my stuff,' I always assumed the blustering of the one group led to these feelings in the other. 'If that guy over there says he's doing so well, then he must be. I don't like his work, I see it as clumsy and unskilled, but if he's doing well then logic states that people must like his work more than mine. After all, I don't feel I have anything to brag about. Thereby, it must be my process which is flawed. Which means, my work is inadequate.'

Seriously, my brain does this whenever I run across someone praising their work and abilities to the heavens. Now, before anyone believes this leads me down a road of self-pity, let's get one thing straight here... it doesn't. While it generates feelings of self doubt, it also creates confusion and, oddly enough, anger. Not at myself, but at the person who's parading about like a peacock. Especially if that person is basing their bragging on their ability to give out false information. Maybe it's the fact that I worked in the library field for a while and had to deal with patrons who believed that they already know all the answers (If that's the case, then why ask in the fist place?) and yet everything they know is inaccurate... yeah. Have you ever tried to teach someone who's like that? Try it sometime.

Anyway, I knew I wasn't the only artist who feels this way, so I figured it must be fairly normal. The other side of the coin - those who really have no clue who believe they're excelling anyway... those people I never got. Am I missing something here?

Turns out, there's a term for it. It's called the Dunning–Kruger effect, after Justin Kruger and David Dunning. According to Wikipedia it's...

...a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the meta-cognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence. Competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.

It goes on to say that for any skill or knowledge in question, those who are in the grips of the Dunning-Kruger effect and are incompetent will...

1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.

This could explain a lot. Such as the person who can't get their comic off the ground yet, insists on telling you how you're running your comic wrong. Or, the person who can't write worth a damn who corners you at a con for over an hour, lecturing you on how to write using tactics you learned in high school. Or, you yourself feeling like an ineffective lump despite being able to moderately make things work.

I can see a good and bad effect of each side of this. If you feel overconfident in your abilities and that confidence is hard to shatter, then you probably feel pretty good about yourself quite often. And everyone wants to feel good about themselves, right? Unfortunately, on the downside, if you do always feel that you're the expert, then when will you ever be motivate to actually learn and improve? When will you ever take the time to evaluate your knowledge and perhaps discover that some of the facts you know are actually false? Chances are good you probably won't. Why bother? You're the expert, after all.

If you feel inadequate in your knowledge and abilities, chances are good you'll be motivated to learn and improve. If you feel you're a hideous author and yet, you want to be like the writers you admire, you're likely to practice, take courses, and learn the theory behind the craft. And, you will improve. Unfortunately, chances are good that you will still feel inadequate. No matter how much you accomplish, you will always see yet another goal off in the distance. While this is great for fostering a desire for life-long learning, it can easily mess with your self-esteem. And while the overconfident are perfectly capable of writing off your abilities as bunk (despite the fact that those said abilities should be a clear sign that they themselves fail to measure up) you will be unable to dismiss their claims as easily. You may even find yourself wondering if, in fact, they're right and you're wrong.

Either way, it sucks. I guess your best bet is, if you find yourself slipping into either of these mindsets, to recognize the pattern and break out of it. Think you're an expert? Then try doing something that's in your "realm of expertise" and yet outside of your comfort zone. And, if you fail at it, own your failure instead of blaming it on someone else. If you feel you're inadequate, take stock of what you can do and how well you do it. Recognize that it took time and effort to reach that level and that you have a right to be pleased with the results.

Or, you could always just knock the person who's annoying the hell out of you down an open manhole and into the sewer. Yeah, I like that idea. Maybe I'll try that this year at AC.


"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
-- Charles Darwin

More Gavin and Puck (sketch)

Page thirteen is mostly inked. There's a little under half the page left to go. Yes, it's slow going. Hopefully y'all will think the end results are worth the extra effort I've been putting into things this last issue. I ain't doing this for my health, after all.

Here's the clean sketch/first ink of the bottom panel. Ah Gavin, he's so popular with the other fey.



My back is driving me nuts after sitting hunched over all day. Time to try stretching it out a bit. Then, hopefully, some more inking later this evening. Though I need to be careful, I don't want to be up until 3:00am like last time.


"Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend."
-- Agatha Christie

The devil's in the details

Matt surprised me last evening by bringing home a few notebooks for me! *squeee* Now I just need to remember to leave time each day to doodle. I never use to need to think about that, setting time aside to doodle. It just sort of... happened. Now I need to actively think about doing so. I'm just getting a little burned out, I guess.

I've page thirteen to ink up today. Then, it's on to page fourteen and the introduction of Ruby's uncle, Ishmael Pyrenees. Which means, I needed to come up with his basic character design. Poor Ish has been through a lot, and it shows.



Most of the agents we've seen so far have been fairly young - in their early to late twenties. And, aside from the troubles with Astoria, most of what RCSI has been facing in recent years has been minor. The last big confrontation RCSI faced was the werewolf outbreak in the 80's.

As a result, most of the agents we've seen have been fairly fresh-faced. If injuries/scars are present, they're often hidden by clothing. Why? Because anything that adds extra detail to a character makes that character slightly harder to draw. The detail needs to be recalled and positioned in the proper place on the character. Otherwise, someone will notice and you better believe they'll point it out - in front of others, no less.

"But Darc," you say, "surely no one would do such a thing." Oh yes, they will. Need I remind you of how much time I wasted going through Issue 10 looking for missing earring backs because someone harped about it on Twitter?

This is the reason why the main characters are of a more simplistic design. They need to be drawn in multiple angles and positions - often. Simpler designs make mistakes less likely to happen and speed up the drawing process. Even then, I've occasionally had to go back and add Max's muzzle patches in later.

More elaborate characters, such as the fey and even Moraine in the current issue I'm working on, are a hotbed of details. Little things can easily slip by as wrist pain starts to become uncomfortable and eyes grow itchy and sore from staring at a screen all day. These things happen. It's all part of the language of comics. The ultimate goal is to get the story across, not to create an image of visual perfection.

If only more people understood that.


"No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art."
-- John Ruskin

Issue 12, page 13

Woot! Page thirteen is sketched. Ah, Gavin and Puck... they just can't seem to get along. But then, most of the fey tend to react badly with members of the opposite court.

With these two, a lot of it comes down to their various attitudes. Puck tends to be a bubbly fellow who sees others as toys to play with. Gavin also sees people as toys... he just prefers his toys broken.



Lettering in a bit.


"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
-- Herm Albright

Gavin and Puck (sketch)

Page twelve of Issue 12 is complete and work on page thirteen has begun. Which means, I'm half-way through this issue. Yes, not as far along as I wanted to be by this time. Yes, I know, I suck. I hadn't planned on doing the more intricate pages and odd poses I've been trying so far this issue. Hopefully, the extra effort will be seen as worthwhile.

Unfortunately, due to a bad headache, I'm getting a bit of a late start on the sketch for page thirteen. Gavin and Puck aren't helping matters any, either. These fey with their cloaks and flowing sleeves take a bit more thought. Not to mention trying poses I'm not familiar with.

Such as this one. Here's the rough concept sketch for one of the panels.



I should really doodle in notebooks with pens more often. Ideas come easier and feel more organic this way. I just fell out of the habit of doing so over the last few years.

Well, back to work.


"If an artist draws a subject over and over again in different ways, then he will learn something."
-- Pudlo Pudlat

Drawing Dad's car

My dad restores cars as a hobby. And occasionally, when he finishes one he really likes, he asks me to draw a picture of it. His latest car is the Viper below. No, he didn't repair this one. If I remember right, he bought it this nice. Though knowing Dad, he's probably tweaked the engine a bit.



I wanted to have the drawing done for him by Christmas, but I... kind of forgot about it. Eeep! I still need to call Mom and ask if he wants one of my "little dog-headed people" as she calls them with the car. He usually does. But still, I'd like to be sure.

If it was to be done on the comp, I could have it whipped up in time. But, it's to be in trad medium and has to be shipped out to Iowa. So, it probably won't be finished until sometime next month. I just need to remember to do it. I've been so scatterbrained lately.

I've done a few other car drawings for Dad, two of which are below. There are two others - Ruby with a Porsche and a morphed version of our old Rottweiler, Sadie, with a Shelby Cobra - but I never got a scan of those.





I love cars, but they're always a little difficult for me to draw.


"Glorious, stirring sight! The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here today -- in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped -- always somebody else's horizons! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!"
-- Kenneth Grahame

Tinkering with ads (sketch)

Part of the business plan for 2011 includes advertising more, both on the web and in print. CN:H has been online since 2001 - with the current version of the comic starting in 2005 - and in all that time we've barely done any advertising. We've mostly been relying on word of mouth, hoping that if people like CN:H they'll tell others about it.

It's been working so far. A big thank you to everyone who's helped spread the word about the comic! But at this point, five years into the current version, Matt and I would like to see what some good, old fashioned advertising can do.

So, starting next year, we'll be setting aside a budget each month devoted strictly to ads. Some will be Google based, some Project Wonderful, and others may involve con books and other comics. But first... we need some ads.

Since I couldn't sleep this last evening, I've been tinkering with a few ideas. Here's one of the color tests below. I may decide to nix the comic page background and draw something more reminiscent of the current storyline - certain characters in the background, stuff like that. I went for the pages at the moment because I couldn't decide just how I wanted to lay out the background composition and, to be honest, it helps reinforce the idea that this is for a comic.

No copy has been added yet. It's still in the sketch stage, after all.




Like all ideas fresh out of your head, it needs a bit of work and development. Which, is something for another time.


"Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does."
-- Stuart Henderson

Issue 12, page 12

I always lose track of things during this time of year, as well as get kind of lethargic about most things. I don't know what it is about December, I just run out of motivation to do much of anything.

But, work on the pages still needs to go on, even if a bit slowed down. So, here's the sketch of page twelve from Issue 12. Gavin and Puck are a fun combination to write. A little tough to draw, though.



Lettering in a bit.


"Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind."
-- Juvenal

Old CN:H sketch notes

You find the oddest stuff when rearranging rooms. This weekend, Matt and I got a bit more work done on the rooms upstairs. Things are still in disarray from the fire last year. The house is small and storage a little hard to come by, a problem when most of said storage is being devoted to RCSI stock. In other words, there have been a few boxes sitting about that we've needed to go through.

One of the things we found was an old notepad. I don't like sketching in sketchbooks much - probably from having to keep ones throughout high school and the first few years of college. Instead, I like to sketch ideas down in little lined notepads. The one we found had some of the early CN:H notes from 2002, including some time lines and information about how magic works in the Hunter world.

Most of this info I don't want to get out. Partially because it's no longer relative to the series - we did a few reworks of the world between 2001 and 2005 - but also, because I don't want to give away future plots. Still, I did scan a few sketches...

Here's one of some of the main females in CN:H - Moraine, Gadel, Ruby, Twitch (who we'll meet eventually), and Ellen.



An attempt to get everyone's heights right in comparison to each other. That didn't work out quite as planned. Please ignore the lion in the background. I liked drawing lions now and then. Still do.



The RCSI collars, specifically their hinging mechanism. See, I thought of this stuff!



Since CN:H was still a text series in 2002, this may have been a cover idea or just a random doodle. I can't remember anymore.



The old design of the Dawn Seal. It didn't change too much over time. It was always suppose to be kind of simple looking.



A floor plan for Max and Ruby's apartment. This did change a lot, since I couldn't find these plans when the apartment came up in Issue 9. The apartment is at least a little bigger now so, I don't think Max and Ruby mind the change that much.



This was just a vague idea of how the cover office and the main entrance to the RCSI headquarters might look like. Yes, there are multiple checkpoints between the cover office and the actual entrance. For big deliveries, like the one mentioned in the "Lifts and Liaisons" interlude, there's an elevator hidden in the first check area. RCSI goes down an additional five floors, with the storage vault on the bottom level.



A lot of planning and development goes into creating a comic. Unfortunately, it's often a little hard to show that. Being able to is nice, even if the sketches and notes are really rough and off-model. *laughs*


"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."
-- Napoleon Hill

Issue 12, page 11

I'm such an idiot. It's after 4:00pm and I still haven't eaten lunch. I just lost track of time again. But, not only have I organized the books in the office - they were getting out of control - I've also sketched out page eleven.

I'm trying to work with perspective a bit more. I thought the slight tilt in the first panel would make things a bit more dramatic. Hey, it was worth a try.



Lettering in a bit. Woop!


"Say, do you remember that guy Larry next door? Well, he always was the neighborhood clown. Like the time he pulled my pants off and he took those color pictures and posted copies all over town..."
-- I Remember Larry - "Weird Al" Yankovic

Workouts, wrist, and reinventing oneself

With Twitter gone, I'll be making more personal-minded posts on here. Everyone needs an outlet now and then. Nothing strange or disgusting... just random thoughts, ideas, and a bit about what's going on in my life.

I know it probably sounds odd to most people, but closing the Twitter account and abandoning FA has led to a rather relaxing week. If it wasn't for the wrist, I could have easily gotten three pages done. My focus is stronger without social media around me, it seems. I never used to have a hard time with focusing. I guess I should start doing some brain teasers or puzzles. I don't want the mind slipping, and reading more won't change much. I already read nonfiction for fun.

Matt remembered that we had a really old jar of tea tree oil in the bathroom. It's pretty solid at this point, but the bit I did put on the wrist really helped to take the pain and tightness down. I tracked down another jar of it on Amazon.Com, which should arrive in a week or so. Hopefully that will help me get over any future flare-ups faster.

I really need to get my weight back under control. I'd love to be down to 140 lb. like I was in college - any less than that and I start to look too thin and unhealthy. I've discovered the "Just Sweat" area of the "Just Dance" game. Neat. I'm not sure what it's measuring - I'm assuming calories burned - but hopefully it'll help me keep things on track. Unfortunately, I now have "Walk Like an Egyptian" stuck in my head thanks to that game.

I'd also like to pick up some small weights this weekend. We have a 10 lb. set, but they're a little much for my wrist. Lifting small weights should help strengthen the wrist, considering doing curls with a soup can helped get it mobile again after it was damaged. Seriously, they recommend that if you have a wrist injury to do curls with a soup can. Oddly enough, it worked. I'm not making this up!

One thing I'd like to start looking into is the idea of reinventing oneself. I'm not looking for a drastic change, just a new self image and a boost in confidence. And maybe a slight change to my wardrobe - though I'm not going there until I shed a few pounds. And my hair. I need to do something with this hair.

Physical aside, the main thing is the self-confidence angle. There is absolutely no reason why I should be made to feel inferior by some schmuck who can't handle his own comic, yet insists on telling me how I'm screwing up mine. Yeah, what?!

Whoa, there's a whole rant in there and I'm trying hard to avoid ranting on this blog. You don't want to hear it, and it's bad karma. Suffice it to say, I'm aware that I know my stuff, yet these kind of people can still make me doubt myself. So, need to boost the confidence a couple of notches.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure how one goes about reinventing themselves just yet. I'm sure there's a book or series of articles on it out there somewhere. I've my MLS, time to put those skills to good use.

Though first, I've a page to finish up. Two more panels to go. Later.


"Self-help must precede help from others. Even for making certain of help from heaven, one has to help oneself."
-- Moraji R. Desai

Well, that explains it

Well, I managed to finally get one panel inked and toned. Unfortunately, that looks like all for now. The area between my right thumb and forefinger is locked. Even typing is proving difficult. And, with that happening, I'm done.

Though I think this little satellite picture may explain what started the flare-up in the first place. At least it looks like it'll pass by tomorrow. Which means things should be back to normal wrist-wise by Friday. It's odd how some injuries can turn people into living barometers.



So yeah, it's time to call it quits for the day.


"Pain and death are a part of life. To reject them is to reject life itself."
-- Havelock Ellis

My wrist, the diva

After a night of sleep and aspirin, the wrist is still in full 'I'm gonna be an uncooperative wank stain' mode. In other words, very stiff and painful. After fifteen years of dealing with this, I can handle most of the pain fairly well. Seriously, you get use to it. Unfortunately, the shakiness and lose of fine motor control (my hand seizes up and I keep dropping things) makes inking more than a little difficult.

I'm hoping to get at least a few panels inked today. If not, I may spend the day sketching. I've a few print ideas to come up with. As for the schedule on the calendar, it's a flexible, self-imposed one for my own benefit. At the moment, I am covered for updates up to March 18 of next year on the Supporters side and April 16 of 2012 on the Main. Still, the thought of loosing the day annoys me. Being sick is one thing, that goes away. But, being unable to work because an injury that is a part of me and that I deal with every day decides to flare up... yeah, that sucks.

Unfortunately, there's not much to do aside from keep plugging along while waiting for it to calm down. It's not going to heal, but it'll stop flaring up and go back to its regular mild ache in a few days. It always does.

Until then, I think I'll stick to drinking from the nice plastic mug. Last time my wrist acted like this, I broke two glasses and a mayonnaise jar. No lie. Just call me Mrs. Butterfingers. *laughs*

I'm going to try to get some work done. Later, guys!


"Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase. When you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along, too."
-- Lawrence Bixby