Make Me F*cking Care

[warning. this post contains expletives.]

From the Good Fucking Design Advice Store:

"Believe in your fucking self. Stay up all fucking night. Work outside of your fucking habits. Know when to fucking speak up. Fucking collaborate. Don't fucking procrastinate. Get over your fucking self. Keep fucking learning. Form follows fucking function. A computer is a Lite-Brite for bad fucking ideas. Find fucking inspiration everywhere. Fucking network. Educate your fucking client. Trust your fucking gut. Ask for fucking help. Make it fucking sustainable. Question fucking everything. Have a fucking concept. Learn to take some fucking criticism. Make me fucking care. Use fucking spell check. Do your fucking research. Sketch more fucking ideas. The Problem contains the fucking solution. Think about all the fucking possibilities."

yah... I pretty much fucking suck at every point on this list. (Except staying up all night. I actually do that quite a bit.)

therefore...
gonna try to care more, collaborate more, procrastinate less, have a concept, Etc...

it's called NaNoMangO (Plus Sunstoned!)

After my previous post,where I mentioned doing my own personal NaGraDraMo next month, someone drew my attention (/snicker) to NaNoMangO; the OFFICIAL art/comic-drawing alternative to NaNoWriMo.

Sweetness. I just joined the group.

(Disclaimer: yes, I have a bunch of unfinished art commitments I gotta tie up before I put another time-consuming project on the table.. but really, I am really getting excited about this!)

The tagline of NaNoMangO is "30 pages in 30 days", which is more pages than I was originally thinking... but here's how they broke it down.

Either: 1) 30 pages penciled. OR 2) 15 pages inked OR 3) 10 pages "finished"

Thinking I'll aim for the long distance endurance version of 30 rough penciled pages, for the "wow-do-I-have-that-many-pages-of-story-in-me?" experiment.

In other news, guess what came in the mail today??!!!

Zot! Pow! Sunstone!

Nestled in this edition (an amazing collection of LDS comic artists and comic aficionados) is the little comic I drew up; Being Born. My first ever published comic (not counting Bloody Eve ). AND, I get a mention in the intro! Noting the breadth of style, the vastly different kinds of comics Mormons are making, guest editor Theric Jepson queries:

"Look at Galen Dara's earthy mysticism (pg 60). Witness Nick Perkin's bobble-headed National Treasure (pg 84). Then ask yourself: How could they be more different?"

Thanks Theric. :)

It really is a stunning and eye-opening collection, chock full not only with a vast array of Sequential art by folks w/ ties to Mormonism, but also with multiple insightful essays about appreciating comics, Mormon artists, the new Wonder Woman, Crumb's Illustrated Bible, how it all ties into the Mormon experience, etc.

It was a pleasure to be a part of it.

Murals, Comics, NaGraDraMo, etc.

Just a few things of note:

1) Yesterday, just for kicks, I pulled out some house paint and doodled on my studio wall. I have been doing so many small, controlled illustrations and thumbnails lately, I really just needed to do something large, messy, spontaneous, and unplanned. It was VERY therapeutic, and I liked how it turned out too:

2) I'm in the process of hammering out specifics on a graphic novel I'm working on with a friend... and realizing that it's high time I brush up on my Illustrator and InDesign know-how. Especially when it comes to adding word-bubbles etc. My patchy Photoshop skillz just aren't going to cut it for the current project. Here's a quick glimpse at a quick (VERY rough) page study w/ my very insufficient dialogue and word-bubble additions:

3) Which leads me to my next personal project... In solidarity with my writer friends who are participating in NaNoWriMo next month, I'm planning on doing a second attempt at NaGraDraMo. This is dependent on if I can wrap up the current projects I am committed to, but I am hopeful and excited to give this another go around. I only have a vague idea of a cast and story line; but my idea is to aim for 18 to 24 pages, B&W, low-tech, and probably pretty wordless. (I will be using Tyler Stafford and Noah Van Sciver as inspirations for low-budget-but-way-cool comic making.) /Fingers Crossed!

okay, that's all.

on this, the 276th day of 2010 (a #draw365 post)

I just drew no.237 of my draw365 project.

As you may have noticed, I'm behind by 39 drawings. But here's the thing, as this year has progressed, I have been picking up work as an artist. It started with getting a slot in a comic edition of Sunstone, from there it was a chance to do some illustrating for Rigor Amortis, which segued nicely to doing some illustrations for Cthulhurotica, cover art for Little Death of Crossed Genres and working on a graphic novel with a friend. Plus a few more things coming up on the horizon.

So while I am behind on the official "draw365" projects, I have actually been putting out hundreds of drawings/sketches/studies lately that haven't lent themselves to uploading and sharing as such....

I had an epiphany late Friday night as I was drawing like a madwoman, rushing towards a midnight deadline: what I was doing right then, that evening in my studio, I would not have been capable of 276 days ago.

(Here's the post I wrote when I was only about 30 days in, and then later at 65 days.)

Draw365 has been a pretty formative little project for me.
Now, I AM still planning on getting 365 drawings uploaded as such. On principle. Meanwhile, I"m going back to my sketchbooks to keep working on early Mormon apostates, Japanese bathhouses, shinto temples, Ninja Monkeys, tentacles, zombies, etc...

#amdrawing!

Rigor Amortis Rising

Seriously... "SQUEEEEE!!!"
Remember that zombie erotica book I decided to get involved with so many months ago? Well, Yesterday was the official Launch of Rigor Amortis and thanks to the hard work of Erika Holt and Jaym Gates at creating some buzz about the book, within just a few hours it had risen to #30 on Amazon's Horror list! (Just above Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, just beneath Bram Stokers Dracula.)

(As I write this, it is sitting at #52, just underneath Stephen King's The Waist Lands & Stephanie Meyer's Eclipse, just above Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.)

BTW, Bitten By Books hosted a release party and Jaym had this to say about us artists:

"Each section has a beautiful, full-page illustration from artist Galen Dara. More illustrations fill the book, the surreal, grotesquely-beautiful things from Galen Dara’s pen, and the dark, strong art from Miranda Jean. Rigor Amortis wouldn’t half of what it is without the hard work of our artists."

Gotta love those who appreciate the arts :)
(Oh! thrilled and flattered that a print of one of my illustrations is the take-home prize for the winner of the Zombie Recipe contest. More info here.)

It's been a serious fun ride and this whole week is Zombie Week, dedicated to continuing the buzz on facebook and twitter. Join the Rigor Amortis Facebook group, and/or follow the twitter hashtag #rigoramortis or #zombieweek for more updates, story-line teasers, plus me and Miranda tweeting illustrations.
Oh.. and go buy the book!! :)

just for kicks.. here's the trailer, featuring artwork by Miranda and myself: