This year I was fortunate enough to be able to go to SDCC [San Diego Comic Con] as a Professional Artist because of all my hard work with TNP Press and Unconscious Ink [ui]; this for me was a pretty proud moment in my life. Though, I wish we would have been their as exhibitors, it was still a major stepping stone in the right direction. One of the best parts about the con, for me at least, was being able to have the chance to sit and talk with and interview some of my biggest influences into the whole Web-Comic world. White Ninja Comics for instance was the first Web-Comic I had ever read. I loved it instantly because of how random it was.
When I first started Reeder Rabbit I would always reflect back on there humor when i was writing; though I will have to admit, I was never as funny/random as they are. As i started growing artistically, and found myself bored with trying to be funny (when i obviously wasn’t), I had stumbled across Andrew Bell’s Creatures in my Head. This was something new and different from everything else on the web. It fit my personality more; weird, twisted, and cute? So I started [ui] as a way to grow and explore the weirder side of my art. In fact, the reality of it is Unconscious Ink really is just a art exploration blog more than a “Web-Comic”. I will be the first to admit that in the start my site was just a cheap rip off of Andy’s works, but that was never my intent; I just needed a starting point to start my artistic exploration with. In fact when I started Unconscious Ink, I wasn’t really all that great with Photoshop, Reeder was originally drawn on some crap note pad program that didn’t have layers. Let me tell you this was a true pain in the ass. The shift from that program to Photoshop was a painful one, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I still would draw on one lay for the first first strips, eventually moved into layers but had no clue what textures or shading where, then got frustrated with tablets and started hand drawing and scanning everything… which had it own set of pain to learn. This was the point when i started really looking into Andrew’s art more; He doesn’t tablet draw most of his post, he inks. When i finally figured out his techniques I applied them to my growing knowledge of Photoshop and started Reeder Rabbit over till i got bored again. Long story short, every project has been a developmental process towards bigger and better projects.
I’ve got a lot of ideas stirring around in my little mind: A graphic novel (which all the that nonsense i just jabbered about is helping me develop), Some plushies and vinyl toys (which Unconscious Ink essentially at this point a set of blue prints for), and even more junk that may or may not ever even get started. It was interesting to learn after my interviews that I’m not the only artist who has a hundred ideas creeping around in their minds. Chris Yates, creator of the Poop Sign and many really awesome artistic puzzles, confessed the same thing in my interview with him. I’m hoping that in the next year some of these projects will start moving along.
Next milestone: APE [Alternative Press Expo] – Can’t wait for October to come already! :]
