And on to 2011...

2011 is going to be a good year for me, I can sense it somehow! The New Year is going to be a busy and productive, and I hope to end it a lot better than I begin it. This is the year I reinvent my life, brush away the cobwebs of a long and disappointing 2010, tend the wounds of the fading recession, find new direction and discover the creative path that I will follow for the rest of my life.

I'm going to be shutting down my blogs this coming year and giving real time updates of 2011's adventures on Facebook. Facebook has become so universal that having a blog nowadays makes no real sense for me anymore. Facebook helps me combine my personal with professional motivations into one real time, easily accessible, interactive and cleanly formatted location and all without cost. It's worked so far, so I might as well go all in.

Stormseeker

Happy Holidays!

Blood Falcon Studio will finally begin to have an open face to the public starting in January of 2011. It's been a long road, with a lot of evolution, but things are looking up and I think its time to flip the switch back 'on' to the studio. I'll update when there's something to update!

I guess I took some more time off!

OK, I needed a bit more vacation from Blood Falcon Studio than I thought I did. The reason...um...I guess I just needed summer to pass. I have issues with heat, especially during the hotter months of Sacramento and due to that sensitivity I have difficulty organizing my thoughts and being creative. But here we are with the holiday season just around the corner along with its cooling trend, so I figure its a good time to jump back into getting things moving.

The blog is therefor back in operation, as well as development of all my creative projects.

I also spent the summer stocking up on new art supplies, art software and reference material, so things should move at a quicker pace now.

More news soon!

So…things ARE moving again!

Long story short; I got too close to my comic book project. Too wrapped up in the whole thing.

I got so deep into the process and development of the Stormseeker Universe that everything got all ‘muddied up’ inside my head and overwhelmed me to the point of insanity. I was stressed and pulling my hair out. So I took some REAL TIME OFF, where I didn’t even look at this hobby, didn’t think about it, pretended it didn’t exist, and spent some time distracting myself with other things; like riding bike, catching up on missed television shows and spending some quality to with myself doing some heavy reading. I even backed off of using the Internet, which in this modern age was like medieval torture, so I broke down on that particular one (I just couldn’t go cold turkey with the Internet).

So in the next couple of weeks I'll get everything up and moving again.

Stormseeker's 'Little Bang'!

     Everyone has to start somewhere.
     For me that somewhere is going to start locally, at local cons with my first public art project, a home brew science fiction / fantasy comic book venture called 'Stormseeker'. And though I doubt in the beginning anyone will notice its coming and goings (such is the way of independent publishing), my hope is that a few issues down the road, as people see I’m serious about the project and the first story arc is wrapped up into a nice little trade paperback, that fans of my work will be found. It’ll start at my local cons, where I’ll test the waters, and hopefully ripple things out from there over the next year or so.

     Though I’ve related the Stormseeker Universe development story time and again, I'll summarize it here quick for those who’ve never heard it;

     The ‘Stormseeker Universe’, the backdrop for my upcoming comic book series, has been in development for over two decades, starting as an original single weekend ‘role playing’ campaign scribbled onto the back of a character sheet and ending as a fully fledged Science fiction / Fantasy universe on the other end, but only after countless thousands of hours of thought, work and twenty years of research, development and endless tweaking. And I can say with complete seriousness and honesty that the ‘Stormseeker Universe’ is without question my ‘Magnum Opus’ AKA my greatest work. And probably will be the only project of this scale I will ever attempt in my lifetime.

     Over those years, I’ve developed, outlined and written hundreds of short stories, adventures and historical timelines that flesh out the inner mythology of the ‘universe’ and to give it texture. And have become so intimately connected with this ‘private’ work that in a strange kind of way, I still really don’t want to share it, but rather keep it locked away for my own personal reflection and pleasure. But reaching middle age, I’ve realized that if there is ever going to be a chance of sharing my work with the world, I have to get working on sharing it now, before I get too old to promote it or too distant from the material that it loses it creative meaning.

     The upcoming publication of my ONGOING comic book series ‘Stormseeker’ will be the first public appearance of ‘The Stormseeker Universe’. Though being published as a comic book series is a recent creative notion, inspired in part by my lifelong interest in the medium of comic books, specifically independent comic books, and the recent trend towards affordable but high quality print on demand.

     Personally, I don’t think ‘comic books’ are the greatest and most universal medium to work in, being that most of the consumer demand is in specialty shops and independent grass roots efforts in the industry are generally ignored by the mainstream, but it is a very effective medium to introduce my work visually and on a small budget. Down the road,  a trade paperback collection of my work might find a place in distribution, but I don’t see much financial success in the ‘independent floppy comic’ version of the work. But it’s more important for me, at this moment at least, to get the work ‘out the door’ as a first step. I’m willing to work at a financial loss to get the work out in the short term for the long term exposure and to meet my personal goals with the overall work, which puts me above most ‘independent’ publishers who seem to be unwilling to see the bigger picture and completely unwilling to make sacrifice for the greater good of exposure.

     Thankfully as a graphic designer by trade, I have an insider’s knowledge of printing, advertising, graphic design software and good understanding of the publishing industry and its technicalities, so it’s also something I can do all on my own without needing external help. Every aspect of my comic book, at least for the first few issues, will be by my own hand. This eliminates initial overhead, reduces overall investment and saves on the overall costs of preproduction.

     Hopefully in July, I’ll have the first copies in hand of Issue #1, a Full Color 52 Page introduction of the ‘Stormseeker Universe’, titled appropriately 'Stormseeker'. That will be followed by a more action packed and higher art quality Issue #2, that’s already in fast development.

To be continued…

Some little changes!

The Blood Falcon blog has now, once again, been emptied of the old to ready it for the new.

Since the whole ‘art only with no commentary’ thing was a bust, I’m going to go back to using my blog…well…like a blog. I went from having some regular hits and comments, all the way down to having ‘just another ghost town site’ on the web.

The blog will now be focused on my Blood Falcon projects overall, not just my artistic side projects. New art and art samples will now be post directly onto my Facebook profile, where more people will have the opportunity to see them and comment publicly.

Enjoy!