What a splendid time to be in comics! I’ve been waiting for the Apple Tablet for YEARS. Ever since I played with a Toshiba tablet PC and realized it could be better, and then when the iphone came out. It seemed the perfect prepping ground for a truly functional full-sized tablet. It’s the one product that would make me Go Apple.

Apple makes expensive products far outside of my budget,  and my mind clicks better with the Windows OS (can it be helped having grown up using it since it’s birth, and a father who betatested and used its predecessor, (and the guys Microsoft ripped their visual style from), OS/2?), but Apple makes solid products (let’s not talk about the Macbook Air, please.), and a tablet? Well, it just seems like something they’d do right.

And for comics? Well, the iphone isn’t enough. It’s too small. I like to see my pages at 5.5×7 and larger. The business-card size screen of any oversized phone isn’t enough.

I’m looking forward to this. You can bet I’ll be releasing versions of my future comics in digital format now. I’m working in color now, and it makes it that much less expensive. And some day I’d like to buy one, but like with all Apple products, wait a few years and the price will go down and the functionality up.

Of course, I will still always prefer paper. Paper takes reading books beyond the mental experience and into the tactile. I’ve thought a lot about how I plan on printing “Jeannie Carnini” because the touch and feel and smell and look and opening and closing of the book are as important to me as the pictures. Now that I have a job lined up (YEAY!), I’m going to save so I can take a few classes at SVA (School of Visual Arts here in NYC, btw), mainly: lithography and bookmaking.

Since moving here, I feel like I’ve been bursting with energy and ideas and motivation. It’s amazing how much of a change something as little as moving into the right city for me has made. I click with the people here. The way everything functions makes sense. And I don’t roll my eyes at all the idiots I perceive on the streets anymore. Austin’s a fun city. A great city really. There are so many things that I miss (other than my family, of course). Central Market is first. Good coffee and cafe’s that stay open 24 hrs is another (oh my gosh, NYC has such cr*p coffee!!!!! Which is why my mother has mailed me my favorite blend of Lola Savannah coffee from Austin). I also miss the green. Austin is a lush city, especially for being in Texas. And people put a LOT of pride into their gardens.

But those are all small trades to be made to feel like I’m back on track again. I’ve felt so lost the last three years. Pursuing thread after thread after thread that leads nowhere but back to where I started. I really, truly, love New York. I love the people here. And I love the kind of person I’ve become here.

I’m looking forward to the next few years! Because who knows what will happen or I’ll become? I expect to change, to grow, and hopefully become a better person in the process.

I have a few more samples from what I’ve been working on lately. Oh! And my children’s comic has a name now, too! “Jeannie Carnini! Clean Your Room!” Hee. I already know what I’m going to do with the cover, too, but that’ll have to wait until the interior is actually done as well. I’d say I’m about 3/5th’s there. Optimistically, I finish by the end of February. Realistically, by the end of March.

The character for the girl in this book, Jeannie Carnini, was a particularly tricky one. As you can see, these are some of my (many!) initial, horribly failed attempts (which actually starts on the right and works left):

You’d think I’d have learned by now that if I don’t like a face, I shouldn’t try to just erase and rework it. I really should just throw away the entire pose.

Usually, the problem isn’t where I initially think it is. I would erase and redraw the face, thinking, “WTF is UP? Nothing looks right!” I must have erased that stupid face about fourty times when I finally went to bed, woke up the next morning, looked at it once and realized in a flash of dumb inspiration that I needed to redraw the entire pose, and really the whole character. That wasn’t Jeannie Carnini on my page. That was some other girl dressed in her clothes.

So I drew another character, but I still wasn’t satisfied. Something just wasn’t sitting right, but I couldn’t pinpoint it.

Later that night,  I went over to my boyfriend’s because sometimes I need to work away from home, and we sat and discussed (he IS an artist), and I doodled, and thought about how Jeannie Carnini would REALLY stand, and finally I hit upon it:

First of all, the pose is better. She’s more awkward, less sure of herself, which is more her personality. I’m a pretty confident person about most things in life, and I tend to project that on to my main characters. But … kids are awkward creatures. Smart little snaps, but unsure in the way they walk and stand. I don’t know any kid that holds themselves with surety except for the bullies. And the brownnosers (which ah … I was one of those).  Or kids pretending to be mutant turtles on the playground. >_>; (I dug Raphael because he could swear and get away with it).

The other problem I kept running into with this character was that I kept whispering to myself, “simplify! simplify!” because it’s the style I’m running for, but it kept being either too much or too little (should have scanned in the overly simple ones. oops. too late now.) I would catch an expression on the first sketch, a few simple lines, and then I’d run in with a pointed lead and ruin it with detail. I needed to find that happy balance, and at last, by trying and trying and throwing away an awful lot of sketches but never giving up, and thinking about it and thinking about it some more, I finally got it. And slowly, as I get into the character, the easier she becomes to draw.  Not just in the face either, but in her body language as well.

It takes time to get to know your characters! I actually sit down and talk with them in my head. When I find myself struggling with their body language and expressions, I tell them, “Okay. What would YOU do in this situation? What kind of person are you? SHOW me.” And eventually they do.

Sometimes, it’s silly to admit, I play the actor, stand in front of a mirror and pretend to be my characters. And really, it’s the more subtle characters that are the most difficult. I struggle a lot with main characters because they need to be generic enough to appeal to anybody but also have a strong personality that is charming and engaging. Kind of a paradox, isn’t it? In this story, the easy character is the Frog Prince. He’s one aspect of a personality he doesn’t veer outside of. But Jeannie Carnini? Well. She’s an emotional, inquisitive, odd little girl, and sometimes she overreacts like the Frog Prince while other times she’s still and contemplative.

It takes knowing your characters to draw the expressions beneath the cartoon mask out, and truly reveal who they are.

And it’s made yet more difficult when you’re drawing in a new style! But hey, I think it’s worth it. It makes them real and breathes them to life.

The above are some of the pencils from the beginning of the book. I take an 8.5×11 sheet of 65 lb cardstock (I prefer a heavier paper because it doesn’t tear from all my erasing), fold it in half, and then I work on the right while I use the left space for reference drawings, thumbnails, and practice sketches. I’m having to think in a two-color space for this book, so there’s a LOT more planning that goes into it!  I’m particularly fond of some of my light studies in moodily lit woods. :)

Off to bed now! Tomorrow I have an interview with a temp agency. I plan on self-publishing this book, but that means I’ll be needing capital, and I don’t have good enough credit unfortunately to get a loan. Or heck, I get declined for high-interest credit cards. And I’ve never even owned one before! No credit is worse than bad credit, I guess? Anyway, ideally, I would like more web site and illustration work, but this agency is mostly office jobs. I do what I have to so I can continue pursuing my dream. :)

I’m in the middle of working on a 60-page children’s comic (page twenty of layouts/pencils), but a question popped into my head while I was working on this: Why do I always prefer to work in the vertical? It feels right to me, but why?

A lot of people argue that we see the world in horizontal, but I disagree. Take a good look around you. Focus on anything in the room. What do you see? Do you notice the objects on the peripheral (horizontal) of your vision, or do you focus in a line straight up and down, the vertical of your vision?

There’s a trick I’ve been doing for years now because of my bike riding where if I’m about to cross a street, I unfocus my eyes slightly, the better to see motion to either sides of me. Because have you ever noticed that when you focus, everything in the peripheral disappears? Not literally, but your brain just doesn’t quite record?

Well, at least, that’s how it is for me.

So how does this coordinate with comics? There’s been a lot of argument over the years about which is a “better” format: the horizontal or the vertical? Personally, I think both have their strengths and weaknesses, but one of the arguments I’ve heard for horizontal layout (indeed, even for having horizontal computer screens) is the previous supposition that human vision is horizontal, not vertical. So, I call bullsh*t. We FOCUS vertical. But we take in settings and see motion horizontal. Maybe that’s why the two-page spread works for things like establishing setting–where there’s no particular focus, but rather a mood and a theme–but not so much for things like kisses.

Plus, PEOPLE are vertical. I find it rather difficult to squish a whole person beneath a narrow ceiling and floor when narrow walls work better instead. Even the human face is vertical.

Anyway … just thoughts running through my head while I work. Pretty dang happy with this project right now. I’m going to finish it mid January. That’s not an “I hope”. It’s an “You have no choice, Rivkah, so you better seat your freakin’ ass at your desk and WORK.”

So back to work. Tomorrow, I’m going to a Paul Pope exhibit because I’m in freakin’ NEW YORK and because I CAN. And because he’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to comics. Other than Craig Thompson. And my boyfriend, Matt Bernier, whom not many people have heard of yet but they freakin’ WILL.

PS: IT SNOWED!

November 6th. Three days in New York, so far. Sunday, I move into my new apartment.

What a harrowing journey this last month was. And yet, what a blessed one. Never have I felt more the breath of G*d lingering over my shoulder. Yes, it was a lot of work getting here. Yes, is there still work yet to be done. But every bend and corner, every hill and valley, no matter how steep, has never been too sharp or too steep to get around again.

I’m in Windsor Terrace right now. A little cafe called The Oak and the Iris. Coffee is a dollar thirty-five, sixty cents cheaper than anywhere in Austin. The barista speaks broken English, and half the conversations around me I’d need a translator to interpret.  It’s a brisk, sunny 65 F out, and the coffee is delicious.

Six months ago, I made a decision that I would move to New York. I needed comics and I needed friends. This move from the college town I grew up in to one of the most populous, diverse cities on earth has helped me to realize that I need never be truly stuck. If I find myself in the mire, I can swim free again. I needn’t fear stagnation or despair.

So how appropriate to have my first set of keys in my pocket with the key chain given to me that says simply:  New York.

Welcome to the next stage. Welcome to the place I can never say I didn’t have the opportunities. Welcome to my new home.

This is going to be a fascinating journey, and I hope a few of you who’ve seen my posts wane over the course of the last few years will stick around to watch, be it on livejournal, twitter, facebook, flickr, or the face of my new site and blog (mucho tweaking to follow). But no matter what happens, this chica is going to finish another book and get published again. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Love and Kisses,
Rivkah.