I thrive in chaos, as Anthony said the other night. This is why, historically, I've always worked on multiple projects at once, and back then I had the time to do so, being single when I started this habit. Now, however, I'm all familified and I have enough multiple, constantly running "projects" on the home front that are naturally occurring, to where I don't need to go and artificially create my chaos. As a result of that, I can only realistically afford to give my focus to one project at a time, given that these are no longer the years where I can dedicate all my waking non-working hours to producing material.
It's not that I can't work on (currently) three books simultaneously, doing pretty much everything myself, just that I can't do it all consistently. Two or three weeks, maybe a month and a half, I'm running fine and then something derails me and suddenly I don't have one book on which to catch up, I have three, and nowhere near the time around job and Hexx and yard work and spending time with the boy (and soon girl, in addition) and helping with homework. It's one of those reality check moments. And a bitch for someone such as myself, who has grown very use to doing everything singlehandedly, not having to depend on really anyone, especially when it comes to the creation of my comics.
Anthony has been assisting with layouts and Hexx has picked up a pen for the first time in, like, fourteen years and started to help me with inks, but really, I need to cut back what's on my plate, and luckily, I'm probably in the best place I can be to do that.
The line art for the first issue of this two-issue Prenna story is finished, and I have my own layouts for half of issue 2, along with the first five pages in various stages of pencils and inks. Endless Winter is two issues down and going into the third and final issue for this current arc.
If I can get those two books down, I can dedicate most of my own energy and time on the art front to Sune, which has the longest to go in terms of story. Then, while I continue on with the writing side of the other projects, I can perhaps hire people on to take over art chores for future one-shots and story arcs of those titles. I just need to do a better job than I have in the past of picking artists who aren't flakes.
So, I think my first two tasks are to bring on a colorist, to take over the Prenna pages and book covers in general, and for me to finish Sune issue 5. That will at least give me another issue of Sune complete before I go off and do this other stuff. Few things are more momentum-zapping than going off to work on something and then coming back to the reality that you're not even at a "start" or "stop" when you return, but still somewhere in the middle. Then I can focus on the second issue of Prenna while Hexx inks the pages of Endless Winter that I have done, and Anthony works some layouts for me. Since the second issue of Prenna is shorter than the third issue of Endless Winter, I can get that knocked out and over to colors while at that point I move over to Endless, do pencils for that and hand it off to Hexx for inks, and then move over to Sune.
Not sure what they're doing, I think they're both kind of busy at the moment, but I'll check with Grace and San to see if they have any open spots for colors either now or in the immediate future. If they're booked, I'll see who else I can find.
Meanwhile I'll be looking around for artists.
Course, that's always all easier said than executed.
There should also be a new site design for Stormchild finally coming down the pipe in the near future. Instead of trying to wrangle one more project into my list, that was my first step on this whole "relying on other people again" kick. So with luck we'll have a nice shiny new site soon that will still have the general vibe of the current site, while at the same time being a little bit cleaner visually and better organized for ease of use.
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