Tokidoki Unicornos – Series 2 and Custom!

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It’s not that I’ve stopped collecting tiny things. It’s just that I’ve lapsed in documenting them.

If you look at my miniatures gallery, you’ll see that I have a unicorn problem. Tokidoki has released a followup series to their initial series issued a few years ago.  What you see below in the front is 8 of the 11 ponies, unicorns, zebras, and other hoofed cuties from Series 2.  My favorites are Rodeo (third from left) and Sakura (fourth from left).

series2

 

 

I also didn’t post my custom Unicorno which I colored and gave back to the person who gave me the blank Unicorno to draw on.  She actually is much bigger than the little figures depicted above. The person who received it has taken below pretty unicorn and centered it in the crowd of other figures. (It’s like their mommy or their big sister. I dunno.)   In any case, her name is Starry :>

I probably will do more customs in the future, but only for specific people who ask nicely.  I had to inhale a lot of marker to color the below and I’d rather not get high for just anyone xD.

custom_unicorno

Momocon Hotwash

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More or less this was a good convention for many reasons that I will probably forget to articulate.

First, I need to just get the fangirly stuff out of the way.  I’m a long time anime fan starting in the 1990s. I cut my teeth on anime such as Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop, everything early Miyazaki, Utena, space opera (such as Martian Successor Nadeisco), Kenshin, blah blah blah.

The early days of anime on Cartoon Network probably stood out in my mind as did two voices — Wendee Lee and Steve BlumI’m not one who usually gushes over voice actors as I usually watch the anime with subtitles. However, Wendee and Steve are among the veteran group of actors who have lent their talents to localized American productions — some of the best I have ever seen.  Between them they voiced Faye/Spike (Bebop),  Angel/Roger (Big O) , Yumi/Shishio (Kenshin).

Last year, Momocon brought in Wendee.  And, as such, I hauled my butt away from my table to find Ms. Lee to give her two prints I did and to ask for her autograph.  This year, I braved a two hour line to do the same for Steve Blum.  I fondly called this Big-O trolling in my Tumblr post for reasons that only those who remember Paradigm-City in its hey day as the Big O fandom site probably understand.  I was one of three or so posters on that site who advocated a Roger Smith/Angel pairing over the R. Dorothy/Roger pairing and was quite often hated upon for doing so with my artwork. heh.  So, my revenge is complete.

Other randomness.  I didn’t really go crazy over cosplay.  Momocon is a big cosplay convention and so it would be dumb not to go around catching pictures, but after many years at conventions I don’t get excited over a lot of it.  However, I saw the cutest kids at Momocon and gave buttons away to them :D .

So on to the artist alley rundown.

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Writing isn’t for all social media channels + Momocon

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One of the things I really just feel uncomfortable about is self-promotion.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been around artists so long that I generally feel that I promote only when I have something to really show that is tangible.  While it’s generally okay to show works in progress and such, the eye is to do so to “share” with those who already like your work or inclined to like your work. Over-posting one work is kind of rude. (We have an “okay post your NEXT work” mentality  and a low tolerance for promoting the same work.)

But sharing art in the social fabric on the web is easy.  Artists can churn out new sketches and works of good quality on a daily basis.  And it doesn’t take a lot of time for someone on the other end to digest it.   If I intrude on someone’s space/time it’s quick and easy to assess and view an image (if they’re that interested or bored).  Text is a whole different bag.

One book takes months to years to put together in most cases. An author has really one objective too — usually sales.  So I understand why promotion from authors is what it is. But seeing this message on the social channels with other little value offered by the author (i.e., all they post is links to their sales page) doesn’t fit in with the internet as largely a place for free stuff/interaction/information/ and fandom first. It fits squarely in with the “annoying sales ads” we see instead and, I think, starts to become uncool.

On a tangent — I think writing has an incompatibility with the quick attention span of the web even when the novel or book is serialized.

I think that’s highly obvious in a place like Tumblr where content is posted or reblogged constantly.  The people who build up a lot of notes under ‘writing/prose’ aren’t people writing long-form serials (as a scan of that shows very few using it compared to like “Avengers”), but those people doing flash fiction or poetry on a highly regular basis.  Tumblr isn’t a good place for long attention spans. Rather – issues, activism, fun memes, and fandom seem to be the best things to promote there.

So I don’t mean to put down Tumblr as a place to post my text, but I think it has to be small pieces and not entire serials.  (The navigation and linking of related posts is just not reader friendly either except perhaps in more soap-opera /slice of life journal posts, aka “Bridget Jones” which incidentally was a serial when it began ;) .)

There is a way to notoriety on Tumblr and perhaps some of the less adverse perhaps will be willing to risk their reputation to try it. And that’s generally, as a person on Tumblr, wade into the controversy and drama that exists there.  Sure, one might be able to get massive reblogs/likes (i.e., your popularity metric on Tumblr) but it’s disturbingly hard to control. Tumblr isnt’ fixable by taking down your original post.  It also lends itself to a lot of quoting out of context.  And it’s terrible about attribution.

My conclusion thus far is it’s one of the weirdest places and most problematic to post text in great pieces.

And before this gets to be borderline to be too much like an “Online Novel” blogpost, I’ll stop.

I’ll be at MOMOCON THIS UPCOMING WEEKEND IN THE ARTIST ALLEY.

I’m doing b/w – grey sketches again this year.   I’ll do free Tales of the Big Bad Wolf sketches for any readers who ask.   I also have proof copies of a paperback that I’ll let go of.  These were copies that had an extra blank page inserted in the middle and are otherwise a good reading copy of the serial.  And bookmarks, buttons, charms among the other many art prints I have :) . I know I should post a picture but I’ll have to do that later.  Still trying to recover from working over the weekend.

 

PS – Yes the site design changed because the install got compromised by a SEO hack.  I basically nuked everything and restored content only from a backup.  I’m not sure that the theme wasn’t to blame so I’ve stuck back to default themes that I know are pretty well-maintained.  Hopefully I haven’t lost anything most people navigate here for (i.e., the old Rurouni Kenshin stuff), but if it’s missing let me know. 

 

Rambling post: 2013 plans

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I don’t seem to make a point of blogging on this site. In fact, a lot of journal/blog activity seems to be largely concentrated towards the Online Novel blog. (In truth, I just don’t do as much self-contemplation in an open space anymore. It’s hard to focus when you’re writing blogs and novels at the same time -_-.

But I can’t let 2013 get too far away from me without remarking on a few posts that generally touch on the themes of “creative resolutions” that I scattered here and there.

Writing books

  • Writing on the web remains a really crappy gamble. If you’ve read the blog posts on stats, you’ll know what I mean.  Thankfully I’m two weeks away from wrapping up my first volume of the serial and should shortly follow with an e-book version. My major goal was to complete this volume (in spite of how much more I can write about the characters in fluff pieces).  Really the issue has been trying to come up with something that would take advantage of other avenues of distribution (i.e., tablets, e-readers) as well as the Wattpad machinery.   Having a complete volume (two weeks yay) will allow the work to evolve into another form. 
  • While it would be lovely to wait months to do the extensive edits and spend time on a hardcopy, I’ll have to rethink all of this as I would like to not lose too much momentum and move into the next serial sometime this year.  My goal for this year is only the ebook.  And given that, I may just do the cover myself. Who knows. 
  • Part of my struggle on setting a goal for the paperback is that I feel I need time to examine the work and re-edit it for construction.   Getting the editing that I would like for a “paper” version is expensive because of the size of the work. I may just put the paper one on hold and only look at doing book copies for conventions as an “early release.”

Writing community participation

  • Reviews and cross-promotion are a good idea but not so easy to implement. (See this post.)  It’s clear to me that genres are often hard lines to cross for readers.  I see less crossover in fiction than in, let’s say, comics. As such, I’m pretty reluctant to promote random stories of other authors.  I haven’t talked much about this as I have always wanted to maintain control over who I link to from my sites.  That said, over the past few years I was approached to exchange links with serials and did not automatically entertain the offer. Many of these serials rolled up dead within a few months of their launch with no explanation to the readers.  
  • It’s become more obvious to me that web writers, just like webcomickers, come and go.  A great majority of them give up too quickly because the instant fame and riches don’t materialize.   While I am certainly enthusiastic about supporting others, I’m also pretty  jaded.  I don’t like to passively “endorse” those who aren’t serious about writing.
  • I’d like to do more reviews, but remain very concerned about their role in a pretty fragmented community.  There’s a low barrier to entry and such, but there’s no concept/etiquette as to how reviews should be done.   As an artist I already know how to sense who wants critiques and who doesn’t. We are used to putting things online and getting told a lot of things like “your anatomy is wonky,” “you lines are messy,” etc. etc.  But there are standards, and as such, most artists can figure out if the criticism is valid.   Writers are nothing like artists in that sense. They rarely put things out because it impacts likely publishing by a major house or for some reason, writers feel their ideas will get stolen.   That and writers often view each other as competitors (or at least the whole Amazon review scandal points to that).   The appropriateness of writers reviewing writers is , in my mind, in need of some real guidance. 
  • Reddit: I love /r/fantasy.  Best place for authors and readers to mix, IMHO.  Learned a lot already in my few months of lurking there.

Artist Alleys

  • No desire to increase my presence.  This year is going to be a hard one at work and physically, I’m exhausted from last year and two major trips.   I’ll be going to ones for fun.  Only Momocon and then will apply for AWA in the fall, but mostly to push the serial.  I will try to make a lot of illustrations though for the next volume.
  • Completely disenchanted by the anime artist alleys.  Would like to link up with similar artist/creators and partner to divide -conquer different regions but boy…. dealing with registration of these conventions is such a draining experience I loathe the idea of even trying to get into any new ones.

Travel

  • One trip maybe towards the last quarter of 2013.  Lot depends on what happens this quarter with my job.  It’s not a year to be spending money, for certain.

Online-novel (blog)

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Well, the domain name /blog bug has hit again. Started a new blogger at http://online-novel.com . Mostly it’s rambling about all the things I read, stalk, and otherwise observe as a complete newbie to the self-publishing realm. Unlike other blogs, I guess the focus is coming from the web publishing niche. Most writers of the traditional sort are largely writing still for the traditional market or venturing directly into e-book territory. Some of us young neophytes are writing on the web first as our initial platform, then pursuing the e-book realm (if we can get our selves motivated enough), and then print last.

In any case, by trying to keep the blog off my sites as well as not affiliated with my “author platform” I hope this will eventually become a long-term blog project with other contributing bloggers.

It’s funny how much I hate author branding. Maybe it’s because coming from the artist realm, I prefer my work speaking for me than my personality or my lack thereof online :p