I’m going to come clean here a little bit… I’ve come to think that moving to San Francisco was one of the worst things to happen to the comic, bar none.
Don’t get me wrong here. Living in San Francisco has been a fantastic experience for Liz and Myself, and I’m going to be more than a little sad to see it go. I also think my year of school was one of the best things to happen to me, because it forced me to grow up a little and commit myself to something, (even if it’s something that, were I to do it professionally, it turns out would drive me insane) and I got my degree. I consider this to be one of the most interesting and diverse cities in the world, and leaving it will be very difficult.
But that being said, it’s been an extremely trying two years. I went from a job with little responsibility that allowed me to work on the comic at my leisure, to a job with very demanding deadlines coupled with a full-time schoolday. The comic went from being something I loved doing, and spent a lot of time on, to something that I had to squeeze in with everything else I did at home. I became a little more likely to use shortcuts than to really spend time on a comic and work on it.
This is something that’s been dawning on me over the last couple months, but it really hit home today when I had some extra time earlier in the day, and decided to work on the comic. In panel 4, I needed Liz with her arms crossed, so I dove into my archives, only to find that I had not drawn Liz with her arms crossed since changing the wardrobe, late last year. Certainly there had been occasions over the last year where the comic called for it… but I just didn’t do it. That’s the wake-up call that I needed.
This move has a lot of reasons behind it, but the one thing that I’m looking forward to is once more getting up and ENJOYING working on the comic. Being a little more clever in the writing. Putting a little more love and effort into the graphics. Hell – I’ve got some storylines that have been brewing in my head for a year now, that I’ve just been unable to do because of time constraints. It’s time for that to become a thing of the past. Put simply, the comic is becoming FUN again. I’ve got all these ideas for things I want to do, and it’s got me excited.
And one of those things is to start posting rants on a regular basis again. I’ve been extremely lax in doing so, because I’ve focused so much of my energy elsewhere lately. You deserve more than that. It’s still going to be a few weeks yet before I get settled in and start in on this whole thing, but I’d like to think that, metaphorically speaking, it’s a new day here at Real Life Comics. Stick with me… things are going to start getting better.
