2012: The Year in Review
2012 has been a hell of a year. I started the year with one goal: get my art out there. Whatever it takes, however I have to do it, I needed to push myself. I needed to learn new techniques, to color more, to draw more women, more caricatures, to meet people...I needed to change.
I've met thousands of challenges this year. I've failed at hundreds, at least. I feel like I've succeeded a few more times than I've failed. I've grown, as a person and as an artist. I've worked hard this year, first for others, then for myself. Before I get too much into how I felt about this year, I feel it's best to provide you with the raw statistics.
- Blog Posts (currently): 98
- Illustrations: (currently): 135, not counting con sketches. (118 colored, 17 B&W only)
- Comic Pages: 40
- Relettered Pages: DDJ (28) Neverender (56), Ferryman (32)
- Comic Books Designed: 8
- Comic Books Printed: 5
- Comics Sold: ? (Over 100, but I've yet to take an exact count)
- Places Published: Digital Artists Magazine, Roswell's Vista Vision Magazine, New England Journal of Medicine (Ad), Comics Alliance, Emanata
- Design: Logos: 4 Banners: 3 Bookmarks: 1 Business Cards: 3 CD Covers: 2, front and back 1 front only, Pens: 2
- Real Jobs worked: 1 (Graphic Designer/IT Specialist/Videographer/QA/Occasional Web Developer)
- Super Sketch Video Blogcasts: 4 (Currently)
- Super Audio Podcasts: 5 (currently)
- Comic Conventions Attended: Staple, Dallas Comicon, ACE, Roswell Cosmicon, Fan Days
- As Exhibitor: 4
- Comic Shops my stuff is in: 1 (Titans Comics, Dallas, from the 26th-2nd)
- Sketch Covers: 5
- Visitors: 20,000+
- Conventions sets prepared for: 2 (one medical convention, one comic convention set)
- Seasons of Doctor Who watched: 7
- Mass Effect games finished: All of 'em
- Concerts attended: Mountain Goats (twice), Savage (twice) Zaire, Why?
My goal was to have something to post on the site every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. and while I was a bit shy of that (156 illustrations needed) I did produce 135 illustrations, many of them colored. In the old days I would have posted both the colored version as well as the black and white illustrations...so if you count colored as two pictures, I kicked ass. I was shy the 21 illustrations due to working on sequential pages, and if you factor those in (40), I smashed my goal by producing 175 drawings to date. The year's not over yet, but I'm skeptical I'll get too much done over the next few weeks.
If you assume it took me four hours to produce each picture, I spent cumulatively 700 or so hours. That's 30 days straight. Four hours is generous for some pictures, and scant for others (assuming 5 hours per picture nets me 36 days). Add three or four days to that if you assume an hour per blog post. Four podcasts at roughly two hours each, in addition to a few time lapse sketch videos...I've been busy. Below is every picture I drew this year in one image.
I'm about recount the year in detail, more for myself than anything, so the tl;dr version:
High point of the year: Being able to freelance and network with other artists
Low point of the year: Getting fired from a job I genuinely liked