30 Character Challenge: Day 1

So, clearly, I'm having some issues getting my mind together enough to work on any sort of long-term comics. Thankfully, I just found out about this sweet 30 Characters/30 Days challenge. I wasn't able to register for it on time, but decided I'm going to participate anyways. The gauntlet is just that: create 30 new characters in 30 days, one for each day in November. I'm going to post them all here, one a day.

I've been thinking of working on a super hero or otherwise more creative storyline, and I think this will really help me brainstorm for it. Yay, you get to watch me brainstorm!

Ok, first up!

Can you tell I just finished reading The Hunger Games?

Name: Chloe
Title: The Assassin
Age: 22
Height: 5’4
Weight: 140 lbs
Location: the Rebel States
Hair: Ginger
Eyes: Brown

Bio: The Rebel States is a nation within a nation. Since the Uprising of 2013, the government of New Masada imposed harsher sanctions on its citizens, 1984-style. Most of the leaders of the Uprising were executed, but those who escaped the government and the families of the dead banded together to form the Rebel States. Part black market, part social services, and part para-military, the shadow government of the Rebel States protect the citizens of New Masada.

Chloe's stake in this battle is her family. Her mother was a leader of the Uprising and was turned in by her father, a Garrison for New Masada, and executed. Like most young adults in this economically depressed country, Chloe lives at home with her father. "You know the saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Like, in the bedroom next to you," she explains. Chloe is now in the employ of the Rebel States, taking out snitches, narcs, informants, and anyone else who threatens to end the people’s last hope. Living with a Garrison has its advantages; most of her targets are topics of conversation around the dinner table.

So convention season is over. Now what?

Hello hello hello there. So, lot's of things going on here.


1. Baltimore Book Festival was all right. It was pouring rain the day of the Zine Pavilion and not really anyone stopped by. The talk, however, went really well. The Pavilion was empty when I started, and then filled up to about 25 or so people. Red Emma's said they'd invite me to their shop to give an in-store talk as well, which would be a lot of fun. It was really exciting to share my process (is there no way to sound more pompous than by saying "my process?") and the history of Gay Kid with so many people.

The rain mirrored my emotions.

2. I stopped writing Office Bitch for TheNewGay. I was feeling a bit burnt out with the story and was having some issues with the overall vibe/feeling of the site. I'm going to start a weekly comic here in the next few weeks. It took a while to realize it, but no one I know really reads TNG. It's not really my scene; think HRC vs the radical queer collective that throws potluck fundraisers and you'll know what I'm talking about.

The new strip has yet to be determined, but I'm excited to figure that out and get started!

3. There are two new comics that will be started in the next month or so: Gay Kid 4 and Culver. Culver is a book I'm going to be illustrating, and is written by Matt Smith.Gay Kid 4 will be the next installment in the series, following issues on Seventeen Magazine, Fashion, and Anxiety. I'm thinking it may be about friends and/or family.

In the meanwhile, here are some doodles I've done at work while talking on the phone.

I'm working on a short comic about getting my wisdom teeth out. This is me feeling anxious. DUH.

Molly, our old beagle, in a Santa costume looking doleful.

Ok, that looks better.

Now that I have a free moment, let's find something else to do that's not drawing!

This spring was really busy for me, and now I have finally gotten a chance to sit down and do some serious drawing. JUST KIDDING! I've gotten a chance to sit down and slack off. The next con I'm going to is the DC Zinefest, which is July 30 (come see me!). Plenty of time, right?

Yes, unless you are a clinical procrastinator. Before July 30, I want to get a number of things done:

• Suggestion Box 6: drawn
• Suggestion Box 8: drawn
• Gay Kid 3: written and drawn

Guess how much I have done?

Well, more than zero, so that's really impressive. I've started work on Suggestion Box 6 (again written by the ever super Matthew Smith), which is another great story on the perks and peril of working a retail job. Just to sate your comics-tooth, here are the first two pages.

I made a gif

Oh my God this took me FOREVER to get this thing going. I've never done a gif before, and all of the Photoshop I know has been self-taught. Please don't judge too much.

 

UPDATE: It is possible that it's not going to work on the blog. If you click it, though, it should open up in a new window and work fine.

New Project

So, in case I didn't have ENOUGH already on my plate (between Suggestion Box, Gay Kid, Office Bitch, and oh, you know, work and friends), I've decided to go on another venture with Matthew Smith. He's got a script in the works for a new project named "Culver." I'll let him break the news on what it's about, but I'll post some of the rough character sketches I've done for the illustrations. I'm really excited to work on this project and test out my style. I want this to be darker than what I'm used to. And I don't mean like "blood and depression" darker, but instead graphically darker. I have such trouble darkening up the page--cross-hatching is usually the darkest-dark--and I really want to try and get some solid blacks in these panels and not be so afraid of it.

New Year, New You, New Comics!

This blog has been horibly underutlized by myself. My new year's resolution: try to post just three times a month. This shouldn't be such a hard thing for me to do; I don't know why it has been in the past. So, here goes!

Comic strip in The New Gay

It looks like I'm sending everyone away from this blog once they get here, but here's a link that definitely needs to be included here. I have a new weekly in The New Gay, a blog that was started by my friend Zach who lives in DC. Though it started in the District, it now has pages for cities across the country and covers a spectrum of gay/queer/trans/etc issues. It leans towards hipster (or at least 20-something) gay, which--oddly enough--works for me.

The strip is called "Office bitch" and focuses on Sarah, a character who has been my old stand-by since college. Whenever I've needed a character to just throw into a situation, she's been the go-to. She's 20-something and works an entry-level job at an office. Since "the new gay" has the tag line "for everyone over the rainbow," I'm going to focus most of the strip on things outside of the typical gay experience, not just making it a comic strip where girls hook up (though some have said that this may be a good turn to take), but more about the shitty little things that happen in an admin assistant job.

Oh, what the heck. Here's the first strip:

Gurtie

Sketch for a new mini I'm working on.

COC: new installment

So I've left the "Seventeen" story line alone this past week, and have jumped ahead to high school. I got kind of sick of all this holy-shit-I'm-stuck-in-my-head for now, and have temporarily moved onto more action. I've done about 9 pages of this section of the coming out storyline, all of which is done without any interior monologue or narration. Doing it completely from the third-person has been a lot different than how it was to actually live this experience, which involved a LOT of back-thinking (why am I acting this way? what am I thinking? what is going on? who do I think I am?) and a lot of worry (what if she hates me? what if I hate myself? what if I am completely clueless and awkward?).

Here are three of these nine pages. I'm sorry if it's a bit hard to read the text in the images, but if you click on it you should get an enlarged version that should be clearer.

Suggestion Box 3: A Titanic Failure

Hi hi!

So, no installment of the COC this week. I've been really busy working on the next Suggestion Box with Matthew Smith (if you haven't checked out his work yet, here is a link to his blog). So far I've finished inking five of the eight pages. This one is turning out a lot more detailed from the last, and I've seen even a huge progression within my own illustrations, even since working on "Mildly Irritateing." Holy crap, now that I just wrote this, I realize I haven't uploaded any images from MI! I will have to do this at a later date.  I've gotten a lot more comfortable in filling in space with gray tones, something I used to shy away from. I finaly realized that the extra ten minutes per page is worth it, since it creates a much more balanced page and a much more interesting layout when you encoorperate a range of tones that spread across the page. Here is the first page of the new comic. I will let you all know when this is done, and I will add it to my etsy site and Matthew and I will be exhibiting it at the VA ComiCon on Februrary 28. Come check us out!

Already excited

I got an email earlier this week from the SPX coordinator saying that tables are up for reservation for SPX 2010. For those of you who do not know what SPX is, it is basically the Promised Land of indie cartoonists and self-published cartoonists and zine-sters. Click here for more info. It's not going on until the weekend after Labor Day, but my joy is already set to an overwhelming level.

I have really done some soul-searching (cause I'm deep like that, shut up) about the next big project that I'll be working on for the fall show. I recently had a working date with a friend of mine and as I started just doodling before she came over, an old story that I have heard popping out of the back of my head for a while finally took hold. I've thought a lot about making a comic that has a really heavy personal meaning, and the 0ne that really takes the cake is the story of coming out and of knowing that I was a big gay basically from the start. I remembered that one of the reasons why I got so into comics in the first place when I was in high school was that was the closest place to where I felt someone "got" me. I didn't need to know them, and the story didn't even need to be real (in the case of Terry Moore's "Strangers in Paradise" series) or really that terribly decipherable to a 14 year old who has a hard time reading other people's handwriting and knows nothing about drugs (Ariel Schrag's high school comic books.)

All differences aside, these were the books that I could bury my nose in and feel the "holy-shit-I'm-different" anxiety come down from the break-neck speed at which it would attack.

There will definitely be more to come as I work on this. I just really needed to get this out of my system.

New book finished!

Hello again!
I just finished the art on a great new mini written by my friend Matthew Smith, which can be found here: http://www.mdsmithcomics.blogspot.com/. We exhibited next to each other at SPX this past fall, and realized a wonderful truth: he likes to write comics, and I like to draw them. And voila, so began the project of "Suggestion Box #2, 3, 4...."! Here is the cover of the first one, called "Hip-Hop Hooray:

The story is all 100% true based on Matthew's experience working in a record store, which I do not envy him one bit. Here's a sample of one page of the book:

I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I tried to place this comic within the 1990's, when, while it may not have taken place then, is still a great place to put it: Nine Inch Nails and Michael Jordan shirts, Eminem haircuts, and the rest. If you have any interest in picking one up (numbers are super limited), please email me at katie.omberg@gmail.com for pricing and availability.

Til next time!