I have moved to the indian summer/yuppie infested city of Savannah with Ned from Woodbridge, VA/ Washington D.C. In my time here in Savannah (JAN-MAR) not only did I escape winter but I scripted 4 comics and began working on the penciled pages of a one-shot comic about karaoke called "Pew! Pew! Paralyzer!" which is about 25% done. It's about 70+ pages of karaoke battles featuring a Street Fighter meets Parrapa The Rapper aesthetic. The songs they sing are actually lyrics written by me and will be made into songs on an EP that will come free when you buy the comic. Teasers to come in the next month when pages begin getting inked.
"New karaoke machines have been installed in bars across the city but they have a major defect, spitting out monsters! This mixture of karaoke and battling is called Barraoke! Rpl Gadzap the Paralyzer! is a barhopping ninja renown for his Barraoke skills. Rumor is he has even gone as far as recruiting an entire singing mountain (Frankin Fuji Jr) as his party member in his well known band Immune Mifune. Word is they even have enraged Kitschfork the notorious independent music publication known for their pretentious critiques of bands. His band receiving the lowest rating in Kitschfork history has surprisingly stirred up a ton of unwanted status now everybody wants a piece of them!"
The second project at work is a journal comic about hitchhiking called "Take Back The Rad World" that will be half comic and narrative. Both of these will hopeful hit SPX in the fall and will be printed in a limited run.
More info about SPX here at http://www.spxpo.com/
Now time for a twist! In less than 2 weeks from this post we will be moving into the mummer parade on the broken bottle pie crust streets known as Philadelphia. If all goes well I will get a job doing caricatures at the National Zoo. MoCCa is next month in NYC and I may take a day trip to simply browse and meet new comics people.
Time for the backburner material to look out for later than sooner:
-I have scripted the first volume of an entire 180+ page OGN that will take over 7 Volumes to finish. It's basically a comic from high school I drew and kept reinventing and redrawing and now I am trying to iron out the wrinkles and make this a 'THING'.
-All my fears make me want to fall back on just making pokemon fanart like a sellout for the rest of my art career because it is user-friendly, but on the note of fanart I may erect a deviantart account to post my fanart of things I love, such as; RPG's (Golden Sun, Megaman, Chrono Trigger), Tokusatsu and chanbara films (Mothra, Kamen Rider, anything with Giant Monsters and Henshin warriors), my nakama and to post stuff from my comics.
-Getting a REAL website.
Small hobbies lately: Pokemon Black, Weightlifting, Dumpster Diving behind Little Ceasers, 'Bro' watching, and differentiating various southern accents from each other.
Everything is awesome!
-xo Johnny
Monday, March 21, 2011
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Welcome! Welcome! // First Post
So I've been having an amazingly productive year trying to get back on track with doing any kind of artwork again since I came back from hitchhiking the American highways for 6 months so I thought I would start a blog to extent my web presence on the virtual highways to other comix people to keep the trade of ideas, support and comics alive.
I spent 2009 in a very crippling place. I took about a year in writers block kicking around the same dead samples of music between bandmates, artwork with myself and numerous projects with friends that seemed to have spun themselves into saran-wrap cocoons that resemble bodybags shortly after taking off. Anyone that has tried sitting down to work on something they love knows that sensation of sitting in front of art supplies and instruments bewilderingly staring at a blank page as it piles up in a highland worth of eraser shavings. Trying to get the same part right over and over again for 6 hours and your not even sure if you really are enjoying what art is doing for you anymore and feel there are so many people out there that are better than you but you are too frightened to give up on the idea of art so you are caught in that limbo and claim your on a 'hiatus' with yourself to pursue a worthy degree in petroleum engineering or to start patenting your idea for an anteater farm or anything that feels more productive because you've felt like you've robbed yourself of all creative intent and dug it a pit to hide in until you want to whip out that you are an 'artist student' to someone when you don't feel like anything. That's where I was at.
Toward the middle of the year the combination of defunct creative movement and the social anxiety of coming to terms with unable to produce anything worth my own time or anyone elses hit. Aimlessly working, doing the college thing and having a violently communicative home life (you try dealing with an Asian mother!) and more importantly coming to terms with not being 'straight' for the first time at the age of 19 ( you try dealing with yourself!) radically warped my mind to the point of feeling burnt out, confused and filled my thoughts with the idea of being a true failure, this was my secret I didn't want to acknowledge. I was a fake artist, barely pushing through classes, living with my mom and a faggot. In May I turned 20 and the meltdown was triggered and I walked out of my job grabbed my backpack and began walking in one direction down I-95 to any place the road would take me and I began a long and unexpected soul search and I didn't expect to pull off being alive to type this now.
Traveling brought me from my mothers house in northern virginia up and down the eastcoast along calypso themed backroads near the beach, zigzagging through the midwest in a ufo and crashlanding in Boise where I met some of the coolest kids who revived my love in art and music at a place that held house shows where I would perform, make art and act as hospitality and sound checker of bands coming in and out. In this environment full of creative personas it consequently introduced me into a world of drugs and newer levels of control both in and out of my favor. From there I made my way to the west coast and traveled from Seattle to San Diego where I would find myself in the living rooms of certain comic artists, musicians, friends of friends of friends made days earlier on the other side of the country, and complete circles of strangers who would influence me and restore my energy to move on.
When I returned back to Boise from the Pacific the globe unhinged from sunshines reach and it's beard grew thick with icicles. This dictated a movement down south to anything that had remote semblance to a tropical paradise but I didn't find Caribbean birds that would fetch me coconut halves with the juice in the center at all. Opiate usage sapped the ability to endure numerous days on tar black highways as I was reduced to shivering inside of my camping tent in the center of the wafty Brumback household where performances were once held and the vacant living room filled with my campsite screamed of a lease that just ran out. Laying in a drafty room for a week unable to move much I decided on investing the last of my money on a 4 day trip home on a greyhound bus from Boise to DC.
I've been home for over a year now. My parents fully accept me for who I am. I've been back in school full-time and even have a boyfriend now who also does comics which has helped me get back into what I love doing best when I have the time to. I have been dedicating great thought into scripting, practicing my drawing skills and breaking my hands in each day and finally coming into inking and finalizing finished pages for once in my life that are satisfying. With this blog I hope to illustrate my life daily through comics, illustrate stories of my journey hitchhiking through comics and to keep posts of projects up and stay informed with what other artists are up to. 2011 is going to be a great year for making mistakes, making progress, making connections, making comics and making things work.
Everything is awesome!
I spent 2009 in a very crippling place. I took about a year in writers block kicking around the same dead samples of music between bandmates, artwork with myself and numerous projects with friends that seemed to have spun themselves into saran-wrap cocoons that resemble bodybags shortly after taking off. Anyone that has tried sitting down to work on something they love knows that sensation of sitting in front of art supplies and instruments bewilderingly staring at a blank page as it piles up in a highland worth of eraser shavings. Trying to get the same part right over and over again for 6 hours and your not even sure if you really are enjoying what art is doing for you anymore and feel there are so many people out there that are better than you but you are too frightened to give up on the idea of art so you are caught in that limbo and claim your on a 'hiatus' with yourself to pursue a worthy degree in petroleum engineering or to start patenting your idea for an anteater farm or anything that feels more productive because you've felt like you've robbed yourself of all creative intent and dug it a pit to hide in until you want to whip out that you are an 'artist student' to someone when you don't feel like anything. That's where I was at.
Toward the middle of the year the combination of defunct creative movement and the social anxiety of coming to terms with unable to produce anything worth my own time or anyone elses hit. Aimlessly working, doing the college thing and having a violently communicative home life (you try dealing with an Asian mother!) and more importantly coming to terms with not being 'straight' for the first time at the age of 19 ( you try dealing with yourself!) radically warped my mind to the point of feeling burnt out, confused and filled my thoughts with the idea of being a true failure, this was my secret I didn't want to acknowledge. I was a fake artist, barely pushing through classes, living with my mom and a faggot. In May I turned 20 and the meltdown was triggered and I walked out of my job grabbed my backpack and began walking in one direction down I-95 to any place the road would take me and I began a long and unexpected soul search and I didn't expect to pull off being alive to type this now.
Traveling brought me from my mothers house in northern virginia up and down the eastcoast along calypso themed backroads near the beach, zigzagging through the midwest in a ufo and crashlanding in Boise where I met some of the coolest kids who revived my love in art and music at a place that held house shows where I would perform, make art and act as hospitality and sound checker of bands coming in and out. In this environment full of creative personas it consequently introduced me into a world of drugs and newer levels of control both in and out of my favor. From there I made my way to the west coast and traveled from Seattle to San Diego where I would find myself in the living rooms of certain comic artists, musicians, friends of friends of friends made days earlier on the other side of the country, and complete circles of strangers who would influence me and restore my energy to move on.
When I returned back to Boise from the Pacific the globe unhinged from sunshines reach and it's beard grew thick with icicles. This dictated a movement down south to anything that had remote semblance to a tropical paradise but I didn't find Caribbean birds that would fetch me coconut halves with the juice in the center at all. Opiate usage sapped the ability to endure numerous days on tar black highways as I was reduced to shivering inside of my camping tent in the center of the wafty Brumback household where performances were once held and the vacant living room filled with my campsite screamed of a lease that just ran out. Laying in a drafty room for a week unable to move much I decided on investing the last of my money on a 4 day trip home on a greyhound bus from Boise to DC.
I've been home for over a year now. My parents fully accept me for who I am. I've been back in school full-time and even have a boyfriend now who also does comics which has helped me get back into what I love doing best when I have the time to. I have been dedicating great thought into scripting, practicing my drawing skills and breaking my hands in each day and finally coming into inking and finalizing finished pages for once in my life that are satisfying. With this blog I hope to illustrate my life daily through comics, illustrate stories of my journey hitchhiking through comics and to keep posts of projects up and stay informed with what other artists are up to. 2011 is going to be a great year for making mistakes, making progress, making connections, making comics and making things work.
Everything is awesome!
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