A previous incarnation
I am cartooning at the moment, yes I am, well, I am drawing things in boxes and scanning them into the computer and drawing over them in Photoshop and then deciding it's not good enough, which is my far-too-labour-intensive way of cartooning at the moment, and one I'd do well to move on from.
See, the ever-beneficent cleanskies (or clea8n5sk!9s as the kitten calls her as he walks across the keyboard) invited me to contribute to transatlantic femicom Strumpet. She knows my hours are largely accounted for, but the deadline is long and the pagecount is short, so I said yes.
At the moment, I am pencilling frames, scanning in, creating a new layer and drawing with a tablet over the top. This is a step forward, in terms of how much time it consumes, from my previous non-intuitive method of drawing in pencil, inking, erasing pencil, scanning, and tidying up in Photoshop. But to be honest, I'm not sure the Photoshopping is doing me many favours. I'm tempted to go back to the Eighties and draw the whole thing in pen and then take it to a copy shop where a disaffected youth in pixie boots and a crimped fringe will A3 photocopy it for me.
Meanwhile, I've been wondering - always assuming I finish the bloody thing - what name to put it under. It is sobering to think that my last concerted efforts at the comic thing were, ahem, pre-internet. The term 'online persona' had not been invented. The term 'brand management' probably had, but was far from my hippified, co-operative-living, jumble-saleing world. For various reasons, I used to put my work under the name Tristram Puppy, and sometimes Myfanwy Tristram.
I really, really doubt that anyone Googles either of those names now, or that there's anyone wandering round using up good synapse power on retaining them. But a little bit of me would like, for the sake of connectedness, to put the new strip out as by Myfanwy Tristram. Look! There is the faintest of webtrails: here. Here. And OMG here. On the other hand, I've discovered Mathilda Tristram, ace cartoonist, and that's definitely a mix-up waiting to happen.
I mentioned this on Twitter, and the general reaction was that I should put the old stuff online. You can reputation-manage online. You can transfer from one old name to your new chosen name, simple - redirect from myfanwytristram.com to myfanwynixon.com, have an explanatory page, whatevs.
How funny that I've never even thought about scanning any of this old stuff. The truth is that there isn't a single strip that I can look at without it just seeing terribly, horribly jejune, and poorly drawn, and naive, not in a good way. It's all under my bed, some in printed form and some originals. I probably ought to get it out and see if any of it is worth putting online. You know, when I get some time.
I should finish the strip before I actually worry about any of this stuff, shouldn't I.
(And oh my goodness, a website set up by an ex-colleague, when not only was the internet new, but the whole concept of *having a computer* was new. I remember having a staff training session about Geocities, involving FTP. I think he hosted these pictures because I'd visited the Brighton media centre, got to grips with a scanner and how to use it, saved the pictures to a CDR, and brought it into work because I didn't have a PC at home to look at them. I am touched that he's kept it live, especially this page with my random illustrations on, all these years. "Highly successful screenwriter" *snort*. That dates it to, erm, 1998.)
See, the ever-beneficent cleanskies (or clea8n5sk!9s as the kitten calls her as he walks across the keyboard) invited me to contribute to transatlantic femicom Strumpet. She knows my hours are largely accounted for, but the deadline is long and the pagecount is short, so I said yes.
At the moment, I am pencilling frames, scanning in, creating a new layer and drawing with a tablet over the top. This is a step forward, in terms of how much time it consumes, from my previous non-intuitive method of drawing in pencil, inking, erasing pencil, scanning, and tidying up in Photoshop. But to be honest, I'm not sure the Photoshopping is doing me many favours. I'm tempted to go back to the Eighties and draw the whole thing in pen and then take it to a copy shop where a disaffected youth in pixie boots and a crimped fringe will A3 photocopy it for me.
Meanwhile, I've been wondering - always assuming I finish the bloody thing - what name to put it under. It is sobering to think that my last concerted efforts at the comic thing were, ahem, pre-internet. The term 'online persona' had not been invented. The term 'brand management' probably had, but was far from my hippified, co-operative-living, jumble-saleing world. For various reasons, I used to put my work under the name Tristram Puppy, and sometimes Myfanwy Tristram.
I really, really doubt that anyone Googles either of those names now, or that there's anyone wandering round using up good synapse power on retaining them. But a little bit of me would like, for the sake of connectedness, to put the new strip out as by Myfanwy Tristram. Look! There is the faintest of webtrails: here. Here. And OMG here. On the other hand, I've discovered Mathilda Tristram, ace cartoonist, and that's definitely a mix-up waiting to happen.
I mentioned this on Twitter, and the general reaction was that I should put the old stuff online. You can reputation-manage online. You can transfer from one old name to your new chosen name, simple - redirect from myfanwytristram.com to myfanwynixon.com, have an explanatory page, whatevs.
How funny that I've never even thought about scanning any of this old stuff. The truth is that there isn't a single strip that I can look at without it just seeing terribly, horribly jejune, and poorly drawn, and naive, not in a good way. It's all under my bed, some in printed form and some originals. I probably ought to get it out and see if any of it is worth putting online. You know, when I get some time.
I should finish the strip before I actually worry about any of this stuff, shouldn't I.
(And oh my goodness, a website set up by an ex-colleague, when not only was the internet new, but the whole concept of *having a computer* was new. I remember having a staff training session about Geocities, involving FTP. I think he hosted these pictures because I'd visited the Brighton media centre, got to grips with a scanner and how to use it, saved the pictures to a CDR, and brought it into work because I didn't have a PC at home to look at them. I am touched that he's kept it live, especially this page with my random illustrations on, all these years. "Highly successful screenwriter" *snort*. That dates it to, erm, 1998.)