D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Thought I’d share the sketchcard samples I did for Marvel and Lucasfilm a couple weeks ago– haven’t heard back from them. Doing the sketchcards are really fun though, I might be doing a bunch of Flobots ones soon, we’ll see. These were all done with Prismacolor markers… Here’s a look…

There’s been no “break” for me. Especially with not a steady paycheck coming in, I find myself back in freelance land doing some small jobs here and there. The little $2 dollar drawings I’ve done have actually brought in a few job offers for higher paying gigs, from company logos to blog headers… so I’m trucking along I guess.

I’m looking to kick the Flobots comic into a higher gear here. I did some writing and plotting and figuring out where it’s going on the sci-fi angle. I’m also thinking more along the lines of graphic novels for the future of my own projects, but I don’t want to jump in and commit to some giant project of my own right now.

I noticed I’ve been locked out of the Drunk Duck account to update Hero By Night or do anything over there (check pageviews). Not even a peep or heads up to me by anyone. They edited the header in a rush getting rid of the email the creator link and the Hero Gram Newsletter link. They also deleted the last entry saying Hero By Night is on extended hiatus, and all of the fan comments wishing it would come back. Another person on Twitter told me he voiced some critique on Drunk Duck in the forums , and his comments were deleted. So it appears, even if they don’t want it to, that Platinum Studios has adopted a sort of corporate fascist police state where while they have deals and contests going on, they can’t allow for ANY discourse in the conversation , or any critique of their services. They want new people and new contestants and their families, new investors to be able to come on and see that “EVERYTHING IS OKAY!” — Again… not very good business ethics at all going on there. I can’t say that it makes me very happy to report that, but I also can’t say that I really give a damn either.

Onward!

I’ve also done a lot less internet communication lately due to keeping myself busy. If I were to stop and “take a break”, i fear I might actually lose my mind or just drop over dead. Sort of like Samson and his hair or something, you know?

37. When your dreams become reality, they are no longer your dreams.

If you are successful, it’ll never come from the direction you predicted. Same is true if you fail.

Is it the 25th? I’m losing track of my days here. June is flying by….

Update from me workwise…

Flobots comic is still in it’s “beta launch” as I slowly put that out a tier a day for the first story. Jason Embury had toleave coloring duties because of his limited time, which is understandable. So I’m switching into “one man army” mode again on my approach for drawing pages and stories. I might decide to actually do MORE now and keep the webcomic a standard full page every M-W-F - We’ll see. I have to test my speed and patience today, after coffee. These are reasons I launched this as “beta” to see what shakes down, because I’ve had the experience in knowing anything can happen. Wow, we are getting some AMAZING stories coming in though, some heartfelt and very passionate. I can’t wait to crack into the more sci-fi aspect of the whole thing as well.

SketchCards: I have some submissions in for official sketchcard work for a few big companies and titles, waiting to hear back hopefully this week. I could use the money, and frankly it’s pretty fun to mess around with. Can’t wait to show off the sample ones I did, but it’ll have to wait until after I hear what’s what.

WillDrawAnything: Yesterday was a lot of fun. I have a ton of requests stacked up now though, not sure if I’ll be able to get to them all today, so I might have to ammend the 24 hour thing, but it’s an awesome addition of content, hell I’m thinking it could even be it’s own darn comic on the side, we’ll see. There’s definitly more than enough content adding up, and it’s all beautifully random!

Speaking of that…. Read more

Been thinking long and hard about a few things, mostly what to say and how to say it. There are a few things I’m extremely happy about, and a couple that I am extremely not happy about. I don’t think there’s a way I can phrase things at this time that won’t piss someone, somewhere off or start some sort of shitstorm, so I’m going to take another day of contemplation while I work. Part of me thinks maybe a shitstorm is what the world needs right now, that and a big yummy dose of the truth.

Here’s something funny. I saw an interesting piece on BoingBoing this morning about GM looking to be innovative and one of their ideas is to have a fuel cell car where the entire chassis or bottom is the fuel cell itself that could be easily swapped out or charged, almost like, imagine a skateboard deck system underneath. It was interesting and thought provoking, but when I went to check out the video, the site was broken in Firefox and the videos wouldn’t load or certain links wouldn’t even click. I’m not sure if I have much faith in GM to change the world yet with vehicles when they can’t even build a website that works on the world’s most popular internet browser.

I have a buddy who does sketchcards for Topps and Upperdeck– they do all the Lucasfilm cards and Marvel Masterpiece cards. He suggested i give a stab at that, and it seems appealing to me and something I wanted to take a stab at for awhile, so yesterday I spent some time working up 9 different samples, and I think they turned out pretty groovy. So groovy in fact, people who have seen them already want them. So, I’m crossing my fingers on that. It was fun, and kinda refreshing to do a mix of different characters. Using the prismacolors is like riding a bike, and it was fun to mess around with those again…

speaking of riding bikes…. Flobots Comic!

I haven’t been pushing it much with a heavy promotion yet, because I’d like for the first story to be done before sending mass amounts of people there, I know it’s a slow update formula based on my schedule right now, but I might be looking to remedy that pretty soon. And to speak of bad luck, Jason shot himself in the finger with a nail gun, the poor guy, so looks like I’m coloring tomorrows update which is what i should be doing now instead of typing! That is why I never use nail guns or avoid manual labor with my right hand as much as possible. I can’t even imagine Jason’s workload right now and doing it with a bum finger, even an ingrown fingernail or hangnail would really suck. That use to suck when I was working on the old newspaper strip and HAD to keep a buffer no matter what. Luckily, this is pretty laid back for now and free flowing.

Oh, and Yirmumah news briefly. It’s good to have that back, and I realized in a fog the other day, that we were originally signed up with Keenspot right before Hero By Night came along, and pretty much from the keenspot launch Yirmumah was running on fumes. But now, Keenspot is all working different and all, and they’ve welcomed Yirm back in the fold with open arms, and I appreciate the boost. It’s safe to say I was missing it for awhile, but just lacked the time. It’s been really fun to laugh and think about fun things that I can do on my own without approval of any kind.  I guess that’s how I do everything anyway if you really think about it. I’ll do what I want, and the world will bend to my will! Hah!

I’ve got to make this day count and get some REAL work done here. Lots of things to do and organize.

What’s going on right now– the Flobots comic has been updated, as well as the Yirmumah comic was updated over the weekend.

Hero By Night rings will be mailed out by the end of the week. That’s the plan. I wanted to go all out and have some nice packaging for them, but well, I don’t have the budget to do that and not as many rings were ordered as people who said wanted them. Such is always the way! But these rings are totally awesome, and will be great for comic collections, or to randomly sit around your computer, knowing that YOU have a vitalogy ring.

It’s funny that I seem to be busier than ever now. I’m also thinking about finally officially joining the Graphic Artists Guild after years of procrastination on it. I find their GAG handbook a bible of information from legal advice and sample contracts, to straight up ethical guidelines to follow in business. They have a great list of FREE lawyers in major cities too to help aid you in collecting from clients, etc. That’s handy! I also am pretty stunned at just how affordable my prices are compared to the going rates in the book for different things and hourly rates. I think I may have to adjust from my 1999 rates.

My wife and I are headed to a Jack Johnson concert tomorrow in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio. She’s had this trip planned since March when she bought the tickets. I dig Jack Johnson, and he’s one my wife’s favorites. The Rollingstone cover he did a couple months ago is sitting on her dresser and his giant smiling melon head greets me every morning when I wake up. He is mellow to he point of GROSS NEGLIGENCE! - (sorry, SNL joke there- link)

I woke up and came to turn on my computer and was greeted with this at my station…

It’s an origami Llama. It had a note with it that said “Happy Early Father’s Day Dad” - It appears as though my son Dillon is some sort of origami savant of some kind. He tells me he could have done a much better job if he had official origami paper, I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but I think it’s absolutely awesome the way it is. It’s funny that something so small can bring me such overwhelming joy inside, and this is the type of thing that will stay in my office until I’m old and gray and an official “curmudgeon”

I treated myself to a set of Prismacolor markers. I use to use them ages ago for commissions, but moved all digital around Y2K. I’ve been pretty jealous of the awesome little pieces I see done at conventions or the sketchcards I see around, and I’ve been itching for almost a year to get back into that. Now I can.

The future of Hero By Night is still up in the air. All is quiet on the western front. I won’t lie and say I don’t find it a little bit disheartening, but I don’t expect them to drop everything else they have going on to address my wants and needs. I’m honestly just very happy that I’ve been paid some of what I’m owed, and that was what was most important in the here and now. I just wish things could have worked out differently or on time and schedule. I won’t speculate any further on that, I’m going to just give them some time, about a month at least, before contacting them again about these things, but hopefully everything gets caught up and resolved sooner than that.

I also should have, but was not aware of all the people who actually cared about Yirmumah. I have quietly fired that back up again, and I’m doing it “for fun”, the way it was originally intended. But I’ve already had old Club Members ask if they can begin paying their club fees or supporting it in some way. I’m reluctant to do anything like that until I can prove that I can deliver or won’t be flaking out or quiting in a couple weeks. Yirmumah seems to have been my “constant” over all these years in comics, so it feels good to kick those tires again, and LAUGH. I might warn that there will be some naughty language there and more mature humor. It’s up at a new URL, http://yirmumah.com — a clean slate.

The Flobots comic is quietly up and running as well at http://flobots.net - I’m in what I call a “beta” launch there because I don’t want to heavily pimp it until I get to a certain point of content where new people can come in and get the jist of the stories. Flobots the band are out on tour right now and pretty busy, but they’ll be popping up some ads and pimping it on their sites too– in fact, behind the scenes they asked me to do concept and designs for merchandise like shirts, they’ve also given me work on various websites and cool fun projects. I’m really honored to be working with them. Again, it blows my mind, because just a couple months ago, I was emailing them blindly not knowing they were about to blow up on the charts. The two things I truly love about these guys is their Do-It-Yourself work ethic and the fact they have a heart and care about a lot of social issues and making the world a better place.

Another odd thing I noticed… I had a headline on the Newsarama Blog without even trying. Jason and I would often wonder why we couldn’t get Hero By Night news releases on there, and we always got the feeling that people liked US and OUR work, but distrusted our publisher. I thought it might just be paranoia, but there were many times we sent in releases or previews and they were never posted. The only time we could make “comic news” there was when drama with the publisher was going on, and it use to frustrate the hell out of us. But suddenly, unprovoked, I get the headline about the Flobots comic, and it felt really good to have that acknowledged without trying so hard. So thanks to Newsarama for help in getting the word out for me.

In a way, meeting the Flobots and seeing what they’re up to made me miss the days of mailing out stacks of fake bricks in the mail.

Tim Russert Dead. I can’t really believe it, and it makes me sad. I know I didn’t KNOW the guy or anything, but I’m a fan of awesome journalists, people I know I can turn to to get the straight dope. He was one of, if not THE best. He had that devilish irish twinkle in his eye, and I always loved hearing him tell his personal stories on TV. Really sad to go, and to go on the beginning of a Father’s Day Weekend. They should build a statue of him in front of NBC, and give out awards in his name. He was just that type of journalist and human being. The world, our country lost a great patriot on Friday.

As if that weren’t shocking enough, I heard from Jason Embury, my friend and colorist last night, he was just at the ER where they think his Dad had a heart attack. Last I heard he was okay, but WOW, Jason’s family has been in our thoughts last night and this morning. Heart attacks are scary things, they make me worry about myself. They seem like they can come from nowhere, like the roll of the dice. Anyway, best wishes to the Embury’s this Father’s Day Weekend.