Just got confirmation today that I got into CAKE! Woohoo! I applied last year but didn’t get in. Don’t know what to expect, but at the very least I get to see Chicago…I’m sight-seeing the U.S through comic book festivals, and on that note, it’s too bad there’s no festivals around the Grand Canyon. But anywoo, I still need to apply to two more festivals this year once they open applications. I’m only planning on doing three festivals this year, but if I don’t get into the other two, I guess I’ll just be doing CAKE.
In personal project news, I’m still in the sketching phases of the Carboniferous book. I anticipated the Carboniferous would be the toughest period for me to draw because of the jungles / swamps. I’ve been shooting reference photos for the past two years whenever I go to the Everglades, just to prepare for this book. It turns out a lot of the photos I took are unusable because they don’t fit the compositions I’ve settled on. Anywoo, drawing the carboniferous forest has been a challenge because it involves drawing a whole mess of plants (a subject matter which I’m not very good at) that don’t exist.
The above is a pretty crummy shot I took. I’m posting it to illustrate the problems I’m having with this project: first of all most of the plants in the shot, I can’t actually use for reference because the leaf shape is completely wrong. Then there’s the bigger issue that it’s not totally clear where one plant ends and the other begins. I can’t make sense of the picture, and I don’t know how or where to start in abstracting the shapes out of it.
Having said that, I think I’m close to having the whole book sketched out…if I just keep chiseling away at it everyday, which is not easy since I need to earn money at some point.