Author: Kelci

Dear Readers,

I have been working my butt off the past month. As I take a break these past few days, I realize I want to get back to work again.

It’s not just my workaholic nature that does this. It’s something I have been pondering about thanks to Neil Gaiman. In a video I saw, where he gave a commencement speech to a university, he said something that still clicks with me, especially now:

“A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles, on a desert island, and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it, and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you: appreciation, or a commission, or money, or love. And you have to accept that you may put out a hundred things for every bottle that winds up coming back…

“…The problems of success. They’re real, and with luck you’ll experience them. The point where you stop saying yes to everything, because now the bottles you threw in the ocean are all coming back, and have to learn to say no.” 

(If you want to see the full video, click here.)

I still feel like I’m at a point in my life (having just emerged from the institution known as University) where I’m already throwing some bottles, but I’m supposed to be throwing more of them into the ocean. It’s just that I need to make the content to put in those bottles to throw out to sea.

(Not literally making comics and putting them in bottles. Some guy on Kickstarter already came up with that. I’m talking in a metaphorical sense, you goob.)

So in an effort to do just that, to make content to put into bottles and throw them out into the sea known as the world, I’m embarking on some new, and not-so-new, projects.

First, the not-so-new: I’ll be working with my friend Chloe on “Stray Dogs,” her fancomic for Puella Magi Madoka Magica, doing pencils and tones. (If you have not heard of the fantastic series called Puella Magi Madoka Magica, it’s amazing and redefines what the genre of “Magical Girl” should mean. You should watch all twelve episodes of it. Now.) I’ll also be collaborating with my friend Casey on a new project called “Manufactured,” about the human race losing their collective memory and becoming cyborgs. “Manufactured” is still in its infancy, so we’re still working out some design kinks and talking over plot points and such.

Another not-so-new project I am doing is a short comic I call “The Messengers.” I worked on this script two years ago and then put it aside because my original slant towards it was rather anti-religion, mostly anti-Christian. Now that I have cleared my head and have less bias towards them, I’m rewriting the script so it has more of an old-gods-and-humanity-working-together theme to it. The rough draft is nearly done, which is the first step. I intend to keep working on it and get it finished and printed for Colossal Con next year (which is at the beginning of June).

The new projects I hope to start will have some more solid and immediate deadlines.

The first is a submission to an anthology run by the Hamtramck Idea Men called IF-X. I intend on sending something for their Halloween issue and possibly for their final one the following month. I’m working with the editor now to get an idea of what to work on and what to leave out for this current issue.

The second project is a portfolio to send to Ape Entertainment. I want to see if they would be interested in hiring me for freelance work. I would like to send a portfolio to Yen Press, as well, but Yen Press’s submission guidelines calls for more work to go into the portfolio. With Ape, I have something ready to show them now. So I’ll be sending them my work soon (by soon I mean before the end of the month, so I just have to get up off my lazy ass to do it).

The third is actually a series of projects: monthly mini-comics made exclusively for Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago and possibly for Gumroad, if I can get Gumroad to sell books. (If you haven’t heard of Gumroad, it’s fairly new, but I have used it and it’s literally two seconds between paying for the material and owning it. It’s amazing!) I haven’t figured out a topic for any of them yet, so this project is the one most likely to change or be scrapped. We’ll see.

The fourth is what Chandra Free (the lovely lady who wrote The God Machine) called a “Pitch Packet.”

A Pitch Packet, as defined by her in this interview and paraphrased by me, is a packet of comic pages, character designs, and character biographies for a story you want to pitch to a publisher. This packet also includes a story synopsis and your resume. Every company I want to pitch to has some variation in their requirements for their pitch packets, but they all have very many of the same commonalities. So I want to work on one pitch packet that I can tweak for each company as necessary to fit their pitching guidelines.

My personal deadline for this is to finish the work by at least June of next year, so I can make copies as needed and prepare them. Then I intend to go to New York Comic Con in October and submit stuff to publishers there. Of course, geeking out over seeing my favorite comic artists there would be awesome. I just hope I don’t make myself a jackass, to the editors or the artists.

So yeah. Those are my projects. I have a lot of them.

I like to keep busy. It keeps me entertained, and I learn new things with every project. Plus, it keeps me glued to my desk when I’m not at work. This is awesome because it staves me off from doing something disastrous, like getting so bored I spend my whole paycheck at Books-A-Million (it has happened before).

I hope that things are going well for you, dear readers. Do you have any projects to embark on? I would love to hear about them, and I hope you do well working on them.

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!

Sincerely,
Kelci

P.S. I’m also thinking of selling prints, cards, and other gifts and merch through Zazzle.com. Your thoughts?

I FINISHED MY GRAPHIC NOVEL FOR THE MONTH-LONG GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE TODAY.

I usually don’t include all-caps as one single sentence, but HOLY JEEBUS IT’S EXCITING!

In fact, I’m going to do some happy dances!

Of course, this now means I have to get back to the grind of daily life, including making comic reviews for magazines, collaborating with friends on projects, and actually going to work. But it’s not all bad.

Almost kinda’ wish I could still keep writing and drawing, though.

But hey! At least I finished a rough draft of a graphic novel, which is the first in a series! Woot!

DFTBA, and I’ll see you soon!

Dear Readers,

It’s been a while since I updated. I should get back to doing so on a regular basis, or else it’ll never happen. Perhaps I’ll go back to updating everyday, as much of a pain in the butt as it is sometimes.

In other news, with the graphic novel project going along nicely, I’m just now realizing all the other stuff I sort of forgot about: like the comic I’m collaborating with my friend Chloe on, or the book review I need to write due next week, or the mini-comic I should finish scripting, and the the collaboration I’m working on with another friend…

Yeah….I’ll be catching up on those soon.

In my defense, my graphic novel has been absorbing all of my free time. It is GLORIOUS, with political intrigue, existential questions, and cross-dressing, but sometimes other things can suffer for it. I’ll be working out how to accomplish all of these things over the next day or two.

In the meantime, here is some art to show that I haven’t been dickin’ around…badly:

This is a character design for a friend’s character, Nick. He’s a human with cyborg parts in a world of other cyrborg-y humans. He loves to pick fights with others to better himself, at least that’s the impression I got from him. He also doesn’t mind his cyborg parts, unlike his comrades, who like to get life-like synthetic skin to cover up their body parts if they can afford it.

I didn’t add any shading to the piece because I wanted his gray-color scheme to be evident. Simple and clean is what I was going for.

Nick is copyrighted to my friend Casey Vernon. The design is mine, so don’t be stealin’ him. He’s expensive, and you don’t have the money to get him the cybernetic updates that he wants, anyway. Sorry, but it’s the truth.

I’ll be writing again soon, but don’t forget to be awesome!

Sincerely,
Kelci

Dear Lovely Audience,


I am now free and available for Commissions, if any of you lovely readers would like to own some art drawn by me! Details are now under the “Commissions” page of this website. Isn’t that awesome that now I have one of those?

In other news, I don’t have much other news. I’m still working on the Graphic Novel Project (now on its 56th page! Woot!) and generally working on improving my art all the freaking time like I always am.

I seriously love working as a caricature artist at an amusement park because all the people I work with always inspire me to get better and try new things in my comics.

Also I’ll be sending some mini-comics to Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago because I’ve always wanted to try a hand at selling my comics at a bookstore. And Quimby’s is awesome because they let you sell your own self-published stuff, which is great! I’m hoping I can get more people interested in my stuff, but I’m doing this more as an experiment: to see if I get new readers, see how the process of consigning my work at a bookstore is like, etc.

I’ll be updating the “Illustrations” section of this site soon because I recently finished a few more of those and I like showing off.

I’m also considering experimenting in other art forms, like puppetry and video blogging and music-making. I have a ukelele and a tiger puppet already. I should do something with those.

Thanks for reading me changing topics frequently, and as always, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!

Sincerely,
Kelci

Courtesy of Tumblr. I wish I knew who drew this so I can give them proper credit.

I’ll admit it: I’m a woman, and I’m absolutely in love with Dragonball Z Kai. I love the characters, the ridiculous scenarios, the action, the EVERYTHING about it.

Notice, though, how I said Dragonball Z Kai?

I’ll tell you all a story. Get comfortable, because this might take a while.

Also Courtesy of Tumblr.

I first discovered Dragonball Z when I was around seven years old or so. I think I saw a few episodes of the Saiyan Saga, then a few episodes of the Namek Saga. I didn’t start to steadily watch it until Trunks came from the future and warned everyone about the Androids.

Now when I first saw it, I thought it was cooler than Sailor Moon. Personally, I couldn’t stand the girl. I would much rather watch a bunch of dudes do martial arts (I still do. Dragonball Z was the series that got me hooked to martial arts stuff). Of course, in Dragonball Z days, the actual fighting would only occur in one episode out of five, so it was a little frustrating, to say the least. It was hard to stick with the series.

Why did I stick with it?

To this day, I still can’t really tell you. Looking back on it now, I think Dragonball Z makes some great material to riff on in the style of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I guess when I first started watching it, I did so to laugh at it even though I secretly took it too seriously.

First anime crush. I wish I was joking.

I introduced it to some friends in middle school, which turned out to be a mistake: I was teased rather relentlessly for liking something people saw as “stupid”. After a while I started to hate it just to try and fit in, which is something only a middle schooler would worry about.

Then in high school, I kept my anime and manga interests mainly to myself. I saw new series’, read new comics, and kept Dragonball Z somewhere in the back of my mind.

One day, I was in the band room for a play rehearsal when I saw that someone left behind an issue of Shonen Jump. Since no one else claimed it, I took it and started to read it. Lo and behold, there was a chapter or two in there that took place in the Cell Games, right when Goku pulled a surprise Kamehameha on Cell and used instant transmission/teleport to trick him.

I fell back in love with it, but more specifically, I loved the manga.

Courtesy of Tumblr, I believe.

The manga was everything I wished the anime was, but wasn’t: fast, fun to read, with great characters and plot twists, and even a bit of saucy humor. There was no filler, no cheesy rock music, no ten episode stare-downs; just action and humor, which is what the series is really about.

Then I heard about Dragonball Z Kai, which is Dragonball Z re-edited, re-dubbed, and in many parts reanimated, with a new soundtrack, to stick closer to Akira Toriyama-sensei’s original manga.

I jumped on that s**t right away. And I fell even more in love with the series.

Still my favorite villain, in all of his forms.

Steadily, thanks to my absolutely fabulous friend Chloe, her understanding, and her embracing her fangirlism for FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, I was inspired to break out of my shell and embrace my fangirlism for Dragonball Z Kai. It’s even now to the point where I’m getting plushies at cons for the characters. You never would have gotten me to do that ten years ago.

AND I REGRET NOTHING.

Still, being a fangirl for this particular incarnation of Dragonball Z has its pitfalls. I still remember getting into an argument with someone at ColossalCon who was an adamant Dragonball Z fan and hated Dragonball Z Kai. He claimed it was “dumbed down for the kids” and ruined his childhood.

I can’t help but notice that a lot of people have a similar reaction to Kai. They seem to think that to remake something that they adored as a kid somehow makes it less than perfect. Chloe still gets into arguments with people in the FMA fandom when certain fans hate Brotherhood, even though it stick closer to the original manga, mainly for the same reason that DBZ fans don’t like Kai: it “ruins their childhood.”

Here’s something I want to say for all the DBZ fans out there (and possibly to any FMA fans who for some reason come across this):

The world is big enough for people to love what they love and hate what they hate. However, do not hate something if you’re not willing to try it first. You cannot hate something you’ve never seen or heard because you have no standard to compare it to (and don’t compare it to any series it may be based off of. People have artistic license that they can exercise). Try it, and if you like it, that’s awesome. If you don’t like it, that’s ok, too: just respect those who do like it.

Treat people like people, darn it!

That’s all for now, and as always, Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!