I was too sleepy to get into it Tuesday, but I’ve been increasingly disappointed with the past few weeks of pages. A bunch of people standing around talking for page after page is boring enough to draw as it is, but the potential continuity problems of drawing all those crazy machines the same way frame after frame was something else entirely. Rather than go crazy trying to keep all that straight, I just started filling up the back of the panels with swirly blue colors. In other words, being lazy. Well, that bled over into lazy artwork on the parts I WAS drawing, which ended up just being depressing to look at. And you know how us temperamental artsy-types can be, so being depressed with what I was drawing just made me MORE lazy with the drawing, and the vicious cycle continued.

So, I did the only reasonable thing: started blowing every spare moment this week reading manga. Lots and lots and LOTS of manga. To the untrained eye, this looks REMARKABLY like goofing off, but so far it’s recharged my batteries something fierce. And whaddaya know! This week’s pages have been a MAJOR improvement!

Oh, but speaking of depressing things, there’s a little bit of Conan O’Brien referencing in the technobabble, because that’s as close to topical as a page like this can get. I’m with Coco!

(Historical Notes: Wow.  Not even two full years into cartooning, and I was ALREADY struggling with that.  I thought it was a much more recent problem.  Also, again with the Late Night TV references!  I don’t even think I could tell you who the current talky desk show people even ARE anymore.  How was this ever a thing I actively kept up with?)