by ncwinters on January 18, 2009
…that or like, you know, remember stuff.
Creative License #3 was a fun direction. This is where I want to keep this comic strip headed- in a creative, design oriented silly direction. I try to keep all my comic strips very separate so none of them step on the toes of any other comic, both artistically or content-wise. I say ‘all’ instead of ‘both’ because a new comic strip is on its way, scheduled to debut next week (or so). Stay tuned for more of that. It’s a bit unfortunate that creattica.com doesn’t seem to have the readership of freelanceswitch.com as I had fun designing the look of Creative License. Don’t get me wrong, Freelance Freedom has its own fun unique look, but CL has a simpler more pleasant color scheme, or at least that was my goal. Idaknow, I always like the stuff no one else seems to like. I always had the image in my head that the character in CL would end up covered in the lamest tattoos ever by the end of the strip, but I didn’t want to draw them in every week. Becasue I am lazy. Enjoy.
*NCW*
Creative License #3
by ncwinters on January 8, 2009
…small, medium and no-freaking-way.
Creative License #2 was a fun trip into make-believe land. I say ‘trip’ but the truth is I’ve got a summer home there. Let’s just say I’m a regular and my passport is up-to-date. I did this comic like so many while at my contract job, out on the quad being a loner at lunch. I use the lunch break to of course…work some more. I’m not quite sure exactly how to not always be working, but I’m working on it. Anyhoo, since the job is a production gig, I’m surrounded by other designers and I think that day I was noodling around with Pantone swatches to get a color I wanted. I actually don’t use a Pantone book as often as I should, mainly right before I’m finishing a job and need all my colors in Illustrator to jive on the final print, t-shirt or whatever. Enjoy.
Creative License #2
by ncwinters on January 7, 2009
…let’s start off by shelving some of the more useless resolutions.
So every year, much as I don’t want to, I end up making resolutions, or more accurately, deals and demands with myself. ‘If you can do at least this much per day’ or ‘you will do this this year’ or something of the like. Usually lasts about a month or two, then real life takes over and all of the best made plans pretty much turn into crap. Something different this year. Gonna try to focus on doing the best thing at the time and really emphasize taking some of the work out of all my work. In reading various articles on the best ways to manage your time, my problem seems to be (among others) trying to do too much and putting off the little things. Great article by the way, in this months’ Wired magazine about self-help for freelancers, take a look. What I got in essence, was to go ahead and do it now and quit overplanning some of the other stuff.
One of the first ways this will take effect is in this here bloggy-blog. As some of you may know, I currently write and illustrate two comic strips. You may have seen the sporadic postings of reminders for new ones. Here’s one now: Creative License #16 is online today at creattica.com. I’ve also mentioned that I cannot post the new days’ comic on the site, as the respective websites each pay pretty well (we’re talking millions of dollars here) for the comic strips and that one of the stipulations is to keep the content exclusive for awhile. Perfectly resonable, as that’s what helps push traffic and drive people to the site to see the new comics and bascially keep me writing comics. So to publish here, I will start re-posting after a month has gone by to give you good people who do not currently have freelanceswitch.com or creattica.com bookmarked. The comics will be a month old, but you’ll get some freshness in a new (hopefully) laugh. This saves me the trouble of having to do a new post every week about an old comic, thanks to WordPress’ lovely post later function, I can write the post the night I finish the comic and have it post at the appropriate time. More information than you wanted? Probably. To start with, I’ll post the older comics first. Keep in mind, I’m up to #86 on Freelance Freedom so you’ll get an onslaught of those for a while.
So that’s just one of this year’s non-resolutions. Anyone else have any special plans to cut back on the amount of work in order to be more productive?
Enjoy Creative License #1. I’ll post Freelance Freedom #1 shortly. For the first CL I wanted to go with the idea of inspiration. Talking with the site owner, he described creattica as a place for designers to go for daily inspiration, fun and cool distractions. So much of my work is self-referential or literal, I wanted to push the idea of inspiration from random sources in many comics, but so far have only used the idea for the first one. Enjoy.
*NCW*
Creative License #1
