Week notes #15
Aside from picking up a new car, this week has been fairly uneventful. I've been working while the rest of the family went to parks and things.
The new car we picked up is a Toyota C-HR, our first Hybrid car. Our first automatic too. Having never driven an automatic car, it's taking a bit of getting used to. My left hand and foot now have nothing to do when slowing down to take a corner or stopping at a light*. It does seem to make driving a lot easier. Since you don't need to worry about being in the correct gear, the mechanics of driving become almost like a video game. One pedal to go, one pedal to stop. Despite gear shifting becomes second nature after you've been driving a while, it's still eases the cognitive load a little bit.
We've not figured out all the features yet, we're a bit nervous about testing its self-parking ability so I may report back on that some time.
*For anyone who doesn't drive, when slowing to stop or take a corner in a manual car, you need to change gear so your left hand will be at the gear and your left foot will be dropping the clutch.
A few weeks ago I mentioned taking receipt of Bone by Jeff Smith, a 1300+ page behemoth of a graphic novel but haven't mentioned it since. I'm reading an issue a day, so it's taking some time but I'm about half way through as of this writing.
I went into it knowing absolutely nothing. Only going off recommendations that it's a book I should read. It started relatively slowly and I weren't sure where it was going. It starts out very small, focused on a few characters then gradually introduces new characters and storylines where now it's become a little bit complex with lots of stories being intertwined with the overall narrative.
I still don't know where it's going, to be honest. It would be a bit of a shame if I guessed the end while only halfway through. But, I'm very much enjoying it and can see why so many people recommended it.
On the comic front, progress has been slow this week. I got the rough draft off to my editor as I planned last week and continue to chip away at Chapter 4 to try get this story's ending sorted. I'm not quite there yet because I'm undecided on certain aspects of the ending. I think I need to jot the various thoughts down and take them to the publisher for thoughts.
Despite not wanting to start final pencil work until the whole book is roughed out, I did in the end. I've started with a few pages which got the ok from my editor on the last round of revisions. I got one page finished while doing the Awesome Comics Pod Drink & Draw on Friday night.
This process has highlighted to me that I need to eventually bring parts of this process into the computer. If I worked 100% digitally, I could just "ink" over the rough art I've already drawn out. As my current process sees me working at A3 scale, I can't do that (without the aid of an A3 printer at least) since my roughs are half the scale. Unfortunately, it's an expense we just can't cater for right now so I'll just have to keep plugging away as best I can.