The Imbibe Universe

So I got covid this week. It hasn’t been the worst illness, but it definitely put the kibosh on my weekly posting.

Aside from worrying about the potential day in which diminished mental and physical wherewithal prevent my artistic ambitions, the fever made me realize I wanted to start chapter 11 for “Enter Cedar” differently.

Like, I had already nearly finished this weeks posting, but then I got Covid, and then during the height of the fever, I got the idea for this new page. Which was actually an older thought, but I never wrote it down. If I don’t write things down, they enter one of those game show “money booths” that people get inside and grab dollar bills. I might grab the idea again, but I’ll likely remember months after I’ve published the larger concept, and I’ll just need to deal with the frustration.

Necks and shoulders. I think I’ve mostly been drawing the greys/cousins with no necks. I haven’t really taken the time to explore it, I’ve done my best to avoid drawing them. But, I think it’s all about elongating the neck.

Perhaps the younger a gray is, the shorter their neck is. I mean, it really doesn’t matter when the entire race just genetically engineers whatever they need from their body.

I’m feeling very undeserving right as of late. It began when I started creating a “timeline” of the projects I’ve finished and the projects I’ve yet to finish.

It’s a lot of work. I’ve done the math, it will likely take my lifetime (at my current pace). When I map it out like this, I start to feel like I’m not good enough to tell this story, or that it shouldn’t be as big as it is. That I’m not good enough for this, or that the idea itself isn’t worth illustrating; that “The Imbibe Universe” is only worth devoting a little space to it.

I don’t really have an argument against all that, other than I want this and that I’ve spent a good deal of my life thinking about it. It’s part of who I am as a person. It’s not a part I share very often. And I’d like to change that. Because it seems to be an awful shame for it to rot away in my skull after death. Regardless of whether or not it deserves telling.

I miss doing songs with the comics. Maybe not with every page, but every episode should have a recommended song. Because Tapas Comics had a feature where you could add a song, there’s an entire Original Soundtrack for “Deep Circuitry”.

I really enjoyed that, because most of my comic projects were meant to be either live action or animated. Overall, I really miss audio. I miss the music and working with voice actors. I miss the collaboration and the spontaneity that would come with working with others.

Groph didn’t get music accompany. When I started illustrating “Groph’s Green Wizardry”, I didn’t have any music in mind. In retrospect, I think the soundtrack for “Groph’s Green Wizardry” would just be lofi.

For “Enter Cedar”, here are my initial thoughts on a recommended song accompany.

Episode 01: Smog “In the Pines”
Episode 10: Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld “Hey Hey, My My”
Episode 11: Philip Glass “Tagore-Scene II”
Episode 12: Tom Waits “Come on Up to the House”

This is an early piece depicting the Log Children. It was done digitally, because I thought I didn’t have an option to not do digital. You’ll note the lack of loincloth in the actual comic.

Original designs also incorporated a lot of lazy appropriation of Coast Salish elements. I had a lot of conversations with friends over this. The native elements are not super important to the story, as the gods behind the masks are not the actual gods, just beings who feed of the follower’s faith. Therefor, would that being use native elements to appear to people? They would to those they would be tricking, like someone who believed in the raven spirit. But would Ian see this? He’s just a white boy, with no affiliation with local tribes and customs, and since the appropriating beings use the thoughts and images they’re living in, they would appear with what’s available in Ian’s head. Thus, logs and blue tarps.

The added benefit is that this imagery is lot more personal to me. Making my stories personal to me is challenging.