Zub Tales

It’s been interesting getting feedback from all of you about the pic I posted up the other day. Some LJ posts, some e-mails… lots of opinions.

Several mentioned that the character/face doesn’t feel like a typical/comfortable/proper Jim pic, which I find weirdly neat because there is no Jim look. I don’t have a style at this point.

The only ‘body’ of work I’ve done my own way is Makeshift Miracle and that’s 3-4 years old – it’s not even how I draw any more. I’ve worked on so much client work that I don’t feel like I have a look of my own at this stage. The Animation course taught me how to adapt my artwork to fit a production style. That adaptability has been a boon to me work wise but now it’s left me without a strong sense of what I want my personal art to be.

I seem to toggle between a whole bunch of influences. Ever since Makeshift ended I’ve been searching for an approach that I can build on to take my personal work to the next level. In the end I’m the only one who can judge what that’s going to be but it is neat hearing what all of you think.

Here are some older test pics I’ve done as I stumble around trying to find things I like:

A mish-mash of manga/animated/illustrative stuff. All of them are pretty different from each other, all of them competently done. Instead of polling people to see what they think I should just choose something and run with it but creative hesitation has crept in and I’m a bit stuck. There’s no right answer. My flexibility/inability to stick with one look is making this harder than it should be.

I need to tell a new story in 2007, that’s the core of this… the rest is annoyingly mutable.