Zub Tales

Yesterday was a surreal mix of good and bad.

After busting my butt and finishing off my artwork assignments early for a change, I received files from the other artists on the project and realized there were problems. The standard “color correct and add Udon logo” would not work here. More like the “let’s spend 6-7 hours on Photoshop correcting/improving stuff”. Doing little stuff to make sure images are print ready is part of my job, but yesterday felt like I was the janitor, not the Project Manager. Not what I wanted to be doing just a day and a half before we leave for Atlanta. Not in the slightest.

The artwork I finished up looks good. Probably the most solid stuff I’ve done for Exalted yet, in some ways. I hope that feeling lasts. A couple times, I’ve felt good about art pieces I’ve handed in and then by the time they’re in print, I look at them and go “Meh.”. Scott’s Kurtz’s Star Wars 8 page story came out last week with my colors and it looked really nice. I think my colors compliment his line art well and it was really cool seeing it print as well as it looked on screen.

Lunch was good yesterday, the Owner and the Art Director for Guardians of Order came down from Guelph and took me out for a sushi lunch meeting. It was great chatting about how the company started and what projects Udon might be a part of in their near future. Considering how small their company is, it sounds like they’ve made some really smart decisions and have some nice properties to work with. They came back to the apartment afterwards and we played “show and tell”, trading products and talking about which artists could work well with their products. Very cool.

Proving again how strange my job can be, Brian and I ended up having a frantic series of phone calls to discuss Mayan Numerology and the symbolism of wheat stalks. This is important stuff! We both started laughing at the stupidity of these details that are getting worked into some of the art pieces, and Brian’s promised me that the Savant & Sorcerer book will have a Special Thanks to wheat or something like that.

Throwing a little more on my schedule, it looks like I’m going to be attending the Great Canadian Baycon when I get back from Atlanta. It’s a little convention in Hamilton and wouldn’t normally go, but Pauline from White Wolf’s going and she asked if I wanted to show up as well. It’s a hop, skip and a jump away and figured “what the heck”. I hope it’s fun.

Stayed up until 2am putting final touches on the exam my students will be writing today. Madness. Then my body zapped me awake just after 7am. I currently don’t feel tired at all, but I’m assuming that later today my energy will be drained. Guess we’ll wait and see.

The road trip starts tomorrow… it’ll be tough seeing Gala off. Trying not to let it get to me.