Happy New Year / Studio Journal Entry #5

 It's 5:41 in the morning, I'm trying to shake off the cotton-headed sleepiness, and my Itunes has decided to play an odd mix of Loreena McKennitt and Tenacious D. Odder still is I find I don't really mind.
It may be a belated "Happy New Year" to the rest of you but for me it came over the weekend. No, I don't have a hang over, but I do finally have that feeling of a definitive ending and clear beginning. It's something that I found to be a rare occurance as a Freelancer with jobs, life, and all the stuff on your "to do" list that seems endlessly intertwining. But, this past weekend was wonderfully different.

  I've been working on the Marvel 70th Anniversary card set for the past few months researching, referencing, and rendering 150 Sketch card case incentives. Although I was hoping to get them done by the end of the year, On the whole, this retrospective of a card collection was coming out really good (if I do say so myself) and I didn't want the last few to look rushed. But I finally finished them up and shipped them off this weekend.

 I didn't have a pressing follow-up job that I might have been already late in starting, albeit I was working on putting something together, so this gave me the chance to get to my year end office work.
My computer desperately needed a cleaning and I spent most of one morning and a lunch time filing, burning, transferring, and trashing over 2000 files. Posted here for more on that process.
(would "Bi-annual" mean twice a year or once every 2 years?)

  I then attacked my studio. I had 3 jobs, a bunch of commissions, and about 2-3 months worth of paperwork, convention excess, and piles of reference scattered across every open space, shelf, or floor board available. I spent the rest of the weekend getting most of it organized or put in it's place. I rearranged the room a bit and put up a new handy "within reach" reference book shelf, vacuumed, dusted & Swiffered the whole studio.
      Weekends off are tiring.
  So now I'm sitting here in a perfectly clean and organized space ready to take on the challenges of a new year. That even sound better since some of my caffeine has started kicking in.

  Now being ready to start some new work, amongst the few commissions I will be getting to shortly, I just recently signed on to pencil an issue of Blue Water Productions "Fame:" comics line. It will be based around Kristen Stewart, most notably from the Twilight movies, and I believe will be issue #2. I've already got some script to work with and will start referencing it today.

Here's to a good start for the New Year and I hope yours will be safe and prosperous.

Later
WM

_________________________________________________
Warren Martineck