"The Fundraiser For Computer Equipment Advancement" Studio Journal Entry #6

"The Fundraiser For Computer Equipment Advancement" 

 This isn't a national telethon or anything, it's just a small campaign to get new computer equipment to an individual freelance artist. (that would be me) As my system has really been showing it's age and limitations as of late and I'm finding myself doing and planning on doing more and more digital tomfoolery, it's turning into a necessity to do a decent upgrade.

 So, I've scheduled in some massive overtime, pulled a lot of hard to find items out of storage, started putting them up on Ebay, and plan on opening up for commissions as soon as I get all my Artist's Proof sketches completed. I also have plans to open up a For Sale page here on my website and will post when I get to that.

For now, I'll just keep plugging away at the drawing table and post a pic of this little Spider-Man 97 Sketchagragh of Spidey vs Venom I have up on Ebay. 

Heres an advanced thank you for anyone helping me out with this.

Later

WM

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Warren Martineck

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

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Warren Martineck

Studio Journal Entry #4: The Computer Backup.

Consider this a reminder!

For anyone that owns a computer, this is one of the most important things you need to do. It's amazing how many stories I hear of people losing all their work, images, files, and everything they had on their computer when it finally decides, (usually without warning) to process it's last megabyte of data and dies a most inconvenient death.

This is one of the worst things that can happen and is a real bitch to deal with afterward. Not counting the delays and $ it will cost, there are already enough things we need to stress out over in a work week.

What I do is give my computers a great big overhaul twice a year. Once in June and once at the end of the year. I go through all my files, organize and/or trash anything not needed anymore and clear the desktop too.

Then I go in and Burn a few back-up DVD's worth of files and images and anything else to have a hard copy and throw it in the safe. I'll then go back in and trash anything else I can, especially large image files. Anything you can do to give your computer a chance to breath and run a little easier is a good thing in my book.

Along with the twice a year cleaning, I also have an external hard drive and regularly (2 or 3 times a week) back up the hard drive. Now with Macs, which is what I have, it's stupid easy with Time Machine. Just turn on the External, the computer does all the work, and your done. So if anything happens between the biannual cleaning, your still covered.

I highly recommend this before it's too late.

Being that time of year again, I'll be doing my computer sometime this week. Can't wait to fill up my trash.

Also, please post any tips or good habits that you have and can add to these!

Later

WM

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Warren Martineck

Studio Journal Entry #3: Somewhere To Put My $#!T.

     I have a very happy studio right now. After a very long backorder and wait, my new filing system is in and working it's magik mojo.  It started with a trip to Sears with a mission in mind and a tape measure in hand and now I have very little in the way of "piles of crap" to step over. 

  Yes thats a Craftsman tool chest with all my frequently used art supplies and all my pads ands paper. Who needs to spend gads of cash on specialty flat files, when for half the price and twice the coolness, you can roll one of these babies around your office. 

  Due to the size of comic pages, I really wanted this specific one because of it's dimensions. Now I've got a nice safe place to store all my originals with easy access to everything I need.    

Highly recommended.

Well that was too long between posts. Holidays and all that work stuff, blah blah blah. 

Later

WM

Studio Journal Entry #2: Back To The Drawing Board

I took a 3 day weekend to work on the Studio and pretty much wiped myself out doing so, but it's done. Made a few trips to Home Depot, Staples, and my neighbors house up the street to raid his workshop for supplies and any tools I didn't have. 

 I redid the flooring, the sub-flooring, finished the trim work, patched up some drywall areas, and even repainted the entire room. I returned all the Comic boxes and reworked the layout of the room. One of the problems about the old layout was I had a computer station separate from my drawing table and I found myself doing the up and down back and forth thing constantly when I'm referencing something or just needing the computer while I worked. A big waste of time. So I got rid of one of the two chairs and reconfigured the table and desk into one cohesive station. It's like a really cool drawing cockpit. Only one setback... the drawing table I was using, which was the one I had when I was in school back in the early 90's, decided to finally die in the moving process and let go of some of it's welds. "Well. I guess it was time for that new Drawing Table after all." 

 So here was my chance to make that drawing table I've always wanted. I broke down an old Dinning room table, used the top and the legs, made a few trips back to Home Depot, reworked it and used some cool hardware here and there. I added some features that I've been thinking about for awhile and just about finished it up Monday night. There are only some minor details on the room I need to finish up and some spaces left on the wall for some new pictures, but over all I'm really please with the way it came out. 

 Now that I'm 3 days behind schedule, I guess it's time to get back to work and try out the new digs. I'm so excited.

Now that's a Drawing Table.

Later

WM