ULTRAIST STUDIOS

Grant Morrison quote:

“I’ve been reading about the scientific theory of emergence, which is basically that if you get a bunch of simple things together, and you get enough of them, they start to form something complex. Like, a single sponge cell is completely stupid, but a bunch of sponge cells can actually do stuff, move around, eat, keep themselves going. So, I was applying this theory to writing. Because, we’ve all heard the story about how writers talk about they get to a point in the story when it gets so involved and the story and the characters seem to take over. And as a writer I can say that actually happens, there’s a moment when the story takes over and you’re kind of forced into making choices that you may’ve not made otherwise. So I like the idea that there’s maybe actually something going on here that had to do with emergence, that you can make the story complex enough that the story almost begins to compute for itself, and start to think for itself.” *

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As we get into the final stretch of SPY GUY #1, we present to you The Dead Kennedys with a little bit of inspirational music:

I Spy
Dead Kennedys

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John Romita Jr quote:

“I’m a fan of several different artists.  Leinil Yu and David Finch and Bryan Hitch. Those three guys I get their books and I keep them near by my desk and I look at what they do.  They’re a breath of fresh air in the industry.  I still keep Jim Lee’s work and both of the Kubert brothers work around.  Now what I mean by ‘keep around’ is … there are moments when I wake up on a monday morning and I’m not in the greatest working mode, and that’s true of anybody.  So what I do is I pick through and look through some of the other guy’s work and see how much ambition they put in theirs.  AND THEN (and you’re going to think I’m out of my fricken mind) I go to message boards and have people send me links to all of my critics (not all, but the people who hate my stuff) and I read the poison that is e-mailed to the message board and it inspires me.  So between the young studs that are really really good and the banannas that hate my guts online, it gets me in the mood to work.  And if THAT doesn’t work, I open up my mortgage payment bills everymonth, and that REALLY inspires me.” *

Mark Millar quote:

“Johnny’s got the best work ethic that I’ve ever seen in my life – even outside of comics. I’ve never seen anyone who works as hard as Johnny. He gets up at like 5 am, and does an hour in the gym, and just starts drawing. He’s like a comics drawing machine – he can turn a full issue around in a week, and it’s better than anyone else. Rumor has that he did one issue of Spider-Man in four days one time. There’s no one like him – he’s Marvel’s greatest asset.” *

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Shane Glines quote:

“It just got to the point where I got really fed up with it, and I just decided that I don’t want to go through this anymore. It got to a point where I just did not enjoy drawing. And to me that was just tragic because that was the one thing in my life that I could always depend on… you know, that I loved, and it brought me pleasure, and all of a sudden it’s causing me so much pain that I was thinking of changing my career and just going to work for a gas station.

I really worked hard, I did everything from reading Tony Robbins books, to reading books about NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming, trying to figure out what the Hell is going on in my brain, why have I linked so much pain to this to the point where I can’t even start working?

I’d sit down to draw, and I’d put all this pressure on me, that, you know… you can imagine, to sit down and create in that mindset is just impossible. So I just really worked hard to sort of get back to figuring out what I enjoyed about it when I first started drawing to please myself.

And being a lot more organized as far as my schedule and every night I’d sit down with my notebook and I’d plan out what I’m gonna work on the next day, and you know, just try to become more professional.” *

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Seth book title:

“It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken” *

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Many years ago I envisioned the transitioning from a career in animation to a career self-publishing comics.

In animation wage-slavery, there is fairly decent upfront money, only you’re living hand to mouth where the fruits of your labour are owned by your wage-slave-masters.  The most obvious dilemma was that there is no up front money in making your own comic (and potentially no money off the back end either pending public opinion).

My solution to this dilemma:  You start with 10 percent of your time commited to making your comic, and 90 percent of your time earning a slave-wage.  As you begin making progress with your personal work, you can begin the transitional process.  You up the comic time to 30 percent, and then 50 percent, and then 70 percent, and so on until you reach 100 percent.

It’s easy to talk conceptual.  But breaking the mind out of the control matrix and diving off the deep end is hard.

This is where I have been stuck, in the 10 – 90 ratio.

During a “Brain Trust” brainstorm last month, Matt Campbell said:  “There is a source that has unlimited resources.  It’s like an ocean; you can draw a thimble of resources from it every year, or 10,000 gallons every day.  It makes no difference to this source because it has an infinite amount.  It’s the same source that makes planets and solar systems.  All it asks first is that you eliminate fear, judgmental constructs, to be kind, to have love and to be in tune with your surroundings.  It will make everything easy (and make all the wrong choices really really difficult).”

Which made me think how the Bible says something similar in Luke 12:  “Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”

2009 will be an ultimate experiment in proving all these theories.

After almost a decade of thinking about this, it appears that 2009 is the year I’ll finally begin to make the plunge.

A change in this years day job will free up a good 30 percent more time for comic making.  However that 30 percent gained in temporal currency is also 30 percent lost in slave-wages, so suddenly the comic work that used to be extracurricular now has to start pulling some weight.  It has graduated to something more than just a hobby.

I get the feeling that the Rubicon is being crossed… and it’s exhilarating.

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It’s that time of year where we celebrate the birth of Jesus, by gluttoning ourselves with crass consumerism, indulging ourselves with all our material wants, and indebting ourselves further to the global financial institutions that wish to enslave us.

So cuddle up by the fire, throw the holiday classic DIE HARD in the DVD and enjoy, as we wish you a very

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

FROM

Listen to a Weird Al Christmas Carol:

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1 comment

Wow. December. Already.
November turned out to be a bust for blogging.

But that’s okay. ‘Cause I’ve been busy.

Here are some of last months happenings:

Trampoline Hall
October 22

My brother and I were invited to a gathering at Fort York where we acted as Comic Steinographers.

Click for reverse angle.

Our efforts were printed and the book debutted at CanZine.

Contributor list:

Reverend Altor
Roxanne Bieskis
Arthur Dela Cruz
Shannon Gerard
Kathryn and Stuart Immonen
Eric Kim
Blair Kitchen
Dave Lapp
Steve Manale
John Martz
Brian McLachlan
Diana Tamblyn
Sean Daniel Byron Craig
Becky Johnson

… and myself.

Indy Spinner Rack
November 08
The fine folks and Indy Spinner Rack gave SPY GUY a plug in their SPX recap.

With such memorable quotes as… “we have this one, we didn’t have the second one, and I haven’t had a chance to read them… but I WILL read them” and “here we go… ultra… is…. ultra…. ultrai… ultra eye studio… geeze man, I’m drunk.” and “BLAIR was super nice”.

Listen to the snippet below. Or listen to the whole thing here.

They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Seriously though, thanks for the plug guys… especially Mister Phil (who actually managed to get “ultraist” right).

Hollywood Hero Con

Blair spilled the beans more than I was going to here, so if you want the full story check out possumpress.

In preparation for the Hero Con show, I also created the mockup cover for SPY GUY#1 and had some nice banners and cutouts created. With any luck, all that stuff is currently in transit back to the Ultraist Studios HQ.

Computer Fixed

The Ultraist Studios Portable Computer had to go in for some repairs and is now slowly getting back to operational status.

SPY GUY Webcomic

I’ve been sitting on this next strip for almost 2 months now. Just never seem to have the time to get it net ready. However there have been some requests to get that strip moving again, so that has been bumped up a notch on the things to do list.

Blog Journal Fodder

Over the past year, there have been a number of articles that I have typed up, and never posted. I had debated between posting them or just letting them die. But I figure they’ve been started anyway – so I might as well post the things. I’ve been especially wanting to kick start that Archeology Project again… a few of those are ready to go.

T-Shirts

Another residual project from the Hero Con show was the Ultraist T-Shirt that I’ve been meaning to make for the past 2 years. Well, the prototype is is done. Now it’s just a matter of ordering a box of black t-shirts and busting out that silk-screen kit.

SPY GUY #1

Trying to get page 5 done this weekend.
Hence the hack job of a blog journal post.
The above will get filled in over the course of the week.
So check back for pics, and audio, and proper grammar.

At My Job
Dead Kennedys

Now with video.

The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin is a book I heavily referenced for my next comic, Spud & Harry.

It discusses the The Federal Reserve System, Fractional reserve banking, fiat money and precious metals, etc. One of the best reads I’ve had on the subject.

From Amazon: This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It’s all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Creature from Jekyll Island will change the way you view the world, politics, and money. Your world view will definitely change.

Here is an mp3 lecture with the author G. Edward Griffin. <172mb version>

Here is an mp3 radio interview with the author G. Edward Griffin.

In some cases, the audio quality is quite poor, however once you become immersed in the subject matter, you won’t even notice…