Axioms

If the prospect of being hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully, the prospect of getting eight pages coloured and lettered in that time, after hours only, is at least a pale shadow of that ... so that's my 'lack of focus' problem cured. And if, as the physicists say, time was invented so that everything didn't happen at once, and space so that everything didn't happen to you, they clearly overlooked April 2011, because holy cow, all the things ever OMG. Where were you all in March when I was sunk in a dreadful malaise of feeling useless and unwanted?

Anyway, despite nearly throwing away my flash drive and then having all but one computer in the lab not recognise its existence last night, the comic's nearly done!  Then within the month I shall be seeing Re-Animator: the Musical! It's based on the movie, which bears about as much resemblance to the original stories as Disney's Hunchback does to Victor Hugo's, but come on – The Musical. There will be much snickering. And the timing could not be more hilarious. (see: everything at once.)

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Some goodies dug up from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society in the course of my research –

• Two of my Favourite Things in one sweatshirt, for much personal hilarity!
• Vintage Fonts! I am actually considering buying the CD as there are some dead useful ones not in the free pack. Should've done it before the deadline! Ah well. Maybe for Episode 2. Oh no no don't want to think about episode 2 right now ...
• Old-Timey Documents in PDF ... that's some gorgeous redesign work.

40 Days of Art: How to Cope with Burnout

In a previous entry I mentioned the phenomenon of burnout, and how a professional must soldier on regardless of whether or not they want to do what they're doing. Burnout is, unfortunately, a standard part of every creative profession I know of; creating takes a lot more mental energy and emotional involvement than just putting numbers in boxes, and this can be exhausting. Keep pushing through the exhaustion, and you end up damaging the underlying enthusiasm that kept you going in the first place. Sometimes this leaves you feeling like you've had it, that you can't do this anymore; some people get it so bad that they leave their artistic careers forever and take up forensic accounting or something. Burnouts can range anywhere from 'disinterest' to 'fierce hatred' towards your line of work, and likewise can take varying degrees of effort to overcome. Some are so severe they cannot be overcome. The aim of this post is to keep you from getting to the latter.

There are two important things to remember about burnouts:

1. They are natural
2. They don't have to be permanent

Now, if you're doing this for a living, you can't just throw up your hands and say 'That's it! I can't do any more work, I'm burnt out!' – that is called 'being a temperamental flaky artist,' and they're unlikely to hire you back again. You have to learn to work around, through, and over the burnouts if you're going to make a career of this.

( Some Hints )