On Tuesday afternoon I loaded all the files for Zita 2 onto a little thumb drive, stuck the thumb drive in an envelope and, with the help of the good people at UPS, I sent the little thing off to the Flatiron building in New York.
Then I think I smiled a lot.
This book took far longer and was a far greater challenge than I had ever expected it to be. Everyone involved was very patient with me as I worked and reworked the story for months on end. Anna, of course, was the most patient of all. It was pretty intense there at the end, as the deadline loomed and I juggled freelance projects and the herculean task of coloring well over two hundred pages of comic. During the last couple days I couldn’t even put my contact lenses in. I’ve never felt so relieved to have a project wrapped up!
On Wednesday I did something almost unheard of for me: I took a day to just relax. It was a sunny day, so in the morning I had Anna drop me off in Strasburg, which is the town just up the road, and I walked the five miles back home along the railroad tracks (a long walk counts as relaxing if you’ve spent weeks hunched over a Wacom Tablet), my old satchel full of cheap snacks I had picked up at the Dollar Store. The snacks were for my D&D friends. At one point the tracks turned into a bridge crossing the river. I chickened out in crossing the bridge, and instead forded the river, which turned out to be just as fun, if a lot wetter. It was a beautiful day.
I also made a trip to the library and today I’ve been catching up on my reading, recharging my creative batteries, and already I can feel the glimmer of excitement for upcoming projects.
So stay tuned! I’ve been meaning to kick things up a notch around the ol’ blog and I have plenty of art and news, bonus book projects and other fun things to post over the next couple of weeks.
Here's a little image from the book:
