When one looks at the year past and the year coming, it's hard to get a full grip on the enormity of life. For my family and I, it has been on the whole a wonderful year. Life wouldn't be life without the daily trials and stresses that sometimes threaten to take up all of my attention until I step back for a moment and reflect; we're healthy, we have a warm roof, food, clothes, healthy babies, and feel safe. We are blessed.
This has been my first full year back as a freelance artist and I'm a happy man. Blog-wise it hasn't been all that good as everything I've designed, drawn and animated this year is not mine to divulge, which doesn't bother me one bit, it just means that if I'm to blog about my animation and art, I need to dig out old stuff or do some personal stuff on the side, or just remain mute. On the whole, I've been mute, but that ought to change soon, and I'll be blabbing on a regular basis about animation this and that for some time to come. What's changed? Well, the house we live in and have been slowly remodeling over the past two-and-a-half years is nearly done. (Woo-hoo!) When I haven't been animating (or the stuff that goes along with animating) I've been staining, trimming, installing, painting, cleaning, unboxing, etc... That combined with a pregnant wife (who really wanted to help, but physically couldn't and I wouldn't let her anyway...) a rambunctious three-year old daughter who really wanted to help, but physically couldn't and "pretend help" only satisfied her to a certain point left little time for the fun pass-time of blogging and posting art. My goal has been to have something coherent to say about a certain artistic point on this or that and hopefully get a conversation going with those that might happen to read (and might actually care) about something I've said.
So, now that my wife is no longer pregnant (our new daughter was born on November 13th this year - babies take a lot of time as well, it turns out) the house is as good as done, and the three-year old is almost four (and is now actually helpful) I'm anticipating being able to post on a more regular basis. In addition to everything else, I've ventured forth and am working on a web comic that I've gone live with over at my new site, www.kmcnutt.com. I'm not sure how that whole thing is going to work out, but I think at least I'll have a bit of fun in the attempt. I'm also wondering about moving my whole blog over that-a-way... blogger has been very good to me, but I'm finding that I need a bit more flexibility in the look of things... who knows - it may be another year before I ever get around to that.
On the topic of the web comic, I think I just might pick up "How to Make Webcomics" by Scott Kurtz, Kristofer Straub and Dave Kellett.
Above all, I have to tell you about Michael Jantze's "The Norm" - Jantze moved from newspaper syndication to online distribution and has changed the common perception of how a comic can tell a story. If you're not reading it, you probably should!
So - here's wishing you and yours a most Happy New Year. Thanks for reading, I hope you'll stop by now and then in the new year, and above all, I'd love to hear from you.
Good Luck,
Kelly McNutt
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