Scrapbook!

© 2013-2017 Khaled Abou Alfa.

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There's something to be said about Zaha Hadid's forms. I remember the design of this Pavillion happening in the office. Holds up years after it was done as something fresh, exciting and new.

And is currently the inspiration of a station on Moon Racket! Stay tuned explorers!

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Yes, that's a bunch of planets. Many more coming through the next few weeks I'm sure.

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On a bit of a Zaha Hadid fix at the moment. Never actually worked on a Zaha project, which is a shame as along with Calatrava they're my favourite contemporary architects and going to fit right into Moon Racket!

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So just collecting tires and buggy styles for reference.

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Some buggy inspiration for Corgan and Alfie's ride on the moon.

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Clearly domes are the right thing to dot around the Moon Racket! landscape.

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1960s prefab house - This gives the look and feel I'm looking for (except for the ancient looking stove/cooker). It's down to the curves, colours and the windows.

[spaceagebohemia]

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Those domes (or something very similar to them) would work amazingly on the moon.

[spaceagebohemia]

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The chair and table definitely give the feel I'm looking for. The wooden panels, not so much.

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Giving Up

I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but somewhere along the way, I just gave up creating and giving a shit about creating for the internet. I gave up following comic books in a semi-religious manner. I gave up playing basketball every single week. I gave up watching movies regularly. I gave up writing to my various website.

My aim has always been to create a small library of stories that I've written and drawn that are available in a multitude of formats (from digital to paperbacks and hardcovers). It's a reasonably modest aim, but with the option of becoming greater depending on scale.

Do I think that this library of stories will provide me with a living? Probably not, unless I have some serious success somewhere and hit on the zeitgeist in a way that I can neither predict nor anticipate. So I'll be content to having a series of books with my name on the spine and that finally put to paper the ideas in my head.

Little strokes fell great oaks

I'm clear that for the time being I will not have hours and hours to my name. I can however carve 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening and effectively do 2 pomodoros. High burst sets of 30 minutes pieces of work. That's 7 hours a week. That's 364 hours a year. If I spend 10 hours per page that equates to 36.4 pages of story and art. If I manage to do a page of art a week, then I'll be able to do around 50 pages a year. The size of a European album.

The numbers don't lie. It all starts with 2 pomodoros every single day. The issue however is life getting in the way. Sometimes you're extremely tired. Sometimes the boy doesn't sleep. Sometimes I have a business trip or I'm not feeling up for it. This is only natural. The difficulty is finding a way to get back into the routine. Routines are hard won and easily lost.

Deadlines

The last piece of the puzzle. I have about 8 projects that are not really linked with each other floating at different stages of development. I need to stop the braincrack from spreading and destroying my flow.

So I'll be dedicating 1 year to any of these projects. That gives them enough time to mature. Of course if I'm close to finishing any of the projects then I'll continue till I finish, but if I'm completely off, then that one gets parked and I move onto the next one.

So as a way to keep track, 2015 was mainly Moon Racket! and will extend to the end of 2016. After 2016, I will stop work on this series (unless it's exploded) and then move onto the next project.

This all begins tomorrow morning - I'll be back regularly to discuss progress.

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2016

5 months. That's a really long time between updates. The truth is that I was creating things until at least the very end of september, it just so happened that I wasn't really in the mood to talk about them.

The main reason for the radio silence over the autumn and start of winter is down to the fact that I'm relocating to Dubai. That's been a huge drain on all of my 'free' time and drawing and creating has been relegated to the too difficult to deal with drawer.

I have decided to take this time to reflect on what I want to do with my creative output once things have settled down a little bit more.

Moon Racket!

I've got 10-15 new strips of Moon Racket! to publish and then I'd like to stick to the routine of publishing something new to Moon Racket! at least once a week for the entire year of 2016. Obviously I'll likely fail, but I want to at least try.

The main focus moving forward will be to improve the strip with actual backgrounds. I'm painfully aware at the general lack of backgrounds and environment that is missing (or at least that could be better defined than right now).

However I won't be publishing 4 panel strips. It's not how my brain works. Rather I'll be writing stories that will take up several panels, maybe entire pages with these characters in them. I have the first story roughed out, so just need to get cracking.

Chroma

The real push in 2016 will be for me to finally draw and start publishing Chroma. This is a very long time coming and I feel that if I don't do it now, I'll likely never do it. After multiple attempts at starting this project, I'm now of the mind that it's better to get it out there, in whatever form it comes, rather than trying to get it perfect from day one. It will never be that so I should stop worrying about it.

Creative Output

If I'm able to publish 1 page a month of Chroma and the weekly Moon Racket! page, then 2016 is likely going to be a MONSTER year . I'm fully aware that this is an ambitious programme for me (considering what goes into moving to a city like Dubai), but this is work that I'll be carrying out first thing in the morning. The intention is to carry out 1-2 hours of creative output a day, every day, every morning.

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Woz Character Sheet.

[mrarchive]

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I just published the first full colour Moon Racket! strip, Taking a Minute. I'll be getting into my overall setup at some point, but this is a decided shift from me as I have until now published only in black and white.

This is not a sign that I no longer believe in black & white, but maybe rather the strip is better served on the internet with a splash of colour - I'll report on whether that theory holds water after a few of these have gone out, but my feeling is that this small change will make a noticable difference.

As this is still the first one, like with most strips, there will be an evolution of the colour art as I get more comfortable with the process and try different ideas.The only downside, is that the Moon Racket! website will now have to be tweaked slightly to capture this colour palette (which is slightly different from previous iterations of colour that I've used in promo art).

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I know it's been a while, but I've been working my ass off at the moment, putting finishing touches on a range of items. One of the things I'm currently working on is the coloured version of the characters.

One of the comments that's been made to me is that the black and white version of the strip is holding back potential readers. Some just are not all that into glorious black & white comic art - it feels, unfinished. This week's strip will be an experiment to see whether or not that really is the case.

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Moon Racket! on Medium

I’ve decided to use Medium as an additional platform from which I publish the new season of my comic, Moon Racket! Multiple factors coalesced to make this decision.

In the past I have used 3 different platforms to publish and distribute my comic strip:

The official website, hosted on Tumblr

The newsletter, powered by Tinyletter

Tapastic (at least in the first season).

Moving forward I’ll be publishing on Medium, Moon Racket! and through the newsletter. So what brought about this change? To answer that question, I think I should answer another question, how have the other platforms been faring?

The truth is that each of the above platforms provided very specific (detrimental) restrictions on the artwork itself, but also allowed for a potentially wider distribution. The problem is that this wider distribution never manifested itself in a meaningful way.

Tumblr

Moon Racket! is hosted on Tumblr, a platform usually suited for rectangular posts that fit within the stream that is present for eveyone. The restrictions on images are therefore made to suit their platform. The maximum size of image that can be posted is one that is 1200px wide. On a retina screen that’s the equivalent of a 600px image. The effect of this restriction is that my comic always appears blurry.

While this is a nitpick, for a perfectionist like myself, it’s a deal breaker.

Newsletter

If I thought that Tumblr provided restrictions, then I was in for a rude awakening with my newsletter experience. This one can only be typically shown in a 600px wide image, otherwise it will break most inboxes.

My experience with Tinyletter has been mixed. But ultimately my question for a beautiful experience was wrecked by that platform’s constraints. In mitigate I’ve moved things over to Mailchimp, which I’m hoping will offer better options and experience.

Even then, I’m still not showcasing the art in the best possible way.

Tapastic

This platform holds promise, but once again there are size restrictions to the images that can be uploaded. While the platform as a whole does allow for a plethora of things aimed at comic content creators, I don’t believe that I would be able to reap many (any?) of those benefits.

It’s also being lost in the sea that is being published there. Some of which is aimed at a very different audience.

Which brings me to Medium.

The editor provided on Medium is without question the best editor on the internet, have tried a very large number of them.

The other instant win for Medium is how the platform chooses to deal with images. They’re not just first class citizens, they are allowed to exist in a manner that makes them shine. In fact the more I write about this, the more convinced I am of what an idiot I am for not considering this platform earlier.

The biggest question I have is whether I can connect with an audience for an all ages comic strip about a robot (Corgan) and his worm friend (Alfie) that live on the moon, that’s made of cheese on Medium.

That’s a journey I’m happy to take, because if nothing else I’ll take it in style.

[mrarchive]

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I'm super excited to announce that the first installment of my web comic (now in it's second season) Moon Racket! is finally online after months of careful beavering behind the scenes.

To overcome the issues I described previously with regards to Tumblr and image size limitations for Retina screens, for those with an awesome screen you can check out the Retina Version.

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From the Desk #2

I got a bunch of Shinhan Art pens last week. I was so excited to use them that this little image popped out in a matter of minutes. One of the most encouraging things about sticking with a bunch of characters is watching their evolution happen before your eyes. There is a confidence that I'm aware of and actually really enjoying experiencing at the moment. I just wish I could do this more regularly.