A Necropolis layout from last year. I still work on Necropolis here and there, but anytime I start to pick up the thread, to find my way, the job pulls me out again. The struggle of making television has demanded almost all of my time since July 2020.
Getting to make cartoons with so many talented people has been a huge, all-consuming privilege. It's taken me five years on the job just to get my legs under me, just to begin to feel that I know what I'm doing. It's taken everything I have just to keep my head above water, to get something resembling our crew's talent and effort and intention onto the screen. For that entire half-decade I have longed to make comics, to write stories for myself, to draw for myself. But there was always something that needed doing.
Recently I've realized that denying that part of myself, telling it to wait its turn through one more script revision, one more review, one more retake, one more episode, one more season--it's taken a toll that I can no longer afford to pay. I don't think I can keep going unless I take some time to write and draw and explore outside of the studio production system. As we fight through post on the third season of My Adventures With Superman and start writing the first season of Lantern, I'm looking for ways to work and lead that will get me some of that time back--and my teams are really coming through for me.
But even if I can find that time, I still need to decide how to spend it, and where to put the things I make. I need a place away from the urgency and deadlines and pressure of the studio. Tumblr has always had the best community, is where I've always been the most comfortable, so I'm gonna start here. I will cross-post some of what I do here to other, more hellish parts of the internet, but this is going to be home for a while.
I hope that those of you who never left don't mind me coming back. I hope that those of you who've nested here in the meantime don't mind some new-type Oldtype showing up. I just want a place to be myself, instead of another dusty piece of production equipment.
Thanks,
Jake
Reblogging this here. A lot of folks on this and other platforms ask if I'm still working on Necropolis. I am (see above), but what started as a short-term, long-shot tv development project has become four seasons of television, now spread across two series and five years of my life.
I have been entirely subsumed by the job. But I'm trying to reconstitute myself.
I haven't and won't quit Necropolis, but before I can fully reengage it, I have to find my way back to making things that aren't studio television. Once that's done, I need to determine the correct angle of approach for Necropolis, specifically. And all that is just going to take time.
If you still care, thank you so much. Sincerely. I hope I'm able to continue (and eventually finish!) this story while you still do. I really like making this comic for you all. I would really like to see it done.
-Jake