Hello? Is this thing on?

Well it was two months since my last strip in October. It's now February. That makes it six months. Yikes. Not exactly what you'd call regular huh? Well I've been doing even more socialising and hanging out with lots of new friends and I was talking to one of them tonight and mentioned that I used to do a webcomic. She read it and wanted to know what happened next, so I read through them again and I got all fired up about how much I loved doing the strip. They take so damn long to do, especially considering they're not even in colour but I had such a great time and I had loads of strips written.
So basically, consider this time apart as a hiatus, which to be honest, is what I did. I always wanted to continue the strip, so I'm going to start looking into it. I have a long weekend this weekend, although Friday I'm going off on an adventure with a friend and Saturday I'm meeting up with a load of friends in London. That leaves Sunday and Monday to get a new strip done and online. I think I'll start looking into doing prep sketches tomorrow. No promises, but I'll hopefully have something new to show Monday night.
Cheers Y'all

It's been HOW long?

I know. It's been a while since I updated the comic. Well let's not beat around the bush, it's been over two months.
So, reasons. Reasons...
Well let's see, I had a bit of turmoil in my life, I went on holiday with an ex, I was lazy and lastly, I developed something that if you stand across the street and squint, could be mistaken for a social life. Seriously.
I made some new friends and have been hanging out a lot. We've been to an organic food festival, a kite festival, a carnival, a skateboarding fun day, each other's houses for meals and dvd's and out on the razz. It's all very exciting. I also joined a gym, so even on nights where friends are off doing other things, I have something to do on my own which is cool.
It does mean however, that instead of staying in my room alone and drawing, I'm doing the exact opposite, which is great for me but not so great for the comic.
So, by the end of next week I aim to have a new strip up. That doesn't sound like much, but if I can get back into doing one a week I'll be happy. They do take a fair bit of time to do, but I figure I can break them down into drawing, inking, scanning & corrections and finally lettering and balloons. I don't have to do them all at once, so I can do one section per night(ish) and get one done in a week.

And we're back...

Ok, so it took me two weeks, (and one day,) but the latest issue is finally up. It's a double parter too and we finally get to find out what type of animal Alex is.
It would have gone up last night, but for the fact that it was the birthday of an old housemate of mine. I sent him a text to wish him happy birthday as he now lives up north, only to find out he was actually back for the weekend, so drinks were in order. After an evening of drinking, I got home after 1am, slightly worse for wear and decided it was probably best if I didn't work on the comic in that state.
My last post was one of my philosophical ones, albeit with a slightly negative slant, which was brought on by a bad case of the blues, which itself was brought on by my current situation.
Anyway, I'm feeling slightly better and doing the comic had a lot to do with that as I find it really satisfying to complete a strip and see it go up online.
I'm definitely going to carry on with the comic, because there are so many benefits to it: a sense of pride that I get from completing a strip as well as from being proud of sticking with it, the peace I get while drawing it and many others. Really the only downside to drawing the strip is that during inking, my elbows seize up and I have to take regular breaks to unlock them, but it's a small price to pay.
Otherwise, I'm still busy at work and trying to reassemble some form of social life in the wake of my returning to singledom. I'm going back to my martial arts class this week, (missed that for a couple of weeks too,) I've started to lose weight again and generally things are looking like they have an upward vector, even if the gradient isn't too taxing just yet.
Umm... I guess that's it for now. Enjoy the double issue (unless you're Sam, in which case you won't be reading it, but you will be reading this. Hi Sam.).
Bye.

Where's the damn strip?

Sorry there hasn't been a new episode of Exotic Soup for a couple of weeks - I've been ridiculously busy at work. We've been moving premises and I've been responsible for setting up all the IT for the new site. We've bought all new servers so I've had to plan and set up an IT infrastructure from scratch, which is something I've never done before.

The weekend just gone was my first day off in 3 weeks and I've been working long hours, so it's been difficult to find time. In fact the only reason I got a strip online a couple of weeks ago is because I already had it drawn and scanned so I just needed to upload it. I should've done a strip last weekend but I needed the time just to relax and catch up on some sleep!

In addition to this, my girlfriend and I sadly called it a day last week. She has a new job in a different city and between the distance and both our busy schedules it became apparent that we would not be able to spend much time together - if any, for the next 6 months or so, so we decided to just be friends. As far as break ups go, it was all very amicable and we're still good friends so you could call it easy, but break ups are never easy so this last week has been hard.

I promise I'll have one up for this week and we will finally find out what type of animal Alex is! Stay tuned.

A little dinosaur!

As always there are things I'm happy with about this week's strip and things I think I could have done better. For example, I've just remembered that I ruled one of the panel borders too long and didn't fix it in Photoshop. That's going to bug me now but I'm going to leave it as a reminder to tidy up my work for future.
Drawing a strip is a weird kind of process. I start out with the pencils and sometimes leave things a bit rough if I know what I want to do and sometimes tighten the pencils up so I have a definite line to follow while inking. Then you ink it and almost always it comes out a little different than you expected. Sometimes better, sometimes worse and sometimes just different.
Usually the dialogue will change right up to the point where I write it onto the finished panels. If I think something can be said more succinctly or if a line is the slightest bit ambiguous, I'll reword it.
It's a very organic process, much as I hate to use that amazingly pretentious term, but it fits.
Anyway, I have to thank my Mum for the 'little dinosaur' quote regarding Alex, which if you've read the strip over at web comics nation you'll see I have done.
I was going to do a double issue this week, to celebrate getting to double figures, but time was a factor and also because I already have next week's strip drawn, (actually it was the first strip I drew, but more on that next week,) and it looks like I'm going to be working thte next couple of weekends, (I'll be going to work today for a few hours shortly,) so I can just post the strip without having to worry about it this weekend.
I think that's about it for now, time is against me this week.
Enjoy this week's strip - Ka-spoot!

Exotic Soup - the blog...

(For some reason this post refuses to appear in bold, no matter how I edit it...)

Ok, so it's been a while since I posted. Obviously I've been a bit busy - at work, at home and just generally. Mostly I've been working on my webcomic and the accompanying website, listed above.

Previously this blog was just a place to vent my metaphysical spleen, but it was a bit aimless and that's no way to run a blog, dammit!

So, what with the comic being a serious ongoing project of mine, I've decided to post an accompanying blog to the comic, so from now on I'll post once a week, as I do with the comic, although maybe not at the same time, but probably pretty close.
I did get part of the name for the strip from the blog - the 'soup' part sounded great with the word 'Exotic', which at one time was all I could think of for the name of the strip.
So this blog will be mostly about the comic, which is good because I'm keeping to my once a week updates schedule on the comic, (a fact that I am proud of,) so I think I can manage a once a week blog post too, and having the comic as a main topic will give me something to write about if I get stuck.

I may still wander off into topics of personal interest and debate, kind of like Scott Adams, (of Dilbert fame,) does with his, of which I am a regular reader.
By the way, I remember that Scott had a thing set up whereby if anyone mentions his name and the word Dilbert on a blog, it sent a message to his blackberry telling him, so if you're reading this Scott - Hi! I'm a big fan of the blog and cartoons. Please check out my webcomic if you have a couple of minutes spare. There's only 9 strips so far, so it's still in it's infancy and won't take long to read. Thanks.

For anyone else reading this - Hi! Check out the strip! Leave comments on the strip or blog or email me: mike at exotic soup dot co dot uk - I'd love to hear your feedback.

Until next week: Ka-spoot! (If you've read the strips, you'll understand...)

Comics!!!

When I was a kid and adults asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, my answer varied from week to week and depending on who was asking. I guess that's like a lot, if not most kids - one week I wanted to be a policeman, the next an astronaut. At one stage I even wanted to be a footballer!

As I got a bit older I found myself completely bemused by the whole job thing. I remember thinking that there were certain jobs I could see a clear path to - like doctor, lawyer, pharmacist etc. For these types of jobs, you kind of had to have decided by the time you were 10, (or your parents decided for you,) and you had your life mapped out for the next 10 or so years.

That thought scared the hell out of me. I've always been a bit of a 'live in the now' type of person. Planning for the future does not come easy to me, so planning the next 10 years just seemed like lunacy. What if I decide I don't like it half way through? Is all that training and planning wasted? Of course this exact thing happens to many people; they have their career decided for them by their parents at an early age and then half way through they quit and their parents are disappointed and angry because their child has a mind and tastes of its own. Some even finish the training before deciding it's not for them, others still work at it for years before quitting to do something that makes them happy. The most unlucky ones wait for retirement.

Anyway, there seemed to me to be an awful lot of jobs that I'd maybe heard of but didn't know much about, like quantity surveyor, radio DJ, event organiser etc, that I had no idea how you would get into a job like that and these jobs were probably in the majority when you looked at it.

I now believe that a great proportion of people are in the jobs they are in by accident, or if not accident, then one thing led to another and one day they woke up and they were a wedding planner or someone that fixes LED's in aeroplane cockpits or something.

So I was overwhelmed by the possibilities as a child, worried that in all these weird and wonderful sounding professions, there might be one that was perfect for me, but how would I know what it was or how to get into it?

Of course people first ask what you are interested in. "Well, what do you like to do?" they say, "do you like Maths? Be an accountant! Do you like English? Be a teacher? Do you like problem solving? Be an IT technician or engineer!" and so on.

It's funny, but although most young boys profess to want to be a fireman or policeman at some stage, no one ever asks, "Do you like dealing with violent offenders and being abused? Do you like incredibly hot plasma and extinguishing it?"

So by the time it came to do my GCSE's, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had sat in front of the careers teacher a year or so before and told him I was interested in art. He smiled, quite genuinely and told me he liked art too, and had I ever thought about joining the army?

Even at 10 I was resolutely unimpressed with him. I think that the army leaflets were close to hand, or perhaps every boy got an army leaflet that day, (maybe he was on commission,) or maybe he was just a realist and knew that the likelihood of a young boy from the North of England ever making a living from art were somewhat akin to the chances of a hedgehog crossing a 50 lane autobahn filled only with fast lanes containing turbo charged steam rollers.

I once told my stepdad that I wanted to be a cartoonist and got a similar response. Don't get me wrong, I love my stepdad to bits, but he again is a realist and told me I should think about getting a proper job. I'm all for pragmatism, but I'm also for nuturing the hopes of the young, unless they want to get famous from one of those god-awful reality talent shows, in which case, you're on your own.

The two don't have to be mutually exclusive though - many writers and creative people hold down day jobs to be able to afford to live and work on their passions in their spare time.

I did this myself for quite some time when I wanted to be a 3d artist, working in the day, then experimenting with 3d art in the evenings.

So a little while back I remembered my cartooning dreams. Along with my writing and 3d art dreams, they've been going for quite some time. I dug out some old ideas I'd written down for a comic series, and also went through some material I'd written for a sitcom and long story short, I started my comic. After reading 4 books of Liberty Meadows by Frank Cho, (if you are the slightest bit interested in the funnies, pick them up,) I decided on simple, 4 panel strips. I could tell a short gag, or else have a running story over several strips, but most of all I could handle drawing 4 panels. Not a whole graphic novel that sounds like a great idea but you get bored of after only roughing out the first page, but just 4 little panels.
I liked the snappy pacing - obviously I can have more than 4 panels or less or whatever, but 4 works well for most things and it forces you into the realms of brevity, which of course, is the soul of wit.
So, I get to write, (I think I've got about 20 or more strips written so far,) and draw, and try to be funny, which is something else I enjoy.

The web has allowed me a home for my new opus, called Exotic Soup, (keeping the soup element of this blog,) on webcomicsnation.com, which is a great little site that has everything in place, including RSS feeds, email lists... blah blah. I'm proud to say that despite my tendency to not follow ideas through to completion, I now have 3 episodes online! Hit the link to see them.

Who knows, I may end up earning my living as a cartoonist yet.