Cryptopia - Page #001 re-draw w/ feedback from @catapanoart!

Late night post from the east coast, Steemit. It’s my last night here in Pennsylvania before leaving for NYC tomorrow morning. Lots to do. I have three shoots in two days. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be shooting my close friend, Miss Violet Vixen. The next morning, I have a serendipitous shoot with a model I have’t worked with since 2015 named Molly Morrison; absolute bombshell blonde from Texas. Can’t wait for that! Lastly, Tuesday afternoon, I’ll be shooting NY model and female tattoo artist, Alisha Gory for my upcoming book, Dark Pinup. There’s a lot of pieces that still have to fall in to place in the next 72 hours, but everything will work out. It always does.

I had an eventful day. Our family went kayaking on the Susquehanna river. It didn’t unfold like any one had planned […or hoped]. The long form version of our kayak trip I’ll leave for @vermillionfox and @guthrie to explain since they have the photos and videos to accompany the story. @guthrie was experiencing crippling anxiety over the tiniest of dragonflies landing in his personal bubble. This eventually lead to him crying, which in turn lead to @bonni crying, which lead my stepfather to up-end his kayak and fall in, which finally resulted in me jumping in the water to help him back up. That chain of events ended with me realizing my phone was still in my pocket, which is now…dead.

I’ll be stopping at the Lehigh Valley Apple Store at 10:00a.m. on my way to NYC, and all things going well, I should be back in business before my first shoot. Seriously, I am expressing the deepest appreciations to everyone that follows me, reliability votes for the crap I post here, and the entire Steemit team for making this place a reality. I can promise you, pre-Steemit, this would have been a debilitating situation for me on the road. I know this, because it’s happened. I’ve been left penniless and phoneless in LA, not being able to communicate with clients or get to shoots. Today, as much as it sucks to do when STEEM is down, I was still able to move 200.000 STEEM through @blocktrades and have the funds I need to buy a replacement. These are the real world examples of how Steemit has drastically improved my life. Thank you!

Today’s art is a redraw from page one of my Cryptopia comic, inspired by Steemit. I posted this page originally a few weeks ago. A crazy talented, professional comic book artist named @catapanoart commented on the page, left some great feedback, and graciously offered some suggestions to improve the composition. Constructive criticism is dicey with some artists, but I always welcome it, especially from someone as skilled and experienced as @catapanoart. He gave me some clear direction on how to improve the page design. I took it to heart and thought about how I could implement those suggestions.

It took a few weeks to carve out the time. I tried cutting and moving around elements in Procreate, but ultimately, I decided it just needed to be re-drawn. That’s a scary thing to undertake. People at this distance are a weak spot for me in comics, as are backgrounds. The new drawing would need a lot of attention on both, but I decided to go for it. The perspective an background building improvements have given so much more depth to the top panel, and the shadows on the inside of the casket are going to leave an eerie exclamation of the dried face of the body within. I can already see how this is going to look inked.

I’m much happier with this first page, but I really have to thank @catapanoart and Steemit for bringing artists together and hosting such a positive community for us to help one another. Thanks for reading. I post daily. For more comics, illustration, photography and thoughts on the dangerous of kayaking, follow me @kommienezuspadt!