Railroadlion Tracks

I made this to catalogue what I had been reading at the time. I feel like people don't read anymore, so the intro of the zine was meant to be motivational, to get readers (like you!) into more novels.

Hello! I wanted to give an update from last post. Which can be found here

So, a direct update from that aforementioned post, when I said "This is my fun project. Fun I take seriously. I do not want to stress myself out and make deadlines for it and such."

Well, things changed!

Now, I am taking it more seriously. But it hasn't gotten any less fun. Since that post, I completed all the art I said I was missing and I made the Carnageman:IKE Teaser (Check it out below!)

This was a project I made using my new favorite zine ever, Mark Gee's 4 Week Animation Guide. I gave myself a deadline, I passed it, uploaded, and everybody loved it!

If you want to check out the zine I used to make this animation, take a look at the link to it below. I kind of disobeyed a few rules in it (mostly the one about "scope." I believe my animation idea was bigger than what Mark would've said is a good idea haha) but very much worth the ten dollars.

I was very depressed at that time lowkey, scrolling on my phone. I had just been let go from my position at TheOdd1sOut. I was out of work, and I would scroll past so many videos of OCs on instagram with 40k likes, doing the most barebones tween-heavy animations. And it would frustrate me- because I could do that kind of animation in a few days! It wasn't such a big deal!

Which made me think- Domenic- that doesn't make any sense. If you can do this kind of thing, then why get mad?? Just get off your phone and go make one.

Can't you?

Something the great BayBoyZone once told me and that I now personally believe to be true is that there is a distinct effect on artists when we spend too much time looking at/discussing art and not as much time making it. You find yourself critiquing tv shows with friends, discussing artmaking on the internet, judging posts, looking at pinterest etc. and when you don't have a big art project going on- it can make you think weird things. It can give you odd reservations.

A lot of times, when people say awful things on someone's work, including mine, I go to their profile, and there is not much art. It is usually just discussions. Tweets about why they disagree with something glitch is doing. Musings about how they hate certain indie creator choices. Just... text.

I feel bad. It must be hard for them to draw.

After the success of the teaser, I opened up my shop. With ONLY Ike merch, for the first time ever. Which was also a big success and took care of some rent and car payments for me, which totally cushioned the blow of my unemployment. If you were one of those people that supported the shop- thank you.

I am not exaggerating when I say you single-handedly bring more art into the world. Because the store drop fundamentally changed how I felt about this project:

It seemed people liked my animation style, more than they were excited at the idea of a comic. So I decided to go all-in on indie animation. No comics for now. (Maybe one day it will change.)

I am currently making a short film about each main character. 1 minute each.

I put together a small team of volunteers; artists and friends, to get this off the ground. We don't have money, and the videos won't be monetized. (ads on 1 minute videos annoy me) It's going to be like the cartoons of yesteryear on youtube where we just make them because we want to and because it’d be cool. To make something from nothing, with total control and beholden to no one. I hope you continue to support this project, and when the first short film comes out, I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

I do not know how things will change from there. Because I want to focus on what is directly in front of me.

We are on week 5 of 8 for the first short. Things are looking mind blowing. I hope to share animations and progress soon, in a companion journal to this one.

I'm opening comms for a little bit. For 15 bucks I'll draw your furry/creature/monster characters looking like frightened animals you found under a damp log.

If interested, you can fill out This form.

I'll be posting finished commissions to my Side Blog, to keep from cluttering my personal art blog.

Some older examples of commissions!

It's webcomic day! Did you know I have a webcomic?

It's an action comedy cat and mouse murder-y thing with a special twist. Wink. Wink wink.

Ok this post is a long time coming and will probably have companion posts in the future... but i started reading CONAN BOOKS!

My small stint in sword and sorcery got me hooked and now I'm trying to make a more earnest effort. I have also been a huge Frank Frazetta fan all my life, his cover art is so amazing and a huge interest for me. I imagine all the stories in these books as though they were his paintings in my mind. They are all short stories published in pulp magazines in the 20s and 30s. Which is kind of crazy- these stories are a hundred years old. The oldest books I've read for fun by far.

The guy who wrote these was MY age when he did so! And he committed suicide super early in his life (30) because the great depression hit, and he could no longer survive in writing and he just hated doing anything else. He's a Lovecraft contemporary, and actually had a long mail correspondence with him, where they bickered back and forth for years. Their ancient discord dms...

I read three stories so far they each took 2-3 hours to read

He's just SUCH a boy character like I love when guys make up a big buff unstoppable guy character and pit them against bad things. Its something I obviously do with Ike but like, characters like conan or the hulk are sooooo adorable to me. Like they were thought up by someone’s inner child for comfort and adventure and to be this metaphysical limb that they can extend to destroy things that are awful and frustrating. And the fact he sometimes get babes- yes, very cool

Robert E Howard actually really wanted to write ancient Irish warrior stories (his own culture) He loved writing historical fiction more than anything else! But they took him too long to write- if he wanted to do the proper research on them. So his solution was crazy. He MADE UP a fake, alternative history Eurasia continent and then wrote a small book cataloguing it's histories and cultures, added fantasy elements, and then set all of his stories in it… it's called the Hyborean Age. (weirdly enough, Todd Howard actually wanted to set the elder scrolls game in the Hyborean Age, but changed his mind and made his own mythos)

The first Conan story I read was called the black colossus and it's referred to as having the craziest ending of any Conan book and it sure did. It's about this princess who dreams of a black shadow overtaking her kingdom and enslaving her, so she asks her gods if there's anything she can do to stop it. and because gods are real in this setting they literally told her "go out into the street and the first person you walk into will save your kingdom" and she runs into Conan… LOL and he literally holds her up by the arm and hes like "U ARE TOO BEJEWELED AND UR HOOD IS TOO SILKEN 2 BE ON THE STREET!!!! if I listen to you I know for a FACT that this is an ambush and some shitty thieves are gonna kill me" and shes like "no no no i am actually here because my gods told me to do it!" and whats so funny is that Conan IS a barbarian and his culture has shamans so he just goes like "oh omg why didn't you say so" and just immediately believes her LOL I thought it was so funny…

Next I read the #1 most essential story, called "The Tower of the Elephant" and it was INSANE. Instead of the usual "he fights a giant snake" the circumstances of the story end up with Conan at odds with a cosmic and non literal mystery and uhh it was just so crazy. If I were to recommend any Conan story to anyone in a vacuum itd be this one, it just gets so strange.

Here is a link to the story if you would like to read it.

The last story I read is kind of cheating but I read an 80 page comic adaption of a Conan story- "Red Nails" by french artist Didier Cassegrain and it was AMAZING! All dialogue unaltered from the original story. I am not 100 percent into how Conan looks here (idk why hes wearing brown jeans LOL) it was tonally exactly what i like about these… it was about Conan searching for treasure but he ends up getting involved in a race war instead and he's like uhm this is weird.

I am currently trying to lowball some dudes on ebay for this first issue HAHA the cover art is so insanely lustful and awesome yes

Anyways this is secret art of mine but I drew him and Red Sonja. This is how he looks in my mind's eye. Your reward for reading this post