The doodles just keep coming, and I haven’t played a video game in nearly 2 months.
I’d be worried if I wasn’t having so much fun.
I’m up to twenty-eight finished sketches at this point. and am aiming for the round hundred before thinking about how to get a colouring book published, whether to go the route of self-publishing, or actually submit it to a publisher (or twelve).
There doesn’t seem to be any stopping them either. Work progresses on Doodle 29 not quite as I type this, obviously, but close enough.
I’m slightly concerned at the length of time the vectoring is taking, and may stick to getting the lines down first, and then moving on to the next. The last finished vector (Orbicular, Coming Soon™) was hard work, and I really was getting a bit sick of it towards the end. So in order to prevent that in future I’ll split lining and colouring up. It means I’ll have more ready for a book sooner as well.
I’ve not had much time to get any admin done in the way of setting up a store, both on here (and possibly Facebook) and through a print on demand provider. This means that while my Instagram (@redmandrill) and Facebook page have been getting updated, I’ve been neglecting this page and actually doing anything to make a bit of money out of this. I feel a bit crass mentioning it, but if I can even make a little more pocket, pin and party money (there’s none at the moment*) then I’m going to do it. As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ll be looking to develop a range of products to suit as many budgets as possible. What would you like to see? Not promising anything, but I will look into all suggestions.
Organisationally I’m beginning to sort out a production process beyond the actual act of producing the doodles and vectors. Once finished those images need to be prepared and formatted for producing canvases, and other printed goods, before I can start putting a store together. This is the bit I’m most easily distracted from, so am laying out a step-by-step process for myself which I will follow until it becomes habit. Then, of course, once orders start (hopefully) coming in, I’ll need to figure out a process for dealing with those. This will depend on which services are used to produce which products. It’s looking like a choice between inkthreadable.co.uk and designbyhumans.com at the moment. If anyone has any experience with either of these, how did you find them?
As I’ve been composing this post I’ve been looking at plugins to display my Instagram and Flicker feeds. Another bit of admin I’ve been neglecting. I should have galleries available either in the sidebar or their own pages/posts soon™. I’m also looking at Ecwid/WooCommerce, as a starting point for a store on this site. If anyone reading this has any experience, tips, or pointers for this eCommerce service/plugin, fee free to pass them on in the comments.
I’ve got a process and workflow in Inkscape pretty nailed down at this point (excepting the adaptation above) and am enjoying doodling on the train to work and for a few minutes with a coffee in the morning (It’s even serving to wean me off Toy Blast, one of those insidious Facebook games/apps). I’m also planning my first A3 pencil work, and have ordered a flexible arm thing for holding my phone so I can stream it on either Instagram, or Facebook. I will probably have to have my headphones on for this however (I need music as I work and I’m not sure of the rules regarding streaming music for this sort of thing) so may not be very talkative.
I’m also beginning to get hints of a world/mythology/cosmology behind these seemingly random forms, shapes and combinations, that I self deprecatingly call doodles. I’m not quite sure what to make of it as yet, but there’s certainly something there, in the dark between the voids…
M out.
