Jeremy Wins Life

God I love when life and internet go hand in hand. Because today I handed out a comic book to fabulous people and now the cover is here online! Isn’t it the craziest thing? For those who picked up a comic today, thank you for coming and visiting my website. It is in very early stages so I am glad to have you here being the first to join the ride. There are many things out there in the media where I wish i can say I was one of the firsts to experience, like when the Watchmen comics came out, or when comedians like Steve Martin first started doing comedy. How cool would it have been to go to a Rolling Stones concert back in the day? What is this generation’s firsts? I think we were the first to start freaking in high school dances. With age, we’ll come to see what we were first a part of. Pixar films, Barack Obama, and yes, the snuggie. And one more great thing: Headlines & Punchlines.

The Conquerors of Comedy are having a show this week to welcome in the New Year! Come out on January 10 @ 8PM to see stand up, sketches, and some of the greatest impersonations in Savannah. Seriously, it’s hilarious.

I’ll be performing a great set and presenting comedy illustrations. Also, there will be guest appearances by “Gilbert Gottfried” and “Stan Lee” (Or at least our mockery of them). Come to the show at LiveWire Music Hall and receive a FREE Comic Book written and illustrated by me. Hilariously, it’s serious.

And hey, shoot me an email if you liked the comic. If you can’t make it to the show and would like to see a performance around SCAD, email me about that too! My email is jeremywinsagain@gmail.com

Extra stuff:
Look at that flier above and see how much of an idiot I am. Apparently, Adobe has this online photoshop program that you can use from any computer to make some minor changes to an image. I don’t have photoshop on the computer I’m typing from, so I use this thing, and it’s quite limited to what you can do. Still though, very handy, if I wasn’t such a dork with all these mistakes. Lame!

Head on over to Versus Jeremy to see the battle at hand. It rages like a fire in California.

I added some work from this past quarter onto the portfolio page. Check em out!

So what do you do on a four day weekend? I personally do not take advantage of it. I’m the kind of guy who likes to make plans and never follow through with them (that is a pull quote from my ex-girlfriend). Am I missing out on something? Nope. I’m missing out on everything.

Should an artist have a set style?
I was recently uploading my comics to the site and it gave me a chance to look at my old stuff. It doesn’t make me cringe like some old artwork does for creators. But it does make me reflect. It’s pretty amazing how much I’ve grown from my days in high school to where I am at now in college. And its only been 5 years. It makes me hopeful to where I will be at 5 years from now. But I began thinking to myself, I’m not sure if I have a set style. Some of my colleagues have distinct voices and unique looks and their work is to be awed upon. Beautiful stuff.

I’m also unsure whether to feature work of different styles, or should I be displaying only unified pieces? Freelance illustrators usually have to have a certain style so that editors from magazines and newspapers can see what kind of personality they can bring to an article. But I don’t have a fully realized voice. And I don’t want to be locked down into a certain style either. But I do want to have some sort of visual style that people can recognize me by. See the dilemma I face?

By showing off diverse works, I’m not showing that I have a locked down style. But I believe it shows that I am an artist. And I think an artist should always be changing, trying new things out, and not always being locked down into a certain style. The industry hinders art sometimes, because there are those expectations. It would be weird to read a comic book like Scott Pilgrim if it was drawn like the latest issue of Spider-man. But if it were his decision to draw it like a superhero comic all of a sudden, it would be very tough for the audience to embrace. Experimentation will have to be left to the artist to try out in a different venue, maybe within a new comic or side project. But even then, if a new comic were to launch, would the artist style have to look like his previous book? What if after doing All Star Batman & Robin, Jim Lee wanted to venture into the realm of shoujo manga? Should he be stopped? Should we support it? Which also leads to the question, how much of us are fans of the artist, and how much of us are fans of their style?

I follow the advice of character designer Stephen Silver, most notable for designing Kim Possible and Clerks Animated characters. Though he is known for that work, he has a diverse range of styles and nevers bogs himself down to one distinct look, and that in itself gives him his own style. Being able to adapt to a project seems like the best way to go, because I don’t know which field of comics I may end up in. I may do some X-men, or Archie. I could do some faux-manga for Viz, or do cover illustrations like James Jean. So I’m going to try and stay open, take in all kinds of art I can, and one day I’ll have the voice I’ve always wanted.

I’ve had debates with friends and colleagues over how the internet can the computer can change comics. We never really found a way that comics could be different from its print counterparts.

I stumbled upon something that proves me wrong. Here is an experimental comic where timing and experience could never be felt in a print comic the same way. Man and I never even considered this as an option. I really hope to see more to come in the digital age of comics.