Still Alive and looking Forwards
I don't believe I have written anything on here for at least two years. It has certainly been a while in any event.
First off, whilst I did stop posting art on this site I didn't strictly leave. I tend to click onto DeviantArt twice a day in the morning and evening to see what things have been posted by the artists that I follow. If I like something, I add it to the 'Favorites' and clear anything else from my feed. I also try to respond to the odd occasional message I get as quickly as possible.
So what happened?
Well, I'm still living in Beijing, China for the foreseeable future. I have been working in the Chinese capital city for almost three years now. By the time my current work contract expires that time will be three and a half years. It is my current intention to leave Beijing next summer (August 2020) for somewhere new.
To recap for those who are either new (it could happen) or old enough to forget me in my absence, I moved to China from the UK to work as an English teacher. I did this because I had sort of become stuck in a rut at my former workplace in rural England, with no ability to advance or save and move away.
I made some mistakes during my undergraduate years and got myself into debt. I spent a lazy summer after graduating in 2011 forgetting to secure funding for my postgraduate, which should have started as soon as my Bachelors degree ended. Instead, my Masters degree got deferred to the following year and I spent 12-months working in a depressing factory job with zero job security.
It was during that time I commissioned the second chapter of the Joe's Journal web comic, featuring Mordred the Mad and the shenanigans at the Natural History Museum. I did not really have the income to support the commission, but I did it anyway because the factory job paid me weekly and I lived (mostly) rent free with my sister.
This context is important for why I eventually purged all my Manic-related content from Deviant Art. It's also why I get a little militant about people re-posting it.
I wasn't in a healthy place when I commissioned that work and I inadvertently poured more of myself than I thought I had into writing this long comic-book arc for this character which I created as a pastiche. The original concept of Joe, a character set in the erotic universe of an artist whose style I really like (because boobs and muscles), was a self-aware horny power fantasy.
Eventually, I got out of my depression and went back to university where I completed my Masters degree and moved to live with family in the south of England. What was originally supposed to be a few months crashing at my Grandmothers became three years. See, when you live in the English countryside you really need a personal vehicle. Otherwise, you're stuck either using expensive public transportation to get to work or relying on whatever work you can get locally.
I found a job which paid a decent rural wage, but at this point I had started repaying the bank loan I had taken out to do the Masters degree.
During all of this time, I had this 20-part saga of a comic series written out on my laptop. The comic scripts were all written with story and transformations galore. I was still getting a steady stream of interest in the web comic, but then I started doing calculations. How much would it cost to make the whole thing?
Too much was the answer. I didn't have the same 'disposable' income I had when I was a university student with a bank balance bloated with student loans. I also lacked the depressive state of mind to ignore how stupid it was to commission a $500 20-page black and white comic. Sure, the art was great and I really enjoyed seeing people react positively to a thing I had written being drawn by a popular artist but it still cost me $500.
Never mind that Manic has since changed his commission prices to more accurately reflect what his time is worth. Back in the day you could get a single black and white comic-style page for $25 and today the cost is more than double that.
I became disheartened at the reality that I would never finish this story I had written. I had also began to get a few more 'insistent' messages from fans of the comic asking if/when there would be more.
So, I probably overreacted and cleansed it from the Internet as best I could. Do I regret doing it? Sometimes. Will I re-post the comic in their entirety? Yes and no.
I still enjoyed writing the story of this butler to a superhero team whose appearance bears certain exaggerations. Manic has only improved as an artist.
So, I am steadily working on a relaunch of the Joe's Journal series as a text-based series of short-short stories with illustrations provided by Manic. My work as an English teacher pays enough that I have been able to pay off my student loan slowly whilst also occasionally saving some money, hence the sketch I commissioned from Manic as a test piece.
I can make no promises as to how long this is going to take to produce because I'm still focused on getting debt-free for a little while longer. But, eventually I plan on commissioning the remaining two dozen sketch illustrations from Manic. Then, the first Journal chapter shall be posted online with a small fee attached.
In an age of Patreon, I think it is fairer for me to ask for some reimbursement on this investment I make in collaborating with an artist of such quality as Manic.
I'm going to be moving out of Beijing next summer, hopefully to somewhere like Japan. I've taken to enjoying work as an educator, so my new life goal is to do some more traveling and teaching so I can save to return to the UK and become qualified to teach in British and international schools.
There will be some juggling of priorities as I save up for the tuition of the PGCE course, because I have little intention of committing myself to years of repayments on another bank loan. As I save, I will steadily commission more sketches from Manic for my relaunched Journal series.
Subscribe to his Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/manicart1/overview?
Also, I do still occasionally write web comics for Muscle Fan (https://www.musclefan.com/) so I would appreciate it if you could check those out. I do have a half a dozen scripts (almost) ready for submission, but my work keeps eating at my free time for writing erotic comics involving female muscle growth. I take my work as an English teacher more seriously than I had thought I would when I first started.
I used to post the front covers of these web comics to Deviant Art, but they stopped sending me the finished colour pages for cross-examination when there was an editor change behind the scenes. No individual colour pages means I couldn't share on my personal Deviant Art page, but if you search the Muscle Fan page you'll find them.
That's about it. I turned 30 this year so a lot of my thoughts this year have involved retrospection and looking back at my life in hindsight.
Pro-tip kids. Debt isn't fun and the years it takes to get free of it sometimes holds you in place.
Have a good day.
29th Birthday
I've been living in Beijing for over a year now. My time here has been good so far, and I am glad I chose to travel here to teach. My school has recently decided it wants to renew my contract for one more year, so I will be living and working in China for at least one more year. This makes me happy because I can do so much more now.
My language skills aren't that good, but I'm gradually improving. I get out and sightsee as often as I can, and at this point, I have seen most of the temples and historic places within the old city limits. Most days after work I go straight to the gym afterwards, and I am pleased to say I am maintaining the steady weight loss I started last summer.
I'm certainly going to be here when I turn 30, which is another milestone of life that has been gradually creeping up on me.
Never think you can't make a change in your life. It is always possible, regardless of how desperate your circumstances may be.
Half a year in Beijing
My contract and residency permit shall see me staying in Beijing until the end of July next year. Then, depending on how things go with this new school I might either sign on for another year or move elsewhere. I've been leaning towards remaining in China for a while now because it is a stable place to gain work experience. Once I have enough teaching experience, which will make up for my lack of an actual teaching degree which shall open up new realms of employment for me.
My summer was fun. I went to different parks and tourist destinations, such as the Forbidden City. I am yet to visit the Great Wall, mostly because that requires booking a tour or something and I'd prefer to go with friends. I have been going to the gym regularly. I am working with a personal trainer who is helping me lose weight and gain muscle. So far I have lost 10kg which I am pretty pleased with, though that is still just the beginning.
There are some downsides to this new life. Today is my sisters 25th birthday, so I am missing seeing her for that milestone, and my little niece is graduating from nursery onto a Primary school. My grandmothers aren't getting any younger, and my father's father passed away two months ago. I'm still raw on that on occasion, despite the man and I not having the warmest of relationships.
But it's just a few short months before the semester break when Chinese New Year rolls around. I'll be sending the family all present for Christmas and seeing them in the winter.
Note: For anyone interested in my writing work for Muscle Fan, I have submitted a few new scripts recently and we shall see how well they are accepted. I hope you liked Aztec Muscle 3 because the 4th and final issue of that series is a good finish I feel.
Yes, I cleaned house
So, first things first. I have decided to clean out my DeviantArt gallery of all the remaining Joe Jones related content. Many of you will be annoyed by this, and I can only give you my reasons for doing so and hope this satisfies you. If it doesn't, and you're still mad well, that's your choice.
So last year, I started submitting comic scripts to the website Muscle Fan Comics. I've had over a half a dozen scripts accepted, and so far only one submission has been rejected. It was around the time when I first started submitting scripts that my life was starting to move in a new direction. I now live in China, Beijing specifically, where I work as an English teacher at a public primary school.
My main focus now is in both developing as a teacher and earning enough money to pay off my student loans. I send back so much per month to cover my repayments in the UK, so my finances are now more tied up and focused. This means no more commissioning art, at least not for the foreseeable future. And even then, if I do commission something, chances are I will not release it personally.
Since I started commissions back in 2007 with my Joe's Journal stuff, I've always just thrown up any art I commissioned online without any real thought. But gradually, as my projects got larger and the costs increased I started to realise my hobby was costing me much more than I could afford. The final nail in the coffin of my enthusiasm came when I decided to do an artist a favour and commission something from them at a time when their finances were doing poorly. I paid the full order upfront, instead of splitting the payment half and half.
To this day, all the individual in question has done is sent me some mock-up 3D images. Oh sure, they apologise whenever I bring the situation up, but the art isn't getting done. They have done commissions for others that have been completed and released. They do their projects. But my 4-page comic? Nothing. I doubt it will ever be done, and since they still live hand-to-mouth, I am not going to get back the $200 I paid for the commission either if I asked for a refund.
I'm over it though. I no longer care if I get the work or not.
Moving on though, since I'm no longer commissioning like I used to, I figured I would clean my gallery and change things. I'll now just be uploading the colour covers of whatever comic scripts of mine get picked up.
It is the end of an era. An end that has been coming for a while, I think.
So, as I sit in my school office on the last day of school before the summer, I wish you all a good day.
A New Year beckons
Hello 2017, you blank canvas resplendent with promise.
I am still in the UK, for the time being. The delays on my visa paperwork, in the end, took from September until now to get sorted. My school was left with everything to do and no idea how to do it, and the bureaucracy of Beijing is absolute and merciless. But, thankfully, next week all my paperwork should be ready for postage to the UK. I am all set to fly out to China at some time late-February, though the exact date is TBD.
Fun announcement! After it was considered cancelled, the Aztec Muscle series over at Muscle Fan has been renewed for a final issue. It shall be 20-pages long, split between two parts. Part one has been scripted and submitted and should enter into production soon. Expect a release date for late summer, at a guess.
Meanwhile, my queries regarding the demand for a prose-based revival of the Joe's Journal series was surprisingly active. A few people said that they were interested in reading it. To reiterate, this shall be a first-person journal written from Joe's perspective, as if he were writing it himself. There will be illustrations, but they shall be sketches for the most part. And I still intend for it to be a pay-for-view series, it won't be uploaded for free to this site or any other.
Unless someone decides to purchase it and upload it to a pirate site. That's practically guaranteed actually. It is surprising how stingy some perverts can be online. Free Internet porn has spoiled so many of us randy men and women.
I do intend on trying to write another part of the stalled 'Angel Falls' series, but it is tough to know how to work in that wheelhouse. I don't have the time to read through the wealth of content the talented writers over at that group has already produced, so figuring out the lay of the land for Joe is hard.
We shall see what the new year holds.
Now if you will excuse me, I am beset by a particularly nasty cold at the moment and I need to make some more tea.
Have a good one!