Issue Four Cover Draft, And Stuff
Long update is long.
Anyway! So what’s the deal with me? Issue four of Rough Housing was due to be up and running by now, and people are waiting on commissions and and and…
Yes. All of that is true. Guilty, nolo contendere.
There are a few explanations for this. First and foremost, Mrs. Gneech’s job evaporated, and while we’ve been living on savings, those were rapidly evaporating too, which led me to return to the world of being a barista to pay the bills. That was a pretty punishing job when I was 30. Now I am 46, and it’s devastating. Even on part-time hours I tend to spend my time at home flopped into a chair just trying to recover, and for me art is a thing that requires a certain amount of energy investment.
Second, I wrote a novel when nobody was looking! I’ve recently completed the second draft and will begin shopping it around to agents and/or publishers in December. I’m very pleased with it and I hope it will be the launch of a new career for me. But it also pretty much ate August, September, and much of October whole.
Finally, there are real art block issues I have been contending with.
Now You’re Just a Genre That I Used to Love
The furry art scene was very different when I got into it. Yes, the whole “clean vs. naughty” thing was raging on then, but there was also a lot of vitality and invention going on. “Kids’ WB” was in full force and people were drawing inspiration from things like Pokémon, Road Rovers, and Animaniacs as well as beautifully rendered animated films like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. Furry, like webcomics, was in a growth period, with something new and never-seen-before popping up all the time.
The genre has cooled a bit, since then. I don’t want to imply that there’s no innovation going on, because there always is– but there is a sort of standard “furry art” that is just sort of there. I recently went to my FurAffinity account after my extended writing absence and had 1,500 art pieces waiting for me by artists I follow… of which maybe 6-8 caught my attention. The rest were pretty much the same “fursona standing in a pose” portrait or “YCH orgy” thing that has been filling my watch list for the past five years.
No slices of life. No funny takes on the oddities of animal behavior. Not even so much as a “skunk stinking up the room” joke. Maybe there’s something fun and interesting going on somewhere that I haven’t seen, but right now at least it feels like the furry world is in a rut. Which in turn makes it hard to find inspiration to create new, fun, and interesting stuff. Quite the Catch-22.
The Comic I Created Wasn’t the Comic I Wanted
On a more specific note, Rough Housing was half-baked on launch. I think there’s a lot of good in it, and I intend to salvage it. But on some level I think I was still trying to create the “Verity and Tanya” story without having to reconcile the baroque steampunk look it should have with my sloppy, toony art style. But the whole thing was forced and, as I say, incompletely developed.
I’m working on fixing that now. The series is undergoing, as they say on TV, “a soft reboot.” I’ve completely thrown away my existing script for issue four and I’m rewriting it from the ground up, as well as trying to re-evaluate just what it is I want from the series and how to achieve it. I wanted a vehicle for drawing fun scenes of characters romping around on the beach or engaging in silly shenanigans, and I think there’s still plenty of room for that, but as I was writing it I was trying to shoehorn a lot of shipping things into it that really don’t belong there, or at least were not growing organically from the story, because they belonged in the “Verity and Tanya” book instead.
Hopefully, writing that book will get some of that junk out of my system and I can let Rough Housing become its own thing now. When issue four will actually come out, I’m not sure, that’s entirely dependent on the job situation and how tied up I get in publishing the novel. But it’s not just sitting there ignored!
It’s still going to be called “Buff Housing” though. I can’t let a gag like that escape. 😉
-The Gneech
Well, it’s cool to get an update on this.
I was a fan of the original Suburban Jungle, back in the day, and I’ve sort of followed your creative websites on and off over the years after you ended it. I’m going to be honest, you’ve always been one of my favorite furry creators out there. While I’m a bit that you aren’t 100% satisfied with how Rough Housing had been so far, I really am glad you’re not giving up on it. I like your work and I feel the furry fandom is better for their being more of it out there. I’d love to see you make a living off of your work, although I’ll admit that I’d rather see you doing something you love than doing a furry comic you if you stop enjoying it.
I hope you announce your novel when/if it’s published, and know that you already have one person looking to buy it. Furry or not, I’d love to see more of your work. I hope Rough Housing keep going, though. You’re a talented guy, and I hope you have fun doing what you do.
I’ll make it work! 🙂 “Time + Extended Effort = Awesomeness.”
And believe me, once that book is out there, the hard part will be getting me to shut up about it. It isn’t furry per se, although there are some talking critters in it. 😉
-TG
Hey, plenty of good stories aren’t “furry”. I’ll be happy to read it, and judge it based off of it’s quality. But I don’t think it’ll be bad, given the author.
Anyways, I’ll shut up now. Just thought you might need a pep talk, and you’re the reason my online avatar is called “Terinas Tiger”, so I thought I’d speak up. Thanks for replying, and, as I wish to everyone I meet on a positive note: I hope your life gets better rather than worse. 🙂
Feedback and friendly chatter is always welcome! Thank you! ^.^
I know what you’re talking about. I’ve got a book completed (not published) that has anthropomorphic animals in it along with humans and humanoids. I need to do a little more editing on it and, maybe, I’ll be able to get it published, either online or through Amazon.
Old SJ fan here, as well. Never commented before, but I want to say it’s good to see you back in the cartoonist’s saddle. I admire what you accomplished with Suburban Jungle in the past, and seeing you today, still pushing yourself artistically is a major inspiration for me today.
Good luck on your book, and good luck to your wife on her job hunt.
Thanks! I always love hearing from new people. ^.^
I gotta say, I agree with your assesment of the furry fandom right now. I wasnt around in the early days, but it feels like half of the submissions that show up in my inbox now are either YCH stuff, or ads about streaming sessions. Just one big lukewarm mess. I dont know, maybe I’m missing something.
That’s okay, Gneech. You’re working it out, lad. Thanks for updating us all on it.
^.^