It’s amazing what can happen in just a couple months.  A matter of weeks, really, but my world’s gone all topsy-turvy and is completely up-side down.  Since my last post, in which I discussed plans to update mywebsite (a task that has been woefully placed on the back-burner) my life resembles more a deck of cards that’s been flung carelessly into the air than the randomly ordered stack that I tend to prefer.

A few of the cards that I’ve drawn lately have put me on tilt. The first one, and the one I consider to be the best news is that my beautiful wife, Megan, is pregnant with our first child. I am so excited and so looking forward to this little person it hurts. Everything I do now is touched in some way by either needing to prepare for the coming child or in eager anticipation of sharing something new with someone new.  I’m gessoing the canvas of my life and repainting it with new colors for this new being.

Another card I’ve drawn is that I’ve moved back to my home town of Big Rapids. This is not a move I’m particularly fond of nor particularly comfortable with, but it was necessary. Megan wanted to be closer to family and old friends, particularly with Junior on the way. I’m inclined to agree on this part, however, in my heart it’s the second time I’ve returned to the nest of my youth and I view it as backward progress. I’ll get over it, I’m sure, but it’s not helping my ego a whole lot.  I’m glad to see old friends, I’m happy to be near my family again, though I wish the bunch of them had moved closer to me than the other way around.

More on this later, just thought I’d send out an update.

It’s only been a year, so I figure now is as good a time to finally make a few adjustments/additions/subtractions to mumah.com. I’ve also resolved this year to make a greater effort to post more than every month and a half, and try for more of an every other day schedule. I hear that people are checking out my web page often, so it might be worth my time to give people a reason to expect new content on a regular basis.

This week I’m slated to finish my initial sketches for the book Ghost Cartel for Shadowrun, and the next week or so following will be finalizing each piece for publication. As I don’t have another project due immediately following, that should give me the window I need to take the website to task. I only have to relearn webdesign and try to re-interpret the design that my good friend Bradley Robb laid out for me. For my own sake, and his sake as well, I think I should be able to maintain the website to a certain degree. I won’t have to bug him too much about it until I break something.

In other news, I finished my current Robotech project (finally!) today. Here’s hoping the publisher finds the work satisfactory.

2007 was an interesting year for me. While it’s been one of the most difficult of my life, it’s also the year that has afforded me the greatest opportunities of my career. I spent the better part of the year teetering on the edge of the deep chasm of financial wipeout while working very, very hard to get…anywhere. It seemed that no matter how hard I worked, not matter what I did, I would be unable to pull myself out of the quicksand of constant debt.

At the same time, my career as an artist was finally starting to launch. Granted, it’s all low-pay with rather fuzzy and distant details as to win that pay will come, my work was being published for role-playing games like Shadowrun, Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, Runequest, Babylon 5 and Conan. The work came in steadily, and I received more and more praise from editors and publishers. Even better, I have received tons of unsolicited praise from fans of these games on their various web-boards, most of the time unaware that I might be reading the posts. That, more than anything else, has given me the drive to continue. (That and a lot of stubborness.) I soldiered on, cowboyed up, and did my best to build a reputation as a top-quality artist who works quickly, gets work done on time, and gives the extra effort. I wanted to be the go-to guy, and I feel that all my work has paid off. Not only have I built the reputation that I’ve wanted, that I’ve needed, but I’ve also grown enormously as an artist. The artist I was at the beginning of the year was a pale reflection of the one that writes this post.

2007 was my trial by fire. It was my year to see if I have “the right stuff,” the moxy to give as good as I get. It was my year to see if I had the stones to suffer for my work, and keep my eyes on the prize. To those future artists out there…there is no joke to the term “starving artist.” Making money as an artist is a difficult, trying, and sometimes dangerous way to make a living. There are no guarantees, but it takes dedication, willful thought, humility, and a lot of blood and sweat. If you are not willing to work hard, to push yourself, and to over-come any obstacle, find a different career path. It will not happen all at once, and nothing is ever handed to you. You have to fight for any reward, and never, never, NEVER feel that you are entitled to anything. There are no free handouts. You have to earn your keep.

For me, that sums up how I view 2008. I will be earning my keep. 2007 for me was a year that will allow for what is to come. I have been patiently and purposely setting myself up for a big win. I’ve got a runner on, I sacrificed another to move him into scoring position. Now, I need to hit him in. That’s 2008 for me. The year of the RBI.

Currently, I’m working on a few projects. I’m working on the newly re-acquired Robotech RPG for Palladium Books. I can’t begin to tell you how interesting it is to me that I’m doing artwork for a cartoon that I’ve been watching since I was five. I’m also doing artwork for a new Shadowrun campaign, Ghost Cartel.   I have a few other projects that I can’t exactly talk about for legal reasons, but they seem to be big, loaded with potential, and most importantly, a lot of fun.

I want to thank my fans and the fans of the games I work on. Without your support, your devotion to the material, and your input, this gig would be as rewarding as being a port-a-potty salesman. (Apologies to any portable toilet salesman out there.) Instead, you’ve made this feel like I’m pro athlete playing in the bigs for the first time.

I want to thank my wife, who supports me in all my efforts, and makes me feel like I’m working toward something, rather than repeatedly banging my head into a wall.

I want to thank my parents, who without their help we’d be living out of a box. And a small box at that.

I want to thank my father-in-law for being an interesting bastard and raising a great daughter, even if he has no common sense when it comes to politics.

I want to thank my sister-in-law for finally marrying Opie. He’s always been like a brother to me anyway, but now it’s legit. And so is my nephew, incidentally. (I’ll also thank you for the aforementioned nephew. That kid is the awesome sauce.)

I want to thank the various publishers (Kevin Siembieda, etc.) who saw in me and my artwork a quality fit enough to print and to represent the products they produce. It has and will continue to be an honor to create more and better artwork this year and the years that follow. The source material is so intriguing that it will never cease become mundane and monotonous, and the more you push me, the better I become. I cannot thank you enough for that.

Lastly, I’ll thank my friends. They’re all a bunch of assholes, but in a good way. Thanks for the support, even it does all comes at me through sarcasm. You keep me humble, you keep me grounded, and you have become the framework of my support base, even if you all look at me like I’m nuts.

Contrary to popular opinion, I haven’t forgotten about my website. I apologize to all of you who have beat me about the head and shoulders in the hopes that I might update my website. I apologize, and I’ll get around to it before two weeks is up. I promise. I’m a busy guy, what can I say?

I love October. Of course, I’d love it more if it finally cooled off, but it’s still a great month. Hockey season’s started, and so has playoff baseball (naturally, I’m disappointed my Tigers aren’t amongst the contenders) but it’s the beginning of a great time.

I’ve been busy working on various RPG projects for Mongoose and for Palladium. Look for Rifter #40 very soon, and I believe Dyval will hit the stands later this month!

It’s been a busy month. It seems like products I’m involved with are finally being released. Most recently, Babylon 5: Lurker’s Guide to Freedom Station RPG, Runequest: Player’s Guide to Gloriantha, both of those from Mongoose. Catalyst Games just released Shadowrun: Augmentation, and I’m told Emergence ought to hit the stands soon as well. For Palladium, the Rifter #39 released (that’s the swimsuit issue) as well as Rifts: Hades. They should be releasing Dyval soon.

Be on the lookout for the Rifter #40 in October. It’s a big deal for Palladium, as it celebrates ten years of publishing the Rifter, and I’m honored to do the cover art, as well as several interior pieces. Hope y’all dig zombies.

You guys got me. Here I was thinking that only a select few people read this blog, most of them related to me, when once again, I forget that there are actually people out there interested in what I’m doing. So I was busted, and my own leak was posted up on the Palladium boards. I’m busted, so, so busted. And I’d hoped to only start teasing people with what I was doing.

So what am I doing? I’m doing a graphic novel based off of Palladium Book’s horror noir role-playing game Beyond the Supernatural. Like Ramon Perez’s “Machinations of Doom,” the book will also serve as a new game setting for Beyond the Supernatural fans, also supplying new supplemental material for the game.

So what’s the story about? I’m not saying, but I will say that it’s tentatively titled “Still Waters.” That’s all you get for right now. And maybe this. That’s all you get for now.

I have a good chunk of my artwork posted at the online gallery deviantart where thousands upon thousands of people upload their artwork for people to peruse and critique and in some cases, even buy prints. (I’m working on that part myself.) And of these thousands of pieces roughly a dozen are picked every day and featured for all to see as a daily deviation. It’s a big honor to have one of your pieces selected, as the gallery directors at deviantart seem to have a great deal of taste, and I’m not saying that because I just nabbed my second DD in as many months. It’s strange, I usually get a dozen hits a day on my gallery, but when I click on and see that my pageviews have increased by a few THOUSAND since the day before and I have a couple hundred messages from people selecting the piece for the favorites gallery or adding you to their watch list. I guess I’m doing something right with my artwork.

The first DD I recieved is something of an anomoly that makes me chuckle. You see, most of my work is primarily gritty sci-fi or gothic fantasy, and almost always black and white since that’s what I get the most commissions for. So when this piece was selected I was a bit surprised, and almost a bit depressed. It was a piece I did for my newborn nephew’s nursery and is completely unlike anything else in my gallery. I like the piece, but it’s just not my bread and butter. It said to me that I may be sniffing around the wrong trees and that I’m squandering my work on possibly the least profitable market for my talents, and maybe I don’t have the right eyes for my own work. I have a few pieces that I think really show a lot more skill, composition, and craft than the frog piece, but I gotta admit, it’s got some charm (I chose frogs because the boy’s mother is terrified of them.)

So this week I recieve my second DD, and this time, one of my favorite pieces gets selected, a piece I did for Palladium’s Rifts: D-Bees of North America of a creature known as Mister Lizarro.

Feeling somewhat vindicated, I’m pressing on, and hopefully very soon I’ll be in full tilt working on a Beyond the Supernatural graphic novel for Palladium Books. IN the meantime, I’m preparing to go to Wizard World Chicago to hopefully drum up bigger and better work and I’ll be selling prints and signing autographs at both the Shadowrun and Palladium Booths at GenCon the following week. (If I can raise the funding to get there, I’m a little on the broke side. All donations would be greatly appreciated.) Funding or no, I’m going whether I have money or not. I have a lot to accomplish and I think I can pull it all off, (I feel a lot like Mel Gibson’s character in Maverick.)

That also reminds me, very, very soon I’m going to start selling prints through my website. If you’re interested, shoot me an email.

More updates soon.
Mumah

Ever since the Palladium Open House, I’ve been developing a new skill important to any working artist, and that’s the art of self-promotion. Now that I’ve established myself a bit, I’ve been able to hit broader markets and expose myself to more and more people, but at a whole new level. As a result, I’m starting to develop fans. That’s a thought that just seems insane to me. But feel free to tell your friends.

I’m a busy boy right now. With three or four books due to hit shelves in the next month, I’m looking forward to seeing my artwork exposed to a few more gaming systems, namely Shadowrun with the publishing of “Emergence,” Babylon 5 with publishing of “the Lurker’s Guide to Freedom Station,” and a Runequest book that I can’t remember the name to. Plus a couple more Palladium books are looming on the horizon, namely “Dyval” and “Hades.” Most of this work is already up in my gallery, and I think it’s some of my best to date.

Currently I’m working on a tight deadline to get the artwork completed for another Shadowrun book, “Augmentation,” and I’ve got a few more sketches to complete and I’m waiting for approval before doing the finished artwork. I’m also painting a cover for October’s Rifter issue, a cover loaded with Zombie goodness!

Somewhere in there I need to work up some storyboards for the Wizard Con Chicago to try and net some comics projects. I’m also discussing some possible comics projects with Kevin Siembieda, publisher of Palladium.

First I had the Palladium Open House last week, which opened my eyes to exactly the kind of potential waters I’d been swimming in for the past few months without realizing it, to Saturday. A piece in my deviantart gallery took a big hit by being featured as a daily deviation. That garnered nearly 4,000 page views, and my works were favorited by viewers 600 times.

Not bad.

With any luck I can keep the ball rolling forward.