After Graduation

Today was editor's day - yay! I got to talk to Joan Hilty from Vertigo and Nate Cosby from Marvel. Both went incredibly well and complimented me on my storytelling, camera angles and style. The only criticisms were: 1) that i need to pick a style and stick with it - as far as rendering and cartooniness. And 2) keep better consistency with anatomy and faces.
These are both things that I am struggling with and as they said and i knew, will come with time. I just need to draw more pages and I will settle in. My major influences range from guys like the cartoony and angular Bruce Timm and soft edged Chris Bachello - to in the middle of the road guys like JRJR and Tim Sale and Jim Cheung - to realistic/semi-realistic guys like Essad Ribbic, John Cassaday, Lee Weeks and Oliver Copiel. So they're all kind of fighting for and finding a place in my style which will make it quite a diverse style.
Also the angles I'm choosing are not the kind you can fake but they told me I was pulling them off rather confidently. But drawing the face at those extreme angles is really unforgiving especially on women's faces and it has and will continue to be a challenge.
My inks were not up to par before this class - so that may stay as a side job, there have been plenty of guys who pencil a book and ink someone else's book in the same month. But I plan to keep working diligently after school and not stop drawing! despite all the chaos that will ensue immediately after like moving, getting married and probably moving another 2 times in the next year or two. The good news is I'm working enough to pay rent and get my pages done so once school is out I will have loans to pay back but I hope to find a job fairly quickly.
A friend of mine passed my contact info along to a skateboard company in Florida that pays very well and we might be working on a series of boards for them. that would give me enough money to keep working the hours I am now and put the time i was in school into my pages, to secure a comics job.
I made sure to drop off a leave-behind in almost all the editors boxes and try to make them specific to the publishers. Dark Horse is coming next week, though Ill be out of town and Oni will be here the week after, so I'm excited about that as I hear the hire many young budding artists and accept a very wide range of styles.
Various projects like the Radio Drama, Terra Novus, Phil's prequel comic, Vicky's Unnaturals and various idea's I've had will be used to flesh out the next year's worth of material if I don't get picked up by anyone.
I think some of the issues in the pages were purely due to the amount of time I had to put into the page, so being out of school should give me the time to really nail every detail. The reviews relit the flame of inspiration for me that was quickly getting burned out by stress and semester after semester. I'm sure not having teachers to set my deadlines will come with its own problems but the advantages seem enough to get me headed in the right direction.