*idiotic grin*

This is a good morning for art news.

First, has been nominated for an Eisner award, for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition. I doubt there’s anybody who reads my page who doesn’t read Ursula’s, too, but if you don’t, suffice it to say that she is an abnormally cool human being with an extraordinary mind and a talent for art that expresses itself not only with her phenomenal, absurd, wonderfully silly and periodically perfectly serious paintings and sketches, but also in her irresistable turn of phrase both in telling stories to accompany her artwork and in her journal of every day life. I’m sitting here grinning like a fool. I own two Ursula original paintings and a host of sketches. Someday I’m going to have a wall of these things and be saying, casually, “Oh, Ursula? Yes, I’ve known her for decades. Bought her material when it was still affordable, you know. I could sell it for enormous profit, but I’d rather own the paintings.” Congratulations to Ursula. If the sheer willpower of fans can achieve it, she will win the Eisner. *beam*

Second, I got email back from Ardian (my Chance artist) today, having innundated him with emails over the last week. I’d proposed–a lot of things, but the short of it is, the bones of a working relationship for Chance as a comic series of it gets picked up, and, in fact, even if it doesn’t. I’m going to go ahead and develop it through the first 6 issues, one way or another, and he’s with me as the artist for at least those six issues, and if we’re still happy working together (and it’s been picked up or we’ve figured out some other way to make money on it) he’ll be delighted to continue.

Chance, as I have it envisioned, is a 60 issue comic book. I would love beyond words to do the whole story with one artist. (This is probably and Darik Robertson‘s fault, for doing just that so very successfully with Transmetropolitan. Not, you know, that I’ve got Warren’s standing in the comic book community, but let’s just overlook that NASTY LITTLE DETAIL, shall we? All right then.) At the moment, assuming we get beyond issue 6, Ardian and I are agreed that he’ll do any story arc he begins. I believe I have 2 3 issue story arcs to finish up the first 12 issues, for example. So one way or another I won’t end up changing artists in mid-storyarc, which is fantastic.

Must get a contract for this stuff and get it sent off to him.

Aaaand he sent me the finished pencils for one of the pages. Ironically, I actually liked the roughs better–*but* I see the reason for the change he made, and he’s right to have done it. There was a repeated image in the main frame of the page, not identical, but enough to catch the eye, and the final version doesn’t have that. So it’s better, and I’ll get used to it. *laugh* I do like a couple of the detail things on the rough better in the other frames, so maybe I’ll talk to him about those, but in general…this is pretty damned cool.

Oh, all right. Original roughs and the finished page .

ETA: Just got email from the Best Agent Ever, who finished reading COYOTE DREAMS last night and really liked it. *falls right over* I guess that massive rewrite I did in the last week before it was due was really worth it. *beam*

Wow, what a great morning. *beams more*