LATEST UPDATE: JANUARY, 2007

I've gotten some reviews lately asking me when i'm going to be continuing a few of my stories. The part that surprises me the most is the "lately" part- i had nearly forgotten about this old account. So I thought, for all of your sakes, that I would give an explanation as to what will be happening to these stories.

What happened to me when these stories teetered off was what i was always terrified would happen: My mind became numb, and I succumbed to the toils of everyday highschool life and trying to succeed in a hard school until I lost everything else. My creativity nearly disappeared. There's almost no artwork or writing from these past few years. It's as if all my churning story ideas were locked away in a little box I'm even now clawing open, creaky hinge by creaky hinge. It was a nightmare that, at the time, I was not even aware of. Which, in my opinion, is the worst kind of nightmare. Light was only finally shed on that little box when, last summer, in an effort to gain a few coins for college coffee money, I put on an art show at a local bookstore. To mine and everyone else's utter astonishment, I sold ten out of thirteen pieces and was commissioned for another more, hitting the four-digit mark in profits. Suddenly, by the response I got from my artwork, I remembered my stories and the response I had gotten to those. I remembered the joy I would find in eigth and ninth grade as I burst with ideas all day long, then spent hours writing, without knowing a single moment had passed. I remembered my passion for movement and energy and life, and, perhaps most of all, my passion for knowing that my stories gave joy to others. Now, as I awaken from this nightmare, I know that these stories will always be in me. That it will only take a small something beyond the rain-drenched, limb-freezing grays of the Northwest landscape around me to recreate the inspiration I had felt and give me the motivation to give it form.

But words alone do not satisfy me. Words, so black and white on a little page, cannot fully express the stories as I see them, and it is with the clearest vision that I want people to see and enjoy what's in my head. And by what medium could these visions possibly be seen? Moving pictures. And I'm not talking Hollywood- I mean moving pictures.

Of course, the animation industry in this country is pretty much body humor and deformed Micky Mouse, but that's changing, and I'm going to be a part of that. And I'm going to go there, and I'm going to make quality animation, and I'm going to tell my stories as they were always meant to be seen: with the gleam of Blue's eyes flashing out from the darkness, Vorchay's body contorting midair as she beheads an enemy with a powerful stroke, and the delicately-painted cityscape flashing by Michal as her boots splash in the rain with the panic of her flight. And I'm going to tell more stories. I have so many stories, I don't know what to do with them, and I have too much movement to keep it confined to static letters.

I'm not abandoning these stories. Who knows, I might find time to finish them in writing sometime (although don't count on it too soon). But I'm taking these stories and many others with me, and I'm going to learn more, and I'm going to create even finer stories, and I will put them all where they were born to be: in movement and color. Perhaps it's incredibly arrogant of me to assume that I will ever get in a position of being able to tell my stories as I want them; but that's the chance I'll have to take. Settling for any lesser method than the one I can imagine is not my way of doing things. And I'm arrogant by nature, I think, so this ambition is hardly out of character.

I will most likely be going to RISD this coming fall, and who knows what that'll bring. But I hope that someday, just maybe, if the stars line up right and I bleed, sweat, and cry enough, that you'll pass by some show or movie playing itself out on some television screen in some department store, and you'll pause and think 'wow... that's a cool character.' And maybe after that, your day will be a bit more inspired, and allmy work will have been worth it. Because that's what drives me most- knowing that other people enjoy my work. And to you guys, who gave me most of my first support and still come back to reread and prod me, I owe my eternal gratitude.

So... thanks, guys.

J. Herron