This weekend has been somewhat of a bust. Sometimes I have really good, productive streaks. Sometimes I don’t. That’s the problem with working in creative fields: It’s kind of hard to force creativity. Oh, sure, deadlines often force something to happen, but that “something” isn’t always of quality.

Last week, I managed to get a lot of progress made on a variety of things, including plotting out the remaining 20 pages of The Utopian webcomic, story-boarding about 10 pages for various comics, developing a sponsorship packet for a new project and a few other random things I can’t recall right now. This week? I’ve been making progress on implementing the concepts generated last week, but have made no headway on developing anything fresh.

It’s weird how I weave in and out of productive states of creativity or inspiration. The muse rarely appears when you need her, though there are rare times — like during a caffeine-fueled visit to downtown Las Vegas’ newest independent coffee shop, The Beat, last week — when she guides your hand, unwittingly, for as long as you’re willing to have her.

So it’s back to the drawing board today. Literally (well, digitally literally), just doing layouts, finishes and colors on a variety of pages from both the Utopian and, seen above, a secret, new project that I’ll be telling you about very soon.