Mars Story, First Three Pages

I still have a bit of work to do on these, but I had such a positive response when I posted the first page that I figured I'd post what I have done so far. I have about 5 more pages to do on this story.

Enjoy!

Orbital Plumber

NOTES: I made this for the Middle Coast Zine fest here in Chicago a couple weeks back. It's a micro-mini, meaning that it's 4.25" x 5.5" (Basically one sheet of paper folded twice). This is why the lettering looks so big now.

This is based on a true story, apart from the space aspect of it. One of my childhood friends is a plumber and this actually happened to him. Instead of stale sanitation crystals, it was a dried trap letting sewer smells in the house.

Also, I finished this, photocopying and all in about three days, which is some kind of record for me.

A Study in Style

(Or: What I Did Over Did Over Thanksgiving Break)

I've been thinking a lot about personal style lately.

Whenever I practice draw (i.e. Not for a finished piece), I always prefer to draw from real life (or more often, photographs) rather than copy another person's work. There are a lot of artist I respect, but I don't want to have their style, I want my own style. I assumed that if I just keep drawing what I see, eventually, my personal style will just magically form (Like Venus from ocean foam).

I'm starting to rethink this ridged method and came up with a little drawing exercise (I'm can't be the first person to think of this). I drew a page from a published comic, but I tried to emulate another artist's style.

Two of my favorite artists are Sergio Aragones and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, at least), so I decided to do Akira in the style of Sergio Aragones.

I picked a page out of Akira at random (I just googled image searched "Akira pages" and picked out one of the first ones that came up).

Here's the original:

 

And here is mine:

 

 

 

 



 

I did this while traveling to St. Louis, so I didn't have much in the way of Sergio reference material. I think it ended up looking more like something by Roberta Gregory (which isn't a bad thing) or maybe Jim Davis (which is bad).

 

Also, the perspective in panel #3 is way fucked up.

 

I'm not sure what I learned about my style. I was a fun exercise. I enjoyed it. I stretched my drawing muscles in ways I never had before. I think I'll do it again but different artists. Why not?

 

Last Minute Edit: I just remembered I did something like this before.

 

Speaking of St, Louis, I dropped off some mini-comics at Star Clipper. If you live in St. Louis and want a copy of King Crow Comics #1 (for only $1!), head down there.





Phantom Kangaroo, Page 3

CkClick

Phantom Kangaroo, Page 2

Click to make bigger

Phantom Kangaroo, Page 1

Click to make bigger!

Everyone Hates Their Job

Click to make bigger!

Wow, it's been a year?

-click to make bigger-

Bone Dog Single-Panel

Here's the third single-panel from my Ivan Brunetti homework (see my last post). It features my character, Bone Dog (as usual, click to make bigger).

For those of you who don't know, Bone Dog is my comic about a skeleton dog who lives in a dump with his rat friend, Sergio. Garbage eating is involved (just look here).

This comic was drawn with a nib pen. The image needs to be cleaned up; I'm sorry. I didn't get a change to run it through Photoshop. I promised I'd post it today, so here it is, smudges and all.

More Single-Panel Homework

More single-panel comics based on homework from Ivan Brunetti's Cartooning book. Nothing fancy here. The homework was to just draw three single-panel comics (the third one is done, but I'm going to hold it until Monday).

Am I happy with these? Meh. They're OK.

I did them both over Thanksgiving weekend. This top one came from all the retro television I watched while were staying at my in-laws house in St. Louis. It's a bit dark for my taste. I mean, I generally a much more upbeat person than this.



This second one is based on something that actually happened to my wife while I was drawing the first comic(Quick disclaimer: This is NOT what my wife looks like. I just need to say that to avoid the "That's what you think I look like?" conversation). We were in a coffee house near my in-laws place and the woman next to us asked my wife if she could borrow her computer's power cord. She had the same type of computer, but it turns out a much, much newer model. The look of revulsion on the woman's face was priceless. And a little terrifying.

Anyway, these are both pretty rough, and if I really liked these, I might actually re-draw them. It was good practice, none the less.

Wednesday with Ivan: Single-Panel Exercise

As I mentioned previously, I'm working through this book. I just started week 2, which is about single-panel cartoons.

The single-panel cartoons below are the culmination of the first two exercises in week two. The first exercise involves writing several sentences or phrases based on writing prompts provided by the author. The next exercise is drawing several pictures again based on specific prompts (something scary, something sad, etc...).

Then you take the phrases and pair them with the pictures to see what works together. Here are some of mine.





I don't know that any of these really knocked me out or made me laugh, but that's probably not the point. Mr. Brunetti says in this exercise, "Surprising, even unintended, things happen when we combine words and pictures."

I like reading single-panel comics, but I've never felt compelled to do them before now. I've already started trying more (to be seen soon-ish)

If you want to see some really good single-panel cartoons, you can check this guy out. He's a friend of a friend and he's pretty funny.

Turkey Doodle

I did this while sitting at my desk the other day. I wish that turkey baster didn't look so much like a microphone.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Bone Dog: Page 5

There are a few significant things about this page. First, it's the first I've done with a dip pen (a.k.a nib pen). It's also the first one I've done on this larger size of Bristol board.

I consider the dip pen a success. They are hard to use, but India ink out of a bottle is so much blacker than using markers or Mircon pens. Plus, if you use a more flexible nib, it's a lot more expressive.

Up until this page, I've been doing comics on 9x12 Bristol board. I really wanted to have more space, so I "upgraded" to 14x17.

It was nice to have all that breathing room. I really felt that it made drawing the details a lot easier, since everything was bigger. The lettering was easier too. Great success all around.

Then, I scanned it.

The first problem is that my scanner is 10x14 (or thereabouts), so I had to scan this sheet in four pieces and put it together in Photoshop. I didn't mind the extra work so much, but my 6-year-old Mac did. The file on this thing was huge. I think I actually heard my computer wheezing when I tried to do any kind of manipulation. I can't tell you how many times I had to restart my computer while working on this one page.

Anyway, if you see stray pen marks or mistakes on this page, I'm sorry. I just couldn't torture my poor ol' Mac anymore.

On the upside, the India ink scanned great!

Bone Dog: Page 4

I've been sitting on this for a while. In fact, I put this in a four-page mini-comic (micro mini?) that I've been giving to people (If you're one of those people, welcome to the blog!).

Here it is after three months of sitting on my hard drive, Bone Dog page 4!

Also, I have decided to try to post in this blog every Monday. I think I need some kind of deadline situation to motivate me to draw more. See you next Monday.

Bone Dog: pages 1-3

I've posted the first two before, but I figured I'd post all three together.

Bone Dog Page One, Edited

Here is page one of Bone Dog, again. Since I last posted this, I was able to re-scan it and do a little clean-up in Photoshop.

I learned a lot about scanning and image files by doing this. Scanning images tends to magnify mistakes. Lighter lines nearly disappear and uneven lines look lumpier. In the future, I'm going to need to make my panel boarders thicker and bolder and generally be more sensitive to my sloppiness.

The more complicated part was making sure the right resolution and image type. I'll spare you the gory details, but I'm just glad I learned it now when I'm just starting out.

I have to thank Aaron Schmidt and Marie Martino for giving me advice on this.

Also, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, authors of Drawing Words/ Writing Pictures, were nice enough to respond to my e-mail questions about scanning and image files. If you're interested in making comics, I can't recommend their book enough.

I still have a lot to learn about turning paper pictures into electronic files, but I feel like I'm on the right path now.

Anyway, Here's page two of my comic Bone Dog (click on it to make it bigger):