Some new sketches

Ive still been working on getting some final drawings for my book, but when that gets boring I find myself drawing random things and developing new characters and plots. Here is a pager that started from a few quick sketches. I'd have to say, this was one of my better idea days. (again small scanner + big paper = nono)

Here is a treatment for a strip I think im going to submit to the Siskiyou. Feedback would be much appreciated on this one, I think I'll call it 'The Artists Dilemma.'

Heres a couple characters I drew up. I really like the second one, I'm thinking about doing a strip or some sort of thing with the black metal theme. That is from the band Immortal btw.

Here is just some practice drawings I guess. I like using this ballpoint pen to fill in black because you can get some really cool patterns going. Most definitely going to use this technique for something or another.

I've been in a real rut lately as far as story ideas go, I guess it just happens over time. The good news is that I've been getting new inspiration lately from the weather, dreams, and a bunch of other stuff. So yeah, hopefully will get some new finished things up soon, keep your fingers crossed!

unholy beast of the night

Max had the great idea of having everyone in class draw the same thing for an assignment. The first (and only so far) theme was werewolfs. I'll be honest I forgot but I made this gem during class. My marker nearly ran out by the end of coloring it which made the black really choppy. I put it in the scanner at work and set it to 'text' and it made me this print with some really great black on it. I liked coloring it by hand and copying it like this vs. messing with a scanner and photoshop, although you cant really get around using a computer... unless you have LOTS of spare time and a copy machine.

random drawings, digitalized!

Here is a short comic made at work, based off of actual occurrences.

I made this with my new .005 micron after getting backed into. Its actually really small, as small as I could draw/write.

Here are a few quick ones made in class. I was seeing how fast I could get an idea and draw it. Turns out about 10 minutes.

Finally here is a picture of a elephant that I drew based off a picture I had from Thailand. I wanted to see how it looked using a marker for outlines and a thin pen for details. Looks pretty good imo.

Check out my flickr set to see other stuff I scanned the other day.

Comic artists personal belongings

[LINK] Here is an interesting article from Vice, showing you stuff from different comic artists. There is some funny stuff in here, as expected from Vice. If you look at Vice Comics, there are some pretty good ones too [cough].
Above: this is a comic writing tool, when stuck Jonny Ryan rolls this to see what to write next. Pure genius...

Shintaro Kago

Here are some Kago comics up on SAME HAT! which is a sweet blog-site for horror/abstract manga. Shintaro Kago is like the god of fucked up drawings. If you look at his feed there are a bunch of one paned comics featuring special ways of suicide based on person/occupation.
Here are some of my favorites from his books. (note: read right to left) Oh man I just re-read these, they are so awesome! I hope you guys like them as much and dont throw up.
WARNING: BONERS
Blow-up
Multiplication
Abstraction


You can see more of his stuff if you go here. You might have to go back a few pages to get to the books, he hasn't done one in a spell... And if you can read Japanese, go to his website.

Don Hertzfeldt

Here is a couple animations from Don Hertzfeldt, who is a comical genius in my mind. He is definitely a big influence for me, not only because of his humor but his drawing style (basically stick figures) Most of you have probably seen these before but everyone should watch these again or if you havent seen them, prepare to have your minds blown. enjoy.

mike judge helped with this second one, apparently. does anyone know anything about 'the animation show' that he is involved with, because i dont.

project

working title - 'otto' or something not sure yet.
description - Basically what I want to do here is make a dream sequence picture book. There will be minimal dialogue, only at the beginning and end, and the middle will be a story told by pictures and probably emoticons and thingys. The main character is a poorly drawn man, who is embodied in a poorly drawn head when he is imagining. It is supposed to represent him having his head in the clouds, literally. It reflects on this also because he isn't only dreaming at night when he is asleep but during the day too. You see this at the end of the story when he is late to return to reality and his body is already in class when his mind returns to him. During the dream sequence a variety of non related things happen at random, like a dream. I kind of have an idea of what will happen but its still in early in development.
What I have so far (abbreviated on purpose, each event will be like a snapshot)
Goes to mt.everest, there is pirates, treasure, tied up maided, a pirate ship appears. get on the ship, aliens arrive, dude turns into pirate, pirates vs aliens, aliens take dude (who I am now naming otto) onto the ship, he meets the aliens, and they bring him to some planet. otto exits the ship, meets a monster, the monster chases him through the streets of american suburbia, into an alleyway, and eventually corners him. the monster eats otto, and you see some scary shit. otto is now in a sublime forest, floating along, there is a 1st person view where you see a lake with some hills and stuff, and when you crest a hill there is a clock tower displaying the time. cut back to otto who is all, oh shit what time is it, im late, or something.
after that he goes back though the clouds and stuff and meets his awaiting zombie body in class who, after re-aquiring his mind looks around confused and shrugs it off and starts drawing.

goals - I want to make this 24 pages, so most of these pictures will end up being full page. i dont know the dimensions yet but its not going to be a normal book size, smaller, so it will be a little easier. uh, i also want it to look good, thats a goal I guess, and I want it to make sense to people who read it - without having me explain it. thats a big goal for me.

schedule - once I get rolling I want to be able to do a page like every other day. it probably sounds like a lot but i dont forsee these drawings being super intricate.

issues - i am throwing around the idea of using both drawings and photos for the dreams. photos for the backgrounds basically, and for like, mt.everest and the pirate ship etc. but I think I realized that most of the stuff I am going to have to draw anyways, like the aliens, monster, etc. its still in the back of my mind, but I am probably going to go ahead and just draw everything anyways. the only thing I am dreading is drawing all of the pirates...

visuals - coming soon!

first comic, kinda

Here it is, in all of its unnamed glory! and here are the notes I took prior to drawing it. (see process)

note to self: use the big scanner next time or draw on smaller pieces of paper.

FOUND: some things

Here is this chick who made a book full of comics that only took him FIVE MINUTES each. wow! talk about profit. Her name is Joey Sayers, she has other stuff too, like pics and a webcomic. but I am showing you this - its called Im Gonna Rip Yer Face Off!

On a related note, has anyone been to Reading Frenzy in Portland? I am looking at their site, and they have a lot of cool stuff, not to mention their support for the independent art and media scene. Ima mos def visit next time im in Portland. Heres the link, check it out.

process...

Here is my process as of the last full page comic I made.

• idea / story formation - pencil, pen, whatever. just put it on the paper.
• panel division - pencil all the panels or panel ideas with the contents, approximate size, text, etc. these dont have to be good, exact, etc but should give you something of a reference.
  
• layout / panel design - using pencil, draw the layout. ie a rectangle with various squares and rectangles inside. evenly spaced of course. last time this took like 5 tries to get one that fit, its like an analog tetris.
• outlining - use a very light pencil to sketch out the panels and maybe some composition onto the page that you'll be drawing on.
• dark lines - use a marker to outline all of the panels, the background, pretty much anything that does not require gross detail. I ended up using marker for almost all of the drawing - probably not the best idea, especially for the face. I am still trying to find a happy medium for the line weight i want. marker looks good enough at arms length so whatever.
• thin lines / detail - I use a fine point ball pen for all of the detail that the marker cant get. pretty much only some accent or definition lines. It can also be used to clean up some of the dirty marker lines if you messed up or something. again, I should of used the thin pen for some things instead of relying upon my steady hand to make really thin lines with the shitty marker.
• I suppose the next step would be to scan it into photoshop and fix it up so you cant see overlaps, pencil marks, etc. I haven't gotten to this point yet but I will post the final page when I do scan it in... in a few hours.
  

So there you have it, the process I followed for my last page. I did a full page from JTHM the other day too. The process was a little different though - it was more like
1.pick up pen 2. look at jthm book 3.draw

...my internet is too slow

thank god the school's computers are still up. my neighbor needs to update their wireless internet!
Ha.
Here is a link to this thing called 24 hr comic day. This is a 'contest' where you have 24 hours to complete a 24 page comic book. I say 'contest' because there arent really any prizes, other than the sweet book you've made in only one day! The catch is that you cant have any predetermined story developed, character sketches, notes etc. It sounds like fun, and even though I will probably never actually do it, I would like to train for it. This means pumping out a page of comic in under an hour. Even if the pages are like 6x4, it will be good practice nonetheless. and uh, yeah.
that other site is something i randomly found, but it fits because it looks like I could draw those panels really fast. I haven't explored the site much but the stuff on there looks cool.

http://www.24hourcomicsday.com/

http://www.transatlantis.net/blog/archives/bibliography/index.html

cartoons that inspire me (video edition)

Korgoth of Barbaria - A pilot for Adult Swim (watch parts 2&3 on youtube)

Superjail - A show on Adult Swim, the animation in this show is amazing

Skinner's Hell Dream - A collaboration between artist Skinner (a badass) and Eighty Four Films

Seriously, how do you widen this frame so things dont get cut off? Its ridiculous how skinny it is.

a good book

Jonny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez

I like the style of this book, there arent any straight lines - they are all crooked, and the gutters are always filled in with either black, little drawings, or a lot of the time they are full of words and sayings like this one. I also like how um, there is a lot of gore and people dying in interesting ways. It has good sound effects too, for a book.

new places / new ideas

So on Monday night my roommate, friend, and I were stoked to go swimming at the sou pool after a long summer break. As it turns out, its not open for intermurals anymore - figures.
Determined, we went to a few hotels before getting someone to let us use their room key to get into the pool at super 8. I've never been there before, the pool was small, but old with character. Needless to say we had a great swim, and it was not only literally refreshing but nice to be somewhere new. Ive always liked hotels for that reason, so clean and new feeling.
Anyways, here.

my favorite web comics

The Perry Bible Fellowship

XKCD

Superpoop

LOL

comics and pictures now

ya so ill be using this blog to throw all of my comic stuff, inspirations and stuff. there is other stuff on here too, flash things and whatnot. I have a website too, for people (just like you) to post up their finished projects and ya, if you think your hot shit email me and we can do something, or something. aha
the site is www.mediumhouse.com

word

blogging - a luxury, a necessity

wow.

I, have been off in medium house land for the past few weeks. the website is growing and looking great, im happy to say. its at www.mediumhouse.com and its been heavily updated since i put it up. i feel like the website is a such a small part of what we are doing though. we have been connecting artists, designers, and videographers with visibility, business, and content. gathering creative people was one of our goals of the medium house project, and i think we are quite on our way to becoming a very important resource in peoples lives. im excited for what we can do with this.

besides the website we put on a student art show, and covered the mini ramp skate competition at sou. the art show will be going on every first friday at aedion skate shop, featuring paintings, prints, photographs, and videos from SOU students. the pictures from the skate competition will be posted on the website under events.

Yulia, along with having her paintings displayed at the art show printed up 20 limited edition t-shirts to raise money for medium house. they are absolutely and awesomely spectacular and were made with extra love by yulia, thanks to basement ink. you can look at them at this link [art show pictures].

hoorah! for the closing of the term btw.

word up

-jake

links for easy access

www.mediumhouse.com
featured artist
yulias page

http://www.mediumhouse.com/ppl/0201jakefery.html
the beginning of the beginning.

the end of the world in 35 seconds

Put together this animation for class. I still need to add sound, but I don't want to put too much time into this as I want to start on some other projects.



For those of you who enjoyed the ending, I made a loop for you. go HERE

MEDIUM HOUSE DOT COM

Finally got a site up, not the site but its progress. 

Also, one of my hard drives is failing on my desktop. Ironically, its my backup drive so im looking for a few hundred gigs of free space somewhere to transfer everything... fun stuff.

www.mediumhouse.com

Page Layouts

Here are a couple non-functioning pages that show the layouts for the video and picture viewing pages. 

The heat is getting to me.

I just want to sit in the sun all day.
not helping...

More animations

LINK
Here is some more of the schematic animation im working on. Not only am I bettering my overall Flash skills, but I believe it will help the final product tons. The story thus far is that the rabbit and frog kill their way into this office building, and steal this vial of some suspicious liquids. They take it and put it in the water container. Following that, I think they will pull a fire alarm and proceed to kill zombie office workers in a side scrolling video game fashion. This is all still in production, so im developing the story as I draw everything. Once I have the mock animation (storyboard? Whats the right term for this anyone??) I will re-draw everything and draw more frames, make it more smooth etc. Here's some inspiration for today. Cheers

website layout ideas

Here are a couple schematics of my original idea for the website. This is a fairly underdeveloped concept so far but I have been sketching / digitalizing some layout ideas for the site. Yulia and I hope to come up with 5 site layout concepts this weekend and into next week. The concept for the site itself has evolved to more of a local artists gallery for the web. Something that can display digital artists work like what everyone in the class is doing. It will have periodically featured artists along with profiles and stuff. We thought the people (namely sou's digital media students) needed some kind of collective, a hub of sorts to show off work and collaborate. It will have a stupid simple layout without tons of ads and text, kind of reminiscent of real life art galleries.

This weekend I am takin a trip home and will hopefully return with:
A new car (new to me, a 16v VW Caddy)
My laptop (with all new parts)
More and more ideas (incarnated)

Preview

Practicing my animation skills.
More soon or later.

Here is a mock up of the short im working on.

Here is that other flash that was up here.
click to slightly enlarge

Papervision3D

www.papervision3d.org
This technology is pretty sweet. Im still figuring it out right now, but luckily there are a lot of resources out there. This blog thing they have has a lot of good examples of how this could be used. Once again, gotoAndLearn.com has some good tutorials out on using it. There is one where they use Blender (a free 3d program) to make the 3d object and then imports it into Flash using papervision. -Somehing I will be working on...
Papervision3d daily showcases

I dont know if anyone has seen this, but this is freaken sweet. GE Augmented Reality (interactive hologram advertisement)

Stuff

gotoAndLearn 3D Panels
Here is a tutorial showing how to have your stage basically always facing your mouse using 3d space. This will allow all of the pages to have basic interactivity, plus it will make the pages more viewable. You can see this concept applied in this site advertising a concept oven. This has unlimited capabilities, like just making a simple website 3d, or it can be used to explore a 3d environment. This website for 6 beers of separation uses the mouse to change the perspective of a corner of a 3d room. This really sparks my interest for designing in flash to be viewed in this way of changing perspective and stuff. Here is the website of the dude who designed the 6 beers site. It starts out with a video showing off his flash skills, and the website and content itself is all made in flash. The intro video is pretty impressive, involving a pretty in depth 3d room with animations going on all over. Everything is going on at once but the camera moves around, changing perspective and highlighting all of the animations and his work. I think he did this by tweening the entire room/stage.
There is obviously more I need to learn if I want to do something impressive, but I think these sites are filling up my brain with idea juice. Yulia and I are going to be working on a flash site that is like a zine, with super interactivity and multiple mediums of media. We were talking about having a local zine type thing, basicly an informational site focusing on what we are most interested in. Our goal (still fuzzy) is to present information in more of an interactive interface. Magazines are fun and interesting to look at, but they are missing the interactivity that computers can offer. Also we want to have something to show future emploryers, and hopefully impress some people who are in a position to hire people such as us.

Links
>www.zink.com/
This new technology is kind of like the new poloroid. It uses special paper with RGB color crystals in it, and the printer has a sensor thing that activates the right crystals to make a full color picture with no ink. The only drawback is that I think the paper is expensive (I would assume) and you cant use just any paper. But they are on the right track to offering a viable alternative to printing with ink.
>We Have Sound flash game
This is a game that uses the same tech to rotate a game board in an interesting maze game. This is interesting because instead of rotating a panel, its more of a 3d object than anything. This makes me think about creating a 3d spin object (think panorama inversed) and using flash to manipulate it. This way you could have real 3d objects in flash derived from pictures.
>www.eink.com
Here is eink, which is basically electrically charged ink that can be turned on and off. The benefit of this is that the display is ultra thin, flexable, and updatable. A while back, Esquire magazine used this on a cover of one of their magazines. The website is old, not updated for a few years. I dont know what this means, maybe that some other company is using the thier technology so its like, protected info now. Eventually the displays will support color, and newspapers will be able to display video, update stories, and more. Here is an article about it.
>Here is a site that I found that has 10 sweet flash sites. Definately worth checkng out.
>Abduzeedo.com
The same site that had that future of zines article above, this place has some pretty sweet links up. They have a daily inspiration for designers and such, which is definately what I need.
>Reality Gets Hyperlinked
This article talks about being able to put hyperlinks in something like Google Maps Street View, and having a camera that can recognize images like a smart camera, and then being able to put links or even just labels on building or something. If that didnt make sense just go to the link, I think they will explain it better.
>Immersa-Dome
This is just kind of cool. Its interesting to think about how something like this can be used in marketing, entertainment, web interactivity and really anything. It would be the optimal tool in viewing 3d panoramas, virtual realities, and planetarium type things. Mhmm

Alright peeps, as boring as this class is I should probably stop typing and start paying more attention. ha .

3D Space in Flash CS4

Direction

So I decided that I wont spend too much time writing script and debugging, since it strays away from what I am working towards ultimately. So I want to use video and pictures to make more of an experience than a game. This HD flash video really inspires me. I mean really, this is impressive. [LINK]

Video Art

Here is a little something thats been a side project since I took these pictures. I think I could work on the timing a bit but I like it. Click the picture to watch. Put your speakers on and your browser to full screen. Music by M83 

: )

Comment

Here is a site with some good interactive flash videos for inspiration / ideas. There are some really good ones in there, along with some that are simple and would be possible for people in this class to do for a project. Here are a couple of my favs, but I recommend watching them all.
FLOW
Come Dance Wit Jah

Aahahahaha

Here is a short little blip with some sound. I had a little bit of scripting problems that im trying to work out, but overall no major hiccups. I found the audio file at this site, www.stonewashed.net/sfx. It has a ton of little sound clips for free download, very useful.

Uhhhhhhhh...

Here is a preview of what I am working on for my calender. Thoughts?

LastGraph is awesome

LastGraph lets you visualize your listening history at Last.Fm. Its pretty cool to see how your listening habits have changed (or not) I recommend this to anyone who has an account at Last.Fm. 

Download the full history (save as)

Kitty Cat Shooter

Help the kitty season the smoked fish with the blood of the innocent!

Hey Mr.Trampoline Man, do a trick for me

Everything, by Everyone

Newgrounds.com is a sweet "flash portal" where anyone can submit their flash creations including movies and games. There is also a page for user created music, which has some real gems. (royalty free btw) Its a really good place to spark some ideas, see what other people out there are doing with flash, and even post your own creations. Check it out!

NOM NOM NOM

Success! Check out my flash stuff.

Go here for the source code to embed swf files. Cheers!

We like the moon

According to NASA, tonights moon is to be the biggest full moon of this year. I decided to use this as an excuse to "get out there" and take some pictures. Plus if I did not photograph tonights moon, I might of had to settle for some puny and pittiful excuse for a moon for a year at the least. Needless to say, the moon I saw was a mere sort of huge. Nonetheless it was a good excuse to dig up the ol' camera and get some sweet pics yeah! It made me feel rather good I would say... enjoy

www.rathergood.com/moon_song

Bonsai Teriyaki

Today for lunch I went to Bonsai Teriyaki Sushi Bar on Ashland st. I've never been there, but always driven by it and fantasize of rolls upon rolls of sushi. Although they didnt have the conveyor belts of plates roaming around, there was a nice little bar where I enjoyed some fresh tea as I watched the chef prepare my roll. I decided on a cucumber roll with tuna, and I very pleased to say the least. I liked the place so much, I yelped about it on the popular restraunt review site Yelp! See it here.

Interactive Videos

Now that the internet is so widely available, interactive websites and media are at an all time high. Documents, pictures, videos, diaries, and pretty much anything can be shared which makes for a new level of interactivity. Meetings can be held in virtual space where individuals from different corners of the globe are controlling avatars that represent that person. One thing I find interesting is the interactivity in online videos, namely video challenges. Here is a video challenge from a series put on by Loaded Longboards, where you can tape yourself doing the tricks provided by the hosts, and submit them for discounts and potentially free stuff from the company. This gives anyone (with a video camera) the opportunity to document their trick and not only get sweet prizes but recognition both as a skater and a videographer. Check it out.

This isnt the only thing like this either, there are thousands of these contests going on right now. Check out Loadeds website for more interactivity.