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.