Keep this short and sweet. I’ll post more shite later on other stuff.

Webcomic. MÜT ON A STICK: You won’t get the title unless you’re very, very ethnic AND old, old school.

I spent the better part of today doing CGing this comic. As usual, I make things difficult and don’t use reference, even at least for the colour. Goes to show that just grinding it out gets the best results for me when it comes to CG. 

I was surprised how decently I managed, at least for rendering the sky. I used Photoshop and the same old brush I always use. For some reason I’m more effective with full opacity settings on the brush. I can blend without it being a faint thing. 

If I keep this webcomic as sporadic ongoing, I should stick with it as it’ll remain interesting for me to continue. My long form comics are what I really enjoy doing predominantly,

It’s entirely “uncalled-for” humour, but hey.

In other news:

Comic a week is chugging along. I’ve been doing it, but I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I should. I’ll change that as soon as I get some obligations out of the way; which should be cleared up after 8 September.

I’ve worked on Incunabula a bit more. I’m redoing it again from the start. I’m working bigger so that my inked line work will be tighter. I found that working at A4 was too restricting, and that my inks look like some amateur did them. When I did the cover on larger manuscript paper, my inks were satisfactory. So far I’ve done the first two pages. Admittedly, they are splash pages, but the amount of detail I’ll put into them will be quiet a feat.

Since I am taking my time with these pages, I’m somewhat enjoying it. I like working on something, taking time off, and looking at it with fresh eyes. You tend to admire the results more too, as the work you put in pays off. If you rush shit, then you get shit.

Commission work is now my priority for this week (amongst all my other non-comic related priorities). I went out of the house today, and went to my Uni’s library and got some work done. These days, I cannot work at home. There are too many distractions. Internet, for one, is very, very bad for getting things done. It’s also refreshing to move about and just bask in outdoors. The library is quiet, and there’s enough space to put a laptop on the table as well as spread your page. The best thing is that it’s open until 9pm on weekdays; plenty of dedicated work time. 

The List isn’t getting a lot of love as of late. It has a tentative January release date (same like the last volume). I best get cracking on that so I can give it Tom in increments. I don’t want to do the same thing I did last year and lump it all on him in one shot to ink. As I’m sure I’ve said before (if I haven’t, I’m saying it now), I want to put more work into my pages. I felt that with each volume, my work is improving, but there’s always something that feels like a step back. I’m going to put more attention into my backgrounds, and I have to learn to adapt to Tom’s inking style. When I pencilled the last volume, I was pencilling like I would ink it myself, but Tom has a grittier bolder inking style than I do. He also takes liberties with my details. So I have to make the most of his inking style as its pretty damn good.

Henry

I’ve been throwing the idea of doing my own anthology for quiet some time now. Sure there’s the tentative Oztaku Anthology, but I want to do things differently. This is spurred on by getting other anthology comics over the years. Titles released locally like: Fist Full of Comics, Xuan Xuan, Moshi Moshi, Pirates, Something Wicked, Oztaku, Generation, et cetera; but also other international anthologies, in particular Robot and Flight.

 It’ll be a limited series of 3 collections. I think 3 is a good number, and doing an anthology one way can only last so long until it’ll stagnate. 

Ideally I want it in full colour, making it expensive from the onset. I’ve also found that there are a few artists I know of already hesitant with working in colour. I might be able to assist with that by doing the flats for them to work off, but I already see this turning into a nightmare task.

Although, the main differences that separate what I want to do from most other Aussie anthologies is the quality control. I want to choose artists that would go into it. I’ll be flipping the bill for this, so I might as well make it the way I want; and I want quality. This poses problems in itself, as getting artist commitment would probably be difficult.

I’d be acting as a default editor in chief as well, so that would be additional work for me, on top of creating content. It goes without saying, that because this is my project, I’d be doing the lion’s share of work as well, which is honestly, something I am looking forward to. I happen to like learning new shit, and because I’d be working at my own pace, I’d have the chance to enjoy it too. So pre-press, marketing, distribution, sales and customer service.

Storywise, they’ll be shorts. It can be a story spanning the whole 3 collections, or just disparate one-shots per collection. Nice and easy. It would range from 15 to 20 pages from each artist per book. If there were 6 comikers in total, and each did 15 pages minimum, then it would hit the 90 page mark. I think that having 15 pages per story is important as it would give the reader something substantial. This anthology would conceivably be shared with everyone who’d come across it, so I want those who come by it to enjoy it naturally, and come away with an experience. Ideally, I’d want the shorts to be experimental, so whoever comes across this anthology will experience something they haven’t read before, but I know not all comikers are inclined so, so this isn’t essential.

That’s it for the moment. This is only an idea. I don’t have the time necessary to devote to this…yet. I guess after July 2010, I’d have the time to do this properly. 

I’m putting this in writing so that this may actually happen in the future. By writing things down, at least I find for myself, that I eventually make my ideas happen.

Smash 2009. I'm off to Smash tonight at midnight.

I'll be at the OzTaku booth helping out and maybe working on sketches there, so I'll be promoting myself and earning money. Well, that's what I say now; I'll see how I feel at the con. If you're there, or planning to go to Smash, definitely come and say hi.

If you want a sketch, I think I can cover paper, but if you want me to draw something for you in particular, please bring a reference.

I hope there's a bunch of stuff I can bring back. I mainly go to cons for new independent works. I don't buy the shite I can get here (and choose not to buy anyway), or useless fanart. I go for the comics. That said, I am looking forward to seeing RockSalt GN and finally meeting Mark after all this time.

There's some more stuff I intend on doing there, like getting some other work done, as well as designing a business card for myself.

I suppose that's it for now. I'll post more when I get back.

Cheers


Henry

So it's been a bit between posts. For the two people reading my blog, I've probably lost them. :P

Well, I've maintained some output in my self-imposed sabbatical. I have sort of been creating one comic a week, but some I can't really show. What I will share is some development of The List. I've done this for the List website which needs some content inbetween volume launches. ;)

I'll also be making some changes to the layout of this blog. At least the banner. Probably work on a welcome picture for my DA Portfolio which has been set up recently. It's a new feature of DA, which I welcome. I don't think it's any real substitute for creating your own portfolio site, but it's better than the nothing I had. 

The List Process.


 
Here are the thumbnails of the first few of pages. What I do is I open the script in Word, and then I print it out the script so you get 2 pages on a single page. I work directly on the scripted page. It saves paper, and I don’t have to flip between pages. Also, doing more than one thumbnail on a page helps with the storytelling relationship between the pages, and makes it more cohesive overall.



Nifty fact #1: I work in traditional media, even though I am reasonably good in digital (I paint in digital though, but the main work is done on paper first). It feels better, and with art, that is what I usually go for. For me, the result doesn’t matter as much as the process. Somehow, it always works out with producing the results in the end. :P

You might notice the thumbnails are pretty weird. Thumbnails are meant to convey layout only. I used to do more detailed ones when I started working with Paul, but that was more the fact that we haven’t worked together before, so putting more detail in was a way to get across what I was doing visually to Paul. The script writing probably changed as he got more familiar with my work. 
Now, thumbnails are purely for organising what Paul has written in the script into a storytelling format, and design purposes. It’s a planning stage. I figure, that if you put too much detail into the thumbnails, you might as well be doing the finished page.  

Nifty fact #2: Oh, and the lame offhand comments written on the thumbnails are there for my own interest/amusement. :D

Page 3 is a finished page. I pencil fairly sparsely typically, because I’m used to inking my own work, and I do all my detail in that stage. But as of the last volume, I am working with Tom Bonin. Working with an inker changed my pencilling process somewhat. I had to put all the detail, as well as pencil the entire page. What I used to do was pencil the foreground and ink it, and then do the background objects in layered order. Now it’s all done at once. It feels weird doing what every other conventional penciller does.

I’ve also included a close up of my pencils. I’ve sharpened it up in Photoshop a bit to make it more crisp for intertrons viewing. As Tom is inking this, I usually leave the scans unaltered. He’ll then use whatever process he has to transfer it to paper.
Tom would probably have his own preferences on how he wants to reproduce copies of my pages to ink, and therefore altering my pencils post-scanning would just end up being a pain in the arse for Tom. 

Page four has been scanned prior to its completion just to further show how I work pencilling. If you take a look at the thumbnails for this page, the layout is roughly the same. But you still have to transfer it to a page. In this stage I chose the main things to draw and position them roughly how I want them to appear on the final page. I then adjust the layout slightly to accommodate. Thumbnails are a good indication of how the page should work, but it is by no means final. Layout is an art in itself, so my advice to anyone doing comics is to treat it with care.
Working on paper on the physical page also visually helps with composition. It’s hard for this to be replicated in a digital canvas for some reason (zooming out is not the same as standing back), so I can’t imagine myself working entirely on a computer.

Nifty fact #3: The List is a sausage-fest. Even as heavily silhouetted, as this female character is, I’ll draw the detail in, if only for the fact that it’ll be a while until another chick is in this damn script. :P


Cheers

Henry

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have been progressing with One Comic A Week, albeit in a different form. Over the last 2 weeks I've been working poster-size on the cover to my 24 hour comic, which is now called Incunabula. It took ages to do all the cross-hatching detail, and even half-way through it didn't look like it was forming well, but that's the nature of working creatively. Thankfully, I think it turned out rather decent. I used nibs, ink and a pen brush. Here's a draft of the cover.

Aside from cover, I have also been planning the story to Incunabula as well as another project I've called Quorum. While I intend for Incunabula to be a fairly short 20-30 pages story, I want Quorum to be a significantly longer story. Indeed I want it to be Novel length 100+ pages. I've done the outlines to the scenes for the story and it's starting to take shape before my eyes.

I also created a poster for Quorum. I wanted a retro circa 60s feel to it, and I think I achieved it. I used a different medium for this though. I used a Pentel Aquash disposable brush ink pen. It’s distinguishable from other brush pens like Copic’s or Windsor & Newton’s as it has bristles, and you can refill it. It’s not to the same standard as a really good brush and it has a habit of forming large globules of ink on the bristles if you do only fine lines and not use the whole brush (scrap paper to wipe off excess essential to using this!), but on the whole I am liking it.

I even used the brush pen to do all the lettering for the logos in the images. That's right; all this shit is hand-written.

I did the Quorum poster in all of 20 minutes. I like the way the folds in the cloths are rendered with the brush. I’m still uncomfortable with the loss of detail as I am a detail junkie with my nibs, but I’m getting line work similar to other brush users I admire (Meredith Gran, Craig Thompson, Jeff Smith, et cetera). I’ll be planning on using a brush entirely or at least for the figures for Quorum.

-Henry

Something I've started over on the Oztaku forums. After the high from the comikraze 24 hour comic challenge last weekend, I've been listening to comiking podcasts like SEQALAB and going over old podcasts from Webcomics Weekly. One particular SEQALAB podcast brought up the professional production schedule differences between French and American comics. French work on poster size works, and usually paint one page a week. American comikers do a rate of one page a day. The French comiker does this for about 46 weeks which is then put into a BD, then knocks off for a month of holiday and starts all over again for the next year (publishers have the right idea for creatives there).

This got me thinking, that working on a page a week is really doable. It's easy. No matter what is going on in your life. I am working more frequently on pages for the List, than that schedule. 

Then it reminded me of something from a Webcomics podcast brought up. If you think of doing a 40 page book, your natural reaction is that it is impossible before you start. Sure. If you think about doing a page a week, suddenly that's not impossible. The point is, if you keep doing one page a week of comic, before you know it you have a GN.

That's the idea behind A Comic a Week. While the Australian comic scene is very creative, and there are some real good comics being produced, there's a whole lot of wasted potential. Good artists that could otherwise do a comic (look at the 24 hour comic challenge), just don't even start. Something I've learnt while doing GNs is that if you just concentrate on just the next page, you suddenly have a lot of pages under your belt. After a while I was counting by the GNs I've produced and not pages.

From now on, every Monday, I will post a new page of comic. I also have multiple projects, so I'll also alternate between them depending on immediate priority. This will most likely be concurrent to work on the List as well as commission work, but I think I can always find the time to do one page a week.

It's this focus I want to introduce people to. It's not a natural thing to adapt to, but I assure you, once you start, it will never feel like grinding. It feels like grinding when you look at the end, but if you look at just the next page, it feels like a stroll. Suddenly your at the end.

Henry