Projekt Ultima-tely Shelved

Still turning out some pages based on old stuff I have lying around while I do some more writing. This page is based on some old thumbnails for a story I started dreaming up about 15 years ago. It was going to be called Projekt Ultima and was a story about a team of Allied agents racing against the Nazi's to find the lost city of Atlantis. I knew even less about writing then than I do now (which still isn't much), so it was shaping up into something bigger than I could handle and I eventually gave up on it. I still feel like I have too much mental clutter from it to ever go back to it, but maybe that'll change someday.

This page wasn't actually from the story, it was something I drew up before I had the Atlantis angle worked in and is more straight sci-fi. Here's the original thumbnail:

 

Here's the page I came up with based in it:

I made several attempts at coloring it and couldn't come up with anything I liked, so I just went with a sepia tone look that kind of matches the idea of this page being based on notes from an old file.

Keepin' the Ball Rollin'

I took some time over the holidays to go over what I had done on my western comic, both in terms of story and art, and decided to do some major overhauling on the whole thing. That means it'll be a while before I have any pages to post, but since I don't want to lose the habit of turning out pages I'm going through my notebooks and looking for anything I can work up into short pieces.

This first one is an idea I had about 14 years ago when my wife and I were living in a small town in southeast Ohio - not much to set up, just a quick little two pager:

 

BADGE - page 4

BADGE - page 3

BADGE - pages 1 & 2

Reposting the first page with the second since I made a few changes:

BADGE - page 1

Alright, here's page one of "Badge", my western story. The plan is to post pages as I finish them, with no set schedule. Once I have a decent number of pages done to act as a buffer, I'll create a site for the strip and make it a proper web comic. Right now, I'm just trying to get into a production groove, see if the story has any legs, and to get some feedback (good or bad):


I'm producing the pages at full print resolution in the event that the story ever goes to print. Here's a full rez shot of panel three as an example:


I thought I'd go over my process (which is still evolving), in case there's any interest. I'm working from a loose outline which should honestly be tighter than it is, but I want to get this story rolling before I find more excuses not to do it. I'm drawing thumbnails for each page at about 2"x3", scanning them in, then printing them out at 6"x9" and penciling over that:


The finished art is all done in Photoshop to save time and to allow for more experimentation. The goal is to build up several simple techniques to get an illustrative look in a relatively short amount of time. The first step is the inking, which is primarily focused on form and laying in the graphical black elements. I want the story to have a bit of a rough edge, so I created a brush that gives me a look similar to black Prismacolor pencil on textured paper:


Next, I go in an lay in some medium greys, mostly flat with a few gradients:


After that, I go back in with a brush I made that has an ink wash feel to it to give the page some extra texture and tonal value:


One all that is in, I go back and do a polishing pass with digital screens (like the old zip-a-tone patterns that old comics used) for more tone and texture, some digital spatter (which I used to do with an old toothbrush back in the day), and finally, just going in and punching out some white highlights on things:


After the lettering is done, I overlay a scan of old parchment paper to give everything an antiqued look and I'm pretty much done. It sounds like a lot, but really, I'm just building up several simple steps that add up to (I hope) a lush, finished look.

When I post the second page, I'll re-post page one without all of the blabbing.

Thanks for taking a look. Like I said, any comments, good or bad, are appreciated.

Solomon Kane & Candy Canes

Let me try this one more time - the first time I posted these, the images weren't clickable.

Anyway, I finally got some time to finish the last page of the Solomon Kane story I had intended to wrap up by Halloween. I didn't get the last page done in time, then things conpsired to keep my from finishing it, and suddenly it's almost Christmas.

Here's the whole story:

Shipwrecked Page Five

Got a little behind this week, so I missed my Halloween deadline, but only one more page to go:

Shipwrecked Page Four

Shipwrecked Page Three

Shipwrecked Page Two

Shipwrecked Page One

Here we go:

The True Measure of Power

Last year, I started working on a short story, mostly as a writing exercise. Working on it in my free time taught me a few things about doing any future comics work:

1) Although writing the story in prose as opposed to a script felt more natural, the length of the story got away from me. What was supposed to be a 5 page story turned into a 9 page story.

2) Scanning in my thumbnails and doing a rough pass at lettering before I started penciling was probably the smartest thing I did. I was able to refine & edit the text within the actual pages and lay it out so that it worked with the art rather than being dropped in later as an afterthought.

3) Working in the traditional way of penciling, then inking, then coloring isn't going to work for me. It feels like I'm doing the work four times rather than building up all of the elements together. I felt like it was going to take forever and I lost my motivation to work on it.

I'm working on ways to build up a page all at once making the most out of digital short cuts. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I don't see myself getting much work done otherwise the traditional way, especially something in a longer format, like a graphic novel.

I hate not doing things the 'right' way, but I'm more interested in telling a story at this point than worrying about the original art. I think it'll be more satisfying to have a finished graphic novel on my shelf than a stack of half drawn pages.

This story isn't anything earth shattering - just straight forward action, but I thought it worked out alright, so I'm posting it here in pencil form with the rough lettering added:

It's About Damn Time

I finally had a chance to finish the last page to the little story I started a long while back. It was frustrating because the drawings took no time at all, it was just a matter of finding time to draw them. Changing jobs, getting a new puppy and a million other little things got in the way.

Also, since I was just making the story up as I went along I didn't have any real burn to get back to it. I'm sure it reads very disjointedly (is that a word? I don't think so. "Blog" isn't a real word either, but here we are.)







Thanks for sticking around.

Another Page...

...from the story I started a while back. I want to find the time to get this thing wrapped up so I can move on to other stuff:

Another Story Page...

I'm going to try and wrap this up this week:

Do Over

OK - I'm feeling a bit better and want to get back to the little story I started before the holidays. I never really explained what I was doing, so I'm going to do that now as well as reposting all of the pages so far.

I drew the first page without any idea of what was going on or where the story was headed. I liked the idea of painting myself into a corner with each page and figuring my way out on the next. By the time I got to the third page I had a better idea of where the story was going, but still wanted to play it by ear day by day, page by page. It's a fun and challenging writing exercise and forces me to draw quickly. Each page has taken me about 3 hours from initial idea to scanned and lettered digital file.

The biggest hurdle I face in trying to work on comics in my free time is the amount of time it takes. It's very easy to lose momentum and interest when the work drags out over a long period of time. Not that I would consider these professional quality, but it feels a lot better to finish a full page a day as opposed to the 12 months it took me to draw a 5 page story I did with more traditional techniques a while back.

Enough with the talk - back to the drawing:

A Little More

Something Different