comics

24hr comic day 2012

Another year another fantastic venue and turn out for the 24 hour comic challenge in Perth.

A twist on this years challenge we had to use the name of a song to inspire our comics. "I'm deranged" by David Bowie from the Lost Highway soundtrack was my ear worm for that morning

Deranged 24hr Comic Day 2012



What did you think? I was pretty happy with it. I enjoyed the freedom of not taking it too seriously and just having fun drawing. I even got one of the Manly Show super buff dudes in there. (I love that photo realistic picture of me doing the 24hr comic that Christien drew)

I drew this on glossy A5 paper (I guillotined and halved A4 sheets before the event) as I knew that paper likes ink pens. I wore my glove that I have for my cintiq as I knew my hand would be a bit grippy on the gloss paper. I loosely pencilled it with a H pencil. I found the faster and looser I drew the better to ink from. My pens were a small, a mid and a brush pen. I tried to use the different thicknesses to give the scene depth. I also had 2 different grey markers, a warm and a cool grey. I tried to use the different colours to separate the characters from the background. Occasionally I'd mix up the colours due to tiredness.

Working smaller I was able to produce more pages faster and starting from 10am I was able to have all my pages done by 3am the next day. This is the first time I've managed to finish with time to spare. I also felt I was able to keep the drawings pretty consistent  I may have stopped drawing detailed trees for awhile but the character work I was happy with the whole way through.

This character was based on a cultural statue I saw while I was over in Kuching last month. It had a cat that looks pretty much like how I've drawn him being attacked by a similar styled dog/dragon. I wasn't allowed to take photos in the museum but I drew these while I was over there.


This guy is super fun to draw and the 24 hour challenge gave me an opportunity to bring him to life. That's why these events are so much fun. They just force work out of you.

Well another 24 hour comic done. Super extreme thanks to Chris Maximum Markle for organizing it again.

The next thing coming up in a few weeks the 48hr animation challenge!!!! Man I must hate sleeping.

I also need to find a job at some point. My freelancing is only just keeping the wolf at bay. Such is my glorious life as an artist haha

Sorry for the lack of updates here but keep reading the Manly Show. Christien has been drawing up a storm there that keeps challenging me to draw men with the shortest shorts and the largest nipples... heh. Seriously check it. It's the best website in the world!!

24 hour comic is printed

I made a video preview




Dang I flicked through that first part too quick, there's some great stuff there. Trust me the book is super great, it keeps distracting me and I keep re-reading it.

If you live in Perth, you can swing by Quality Comics on Hay St as they are selling them for $25. There will be a few more places to buy the comics soon and I'll let you know. You can read more details about the comic and buying the comic from Chris Markle here: http://24hcdperth.wordpress.com/

The other artists who drew 24 hour comics in this book are
Alex Manfrin, Calvin Lin, C. S. Markle, Jessica McLeod, Liam Lucas, Linda Foote, Lucas Travis, Luke Milton, Michael Lombardi, Paul Spencer, Robert ‘Grug’ Forest, Thomas Carter (2 comics!!)and Ushan Boyd

Those that tried the 24 hour challenge but didnt make it were given 4 pages to show off their stuff at the end. Those artists are:
Roseline Lau, Chris Gooch, Jane Chang, Justina Davis, Katie Zhang, Lisa Coffman, Ronnie Ryder and Yip (Sze-Yip) Ng

Printed comics are the best!

Robot Cover final?

I'm pretty tired so I'm not sure, there might be some mistakes I need to fix but this is generally the final cover for my 24 hour comic.


I stole the layout idea from some Russian constructivist poster. I thought it would be fun to try and recreate my characters in plasticine (which it was). I wanted it to have an overall hand crafted feel to it. The down side is people may be disappointed the rest of the comic isn't in plasticine

Robot cover WIP

Here's a photo for one of the parts for my cover of my 24 hour comic.


I'll post more about my cover as I do it.

update: 3rd of November


here's the second part. This is heaps of fun

update: 4th of november

and bam! here's the city. Clouds and all

My 2010 24 hour comic

ROBOTS
(click to grow bigger)


and that's a comic done in 24 hours. Less actually, probably only shy of 20 hours.This was probably the first time I finished everything I wanted to do. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out.

Well hopefully this works and I can finally get some sleep

*update* this was the initial seed by Roseline. By boxes I meant I had drawn borders on 27 blank pages procrastinating.


 

24 hour comic COMPLETE

Well I am done with seven minutes to spare. WOO!

My comic had to involve the three words "Troop" "mint" and "once". So I decided on a War/Scifi/Comedy comic.

I wanted to create cute fun characters that were easy to draw. One problem I found the more I got into it was I had too many characters and they weren't that easy to draw. I inked four pages but had to stop and just keep it in pencil as I was really running well behind.

I do like my designs though. Actually the Crabbot pilots look the best in the last few panels they star in. They evolved with the comic. Red Beards 'beard' was a pain to draw. Joker was a lot of fun but I wish i remembered to keep him skinny. I also wish I kept Falcon's arm bandages but then I think that would have taken more time to draw.

Khan suffers a bit of bad art due to me racing to get over the line and not really having the time to develop him. I liked where I was heading with him but not quite there. Steve cracked me up. I wish I kept those little eyes but I forgot. I'm glad I inked his scene with the boys.

Ok well enough of me talking about it,

Read it here!

Also check out my friends comics
Jamie Anderson's - "So now I hate the moon"
Tim Cannan's - "Poo-lock Holems"

Now sleep ... sleep is needed

ComiKaze 24

Ok my 24 hour comic is underway and I'm already way behind schedual. I started at 11am Saturday and I have to finish by 11am tomorrow

Before starting I have organised all my tools and cleaned up my desks. Here's my light table all decked out.
Ok so at 3:45pm I have planned out my whole story. It will be titled 'Skulls and Daggers'. It's a war, comedy and a scifi comic. That blank page in the middle is something I need to be filling in.

More updates when I get my ass on schedual.

Train Sketches 3 and a comic

So I am still taking long train trips every day and have done some more sketches. I have not been drawing that great lately so that is why there is not a heap of new stuff.

Lately I have been into drawing "Dash Dashing".



Here he is holding his weapon of choice. There is also a Tribe Tribal sketch looking a lot like something from "The Maxx". I did this one mid last week.



I did this one tonight between Fremantle and Perth. I was using a 0.1 felt pen but the nib was all jammed in which made it hard to draw. I was still inspired from watching Imaishi's "Re: Cutie Honey" episode. That was crazy stupid but absolutely brilliant.



Ok since the pen was useless I decided to try drawing with a heavy pencil. 4b I think. I like the round shapes I got out of that pencil. I might have to try a few more drawings with pencil before doing the 24 hour comic.

Speaking of comics. Jamie got a sweet new toy from playasia and I asked him to take a photo of it for me so he sent back the first two images. I thought they were hilarious so I took one of my toys. I told Jamie to upload them but he is lazy so I am stealing his thunder. I put together all the images and made this:


(click to make bigger)

Well my net speed is back and I have some sweet new cartoons to watch. Lata!

Train Sketches

I did a few little drawings on the train home tonight. A 'Mr Gough' in his 'Marioish' world and a 'LB' looking like he always does but from a lower angle!



I'm really beginning to see what the 'Mr Gough' world is like. Lots of very round things seems to work best. Also lots of fauna to add more texture.



LB on the other hand is mostly straight lines. He's lots of fun to draw after the 'Mr Gough' stuff because of the different approach to the drawing style. (That also goes vice versa going back to Mr Gough).

Rose and I have almost got 2 major sequences out of the way and they are looking pretty good. So I'm pretty happy about that.

On other news both Roseline and I are taking part in another 24 hour comic competition that begins 11am on Saturday the 7th of June and ends 11pm Monday night



I'll definitely be updating my progress on this blog. If you're not doing anything that weekend you should sign up and get drawing. It should be a lot of fun.

Freedom from paid work

Well as of December I finished my contract with Blue Rocket on the series 'Pixel Pinky'. It was great to work with such a friendly bunch of people. I had a blast.

Here's my Animator's Survival Kit book that I got signed by pretty much everyone who worked on Pixel Pinky. I'll hopefully add Tim's signature when we pass through Adelaide on the way home. Here's what Tim looks like and some nice street art that could possibly been done by a Tim, you may notice he is a little scarred that could have possibly been done by a Tim as well :P


I'm still waiting on my watermarked footage to show some shots I animated but until then here's a look into my work notepad. Hopefully Jamie (who sat next to me) will put up some of his drawings, they be hilarious!


(the above is a little in-jokey to the series)
(some early Dash Dashing)




Oh write a comment if you want me to expand on what's going on in the image or just make sense of my scribbly writing. I created 'Dash Dashing' in this pad and another character by the name of "THE ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMP". That character cracked me up so much that I had to leave the room because I couldn't stop laughing. Good times, good times.

Vicious and Faust 23

Well with this issue I thought it would be cool to put up images as I go along at all the major points. I hope you'll find this interesting.


Ok this is the starting sketch. Usually I thumbnail my comics out first but with this one I wanted to do it in a graff art style and just attack my page. The trick to doing this graff style for a comic is in controlling your lines. Done right the lines will direct the viewers eye to where you want them to be looking. Also it must be one image not a whole heap of separate things. Overlapping patterns and shrapnel can tie your stuff together.

This is the first time I've really gone all out in this style so I dont know if it is quite there yet but I do like it

The inked piece. Inking is something I think I'm getting better at (I only really started doing this last year). This was all done by hand, using a light table, ipod on shuffle, good inking paper, a 0.1, 0.5 and a brush pen. Inking is really an art form in itself. Using the right line weights can really bring stuff off the page or push it into the background. Also you can be dynamic with shadows and be a little loose with your light source. Adding dirt scratches to white areas also softens the image. I'd love to do some of the cool tricks Tim Townsend does but I need to practice a hell of a lot more.


Ok before I started colouring I had to clean up my lines. Fix some overflows and areas not completely coloured black. I then had to fix a typo. This is always a pain but doing some cut and pasting it's a 5 minute job. I based Robot's colours on the best robot of them all GIANT ROBO. I'm using a pinkish background to make it a bit more fun. I'm not too sure about that gradient, we'll see if it stays or not.



Not much done today as I'm busy doing Porcelain stuff. The bright colouring is working pretty nicely. Before I started this comic I watched "Dead Leaves" for inspiration. Man that's a good film. there's a few colours (Go!, numbers and shapes in the 3rd panel) that I'll be wanting to add some glows too later on. I may flatten the image and copy and paste those areas out. I'm not too sure yet.


(click on the pic above to head on over to my webcomicsnation account)

Ok it's done. I copied out all the colours I wanted to glow on an above layer then gaussian blurred them and set the layers to Add. I dulled the opacity a bit to control the glow. I then used Faux film filter and adjusted the temperature and added some grain and added a slight glow. I then went into Hue and Saturation and dropped the saturation a bit and tweaked the hue. As I was about to save I thought I'd try (my favourite filter) sunset and twilight this puts a coloured gradient over the image. I liked how it made the bottom half have a blue tint and brought the top up to being more yellow.

So this image didn't have too many tricks to it and I coloured it pretty flat with no highlights or shadows. There's bits I'd like to change (like the edges) but it's best to move on to all the other things I have to do