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My grandmother died today.
We haven’t been close for the last ten years or so, but… ok, to be honest I’m quite numb at the moment and not sure what I feel yet.
In a way my fear of an “anniversary death” has come true. MY dad died September 1989, and my mom died November 1999. Ten years and two months later.
And it is again ten years and two months later, that my last surviving grandparent has left this world (all others died before my birth). Now I’m sitting here, spooked out by all the synchronicities.. especially that it ties into a certain script I wrote exactly 30 days ago.
Finally have sold first copies of Moon Jade Angel and Inkbook!
I’m ready to do some heavy drawing today, whether on the comic or not, that’s yet undecided.
Just a quick update (have to try post daily, so that I can keep traffic to this site, heh WHAT traffic? Haha.)
Update: Starting today, Ka-Blam has lowered the cost of their color trade printing, thus the price of Amen City Chronicles: Din Krakatau color edition was lowered by me to 14.99$!
First sketch for my next comics project, Robyn Hood.
A 32 page oneshot, full color.
What you see above is the current design. I might still tweak it a bit (perhaps the colors?) but I’m quite happy with it as it is. Robyn Hood is meant to blend together Robin Hood and Red Riding Hood into a single character, and in the course of writing and designing it became a sort of “mythological action fantasy”. More art and notes as the project develops.
Since the page is too large to post it here (and resizing it further down would totally kill any details), here’s a link to the Penciljack forum thread where you’ll find a somewhat randomly chosen doublespread from a Chinese comic (from Hong Kong specifically) that was re-inked by me.
Not much to add today. I’ve been sketching on paper (nothing scanned yet), practicing inking over other artist’s art (nothing to show either as it’s not fully mine) and trying to spread my web presence.
The last part is important, for the sales on my sketchbooks are… well, there are no sales, haha. Let’s leave it at that. I’m still hoping it’ll pick up. I need to upgrade my pc, so I need cash. The main hard drive starts causing problems, dvd burner is pretty much out of order (records in a very hit and miss fashion), secondary hd is even older then the first one, also I’m starting to get some weird crashes, probably graphic card (or just drivers) related. Not to mention the crappy screen I have. I was thinking about going a bit more painterly with my art for one of the projects, but that of course will not happen because…. well, because on this screen colors are off. The more of one color, the more off it’ll look like, and it will also change values depending whether it’s on the left or right side of the screen. Argh.
So yeah, buy my stuff so I can buy stuff that will help me make more stuff!
I have yet to sell a copy of Moon Jade Angel or Inkbook, and I’m already busy making the “sequels”, heh.
 
The b/w piece is first drawing for Inkbook #2, whereas the second one is for the Remake/Remodel: Atoma thread on Whitechapel.
(Click the cover to enter the Indyplanet store)
Inkbook is a collection of 52 black and white drawings. The main part of the book, the first forty drawings were created between September and December 2009, and have been all created in a similar fashion with the help of digital inking. The remaining twelve are from earlier that year (starting January) and show a progression of art, and various experiments that have led to the current drawing technique.
The last two images in the preview above are from the bonus section. Additional six preview images can be seen at the Indyplanet link above.
For comic book store retailers there’s an option of ordering copies through Comicsmonkey.
(Click the cover to go to the Indyplanet store)
Moon Jade Angel is a collection of short comics and digital drawings/paintings. Majority of the work comes from the 2006-2009 period (with the exception of three pieces from 2001, 2002 and 2005).
Overall there’s 14 pages of comics and over thirty pages of art.
To see a further 6-page preview click on the cover above (or on the cover in the Latest Offerings column on the right or on the Cover in the Coilstar Press section or simply click HERE.
There’s also an option for Comic Book store retailers. You can order it for your store at Comicsmonkey.
I love putting dots at the end of my titles, heh. It’s like an unfinished thought which later evolves into a full post. But I’m digressing (and I haven’t even started properly!).
I’ve been thinking recently on how drawing comics as a kid was pure joy. Sure, these things were dumb, cobbled together from various bits of plots and ideas plundered from all over the place. The scan above is two pages from a comic titled “Ax: Xapur”, a roughly 20 page long “chapter” in one of my comics magazines. They were generally A5 sized squared notebooks running for 120-320 pages (although I recall drawing my Turtles comics in 32 page ruled ones) with various stories starting and often not finishing. Most went on for as long as my attention span allowed me to work on them, few really finished.
Ax remains one of the unfinished ones, but then again I never managed to draw a second issue entirely, so as such all the other comics in that book remain unfinished too. Total “plunderism”. The word Xapur is swiped from a Conan story, the clawed skeletons were inspired by one of the Ray Harryhausen films (forgot which one it was, I recall they had skeletons with swords and shields there though) or perhaps it was Army of Darkness? The crazy layouts came from me seeing couple of illustrations by Philippe Druillet, so did 2 panels that I attempted to swipe from a review of Druillet’s Vuzz (a failed swipe I must admit, neither the look nor the perspective were anywhere near that). Still, this story remains a pinnacle of my early teens creativity. And also one of the last survivors. I was made to throw out half of my notebooks around that age by my mom. The other half landed mostly in the cold and damp basement, thus rotting away and being thrown out too. There’s only a couple survivors.
I think I was one of the only two kids with any sense of perspective throughout my entire class. Everyone else drew everything flat… but wait, this isn’t an essay on how I drew back in the day. I’m digressing again, loosing my train of thought, perhaps entering the wrong wagon. Conductor! Where does this train go to?
Back on track.
The old. The joy of simply drawing with a blue pen on ruled pages, filling them one by one with no second takes. Any mistake becomes part of the image, any stupid idea becomes something you have to work hard to retcon in some fashion on the continuing pages. Just telling stories, while drawing on both sides.
I don’t like to draw with ballpoint pens anymore. The good ones have gotten expensive, while the cheap ones have gotten really crappy. Instead I fell in love with mechanical pencils, magnificent little things that don’t require any sharpening. Just click click and draw again for another half hour or so. I love that.
Well, if that’s the old then, the notebooks filled with art, what’s new?
Digital inking. I love it. I simply, simply love it. It took me some time to find the right tools, the right software, the right approach, but at this point it allows me to be much better. I can still be as loose with the line as I want to, but I can also do all the tiny details I couldn’t do on the paper itself, meanwhile I don’t have to switch into larger format paper and go through the fear of empty page all over again (I got over that finally but it took me years to jump from A5 to A4 pages.
Digital inking, digital coloring, digital painting, digital lettering. Someone might say I am losing my uniqueness by going that way, but is it truly so? After all, what’s so amazing about being unable to achieve the level of detail you want to? Is that what I want to be remembered for? The guy who couldn’t draw fingers well cause he drew on too small paper and was afraid to switch to a larger page format? (not to mention that he’d have to buy a large drawing desk and spend a fortune on proper drawing board rather than using simple printer paper?)
Where does it all lead to? What is the destination? I know I am rambling, just as I knew that I would. The moment I sat down to the keyboard I knew it’d be one of these long posts that run in circles, tripping over ideas as they stumble through the thoughtspace.
The goal is near, please perserve.
I have this thought haunting me recently. What if I tried to combine the old with the new? The joy of filling notebooks with comic pages, in a way allowing me to see a finished book of sorts; all that joined with the digital mastery? Take a notebook, draw the pages in there. Loose or detailed, no matter, as long as they convey all that’s necessary to tell the story. The outlines, gestures, suggestions of lights and shadows, echoes of backgrounds, loosely handwritten dialogues and captions, raw emotions captured, gestures and expressions envisioned in loose lines. All that’s necessary to tell a story done that way. And then scan it, page by page, and turn these “storyboards” into the finished product, something worthy of publishing.
Would that work?
Right, what the hell is that thing? I don’t know. I just drew it in my spare time, doodling in one of my notebooks. The color is from Photoshop and the original is grey pencil on old yellowish paper… yes, I love drawing in notebooks that are 10/20 years old. It’s a strange thing, as if you were warping the time or doing something timeless.
Toying with some ideas of doing a book of fake manuscripts and such, perhaps even something written in a code? I don’t know, just strange thoughts tumbling in my brain at the moment.
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Coming Soon an untitled heroic fantasy novel
Robyn Hood
a "Mystical Action Fantasy" 32-page oneshot comic
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