I Inked Tokka

Well, it's taken me many, many weeks to get this done but last night I finally managed to finish the Tokka sketch. HUZZAH!

Casey and the Invisible Arm Flurry

I'm working on inking Dan's Tales issue and there's this scene where Casey and Raph are sorta getting into it. Then there's this panel in particular- where a wildly swinging Casey is being held back by Raph. Dan wanted Casey's arms "to be just a blur". It's not really a tall order, but I had a hard time drawing this. First, I just drew a Casey with 2 arms in a swinging position. Naturally, it didn't really seem to convey what I think Dan had in mind. Then I drew a whole bunch of fists coming from Casey and taking up the space between him and Raph. That just looked a mess. Blurry arms-- it really stumped me.
At least for me, the Manga/Anime guys had the best solution. I don't know how great the final result looks, but I crack up everytime I see this panel.

Dustin's Casey

Got another commission to do a Casey sketch. After seeing other Caseys that I've posted on the blog, Dustin chose the classic version.

Maddi Update

If you follow my blog, you might remember Maddi. Maddi is sort of my student, as I am helping her make a comic book for a school project. Right now, she is doing the layouts and breakdowns for her book. I've only seen a few thus far- but she's doing a great job and I'm really liking her anime twist on the Turtles.
This letter was sent to her this morning, with answers to some questions that she had--

Hey Maddi-
I guess as far as what you want to use for paper and inking tools are totally up to you- I probably would reccomend whatever you feel most comfortable with. For me, I use Strathmore 300 series paper, with a smooth surface. The ink flows nice on this paper, and the line does not run, or give a furry look. As for ink, I've been using disposable Japanese brush pens, however these have proven very hard to find. The closest thing that I have found that seems to be more widely available is a pen made by Faber-Castell. It's called a PITT artist's pen. It has a flexible tip that mimics a brush. It gives a nice variable line but takes some practice to get the hang of. Line weight and variation gives a more interesting look to your art. For example, if you use a certain pen to do the art in the comic, try using a thicker pen for your panel borders. Use a different weight pen for your lettering. Sometimes when I see amateur comics, like when someone shows me their portfolio at a show, they have inked the entire thing with the same pen. This, in my opinion, gives the art a kind of flatness.

My question to you about printing, means at the end of this project when your comic is done, I'm assuming that you will hand in an actual comic book. Running them off on a photocopier is probably the best way to accomplish this. In my experience, these comics are known as ashcans. If this is what you want to do, take a 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of copier paper, and fold it in half. This will be the finished size of your comic. You can do the actual art bigger, and reduce it to fit on this page ( which I reccomend) but you will need to keep it proportional to this size. What I do is draw a line from the lower left corner up through the upper right corner and beyond... make a new vertical OR horizontal measurement, take that measurement to the new upper right hand corner and then simply add then the missing line. I don't know how clear I'm being- write back if you're confused. Anyway, once the pages are done, we can reduce them to fit, then depending how many pages there are, there is a certain way to arrange them on copy paper (in order that we get printed pages on both sides of the paper) and we can run them off on any old photocopier. I'll explain this better when we get there.

Lastly, yes, I am going to San Diego. Yeah, sorry- I've heard the tickets are pretty pricey but from what I've heard it's extravagant and enormous and hopefully, worth it.

Write back if you have any questions, BTW- when is the deadline for this book? This is me, but I always get nervous about when things are due.

Later- Jim

Paleo: Loner, Page 23

Drawing things in heavy shadow or low light is a tricky thing. Thinking about the other guys in the studio (Berger, Dooney, Talbot) they all seem to have a better grasp of it than I do. It's such a beautiful thing when it's done well. I'm noticing in my drawing lately, and it's totally intentional, that I'm trying to incorporate more blacks, although they seem to have a certain characteristically abstract quality. Sometimes it works better than other times.

I hope this piece reflects the dark mood I was going for.

Recent Random Paleo Panel

I've been feeling kinda guilty that I haven't blogged in so long- so I thought that perhaps I would just look around at some of the stuff I've been working on recently and post some random panels. Pencilling on Berger's Nobody issue is done and I actually inked the first page and a half today. However, this panel was done a couple of days ago as part of 3 Paleo pages that I managed to ink in between working on Dan's story.

NDIB- Page 24

I haven't had much to blog about lately- I'm still pencilling away on Dan's Tales issue, NOBODY DOES IT BETTER. I just finished page 24 this morning so I'm getting near the end and should be able to finish it this week.
I always hesitate posting pencils for issues that are upcoming as I feel like I'm revealing something that I shouldn't. On my own stuff, I don't mind so much but on other people's stories I don't know if it bugs them that I might be giving some critical part of the plot away. Hopefully not.

On another matter, I posted new, better art for the PALEO color trials that Steve and I did (see previous post). Stupidly, I didn't realize that all I needed to do to post the color pages after converting them from CMYK to RGB in Photoshop.

More Paleo Color 2

2 more versions of 1 more page to show you. Steve sent these to me this morning and at my request, he did a quick recolor of the main character from green to red.

More Paleo Color

First off, I have to apologize to Steve- I made yesterday's post as I was rushing out the door and as I viewed the blog, I saw that the colors were very much altered from Steve's page. I'm not sure why the file didn't translate- Dooney thinks it's because it was created in CMYK(color for printing). Lavigne called me this morning and he was wondering what was up with the post and why I changed the coloring. We were pretty much laughing about how funky it came out however we still got some good feedback from folks.
Anyways, this morning I took a digital photo of the printout of Steve's page as I recieved it. I don't know how good it came out but here ya go.

Loner Color Proposal

I hope Lavigne doesn't mind me posting this. As most people who follow my blog know, I'm currently working on a new PALEO book, called LONER. In talking with Steve Lavigne, we both discussed that it might be cool to actually do the book in color, and pitching it to Pete. In preparation for that, Steve asked me to provide him with 2 pages that he might do up as a sort of proposal.
This, obviously, is one of those pages. Steve sent it to me last week, and Pete has seen it. I thought that I would post it, because it's kind of a neat behind-the-scene thing, and hopefully maybe get some feedback from the folks that visit my blog.