Spidey

Hopefully the movie kicks as much ass as the trailers. Though it was made by Sony, I still have hope.

Weekly Inspiration 3: Northlanders

  Violent. Gritty. Gory. Yet somehow soft and personal. I love Northlanders. It's a series that chronicles adventures of Vikings, and their unfortunate victims, throughout Europe circa 1000A.D. 

  How does it inspire me, besides just being a beautiful series of comics? The use of blacks. Not making a racial statement here, I'm talking about the inks. I've heard my hero, Ralph Bakshi, say that black is the most important color for a cartoonist, and I took note. But Northlanders really made me see it.  Huge blots of black ink make up a lot of the pages in these books, and it's funny that your mind doesn't find it odd. Black just works. It tells your eye, "This is a dark area," and your mind just fills in the blanks. Definitely gonna look back on these while doing Avalir.

Colors!

  Thinking about all of the work I have yet to do on Avalir, I realized I only had a slight idea of how I was going to color it. I scanned in a recent drawing to play around with it in photoshop. 

I isolated the linework onto a single layer, and filled in flat colors underneath it.

I'm really happy with this look. Early on I planned on coloring Avalir like this, with the inks handling the shading and simple, flat colors to give it the look of old comics. But I kept fiddling and added slight shading with color.

I do think this looks better. More rendered and finished. I guess we'll just see when the time comes to color Avalir. The flat color/inks method still looks great, and is MUCH faster, but I might throw a bit of colored shading into it if another hour shows up in the day.

  Overall I've grown to like this little doodle. It was nice to break out of my comfort zone and play with colors. Thanks for reading. 

OCB and Maus

  A couple weeks ago, I checked out Scott McCloud's book, Making Comics, from the library. Afterward I immediately purchased a copy for myself because of just how valuable it is to me. I could go on for pages about that book and how it helped me. Beneath the invaluable lessons in effective storytelling techniques, it carried a message that hadn't been made quite as clear to me before. Comics is an art form FAR larger and deeper than the action hero genre I've been worshiping since my preteen years. It inspired me to seek out all types of comics with all kinds of stories because, after all, stories are what I'm passionate about.

  I've become best friends with Amazon (one might call it an addiction). It makes it so easy to get lots of books to me quickly, and it's cheaper than a bookstore. Needless to say, the books just keep on coming.

  I started off with a book called Old City Blues, which was a successful webcomic that eventually got published. I love the art in Old City Blues; its what convinced me to buy the book. Sketchy and dynamic lines and inking. It was more of an action book, and the story was a little predictable/cliche, but I still enjoyed it. 

  Next I purchased Maus, which I had heard of for a long time (it won a Pulitzer Prize), and decided now was a perfect time to try it out. Amazing. The story follows the author, Art Spiegelman, as he interviews his father, Vladek, about his experiences in Poland during WWII. Not only are you immersed in the story of the atrocities Vladek endured, but you also view a rickety relationship between father and son. The art is also very good. Spiegelman chose to depict the characters as animals (animal heads on human bodies). Jews are mice, Germans are cats, Poles are pigs, and Americans are dogs. It's no surprise this book won so many awards. It will definitely be remembered as a prominent personal account of the Holocaust.

Weekly Inspiration 2: Actors

  This week I read a lot, and was inspired by a lot. But nothing topped tonight. My beautiful and talented girlfriend Emmalee is part of a high school alumni drama performance. During my years with her I've become friends with most of the people involved in the drama department, and they all inspire me greatly. I've also realized that, even though I can't act, sing or dance, we're a lot alike. We all have a passion for bringing characters and stories to life. The only difference is the tool we use to manifest our stories. These talented artists use their bodies and voices to breathe life into characters; and I use pencils, pens, and colors.
  I really respect every person I've met in the drama department. Their passion is an inspiration to me every time I see them on or off the stage.