Entries Tagged as 'October2008'

Muse and Ben Folds

My Muse update: my finished inked page count is now 40 out of 300.
I have 1 page that I just finished penciling so that one needs to be inked.

I’m currently 2 and half pages ahead of my schedule… which sucks as I was 4 pages ahead last week. I need to be at least 6 pages or 8 pages ahead so I can keep on schedule while I’m off in Japan. Ugh. This won’t be a problem if I’d just work harder. LOL, I’m not kicking myself too much right now since I’m having to go from a dead stop to a real work schedule but really I could be doing these pages much faster. I can actually do a page a day or two if I really buckle down… and don’t surf the internet or read so much fanfiction or be obsessive compulsive outside of the art. Meh.

The current My Muse story I’m working on looks to be three pages but I’ve only laid out one of the pages. I’ve been making extra pages for some of the stories that I’ve already posted. LOL, I figure the pages will end up being special extras for the final book version. I’m not planing to post them but here’s a panel for a page that comes after the Ego and Reason comic.

EGO he is giving bad ideas...

LOL, speaking of distractions I went to a Ben Folds concert yesterday. I wasn’t planing to go or anything. In fact, I was expecting to hang out with my friends and watch anime, but Shawnna was having terrible allergies so I didn’t go out to their place. Then got a call from Kantz who was in Austin and wondering if I’d like to use the extra ticket they had. Was a really good concert and I got to meet up with Chris and Kantz and their friends. They live in Dallas and Houston so I don’t get to see them that often. They did a comic for Antarctic Press called “Legend of Darkwood”… and “How not to Draw Manga.” John’s Deviant art gallery is pretty awesome. Mostly I see them at conventions so it was great to be able to hang around and talk for a bit.

Ben Folds broke a piano string in the middle of the concert… for some reason I didn’t really think you could do that with a piano. They replaced it really fast though so it wasn’t a big deal. He also showed the audience how he got some weird effect that sounded super digital with just the piano and two tins of Altoids placed on the strings. It made a really odd synthesizer sound (like the sound the old Casio keyboards make when you hit that play a song button… god does anyone remember that?) and he adjusted the sound with a pedal. That was really cool. Though I guess it’s no surprise he’s breaking piano strings if he does that a lot…

Also apparently Ben Folds made a totally fake album for this new record that they leaked onto the internet. All of the song titles are the same but the songs are completely different. Which just sounds awesome. I sort of liked one of the fake songs better then the real one. LOL. They apparently recorded all the fake songs in a single day.

Ugh, I think I’ll take a nap. Then more inking! =]

Ink samples from My Muse

Whew, finished inking another My Muse page. That makes 11 inked pages and 39 pages total. Here are some previews as promised. I’m planning to replace the pencil versions on the My Muse webcomic site with the inks at some point. I’ll let you guys know.

LOL, My Muse will never end.

My Muse, I should have made more of the foods on the board MORE suggestive.

This panel gets cropped quite a bit on the sides. I’m actually not sure how much on the menu will be cut off in the end but I wouldn’t be surprised if it the kid’s menu bits end up not being there. I do like bendy backgrounds… no rulers needed. It helps make my boxy panel seem more dynamic, at least I hope it does.

Metalocaplyse…hahahahaha! Click for more…

A brief update on My Muse…

I have now inked up 10 pages…
I still have 1 page that’s penciled left to ink.
I have 2 pages that are layouts needing pencils and inks.

I have a ton of story ideas for it that need to get laid out so I can pencil and ink them.

Right now my finished inked page count is: 38 pages out of 300.

It helps a ton if I just stop worrying that I’m going to screw up the pages and just go ahead and screw up the pages. Photoshop can fix some amazing things now-a-days.

I have a bunch of in progress shots of one of the pages that I’m planning to post. It follows the progress from concept to finished page. Ugh, I need to work on the two pages more I have to finish this week. I wanted to also finish this Halloween comic thing I have and I still haven’t finished that image of Jem… shit. I have to motor.

Jemocalypse, more 80′s metal

I tried to draw Nathan Explosion yesterday and ended up with incredibly bad awkward failures. Leading me back to the fact that anime/manga/cartooning, ill prepares you to draw normal people. Ugh, and I’m looking at screen caps from the show even. Fiddles.

I tend to draw characters in shapes so it’s really odd to find I don’t have any even close to how these guys are drawn. I’m just going to have to learn some new face shapes, which will be great as I need to branch out on my guys a bit more then “hot teen dude” and “David Duchovny”…

So, I drew Jem again and went looking for the guitars that the guys in Dethklok play. I’m just going to leave this one here for now. I’ll get to coloring her in a bit.

Jem Metalocalypse hates you all

Two things I wanted to note… she’s probably not wearing a bra and I fear drawing Pickles’ drum kit. I mean putting the frets on the guitars is annoying enough but oh god the drum kit… =/

Brutally Outrageous, Jem + Metalocalypse = awesome!

Um, yeah… Have I mentioned that I love Metalocalypse. I love that show so much. I had been gearing up to make some fanart of it but then James and me were talking about funny cross overs and this just um, sort of happened.

Jem + Metalocalypse = Awesome

This Jemocalypse took me two days to finish. It’s the fastest I’ve ever drawn and colored 5 characters and 2 logos. I think it was a huge help to have the Metaloclypse image ( you can find it here on AdultSwim.com ) to reference the poses from but I’m still surprised how well the whole thing works. Well, other then the fact that Jem and the Holograms only had 4 people until they introduced the drummer girl later in the series. From left to right the characters are: Shana, Aja, Jem, Raya, and Kimber. They are standing in for Murderface, Skwisgaar, Nathan, Pickles, and Toki.

I traced the logos in Photoshop with the path tool and also drew a version of the background to put behind them. I tried to use the same lighting scheme they used in the original Metalocalypse image with some tweaking for breasts and huge hair. I had to adjust some of the clothing and poses a little here and there.

I hope you guys like it, I posted it up as a wallpaper at 1280×960 since the characters are a little small otherwise. =D

Working on My Muse… and the Jem logo

Wheeee, I’ve started back up on “My Muse” though right now it’s mostly cleaning house. Which means I’m inking the 8-10 pages of pencils that I have. That’s going well so far, I’m about 3 pages in with the inking. I’m suppose to do roughly 2 pages a week but I’m going to try to work in some actual penciling if I can. That is if I don’t keep drawing INCREDIBLY COMPLEX fanart…

Of Jem even… well it’s mostly fanart of Jem, sort of. Kind of, it’s an odd image. I don’t think I’ve colored an image of 5 characters quite that fast before. I’ll post it up in a bit. When I’ve convinced myself it’s a good idea. =/ Or maybe after I’ve drawn some more images of them.

I made a version of the Jem logo for the image since there’s no good large version of the damn thing on the internets. Thankfully there are at least fairly clear versions of it but still. I had to trace the thing using paths in Photoshop. And why does that stupid star just HAVE to go under and over the damn letters. Meh, so yeah if anyone ever needed a small net version of the logo with bonus transparency for extra fun web page designing here’s it is:

A retraced logo for Jem. Good for Jem fansites and webdesigns.

Or a slightly more flattering PNG version: Jem Logo

And while I’m bitching, the screen caps that people have made for Jem suck balls. I know it came out originally back before DVDs existed but there’s been a DVD collection of the thing for a good 2 years already. I’m tempted to borrow the DVD’s from Shawnna and screen cap a bunch of episodes. Just to get the color palettes correct and have a few nice quality shots from the show.