Maletilla (comics)

You don't know how long it took me to make that establishing shot. Three or four hours maybe? It's not even a three-point perspective and the measurements were off so not everything lines up well.

Mooostly happy with this panel, the third to the last panel is a wonky.

Mostly happy with this page too.

I'm not happy with the transition between four to five. Panel six has  wonky perspective too.

I tried but I'm just not a corss hatching guy.

Unhappy. Eugh.

The hands aside, this isn't too bad.

Falling apart.

The bandana is supposed to be colored. I'll rectify that in the published issue.

Maletilla is finally done

I've decided to move to Grandluxe's Monologue's 200gsm sketchbooks, not the pads for the binding is a bit flimsy, on a permanent basis for sketching. Peter Pauper Press' excellent Premium Sketchbooks have served me well but I'll only use them for "work-related" drawings from now in. Mainly thumbails, character sketches, concept art, etc, and just random sketches at home. Monologue's stuff is for actual sketches for leisure and the like. The ability to use watercolors on them is the main reason for the switch to the things as the Peter Pauper can only handle dry media. It helps that the Monologue sketchbooks have a nicely textured cover.

The name of the new sketchbook. I name all of mine to help differentiate them from each other, dates used besides.

I always do some lettering to grant the sketchbook its name to start it off. For this one, I used the Hebrew alphabet as my basis. I played Shylock for an activity in class back in highschool, which is, of course, in reference to William Shakespear's The Merchant of Venice. Basically, we were given a character from one of Shakespear's stories and were tasked to dress up like them as well as memorize one of their monologues (haha). Obviously, the hath not a Jew eyes was what I had to memorize and perform. I have fond memories of that experience and it always stuck with me. Not the words I used in front of the class though. I was never a man of words. Maybe I can change that.

Those last few pages just flew by. I've been working on these on and off , the actual drawing phase anyway, over the course of a few weeks. When I finally reached the action bits where I can drop the backgrounds off.

Failed sound effect lettering.

 

A good draft of what finally appeared on the finished art.

Proper scan of the first page.

I'll post the rest soon.

Updates on some things

I made a few other things. A lot of character sketches, both for projects I'm dealing with and just to help out other creators.

I don't know why, but I felt the Mignola flowing through me when I drew this.

Also, some comics pages.

More stuff (my titles are pretty much useless, aren't they?)

I've decided to scale back my output. I won't try to push for a page a day, but I will go for at least two panels a day. The quantity suffers but the quality might be raised since I'm doing less in one sitting.

The nature of Maletilla, with its gray inks, tells me to ink as soon as I finish the entire panel itself since it'll be a pain to discern what is inked what what is just a line of graphite. Noodler's Lexington gray has a reputation for its closeness to the appearance of graphite itself. Mix that with my messy pencil work and you have a recipe for confusion. Of course this means I'll be hamstrung in terms of speed since I'm used to drawing the panels in graphite and inking it a good while later after I'm done with all the other pages. Black ink standing out from the sea of gray really contributes to that, y'know.

Realistically, I CAN pencil and ink a single page in one day, buuuut I have a certain sickness. It's called laziness. That and I don't have an economic incentive to really push myself to finish it. There's that abstract incentive to push myself to making better art buuuuut pride and the compliments of the few people that would see the final output isn't the most convincing thing to make me go further than what I can for now. Maybe it'll be different if I'm getting paid. I don't know. At least I'm trying. With that said, here are the latest outputs that I've pushed out of my metaphorical loins for Maletilla.

I was still fatigued from drawing all that crazy perspective crap from the other day when I was drawing this. I had to fake it just to get myself to finish this. It may or may not be too obvious, but I had to replace panels three and four, with four being replaced twice. I might go back to this later on when it's all done and replace them again with better art.

Saving the third panel for last since it's one of the most complicated shots in the entire comic. It's also the fourth panel in the actual script since I combined two and three into one panel. I might just crap the first two panels of this page altogether and slap the last three panels into another piece.

Testing out the overall composition of the panels with perspective. I wanted to go two-point with it but it's at the very edge of the page in the final piece but I don't know how to get past that. Not yet anyway. Also it's on a block so it's not easy to rip off unless I feel like ripping it off. I don't right now, honestly.

Have some art for my other project. You, whoever is reading this lonely little blog, have seen some other concept art in the last post. It's a little alt. history thing where them Nazers won WW2 and they live in a giant enclosed bubble. Lots of drama and scifi crap. Drawing Nazers in alt. history scenarios is always fun. Man in the High Castle, Dead Snow, big market.

I tried to me maximalist here. I just can't do it. It's also the proper version of the guy I was drawing the other day. Got back with my collaborator and she drew me the way she imagined him. Clearly, he isn't supposed to look like his 17th century namesake.

Cat

Art+Concept Art

I really shouldn't have jumped into drawing the art for Maletilla without some practice to get back into drawing. The stuff comes off as a bit stiff and... well... unpracticed. I can at least say that my hold over two-point perspective has grown. Three point... RIP. Don't bother for awhile. One day...

See that establishing shot? I worked my ass off for that. It may have killed my appetite for backgrounds for some time. You'll see with page 2.

I couldn't pull off a full, three-point perspective for the establishing. I was tempted to just ham it, but I couldn't pull it off. I also tried that with the other panels, but after those first few hours trying to work out that establishing shot kinda taught me to at least do one-point perspective for every shot when possible. I should have rested and gave myself more time between panels. I just phoned it in for the rest of em after the mental exhaustion of the first panel.

Here are some concept art for the comic with my other friend. She wants an ersatz Gustavus Adolphus, thus the semblance to him. I'm also trying to get a handle of caricature and photorealism to an extent by trying to find the essence of Gustav's face in the linework. Oh well. On to more art and mastering my minor skills in art.

Scripts

Just finished writing my first comic script. There were other attempts but this is the first one that I actually finished and was at least a smidgen happy with the turn out.

Never been the best with names...

I made the language bilingual, leaning on English but with frequent touches of Tagalog. I'd set up a phrase or sentence in Tagalog then directly answer it or set up a direct (as possible) translation in the next line. Hopefully it gives it an extra bit of liveliness.

I wrote this while I was off on my "Uzamaki" high. Uzamaki being the magnum opus of the horror legend Junji Ito. I've been doing it on and off for at least nine months. Then comes the harder bit... refining and then drawing it. That comes later. For now, I rest and think my storytelling choices through.

A good many months to write one thing is a good amount of time to learn and drop things. Creatively, this is a Frankenstein of my different phases. The skeleton though, for the most part, was maintained from the first few versions of it. It's only my interpretation into its more comic-friendly format that's changed.

Pictures of the characters and some of the beasties tomorrow.

"Maletilla" in its barest form

Have some thumbs for the new project I'm making with my usual collaborator, Daze. My ultimate desire in this thing is to experiment with presentation and to keep my panel count as small as possible while still articulating enough information to thread each panel together in a coherent manner.

The image being referenced by the "refer to thumbs" note. The triangle with the circle is supposed to be "the Matador" swinging his thing with the Cop acting as the bull. The line made by his body, as he faces away from the previous panel, is supposed to act as the panel border.

I inked that one little portion since it wasn't so clear in the pencils.

Also, my favorite brush pen is dying. Sad. I'm too cheap to buy the Pentel Pocket Brush cartridges and used ink not meant for this stuff. That's what I get. Oh well.

Premier Preview

http://premiercomics.tumblr.com/post/162484051355/premier-comics-fallwinter-mini-preview

They're using my thing for the preview.

Nice.

Been a bit busy, can't post as you can no doubt tell. It's only for a few more days. Posts soon.

Some random crap

I'm tackling another project. I'm really excited for this one with the shift in style that I'm planning for it. I wanna use more abstract and cartoony designs for the characters while trying my hand at large-scale crosshatching again for the backgrounds. Give it a nice contrast, you know. Kinda like Cerebus, especially when Gerhard took over as background artist while Dave focused on the writing, character drawing, and lettering.

A couple studies. Thank you Google Images.

Using really big, sweeping curves here, gonna try to move away from edges and corners for this one.

Some practice for the backgrounds and observational drawing of arms.

It's mostly in the thumbs stages right now, even then it's still mostly in my head and I have yet to commit it to paper, but I already have a script handed to me and all I need to do is draw it.

I intend to go Chaykin-esque with my layouts. A lot of American Flagg! aping here. That and I wanted to change up the station points of my panels too. Be just as clear but with more esoteric methods of communication of message. In application, think of it like this.

Rather than drawing the main antagonist raising a club to beat the main protagonist with straight. Why not draw suggest the club in the previous pages, devote a good chunk of it a panel or two prior to a certain panel, and in said certain panel, where the antagonist is about to beat the protagonist, just draw the shoulder-chest junction area with the shoulder raised and really exaggerate the cloth folds than focus on the hand and the club itself. I've never been too good with my words so the explanation may not be too clear... bah. You'll see it eventually. 

The after

The before

Apparently, there's a way to transform watercolor sketchbooks into watercolor blocks. I've been itching to try it out with my Grandluxe Sketchpad and a Clairefontaine Paint-On Multi-technique paper, the latter of which I plan to use for drawing comics that involve wet media. If it were dry media, some heavy inking in the big chunks of black aside, I might go with some Hahnemuhle Skizzen Sketch pads. Anyway, all I'd need is a good glue of sorts and a throwaway brush. The glue, made by a company called Redstone who makes cheap Chinese ink and India ink, is cheap too. A little bit less than $2 for 250g. The amount I needed to pay for shipping was more expensive than the actual item itself. Ha. Kinda reminds me of when I bought some fountain pen converters for my Pilot pens off of Amazon. It's always the shipping...

The other method includes glue once again, named Tear Meander, but it's a glue made for fixing shoes and cloth but a watercolorist recommended it and it conforms to ASTM standards so it's gotta be good.

That's all for now.

Premier Deadlines

http://premiercomics.tumblr.com/post/161947535835/premier-comics-submission-premier-comics-is-back

Why not give this a shot, try making a comic.

And it's done (comic)

I might have bitten off more than I can chew by inking this with art materials I'm not too familiar with, paper and pencils aside.

I probably should have used the brushes whose temperaments I'm more familiar with and whose balance I'm accustomed to. At least it was fun. That is until the brush springs itself in a different way than what I've adapted to... that's when the cursing begins and the opaque white ink enters the scene. Let's not forget the panel replacements. I did a good job with the first one, on the page with the black bleed. Buuuut I messed up with the first page, with the title. Aw well. Better luck next time.

Lettering in Practice

All the little x's mean that area is to be inked in swaths of black. Some of the panels just have lines running through them that stands for much the same, but those are recent additions once I thought it over.

It was a pain, in all honesty. Doesn't help that I don't own a t-square, a drawing board that can stay still, nor a lettering guide of any decent quality (it's a little slip of plastic covered with tape and full of holes my friend and I made based on what Todd Klein suggests for Alvin Lettering Guide users on his website). It doesn't help that my pen (a Rotring Art Pen (F)) kept railroading more than putting ink on the page. Eugh. There was probably some leftover oils and debris in the thing from the manufacturing process that I never cleaned out yet. It works fine now after a good cleaning. My main gripe with the pen is that it makes a very thick line, the "F" of this pen is more like a 0.6-0.8 on the standard fineliner. I should find way to get the pen to achieve a thinner line. I should see if the fountain pen stations in National Bookstore do basic nib grinding...

By the time I've posted this, most of these have already been inked or partially inked. It'll be the first time I'll ink comic pages with a brush rather than just my usual practice in inking and other things. I also did a few things with the lettering. I slanted the boxes, somewhat. Made the actual letters more cramped and dirty than I usually do in my practice sessions.