Small Update on the Public Domain Book Project

I'm around two-thirds of the way done adapting the book I've been dealing with lately, adapting it to a comics format from its prosaic origins. It currently stands at twenty-one pages so far, including the small segment of the last section that is yet to be adapted. My estimates of it reaching thirty-one to thirty-three pages long is still true and strong. This is only with the first chapter though, I don't particularly plan on drawing the rest of the book as I think of this project as more of an exercise in how well I can adapt things from one medium to another and honing my storytelling abilities as an illustrator within the Comics-bande-dessine, or the Ninth Art as it is sometimes called, tradition of the Fine Arts.

An interesting thing to note is how my paneling style has changed with my adoption of a new technique*. There was a constant appearance of these styles of comics paneling, in part or in whole:

 

 

2X3

3X3

There was also a significant presence of a Howard Chaykin-esque panel style, I could not find any passable examples online so this sketch by myself must do to make the point.

It's a mix between the 3X3 and 2X3 panel styles in the number of panels per row, the rows themselves coming closer to the 2X2 panel style. One of my favorites was the mix of the 2X2 + one row from the 3X3, becoming much like what you see just above this paragraph but with another set of the two panels.

Intersped in all this I also have those little panels within panels that Mike Mignola and Howard Chaykin use so well and interestingly.

It's just interesting to see this constant pattern appearing in the thumbnails of the comics adaptation.

*Said technique being similar to Chester Brown's technique. I would draw each individual panel as its own entity before arranging them in pages, but my own technique is different from Brown's in that I still punctuate things by beats and significant events that I feel could mark the end of a page/ the start of a new page. Chester Brown, from what I know, just draws each panel as he writes and only arranges them into pages once done drawing them all.

Dart with Destiny Tenth (and Last) Page

Dart with Destiny with Deftbeck (writer) and myself (the artist)

After much time, I've finally done it. I finally finished this comic that I've been working on for awhile now with Deftbeck. I forgot when I started but it's been at least one academic year and a couple months at the very least but damn it, it's finally done. I can move on to other projects now, which I've actually kinda started. In all honesty, I'm not done with Deft's thing. I still have to redo a few panels that are too off or update the style deviation to the later pages or even out the style of the comic with the first few pages. Yet, that is all secondary for the illustration proper is done. That's the important bit.

The tenth and final page. Note the heavy usage of opaque white ink. My backgrounds have also degraded. Where I once had a decent grasp of single-point perspective and two-point perspective, I'm barely even managing to do flat, 2D backgrounds. Mignola was, of course, my muse and my rescue.

Things I'm working on

Hello, lost soul. If you expected any sort of salvation or salve that might cure your cancer in this little segment of the internet I'm calling my own, you are sadly mistaken. You've stumbled on the blog of an aspiring comic book artist and draftsman hopeful who doesn't do much else other than the usual crap. Y'know, stuff. Watching stuff, listening to stuff, reading stuff, going out with some friends stuff, buying stuff, getting tired of university and cursing at some teachers stuff, fixing stuff up, doing stuff, getting too critical over my stuff leading to mild depression stuff, looking for stuff to do. Y'know, stuff.

In this blog you'll see the various concoctions I'm mostly working on, mostly penciling, inking and lettering some comic pages, some scripts for comics I'll eventually draw, others are researching for scripts that I'll eventually draw. See a pattern here?

I do draw other things, of course. Mostly life studies in order to better learn the anatomy and form of the human body or master studies of the works of some of the greats who have interested me in some way. As a result you should expect a lot of brush-and-ink/pen-and-ink since I waste a lot of my time on comic books and have since become very familiar with the various artists working in the medium. I might do some watercolor stuff or some inkwash, who knows? Just expect lots of black ink and paper. You have been warned. Let's get on to the more interesting things.

The following pages are for an online anthology called Premier Comics. The latest issue they've published has some of my work, work I'm not too proud of since I did that a year or so ago and I've changed my approach and how I draw since then. At least some of my work is out there. Download it here: http://premiercomics.com/archives/1414

I drew these on some of Canson's student's watercolor paper, 200GSM.
Sorry I didn't scan these, they're rough sketches so there isn't a lot of detail on them anyway. There isn't much to miss.

You can see a fuck-up I did there in the third page. I made a few corrections in white ink but since I plan to inkwash these things, thus adding a color that isn't some form of black or white. I can't just turn up the brightness and contrast to hide little things like that. So I had to cut it out and replace the panel. 

 

The script was made by another (more) talented individual (with a lot more balls than I) whom I know of as Daze, which is obviously his online pseudonym. The pages will probably be lettered by myself, just like in Soul Food.

The process of turning the script into text wasn't too bad, seeing as it was complete by the time I got my hands on it. Unlike a few other scripts I've played around with before, this was the simplest since I wanted to adhere to the script completely, no changes. I didn't feel like doing something else with it, like what I did with that third page in Soul Food. The main thing that was off from the script, in Fair Winds, was my idea to make the bleed black and expand the borders of the final panel beyond the normal set within the issue itself.

I should be working on this again in a few days, I just need to loosen up my drawing muscles. I haven't drawn in some time since the final weeks of classes were getting in the way, but it's done already so there's no excuse. I can't wait to work on these again.


So this sums up my first official blog post with actual content. Woo. We just hit a milestone.