PINWHEEL!

Pinwheel was the elusive search term I needed, and couldn't quite get my brain around..

I wanted a pattern in the background of the Ninjasaur, but couldn't think how to describe it, then I forgot the word "thumbnail"..

brian has turned to mush.

A sense of action

Today when flipping through my Google Reader feeds, I was struck by a post from Stephen Silver. He's a remarkable fellow, producing some top notch work, and is now running a class. From the thumbnails in the post, the change in style he'd managed to engender in his students looked quite remarkable... and on closer inspection I was equally impressed, in most of the cases.

Then I had a look at the cost of the class...

$998

Why this should feel so extravagant in a world where I often see "consultants" with day rates of £500, even £1000 a day, I don't know, but it was quite telling.

Looking through the images, I was also struck by the sense of dynamism in the characters, something that's sorely lacking in Wychwolf at the minute. Strangely I can remember having the same issue with my work about 15 years ago, when my editor at Harper Collins returned a rough, saying I'd lost my sense of action, "where was the artist she'd hired?"

So, the next few Wychwolf strips I draw need a bit of motion, dynamism... they shouldn't just look the way they do because it's the easiest way to draw them.

simpler ninja

colour and photoshop cutout filter....

Ninjasaur VS Ninja Bunny

Instead of spending my lunchtime getting stuff up to date for the http://www.wychwolf.com, I sat looking in awe at the Ninja Bunny prints I got from Phil Spence at the Webcomix thing on Saturday.

I then managed to cover my desk with DELETER no 3 ink, as I tried in vain to replicate his style.

I ended up with a far too fiddly sketch, but will persevere.

Page 3

Page 3 is up, or rather will be up on the http://www.wychwolf.com site, as soon as ComicPress makes it so, which should be midnight, very appropriately, the wyching hour.

Anyway, our page three is a little more boney than you'd like, but heralds the end of the prologue, and the start of the story proper on page 4.

Dom has a page of inking to get done ASAP, I have a full inbox, and limited time this week, but I still want to get a bank holiday special page done for Wychwolf, and maybe finish off a page of Ninjasaurs vs Pirobots for this blog.

Webcomix thing March 2010, DONE

I've written up our experience of the UK Webcomix thing event over on the webcomic site: http://www.wychwolf.com

SO nip over there and have a read.

I'll also post the "interlude" I drew for the flyers on http://www.wychwolf.com probably tomorrow.

It was great fun, Dom and Adam are both talking about what we should do for next year.

I learned a couple of tips from artists whose work I admire, and it was a generally good day out.

I did take along the tablet PC, so I could practice with Manga Studio between visitors, but it misbehaved itself, and conked out crashing and losing the picture Dom was drawing... but he had another go, and created a sad Octobird.

Wychwolf page 2

I've printed off some flyers for the UK Webcomix thing, that are a mix of 2 "interlude" pages for the Wychwolf story, a page from Adam's novelisation, and one page from Dom's story, hecklr.

I've printed off several sheets of stickers to hand out to those with webcomics passports, and I've printed a few pages on shiny paper so we have something to put on the table.

I've also put up a second page for the Wychwolf story on the site, I'm not sure if I'll have time to put up a third picture before tomorrow, but obviously we "update on Mondays":

Everyone's a critic

Over at http://www.hecklr.co.uk you'll find the first page in Dom's new wecomic, which for want of a title has been named "hecklr".

It's a tale of occupied wartime France, giant killer robots and machine guns in a sin city, film noir style.

Not sure when Dom plans to publish the next page, as he's a bit busy at the minute, with another illustration commission, as well as helping on the WychWolf project.

Wychwolf.co.uk

Domain for the sister site to http://www.wychwolf.com should be up and running now...

http://www.wychwolf.co.uk is where Adam is putting all the novelisation malarkey

for the wychwolf story.

We've got two pages of wychwolf story live on the comic site so far, but Adam is up to chapter 3, so if you don't wnat to know who wins... look away now.

Webcomix sticker fun

I got some stickers for the bargain price of £5.99 from Staples, which are nearly the right size for the Webcomix Thing DIN-O-SAUR-US passport scheme.

I tried using the template in WORD for Mac, but it was a dismal failure..

This is a rare thing in the world of Mac, usually it just happens, things just work...

So a brief search turned up articles on various fora, but they all seemed to say it's tricky...

Strangely a Google add at the bottom provided the result, a free app from Avery labels, called design pro..

WychWolf part 1

I've posted the first page of the wychwolf story over on www.wychwolf.com

The Comic Press scripts should make it go live first thing on Monday morning.

This page was actually not the first I drew for the story, but came out of a desire to introduce the characters a little before we rolled into the main story.

For those who are interested, I drew the pencils with a cheap plastic retractable, on some DELETER comic book paper, and then inked using a DELETER Saji dip pen, and Number 4 ink.

Scanned into photoshop elements, as a 600dpi black and white image, coloured, and fiddled around with, before dropping back to 72dpi for the web.

Art supplies from http://www.dinkybox.co.uk/

The pages that follow have been inked and penciled using a variety of different paper and ink, and pen.

I'll try and record what was done with what, so I can pick out the ones that I like best... which at the minute seems to be a Staedtler pigment liner ink fibre tip.

A new hope

All my tiddling about on a local version of ComicPress made a fair bit of difference in setting up the new site

http://www.wychwolf.com

I've added a number of plugins, and tried out a new "child" theme.. Comicpress boxed:

I like the darkness of it.

I'll upload the first few pages asap, so I can see whether it holds together with the overpowering sepia-ness of the strip.

Wychwolf lives

The Laughing Squid hosting is live, the Domain is mapped, the wordpress scripts are installed, and Comic press theme is running...

Now all I have to do is remember how the bloomin' flip it works..

http://www.wychwolf.com/

It's not as simple as blogger, but then it does look after the whole comic...

Ex Gladio Pax

a little bit of BPRD, a little bit of SAS

For a break I've been working on the BrightAngel foundation logo..

I wanted something like the BPRD logo, but something that looked like it had a bit of heritage, as the Brightangel foundation has a lot of history

Domain pain

I realised I have only a couple of week to get stuff in place for the UK Webcomix thing, so I bought a couple of domains, www.wychwolf.com and wychwolf.co.uk, and signed up for some hosting at Laughing Squid.

The hosting account should be ready by Tuesday, then all I have to do is play the very painful DNS game...

Oh and of course install Wordpress, and the ComicPresstheme, and I guess at some point I'd best finish some of the artwork.

Adam has written a text version of the story to run in parallel with the comic... and reading it makes me want to go back and redraw some of the first pages.. . but I remember hearing Scott Kurtz talking about falling into this trap early in the history of PVP, where he'd constantly redraw and try and get things right. So I guess I have to just get on with it... the story is sound, the artwork will evolve.

Evil, all the way through

Sunshine is a bit of a problem for progress with the webcomic. Sunshine means I can get outside and repair the snow damage to my beloved allotment. Dom and I have dug over the soil, and then went crazy with the staple gun, fixing up the torn netting around our cthulu cabbage cage...

All of which keeps me outside, instead of getting on with it.

Sepia seepage

Up to page 8 of the WychWolf pics, lots of lovely sepia and noise.