Wednesday 31 March 2010

INK SOUP Almost full 8 pages left

You can download to see a web pdf here:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/bFFPL0dQcGszMWswTVE9PQ


  • Anyone interested in doing the cover
  • Having fun with the contents page
  • Know of any cheap and reliable printers
  • Tom Bishop - your work could do with some cleaning (I already spent an hour on it!)
cheers,

chiu

Please check your names and email addresses!

Monday 29 March 2010

Coaxed my friend into writing a comic for the upcoming ink soup. 2 pages long this is the first. I have the 300dpi tiff on my computer because he used my scanner.
Second page just needs inking.
Writing gets a bit messy but I think he is going to photoshop the text in.

What do you think?


Both Pages Finished now with text.
























I'll send the 300 dpi tiff's with layers and the font through usendit if you want it in ink soup.

Sunday 28 March 2010

THING 2010







For all prospectful graphic novelists! This is for you! I attended THING 2010 yesterday, which is the uk's web and independent comics fair! If any of you need to have a good sense of the reality of being an independent graphic novelist this was a good insight into how much it takes to make it and how much competition is out there! But regardless of scaring you these events are really good for also getting yourself seen and heard and recommend anyone serious about being a graphic novelist to try and attend at least one or two with the uni whilst still a student! Things which I noticed that I think help at these events is production. Too many people are happy to churn out work on standard printing paper with no real appeal of craft, now I know it's more about the comics and this isn't artist book, but seriously if you make anything for these fairs give it some thought to how you can make your work sophisticated. Chiu's and my own work got alot of attention solely based on the use of using recycled paper to print on, obviously if you were doing big print runs this might not be practical, but for these fairs and making your work stand out I seriously recommend it! Plus if you handle it right it's a good way to make a nice bit of extra cash! Feel free to ask me more if you're interested as happy to tell more, but thought it would be a good thing to highlight for you guys to get involved in, especially as I sold about 6 ink soups, which if you're involved in again means you're getting yourself out there!

Cheers!

Murray


Here's a link to a bunch of pictures from the fair to give you an idea of what it looked like! Unfortunately from this album the picture taken of us missed out the table and was us generally looking like idiots- (sigh) BUT it gives otherwise a very good idea of what the event was like!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/keozen/sets/72157623726321686/

Wednesday 24 March 2010

Ink Soup almost Half way full

In or about to be layed out into ink soup 05

Cronos by Saul Branco 5
Why we missed the boat by Chiu Man 4
Rise of the Supermarkets by Dan Griffin-Hayes 4
Barry by Pete Heyes 2
Zombies by Tom Bishop 4
Seven days by Chiu 7

Start sending finished work asap! through yousendit

more complete pages...

The 45degree angle is coming into play alot more in the images now, or at least not just flat on!

Sunday 21 March 2010

Experimenting with quick stories and quick shading.


Story loosly based on Charles Whitman who ' killed 14 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage' from a belltower' After he somehow cropped up in a conversion between me and friends.




Quick fix dealing with chui's comment.






I've been working on gummed watercolor paper blocks so i can put heavy washes on without the paper bulging from the water. makes the whole process alot faster and the end result smoother as the washes don't run from the raised areas.

And in case anyone is interested here are the tools I used to make this.

1. 'cartoonist' nib has a nice round tip that makes the same continuous line. Used it for the borders

2. This nib has a smaller flick at the tip which helps when using watercolour paper as other nibs just have a straight tip that can scratch and snag the paper. ( both tips are D. Leonardt & Co. a Birmingham pen manufacturer. Can't find any good websites for them though. Check in Spectrum. )

3. 4B pencil becasue my usual B is about an inch long now.

4. My favorite brush to use at the moment its called a 'dagger' because of the straight top edge and curve on the other. I really like shading with this as alot of the time it has a mind of its own.

5. And a normal pointed brush to clean up lines and fill smaller areas with.


Doing a few quick experiments today that I think should help my narrative writing skills.
I sat down infront of the tv and skipped through the channels looking for anything that caught my eye. I picked 4 things and did a quick sketch of what they could look like.

This is what I came up with;


After I started to get each character or plot device I started to make connections in my head and ways the characters would interact.

The rough plot I have so far is;
-Knight searches for lost treasures.
-Finds a cave with the usual skulls and dragon junk
-Walks inside to find the tapir after some nervous panels
-Knight goes to kill the tapir but it pleads and says the only way to get the treasure is by killing the evil rain cloud that keeps flooding the cave
-knight kills cloud
-gets the treasure which is a delicate lampshade
-chops tapirs head off

Without using the tv to get the 4 ideas I don't think I would ever have just thought up the 4 together.

Anyone else want to try this?

Friday 19 March 2010

Nice photoshop colouring tutorial from one of my favorite web comic writers

http://nedroid.com/2009/05/color-me-surprised/



that's the lot. ;)


barry in B&W

completed pages







Thursday 18 March 2010

1 of a set of 9 drawings about a religious myth where our lady of fatima visited 3 Portuguese farm boys. safe

Wednesday 17 March 2010

Pete Heyes submission

it's colour, but hopefully he'll convert it for me;)
Pete Heyes is not even on the course yet - I'm getting them early!

Tuesday 16 March 2010

sketches

Blog

Bible issue...

I'm just curious what deadline the next issue of ink soup is? I thought it was ages ago but people seem to still be posting work o.o...Lemme know since I started working on something then thought I'd missed the deadline :P!

Elisa & the Bears


Preview of my Submission for the Biblical Tales Ink soup.

Working on A3 watercolour paper using dip pens + Acrylic ink and watered down black acrylic ink for the shading.

Trying out cut away speech bubbles instead of trying to squeeze them inside the panel borders.

Any criticisms?

Monday 15 March 2010

I feel myself slipping slowly towards making web comics.
My weakness is storytelling over long periods as i just get bored with long narratives. while my strength lies in short punchy stories with comedy endings. I enjoyed the free reign that doing the comic a day gave me even though it was a pain to come up with ideas some days.
I don't feel confident enough yet in my storytelling skills to want to tackle a novel and I feel doing short comics would be the best way for me to build up a universe of characters and situations I could then draw from when writing a longer story.

And heres some of my favorite webcomics.
http://nedroid.com/
Bird and a Bear with end panel punchlines
http://www.gunshowcomic.com
Changes his style and length from short 3 panels to multi page comics.
http://www.smbc-comics.com
One panel comics. Not fond of this comic but if he can get away with one panel stories then good luck to him.
http://www.threewordphrase.com
Not the most artistic comics but the humour in them keeps them entertaining to read
http://chainsawsuit.com
Slightly better art than the one above but still uses the same basis of humour over art
http://sailortwain.com/sailortwain-001/
Something for the tonal range fans. A big step from the 3 panel comics this one is a full on graphic novel and nicely drawn.
http://axecop.com/index.php/acepisodes/read/episode_1/
More of a traditional comic layout with one of the weirdest stories ive ever read.
And lots of end panel punchlines.
http://horhaus.com/abominable/
Talking animals. whats not to love.

And some x-rated comics because what would the webcomic community be without them.
http://www.c.urvy.org/?date=20080329
http://oglaf.com/cumsprite1.html

EDIT:

Just stumbled upon this which I think it pretty interesting.
I noticed that alot of the webcomics listed above used adverts from http://www.projectwonderful.com. This website makes its money from people bidding on advertisement slots for your website which you get the money from.(with charges obviously)
Here is the table for webcomic websites and how much the bids are to advertise on them.
Link

Sunday 14 March 2010

Royal







Experiment with my new tablet for the computer and i have found it is much harder to use than i had predicted!!!

Saturday 13 March 2010

ashtray crown

my blog

Thursday 11 March 2010

compositional resources

Learning resources   

Parramon M. Jose (1984)  Composition in Painting And Drawing – Fountain Press LTD
D’Amelio Joseph (1964) Perspective Drawing Handbook – Dover publications, Inc.
Divine proportion the easy way - golden section Photoshop plugin
http://powerretouche.com/Divine_proportion_tutorial.htm
Axonometric projection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axonometric_projection

Week 1    Lesson 01

Referencing real objects - you will be asked to draw dozens of thumbnails exploring different compositional theories.

Broken down you should be exploring:

Symmetry
http://a.parsons.edu/~dezsoa/BOOKS_painted5.html
http://a.parsons.edu/~dezsoa/BOOKS_Hull.html
http://www.nannahvass.dk/
Asymmetry
http://www.in-kamiyama.jp/en/art/2699/
Contrast
http://www.fulltable.com/VTS/f/fut/t.htm
Detail
Simplicity
http://www.lasseskarbovik.com/illustrations/index.html
Proximity
http://www.apogeephoto.com/mag1-6/mag2-5mf1.shtml
Closure
http://www.artnomono.com/index.php?/projects/hommu/
Depth by contrast
http://www.wga.hu/art/c/callot/2pantalo.jpg
Overlapping
One point perspective
http://www.burstofbeaden.com/
Two point
http://brechtnieuws.blogspot.com/search/label/Illustration
Axonometric projection
http://martineck.com/projekt.php?image=226
Multi plane
http://www.pekkafinland.fi/lottanieminen/

Personal favourites:
http://www.romybluemel.de/romybluemel.de/coney_island.html
Just a few things that caught my eye today and thought could be useful to others.

Film Posters for 'Inglorious Basterds' done my a diverse number of artists. All from different backgrounds. Link

Some of my favourites

Alex Pardee





















Jeremy Fish



















Came across these on ffffound.com. Whenever I'm feeling low on ideas or need some inspiration I look on this website and click anything that appeals to me. It will then give you a list of other images you may be interested it. I can get lost for hours just clicking new things but in the end its always inspirational.

half way!!!







quite happy with the quality of work done so far, its starting to develop some sort of character and atmosphere which is good. thankfully because of the progress ive made i'll have ample time after completion to re-edit and adjust whatever needs to be done