another competition - BD-FIL deadline 31st July!

details here: http://www.bdfil.ch/concours/bd/

the theme is THE GARDEN

INK SOUP Issue 04 - Crash & Burn

Hi People!

Issue 04 will be aptly named Crash & Burn to coincide with the third years going out into the big wide world, and of course the economic, environmental and ethical meltdown of our society :)

First drafts May 13th

Final drafts 3rd June 2009

Publishing around mid June

Latest ink soup 03 update

Final line up - test print being proof read by Jess (Lee already with mistakes!) Debbie! can you work with the following list for the contents page

cover art Katie Coulton ( - 2)
contents page by Debbie Lambert ( - 2)
Lee Sparks (The Tale of the Baba Yaga - 2 )
Debbie Lambert (The Magpie & The Crow - 4)
Murray Sommerville (CockCrane - 4)
Milan Topalovic (The Fires - 2)
Katie Coulton spread (Time - 2)
Chiu Man (The Roar1&4 - 2)
Cherry Reynolds (Roaming The Forest Studies - 4)
Niovi Phinopoulou - pull out poster ( Alice & The Spider-2 + black backs - 2)
Jess Watson/Amanda Evans/Naomi Porter (Tabble Manners - 1)
Katie Coulton/Daisy Whitehouse/? (The Tortoise &The Hare -1)
Daisy Whitehouse (The Fir-Tree & The Bramble -1)
Murray Sommerville (The Journey of a Cardboard Box - 1)
Vicki Norton ( The Gingerbread Man - 4)
Jess Watson (Fairy Tale Love - 4)
Ed Homer (Lost Toys - 6)
end pages by Debbie Lambert ( -2)

a 48 (44 not including poster) page anthology - well done all :) But also check your name is spelt write, correct titles and send Debbie your preferred email contacts!

Comics Printing on Demand

There's a few services out there that are geared specifically to printing comics on demand, which I've been looking at specifically for having something polished and professional looking. There's a really good and in-depth review of the main ones at http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/extras/podreview.php written by a comic artist. He goes into quite a bit of depth, but the main points are:

http://ka-blam.com/printing/

Good price, good colour but let down by low paper quality, better for comics rather than their trade paperbacks which have a few cropping issues. Offer a store set-up with preview pages etc of your comic but this has its own problems such as slow order turnaround- better to bulk print on demand and then sell them yourself.

http://www.lulu.com/en/products/comics/

Nice paper, good printing quality. Will sell your book on amazon if you want but they take 40-50% of the money so you have to price high if you go that route, especially with colour, to avoid making a loss. Fairly pricy but apparently decent quality and quick turnaround

http://www.comixpress.com/

Specifically set up for comics unlike Lulu. Take at least 2 months to get your comic to you, and the print quality and paper is meant to be a bit shoddy and thin with overglossed cover. Setup fee of $30 but price per comic is fairly low.

https://www.printhouseexpress.com/

This was in the review but I don't think they're in business any more- the website doesn't work, anyway. Slightly annoying as they're supposedly good for short comics with quick turnaround.

http://www.udoprinting.com/

Naff flash site but fairly middle of the road in terms of paper quality, print quality, etc.

http://360digitalbooks.com/index.html

The service the reviewer went for with his book. More for full books than short comics like most of us will be looking for, however they offer a good personal service, wide variety of papers, and send you samples free of charge unlike Kablam which charges for samples. Minimum of 25 orders as well. So not really good for student purposes but very good if you ever get to a proper book stage with your work.

So Far I Have - and Thus Still Need!

So Far I Have the digital copies for:

cover art Katie Koulton (* -2)

Milan Topalovic (*the fires - 2)
Lee Sparks (* The tale of the Baba Yaga- 2 )
Debbie Lambert (*The Magpie and the crow 4)
Daisy Whitehouse (*The Fir Tree and The Bramble 1)
Niovi - pull out poster (* 2)
Ed Homer (*first four pages only 4)
Vicki Norton (*gingerbread man 4)
Chiu Man (* The Roar - all four issues - 4)

Murray Sommerville (*CockCrane 4)
some single page stories from selection (2)

and thus still need the following 300 dpi files to be sent to me (via yousendit):

contents page by Debbie Lambert ( 2)
Jess Watson (*fairy tale Love 4)

Cherry Reynolds (? 4 )
Kate McMorrine (? 2-4)
some single page stories from selection (2)
end pages by Debbie Lambert ( 2)

send more for testing

Those of you who would like to see how different appraoches to your work may look in print, send me another version for testing if you wish! Here's an example of Roar 01 bitmapped and halftone, then brought back to greyscale:

the one below, is a three level cut out:

Ink Soup issue 3 line up!

provisional order of strips so far:
* = definite included
? = pending on quality of final


cover art Katie Koulton (* -2)
contents page by Debbie Lambert ( 2)
Lee Sparks (? The tale of the Baba Yaga- 2 )
Debbie Lambert (*The Magpie and the crow 4)
Murray Sommerville (*CockCrane 4)
single page from selection (*1)
Niovi - pull out poster (* 2)
single page from selection (*1)
Jess Watson (*fairy tale Love 4)
Ed Homer (*first four pages only 4)
Vicki Norton (*gingerbread man 4)
Milan Topalovic (*the fires - 2)
Kate McMorrine (? 2-4)
single page stories from selection (2)
Chiu Man (? 2-4)
end pages by Debbie Lambert ( 2)

total expected pages = 40 - 44 - 48

singles avaible = murray/daisy/vicki/jess/Amanda/Naomi/??
also double page by Katie Coulton!

well done all (if anyone is missing please let me know!!)

line up and arrangment will be discussed and agreed between myself, Jess, Debbie, and Murray (those people only because of their time and effort spent in the production of the anthology)

CockCrane

The Completed Cockcrane, i'm happy with most of it bar half of page 3, thought the type would be ok in the middle panel, but appears it is i feared too cramped so shall have to make it more legible! But yea enjoy/hate whatever one comes first! (If your name is Chiu it will most likely be both) oh and picture book is killing me so if i don't show up on monday it's because i'm dead! (No chiu i'm not really going to miss the deadline in case you think i'm going to dodge it :P )

The baba yagas one of the most famous witchs in all of russia and has influenced alot of films and cartoons such as howls moving castle and hellboy. she is said to be a child eater in her tales but its never told of how she goes about this so this short story shows how she waits for her prey to come to her and also when she goes out to hunt. this is my 2 pages without text, this is because im still tinkering with how to do it as my scrolls are curved so im trying 2 rememember how 2 text wrap, i want to jus hand write it but me thinks id be commiting chiu-icide if i did that oh sorry about the crappy scans best me scanner could do.

Fairytale Love Finished (And Other stuff)

Unfortunately I did put the text onto the thing so I can't really do much about it...I've done my best to make it look ok but I'll know for next time o.o" Honest!!

I also finished the knight one...with the text and such.

And Fearnot is sort of finished...still the fonts not great o.<>

Magpie & Crow

Tried to spend a lot more time and focus during the inking of this one, using a slightly different style/technique and I'm fairly pleased with the end result.

C'est Bon Kultur Graphic Novel

LOST TOYS

Thank God I finally managed to pull this together!!! I really lost all will to live with this one so some of the frames probably need re - doing or altering. I'm also thinking of adding a title page but I've still got to look at some type faces before starting that.

If you could give me any feedback on this that would be great. Thanks

Fear Not

The text is still pretty lame but now i've got it scanned i can play around with it whilst I'm away...i think the title looks mildly better...er...maybe?

Fairytale Love

I'm a really bad example...because I'm still not finished mine o.o and as I'm going away from a scanner until next saturday the finished thing won't be up until atleast then :/ Hopefully this will be alright (sending the finished thing in on Saturday)...or Chiu might come to hartlepool and hit me with sticks...one of those >.>
I realise this page isnt lined up properly, I scanned the top half in at the wrong dpi but didnt have time to redo it...I'm gonna work on the shading anyway before its finished. I'm just redoing the title on the other double spread now! Lemme know what you think/what needs fixing etc.

finished cover (I hope!)

Inksoup #3 Entry

This is the finished story for Inksoup, hope people like it.
Some of the images look a bit muddy but thats because it is low res, hopefully it'll reproduce better when its printed full scale for the Anthology.

I made a zine!

For some reason, I made a teeny zine on friday:




They're full of my sister's google search history she was telling me about. I thought they were all really weird and interesting, (eg baboons on a plane??!) so I make a load of these on the photocopier.
Possibly the most random thing I have ever done... anyway, back to work!

ps
cover nearly finished, posting up soon!
k.

Any better??

I've worked into it, filling out the grass (thanks murray- they look a bit more grounded now!) and strengthened the shadows off the trees to increase the atmosphere. the crosshatch inbetween the flames bring them together a bit more and they look more daunting so cheers Rose! though i may have gone a bit overboard with it. thanks for everyones advice

first images for inksoup

heylo these are the first few images for the inksoup. Im not used to working straight in pen and not being able to shade so this explains why the 2nd one looks a bit ropey. the graphic contrast between foreground and background aint that great either. Does anyone have any tips to improve this without turning it into an overcooked crosshatch fiasco? Any comments would be appreciated. thanks

cheltenham awards competition 2009

http://www.cheltenham-illustration-awards.com/downemerge_9.htm

Interesting/useful blog

Cartoonist/illustrator Jim Rugg does masses of varied work, and posts up pretty much everything to his blog here including process, rough sketches and personal projects

CockCrane Page 1

Page one of my 4page epic Cock crane fable story, written by a friend (so don't blame me for the dark content!) I've been following his script, I'll have page 2 finished for tomorrow but here's page one in it's finished stage as it stands!

FOR CHIU!!

Right then, here is that godforsaken strip page again, with the top two panels replaced, and there should no longer be grey lines. ( there werent any grey lines that showed up on my cmputer but i know in p.shop the clipboard shows, my point is once printed it doesnt show up. but anyway) here it is!!!!!

Better?

Another try!

Ok not sure if this is any better!

 But i'm done with this one for now anyway, time to move on!!!

Another little nugget!

Hey guys, another little strip, ive tried to do things a little differently this time, made the title a found font as opposed to my own attempts.  Also made the panels hand drawn as opposed to trying to digitally render hand drawn rubbishness! Could do with a bit more tweaking, some areas are a bit wonky etc. But anyway, would be glad of some feedback otherwise! 

Thanks!

Vicktor.

Ginge - revisited.

Right - here is the gingerbread man comic AGAINNN except I've changed the font to the same as the jack and jill one and the foot bit has changed. Let me know if this is  any better please!

Breadwig!

Hi guys! Just thought I'd share some info with you. I was having a mooch around some sites and I came across an illustrator called Bryan Ballinger. His site is pretty sweet with thoughts, illustrations and other little bits and i felt inspired by some of his stuff so i shall post them for you to have a gander at! Enjoy!

www.breadwig.com

cover (?)

Here's a very rough sketch of my current idea for a cover, I have a few other idea's if this one's not right, but I thought I'd post it up so I can make changes etc. It's supposed to be a sort of campfire story scene. I had an idea that I could collaborate with someone for the lettering?

Like I said its rough and I'm going to redraw it so I do have time to redo the composition etc.
ps. the back is going to be a woodland scene.
pps. its not going to be in pencil

Interview with Mark Todd & Esther Pearl Watson

Interview with the authors of