Making a Mascot

Last weekend I was approached by a coworker to design a mascot for his flag football team. The design will be screen-printed onto jerseys and a flag. I was pretty excited for the opportunity, and I figured it would be a good blog entry to share my process.

To start, I spoke with my friend about the design. His team is called "Empty Pockets" since they are a bunch of drinking 20 somethings with no money. I decided to go with a classic football player type with the leatherhead helmets. These were my initial pen sketches I did on scratch paper at work:

He really dug the idea, so I proceeded to sketch on a 9x12 piece of bristol. I inked the head, and that was enough of a sketch to start creating a vector illustration from.

I decided to use Adobe Illustrator because I wanted to have an ultra smooth vector illustration that would look great blown up on a giant flag. So I put this guy together.  For the fun of it, I also colored him just so my friend could have a cool phone background image.

He hasn't gotten the shirts back, but I decided to make a mock design for him. He told me the jerseys would be navy blue, and the design would be screen printed in gold. If they look anything like this, I'll be stoked.

My Comics Process Part 2

If you haven't yet seen part one, please check it out here!

So since part one, I have drawn thumbnails for my pages. The thumbnails are atrocious, mostly just scratches and near stick figures. The thumbnail process is essentially doing long hand division by hand on scratch paper before writing the final answer on an exam. On the thumbnail stage, I need to make sure the page make sense and carries the story. Once I'm confident it will work, I start penciling, ruling out panels, then inking.

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Page 2 of 8

Page 3 of 8

Page 4 of 8

The first thing I like to do is rule out the panels. I use a ruler and pencil them, then I set the ruler aside and rule it by hand. I actually was thinking of just digitally ruling my panels for precision, but since my portfolio review with Jen Vaughn, she made me see how well it complements the art in a hand done style.

After I ink the panel borders, I start penciling the pages. I think part of the reason I've been so pokey slow with this project is because I've been working  in sequence. Since I have a script, I have thumbnails, I don't really need to work in sequence. My last project, Clashing Swords, I think I worked faster for two reasons. 1) I worked on 8.5"x11" pages and 2) I jumped around to the pages that intrigued me at the time. Opening this comic has been a little tedious, which is why I haven't inked page 1 yet. If I start page jumping, I think I'll get moving a little quicker.
Regarding paper size, I actually switched from 8.5x11 to 11x14 after inking two pages. I felt things were getting too tight on such small paper, and needed to move up. Also, with  every new project, I'm trying to add one or two new tricks to my bag. For this project, I want fuller backgrounds, which means bigger paper. Redoing two pages kind of killed some of my drive. But now that I have three complete pages, and page one is coming along, I have mojo again.

Seeing your finished work pile up builds mojo. It's like magic. I remember having the pile of pages for Clashing Swords, plus interior spot illustrations, and the cover and feeling like I just did a triathlon. I think that's what drives those artists who make Odyssey or Ulysses size comics.

Now it's 1:05am, and time to crash. Hoping to get page one completed, then I'm going to return to the script and see which of the final pages excites me the most and get cracking. My deadline for this project is August 1st, which means wrapping up by the 15th so I can set time aside for toning, lettering, and file prep, then finally printing and putting together the books.

Ashley

Today I lost my best friend at 9:45am. Ashley Acosta was my sheltie dog, and the most important thing in my life. She had been suffering, and it was time to say goodbye. It hurts to much right now, because she had been there for me in the most important part of my life, as I grew into adulthood. She was given to me in December of 1999, just a month before I turned 18.
She was the most faithful, beautiful, sweet, and loving dog. I miss her so much. It hurts so much to be without her.

Ashley Acosta 11/09/1999 - 06/23/2012 Rest in peace my baby.

Free Sketch Commission Fridays

Im thinking of maybe giving away two free 5"x7" sketch commissions inked and colored in marker every Friday through summer. I'm trying to drum up some awareness of my art, and my recent and upcoming comics. Everyone likes art, especially of their favorite characters. I figured I can simultaneously post here, twitter, tumblr, g+, and my blog and the first two who email me get to decide a character for the free sketch. If its a US winner, free shipping, otherwise outsiders get a high res scan, or if they want they can pay for shipping on their dime via PayPal. It shouldn't be too expensive, paper is pretty light. Only stipulations are no nudity or ultra violence. These will be busts of the character (from shoulder to head). Does this interest anyone?

My "portfolio" review

So Saturday was probably the craziest day ever. My niece had a graduation party, her graduation, I had to help with her senior all nighter party, and right between it all I had to shoe horn in a portfolio review at the Saranac Arts Projects building. Sadly, I had to miss a portion of her lecture because I was so short on time.

Artist Jen Vaughn was having a little tour across the US, talking comics and cartooning, and doing portfolio reviews. Somehow this didn't end up on my radar until the night before, so instead of a traditional portfolio, I had her review my Clashing Swords comic. I kind of liked it that way, she was able to see a complete eight page story, my craftsmanship of putting together the book, and it was my most recent work.

She had a lot of great things to say too! I was kind of surprised by that. I guess after reading portfolio review horror stories for years, I imagined I was going to be fed to a mutant lion-shark. She was quite the opposite, she was very kind, and actually interested and engaged in everyone. She said that my toning was really great because it draws the eye where it needs to focus on. She liked my varying line weights. She also pointed out that I didn't use any dialogue captions to "explain" the story, and instead just stuck to dialogue on the sequential pages. She said it's always better to show than tell.

I told her that my next project I'm going to try hand lettering. She really liked that idea, because the balloons and text do stand out a bit, clashing against the hand drawn art. She liked that I free-handed the panels, because it helped carry the hand tooled feel of the art. I'd have to thank Gabriel Ba for that cue, sometimes you have to mimic those you are impressed by!

She also suggested I check out Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim's Dungeon graphic novels, Carl Bark's work on Uncle Scrooge comics, Little Lulu, and Archie. She said that the last three are really great at telling stories of various sizes.

I am glad I was able to make it downtown Saturday to meet up with her, she really boosted my confidence in making comics. Now it's time to get back to the drawing board. I want to have a couple more mini comics to show her at Emerald City Comicon next year!

Commissions Open!

My Comic Process Part 1

Since I've received some good feedback from my "Produce Your Own Mini Comic" tutorial blog entry, I figured I might as well blog my thought process when creating a comic from scratch. Currently, I am working on an eight page mini comic for the Comic Projects group on Facebook. The challenge is called "Monster Mini," and the rules are pretty straight forward. The mini comic must be done by August 1st, it must at least be eight pages, and it must contain a monster. With those basic rules to ground me, I started brain storming at the beginning of the month. At that time, I also had been watching several kung fu movies, particularly 36th Chamber of Shaolin and The Five Deadly Venoms. I decided to have a Shaolin monk be the hero, and an ogre type monster as the villain (mostly based on Japanese oni from mythology). Sketching and letting my mind wander helps me think things out in detail, so this is what I started doing:

Shaolin Monk, "Brother Zhao." You can see his six dots on his forehad “香疤 (xiāng bā).

Meng the Ogre. I really like his big upper body, and big arms. He has a Japanese tetsubo weapon. I know, I'm mixing Chinese and Japanese stuff, but it's my fun little mini comic.

This is Meng's head. As you can see the light sketch under his chin, I'm planning a double braided beard. He looks a little plain without one, and it's symmetrical to his horns.

Lastly, after fleshing out the story, I realized I had a few extras that needed to be drawn. This is a villager and a fisherman.



The other thing that helps get the brain pumping with ideas is going some photo reference hunting! Here are some pics I found that were inspiring:

While coming up with the story, I called my friend Aaron for a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. My main thoughts were having an ogre and a Shaolin monk, but I wanted the monk not to resort to Kung-Fu in this tale. I also wanted it to feel like an old myth or fable, so the end of the tale has to resolve with a lesson or moral. With those things in mind, I wrote up a simple synopsis of the story:

5/08/2012
A villager runs to the top of a mountain where a Shaolin monastery resides. He finds a monk, and begs that they send an army of monks to defend his village from an ogre. He wishes them to protect his people, because everybody knows that their Chinese boxing and sword skills are legendary. But only the one monk, Zhao comes down to the town to investigate.
When he arrives, he follows the path of destruction to an ogre eating cakes in a bakery. The monk gently taps the ogre's shoulder, and asks him why he has destroyed the town. The ogre claims he has the hunger of fifty men, and takes what he wants. The monk then suggests, "If I can feed you enough to satisfy your hunger, will you leave this village? If I fail at this task, you may eat me instead."
The ogre agrees, and the two set towards a lake. The monk boards a small sailing boat, and sets a large net into the water. He then asks the ogre to blow as hard as he can into the sail. The ogre blows, and the boat whizzes across the lake. At the other side, the monk unboards the board, and draws the net with the help of the ogre. Hundreds of fish have filled the net, and the ogre laughs pleasingly. The monk suggests, "if you help these fisherman of the village, you will be able to catch enough for yourself and for the village." The ogre vows to become a peaceful member of the community. The monk says his goodbyes, and returns to his monastery.
What do you think of this? Any suggestions? Once you think it sounds decent, I'm going to do a page breakdown of this for the eight pages. I'm also going to start doing some character sketches, and maybe nab some photo references of a Shaolin monastery.

From here, I look over the story, and share it again with my friend. Once we felt it was okay to move forward, I wrote up the page breakdowns. Essentially I write a key moment, idea, or scene that will appear on each page. The dialogue doesn't have to be fully realized, but if I come up with any dialogue, I make sure to write it down for future reference:

5/19/2012
Pg 1: Villager(female) climbs up mountain to the monastery, and finds Brother Zhao at the gate sweeping.

Pg 2: The villager requests an army of monks to defeat a monk that is terrorizing the village. Zhao says that his brothers are visiting another monastery and won't be back for a week. Zhao starts heading down the mountain and says, "I'll see what I can do." last panel shot of the frightened and exasperated villager yelling "aren't you at least going to bring a sword?!"

Pg 3: The monk follows path of destruction to the ogre sitting Indian-style in a bakery, eating whole cakes in one bite.

Page 4:  Zhao asks, "Could you at least pay for your food and be more careful in the village?" The ogre responds, "Pay? Who would offer me a job, if it meant feeding a hungry ogre? I have the appetite of 50 men. Bother me and you'll be my supper! The monk makes an offer that if he can feed the ogre, the ogre will not terrorize the village. If the monk fails, he will offer himself as food. The ogre agrees.

Pg 5: Zhao leads the ogre to a lake where two fishermen are sitting by a dock. Zhao asks them to tie their nets together and to borrow their boat.

Pg 6: Zhao boards the boat, and casts the net. Then asks the ogre to blow as hard as he can towards the sail. The ogre huffs and the boat whizzes across the lake.

Pg 7: The ogre and Zhao pull up the net to reveal a giant catch of fish and sea life. The ogre laughs and says he couldn't possibly eat that much fish.

Pg 8: The monk suggests he helps the fishermen to fish, and he and the village would have plenty of food. The ogre bear hugs Zhao, and the monk starts his journey towards the monastery and says goodbye.

I think this step is one of the most important, because this is my blueprint for the construction of the comic. From here, I can begin work on my thumbnails. From my thumbnails, I can start actual pages.
Sometimes, during the creation of the final pages, I might not be in the mood to draw a certain scene or even panel, so I can use my thumbnails to skip around to somewhere that I can work on at the moment. This really keeps me busy, instead of spinning my wheels on a panel I'm not getting anywhere on for hours. I don't have much free time between work and my busy life, so I have to maximize the usage out of all my free moments .

I currently have three out of the eight pages thumbnailed, and I should have them all completed by tomorrow. I'll scan them in when I get a chance next, and update this process soon. I've also started penciling the first two pages, just because I've been visualizing the opening pages for some time now.