Luis’ Illustrated Blog

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

So the schedule changed and I’ve gone on hiatus a week early. It was  a bit unexpected but it’s okay. I’m still off for the same amount of time. I managed to finish the scenes I was given in the last show I was at.  I plan to go into the studio on Tuesday nights in order to go figure drawing. Unless of course, something comes up like it did this week. See below…

FAMILY

Dante came down with a terrible cold last weekend.  It was bad enough so that he stayed home with me and didn’t go to daycare like we had planned on Monday.  Since we are paying for daycare whether the kids go or not, we thought it would be best to have them continue to go. Besides, they learn a lot there and they have fun with the other kids. It will also give me a chance to work on my personal projects.

Dante was in terrible shape Monday.  I felt so bad for him.  He hardly eat.  He slept most of the day, while I worked on my comic. He got very happy when “Sissa” (his name for his big sister) and Mommy came home.  He ate the most that night at dinner.

On Tuesday, if anything, he seemed worse.  I considered it MY fault. I don’t think he slept as much as he should have the day before, nor did he drink as many fluids as he should have. I remedied that immediately that day. He was up, maybe five hours the whole day and the rest he was in bed.  He also didn’t go five minutes without me putting his orange juice filled sippy cup in his mouth while he was awake.

My efforts bore fruit.  Wednesday he woke up in much better shape.  He had a bit more energy and he didn’t have temperature, the way he had on the other two days.  I’m thinking of keeping him home one more day so he can improve more.  Maybe even just for the rest of the week, just to be safe.

ART

So I thought it would be fun if I was to go back in time and show you my history with drawing comics. Why? Is it because I was such a master artist from the get go? On the contrary, it’s because I was so average. A lot of the time people say, “You’re so talented”. This phrase while, often used as a compliment, actually under minds the years of hard work I’ve put into my craft.  My view of talent is this:

“Talent is only good for making you want to continue doing a thing. It doesn’t make you good at it.”

What makes you good at it is doing it over and over and over.  Practice and hard work make you better at something.  I know of artists who were less “talented” then me who are now much better artists because they worked harder than I did at getting that way. Sometimes, “talent” is a draw back.  If you rely on it too much, you might not improve as fast as you could.

One day, on the way home from school I got an idea for a comic strip. Unfortunately, I don’t remember how old I was when this happened.  It also may have happened at night as I was going to sleep. I was either in 3rd, 4th or 5th grade at the time.  This would make me about, 8, 9, or 10 years old. The strip I came up with was this one:

This was the strip that started it all.  I didn’t stop after that.  I kept all my strips from that time in my life in a scrapbook so I have all of my early strips. It’s interesting to see the development of the jokes and the clarity of the art as well as the development of the designs and the draftsmanship. I will take the time to note now, that while I drew these comics, I also did a lot of non-comic related drawings. The comics where just one of the many things I drew growing up. I bring this up so that you don’t think I only got better at drawing from drawing comics.

80 comics (I counted them) and about two to three years later, when I was 12 or 13ish, my style had gone through nice jump:

Like many artists, I was under the impression that style was everything. I know now that style gets you noticed, but good draftsmanship comes first.  It’s like being a writer who knows his grammar, and writing principles.  He can communicate his ideas much better than a writer who has a unique writing style and good ideas but can’t spell, can’t write clear sentences, or good paragraphs. How is anyone going to understand what he writes?

My parents gave me ink and a crow quill that year, so I began to experiment with my first “grown up” art supplies.  Somehow the tools didn’t magically make my stuff look any more professional:

My comic was originally called, Johny and his Gang but then I realized that the Bazooka Joe comics where called Bazooka Joe and his Gang. Not only that, but Bazooka Joe wore a hat and so did my character Johny. I thought I was going to make a living off of my comic (I was in Junior High and delusional) so I changed the name of the comic to Johnny B. Goode.

I drew a dozen or so of the Johnny comics after that and kinda retired the character.  Still in Junior High (about 13 years old) I started some new comic ideas.  This was one of them:

The drawing above was colored in marker.  I had found my dad’s markers and started using them to color my drawings. The comic didn’t go anywhere. I think I only did two comics strips with both those characters. I drew a lot during this time but I don’t think I drew very many comics.

As a freshman in High school (about 14 years old),  I got the itch to do more strips, which I thankfully dated. I took the sidekick character from the strip above, because I liked writing him,  and made him the lead of my new comic strip:

And so my Paul comics began. This would be the character I would draw comic strips of for the rest of High school (sorta).  I got rid of the markers (which I couldn’t control) and replaced them with colored pencils.

I still used a quill to ink the drawings. I did a LOT of experimenting too.

By my sophomore year (about 16 years old),  I had graduated to using a brush to ink my strips.

I drew about thirty to forty strips  with my character Paul in total.  Somewhere along the way I just kinda ran out of juice. I was trying to develop my  drawing in other ways. I had a good art class that opened my eyes to other things. Not only that but once I hit senior year, I was studying animation and that took all my creative energy.  Below is one of the last comics I drew in my senior year (I was 18). It was a remake of a strip I drew when I was a 15 years old, which is why it has two dates:

I began work on The Simpsons the year I drew the strip above.

Since my life had changed so much, I didn’t really have time for creating comics. My skills were not up to the level I needed them to be in order to keep my job at the studio and I had to get my skills up fast (for more on THAT story, I wrote about it on another post HERE).

Five years later, in 1998 I attempted to draw my own comic for the first time in a long time.  This time instead of just a comic strip I was going to attempt a comic book story.  By this time I had a few Simpson Comics under my belt and I just wanted to try my hand at doing my own.  I drew a  21 page rough of my story, fully intending to do another pass to flesh out the character designs and the drawings. I just wanted to run it by some people to see if it was “working”.  I decided to use my character Paul from my comic strips only redesigned and all “grown up”:

I didn’t finish it. For the full story at to why, as well as a chance to read what I DID do, wait till next week.  I’ll put up the rough pages of that comic, with more legible digital lettering.

The year is now 2010. Twelve years after my last attempt, here’s another preview of the comic I’m working on right now. Coming to this blog soon in full color:

The irony is that The Black Terror Kid looks a lot like that original version of Paul  I did when I was 13. I’ve come a long way and yet I’m still drawing the same stuff in the same way. I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry.

VIDEOS

Two weeks ago, I about how much the Macross version of Robotech influence me. This last couple of days I’ve actually been watching Robotech the New Generation on Hulu. The main reason is that I never really saw it when it first came out.  I watched the first episode and I was hooked.  It really holds up after all these years.  It has some really bad dialogue and narration but nothing so bad that it ruins the drama of the series.  How can you not like a show where the character ride around on motorcycle that becomes Iron Man style mecha armor.  That’s just darn COOL!  It also feels very much like a western at times. Highly recommend it.

BLOG

Just became aware of this Catholic Blog written by Catholic convert Andy Beeler. It’s a great read, I highly recommend it:

The Catholic Comedy

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THE SIMPSONS

My first week back on layout was a bit rocky.  It took me a while to get used to doing it again.  By Friday I was really grooving though. I was going through scenes at the speed I’m meant to go.  I’ve been able to continue holding up that pace so far.  I glad.

ART

I’ve been showing off a bit of my extra curricular Simpsons work for the last couple of weeks.  This will be the last of it for now.

This is some work I did for a Lisa Simpson Book.  Similar to the Krusty one I wrote about last week.  One of the running gags of the book was a Lisa comic done in the style of the Rex Morgan M.D. comic strip. It featured Lisa and Milhouse all grown up solving medical problems.  It was fun to do because it was so melodramatic.  I had worked on the show “Lisa’s Wedding” which takes place in the future and Lisa is grown up through most of the show.  I remembered what Lisa looked like in that show and I drew her in the same way, with slightly stylized wavy hair:

It’s funny to note, now that I see all strips together, that almost all the strips end with a close up of a character or a dramatic up shot. Sometimes, even the exact SAME dramatic upshot as a different strip. 

You will also note that, in the roughs I posted, I didn’t really put in any perspective grids like I usually do. Looking through the roughs I DIDN’T post, I see that they are missing in those as well. I “eye balled” the perspective on all of these strips. Granted, I didn’t really put in all that many backgrounds either. These strips allowed me to experiment with doing “short hand” backgrounds.

Above is a rough that I didn’t post the clean up for…for some reason.

Above here’s the rough of the strip below.

It was fun to have Milhouse totally start crying just for the melodrama of it all. I don’t think that was in the script.

Above is the rough of the strip below.  The note from the art director was not to have Milhouse come in running on panel 3.

I didn’t post all the strips. Just a few.

Yet again, I didn’t receive a copy of this book so I don’t know what the final version of these strips look like.  I’ll need to track this books down so I can check it out:

What do you think?

MY WEEK

I turned 35 last Saturday. The kids, Alesha took me out to eat sushi. Something I really enjoy doing. We then went back home and my parents came over to visit later in the evening.  The best part of the day, (besides spending time with my family) was getting time to work on my comic.

Sunday we were invited to my in-law’s house.  My mother in law  made enchiladas for lunch.  It was yummy.  Later we drove to my parent’s house were my mother there was a steak dinner waiting for me along with my brother, Deborah his wife, my cousin and her family.  We got there late, which was embarrassing since they were there for me.  Still, it I had a good time.

It’s odd, even on my birthday, if I’m not playing a board game, I still feel awkward about being around a lot of people. I think it’s gotten worse since I started working my projects.

MY WEB COMIC

Speaking of projects…I’m very close to finishing the inking process of my web comic.  I’m very surprised at how much fun I’m having working on this thing.   It also has me very frustrated.  Mostly because I’m not as happy about the way it’s turning out as I’d like to be.  The reason for this, is my fault.  I wanted to draw the comic without making it to be too much work.  Usually, as you’ve seen from my comic book making process post, I draw one page three times before it’s finalized.  If I was to ink the page, it would be four times.  Well, in order to speed things up, I decided that I was only going to draw each page twice. I was going to draw the final penciled page and then ink it.  No rough plot, no tighter rough, no clean up page. I was going straight to a tight rough and then to ink.  This has actually caused a lot of problems because my abilities are NOT such that I can just get everything right the first time.  I really needed to take one more step before I got to the inking.  Still, I’m learning, so I’ll know what I’ll do different next time.

I’ve also rediscovered that I have lousy lettering, so  I’m going to have digital lettering through out the comic and I think even the sound effects I’ve put into the pages will need to be reworked digitally.  It’s okay though, practice makes perfect.  The comic is still perfectly readable and I’m still planning on finishing it.  It’s going to be in color and since I’ve never colored a comic before, I don’t know how long that’s going to take me.  Hopefully, not very much time.

And while I’m on the subject of projects…

GHETTOMATION

I’m slowly making headway into the writing and creating of my next Pulp serial ghettomated project.  I think I’ve finally nailed down what it’s all going to be about, who the main characters are and what their motivation is. Now, I just have to come up with a quick story to put them in so I can really begin.  That, and the fact that I have to work out the look and style of the cartoon.

I’ll write about the process when it really starts getting into gear.

VIDEO

And now some Axe Cop ghettomation:

BLOG

This is fantastic blog if you’re into drawing at all:

The Art Center Blog

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Comments are appreciated as well.

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Finished with the last show I’m going to be doing Story Reel work on. I have now officially been moved to doing layout.  I was so rusty I didn’t really know where to start and how to do it. Fortunately I started remembering it all and things started moving faster as I went.  Now I just have to be able to get the scenes out on time.

ART

So before I had created my blog, but after I had done the Trip to Italy sketch diary, hired to draw some pages for a small The Krusty Book.  The best thing about one of the assignments I had gotten was that I was asked to draw a comic strip of Krusty the Clown only small called Li’l Krusty (ala. Peanuts or Little Lulu). I couldn’t believe it. I was going to get paid to draw Krusty cute. I jumped on the opportunity to draw Krusty in the cute style I like to use.  Which is the style I use on my blog and in my Italy trip journal.

I don’t have a copy of the finished pages, just the roughs.  So here are my rough pages of the strips I did. Oh, and I didn’t actually write the gags for these cartoons. I just drew them.

Lot’s of tracing back drawings in these.

Had fun drawing does big eyes.

In the final pass, they had me round out the eyes more when Krusty was in profile and they had me take off the clown shoes.

Chibi Sideshow Bobby was fun.

There came a point with the Sideshow Bobby strips, where the set up no longer needed new artwork so I just photo copied the first few panels and drew the punchline as new art.

In the final art, they also had me shrink Krusty’s ears.

As you can see below, the last panel on the strip above, was changed a bit to end with the monkey more centered:

I never received an actual copy of the book so I don’t even know how the comics turned out.  I DID look in Amazon and found that their preview of the book actually featured a strip.

VIDEOS

Growing up, in order to get my brother and I from spending all our time in front of the TV, my parents only allowed us one hour of TV a day. This meant that I had  to make the difficult decision of choosing a show to watch.  I wasn’t allowed to watch G.I. Joe because, even though my mom never watched it, she thought it was too violent.  So I watched another show, Robotech.  A show that appealed to me much more anyway and ironically, was far more violent than G.I. Joe ever was.

In G.I. Joe the Joes and Cobra used to shoot at each other with laser guns and never actually hit each other, EVER. In Robotech the protagonists where at war with an alien race and quite a few of them died horrible on screen deaths. One of the main characters even bled to death after a battle.  It was a very powerful very dramatic show. It influenced me quite a bit. As a kid, it actually forced me to deal with death and loss. It also showed by example, the difference between infatuation and sacrificial  romantic love. I grew up with and matured with Rick Hunter/Hikaru. It was one of the four Japanese shows I watched in my early years that ruined me to the watered down preachy cartoon shows of the 80s.  Shows I found annoying because I felt talked down to.

Hulu has recently released Super Dimension Fortress Macross (a.k.a. Robotech). Macross is the original version of Robotech as it was shown on Japanese TV.  The version on Hulu is a new dubbed version of the show. It’s great to see the show this way. The new dub is pretty good and actually makes it less cheesy than the original dub.

I highly recommend this show. Though I remember that the art quality starts getting worse as the show goes along. I’m not sure why.

PODCASTS

The Cartoonistas have a podcast now.  Cartoonista Radio.  Find out the inside scoop on all the Cartoonistas.

Visit:  Cartoonista Radio

MY WEB COMIC

I’ve started inking my comic finally.  I really screwed up page 4 the other day. I had to do a patch job on some panels and on a character.  I’ve also decided that I’m going to use computer fonts since my writing and sound effects came out looking really awful.I’m learning a lot and enjoying myself though.  I’ve learned that I’m NOT good at drawing with a brush. It’s much better to have a drawing better worked out before I start inking it.  Maybe someday I’ll be able to, but not yet.  I’ve also learned that I should be watching anything new on a monitor or on DVD while I work.  I get too distracted and I don’t pay enough attention to my inking and it all comes out looking lousy.

Once I’m done inking the pages I’ll scan them all in, re-letter them all and begin coloring it.

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

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Comments are appreciated as well.

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Overtime week this week.  We’re getting President’s day off so we have to make up the hours.

This is good news for me since I just found out when I’m going on hiatus.  I’ll be out for four weeks. The good news is that I’ve got a start date as well, and it’s possible that they may have work during that time that I can help out on.  Still, not looking forward to it.  The bills are hitting us pretty bad.

ART

Last week I wrote about putting up some Simpsons comics pages. Well here they are. This was one of my favorite projects I got to work on. It was a Simpsons Bible stories comic.  At first I thought I might refuse it but since it was just Bart’s crazy versions of Bible stories and since I was doing the art, I went out of my way to make sure through some of the ways I drew things, that the audience knew it was all a big lie.

I had a blast doing this.  I did a lot of research for this.  In fact, I actually got help with some of the research from the art director of Dreamworks‘ Prince of Egypt, Richie Chavez.  He loaned me the books he used when researching the look of Prince of Egypt.  It helped a TON.

I’ll give a little commentary of the pages as I go. The comic was 22 pages long and was broken up into three stories.  The pages I put up last week were from the Abraham story. The ones below are obviously the story of Noah:

The look of the jungles in the page above was inspired by Disney’s  Tarzan.  The costumes the characters are wearing was tricky to find reference for.  I mean, what did people wear before the flood?  I ended up basing their costumes off of what the people of Ur are thought to have worn. God makes an appearance in both the Abraham story and in this one.  Strange thing is, I forgot that the Simpsons had established God as being a guy with a white robe and a white beard. You’d think I’d remember right?  But I didn’t, so my version of God in this comic is represented by “lines of light”.  Panel 4 in the page above is an example.  Noah Flanders is speaking to God in that panel.

I like my version better.

In the page above, I specifically picked a saw design that  was older than the modern ones we have today.

My original design for the Ark was much more square looking and far less traditional.  Doing research, I found some sites that speculated on what the Ark might actually have looked like and how it must have worked in order to do what it needed to do.  The art director had me change it to a more traditional design.  I think, in the end, it was a good call on his part. The more angular and rectangular Ark I had originally designed was a bit ugly.

I haven’t drawn rain for a comic before. Not sure I like how it came out now.  I had fun drawing the griffins.  Too bad they’re only in one panel.

The page above was a pain but fun as well. Very epic.

Lot’s of animals to draw for this one.  It really put me to task.

Oops! There goes Maude off the Ark. This is the second time I’ve had to kill Maude Flanders.  The first time was on the show.  Yeah, I drew the scenes where Maude dies. In the second panel above, I show my love of Japanese comics by doing my version of Manga speed lines.

Well, there you go.  This story was originally published on Simpsons comics #62. It’s now been officially republished in Simpsons Comics Barn Burner if you want to read the full story and see not only what everyone is saying but how the story ends.

What do you think?

How much research do you put in your work?

VIDEOS

I found this process video of how Gabe Swarr creates his comic strip fascinating so I thought I’d share.

What’s you opinion of this video?

ART

Participated in some live art with my fellow Cartoonistas this weekend.  We were at Geeks comics participating in what was called Salabration.  It was the owner Sal’s birthday.  The Salabration consisted of us artists drawing something near or ON display at the window to try get people to come in to the store.  It was a bit nerve racking to be on display like that.  When I went up for my turn, I tried to focus on the drawing as hard as I could.  Talk about pressure.  Everyone was telling me that there were  a lot of people watching me draw but I sure as heck didn’t want to look.

If you want to see pictures of what it all looked like and what my fellow Cartoonistas thought  of it all, go to:

Javier Hernadez’s Blog

Jim Lujan’s Blog

In any case, it was really fun.  We talked a lot about art and comics and generally had a good time.

This is what I ended up drawing:

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

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And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Working on getting the show done.  It’s going well so far.  I’m doing well so far.

Late Thursday of last week, we discovered that this show is the 64th or 65th Simpsons show (I forgot which) the director I’m working with has directed. That’s a TON of shows.  Most TV shows don’t ever even get to do that many shows done much less have have one guys actually direct that many.  Wow. No other director on this show has directed so many.

FAMILY

Happy Birthday to my little boy Dante.  He turned two this weekend on the 31st of January.  For his birthday, we took him to a restaurant located in the Disneyland Hotel called Goofy’s Kitchen.

We weren’t sure what it was going to be like and we kinda made the arrangements late Thursday. We realized we had to make a reservation and we weren’t sure if we would get it on the day and time we wanted. It was late enough in the night that we didn’t want to spend the next couple of hours calling people to see if they could make it.  We were going to go only the four of us but at the last minute decided that maybe my parents might be able to go. We didn’t want it to be a party thing. We thought we would invite people over to our house instead and make the restaurant thing something small.

My parents said they could make it and I quickly made reservations for 11:30 am.

Next day we made our way to Anaheim. We got free Valet parking and made our way to the restaurant.  My parents showed up a few minutes after I payed and we all got seated but not before we got our picture taken with Chip from Chip and Dale.  The thing that made me want to bring Dante to the restaurant was  the fact that  Disney characters walked around and hung out with you as you ate.

Dante and Munchkin LOVED it. Goofy, Pluto, Chip, Baloo the bear and even Princess Jasmine, walked by and said hello to them.  They loved the food too, which was buffet style.  Dante didn’t stop smiling the whole time.  At one point during Munchkin got up and danced along with Goofy with all the other kids. It was great fun.

I couldn’t afford another trip to Disneyland but I still wanted to give Dante a little bit of that experience.  This restaurant was the next best thing.

Later in the day, we had family and friends come over for his “official” birthday party.  There were so many kids running around our house, we barely saw Dante.  He was having so much fun playing with his cousins and friends.  We can truly say from the perpetual smile on his face:

ART

Next week, I’m going to be putting up some of my clean up pencils, of one of my favorite projects to have worked on, in the for the Simpson comics. I drew it years ago. Here’s a preview of what you can expect.

MY WEB COMIC

I really don’t mean to get in on the band wagon. I’ve been thinking a lot about my next personal project, after I’m done with my comic (which is coming along great). What I want to do is a Jim Lujan inspired “Ghettomated” cartoon.  In other words, a colored animatic. The thing is, I’m not going to use my  Black Terror Kid character. I was going to try out something else.

What I was in the mood for was a comedic “Pulp” action hero. I’m really somewhat into pulps right now.  I think it’s because just about everyone else in the world seems to be into them too.  Alan Moore has been writing them for a few years now, I’ve been reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan, the very popular tabletop role-playing game Spirit of the Century let’s you create and play out a pulp character, I’ve also owned the tabletop role-playing game Pulp Hero book for years now,  Star Wars The Clone Wars (TV Series) is basically a sci fi pulp show, the new Immortal Iron Fist, comics read like a pulp story, DC is now coming out with their new pulp heroes universe called “First Wave“…etc. You get the idea.  I think all this stuff has gotten into my brain and made me want to do one too. Even though I didn’t think I was getting influenced by them as much as I have.

So here I am, thinking I was being original, coming up with a spoof on pulps when EVERYONE is writing pulps. So I’m just going to be a “me too”.  But then again, my comic is about a superhero so it’s not like that’s very original either.

I think my take will be a fun one though.  I also have a Swords and Sorcery style story that I’m going to be working on as well since I like Conan so much. I think my take on it will be unique so I’m looking forward to working on it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these things.  I’m very excited.  I’m planning on writing VERY short stories for all these things.  Snippets of stories. That way I can get them out of my system without them getting tedious.

VIDEOS

Time for some videos.

This first one is J.J. Abrams (director of the new Star Trek movie, and creator of Lost, among other things) talking about storytelling and the “Mystery Box”:

These next two are some new comic book animated movies that are out or will be out soon that I’m really interested in watching:

And last, I’m putting a link here for a site that has some great video of John Romita Sr., Joe Kubert, John Busceman, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Gibbons and Travis Charest DRAWING:

http://www.fanboy.com/2008/03/comic-book-artists-in-action.html

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

We finished up helping out the crew we were on Tuesday and then we were moved to start working on our “official” crew. As far as I can tell, this is the second to last show of the season. This means that in about a month or three the shows will be done.  I’m not sure where I’m going to be, work wise, by the end of next month.  I hope I just get moved to a layout crew. Unless there is something else I can do on the show.

ART

In case you were interested, I’m going to write about the processes I used when making a Simpsons comics

Usually the whole thing starts with the script.  I would show what a script page looks like but I threw them away.

I tend to read the script twice. The first time around, I just read it straight through. The second time around I draw little thumbnail sized sketches of ideas, on the  margins, of shots I see in my head as I read it.   Once I’m done with that, I number the thumbnails and then, still on the script itself, I draw a small sketch of what the pages will look like with the panels, giving each panel a number corresponding to a thumbnail.

Once I’m satisfied, I take a piece of paper and work out a rough page, laying out what I think the final page should look like. This is done so that I can send it to my art director\editor at Bongo Comics to approve:

For the step above I use the actual page proportions so that if it IS approved, I can just take a light box and draw a slightly tighter pass directly over it.

I redraw the page again, working out the drawings a bit more. I put in perspective lines and I construct the characters properly:

Once I’m done with that step, technically, all it really needs is ink, BUT I don’t ink my own comic pages and Bongo asked me, from the very start, to clean up my comic pages for the inker; SO I do one more pass and clean up the page as clean as possible:

Once this step is done, I send in a digital copy to get approved. I change anything that needs changing and once it’s approved I Fed Ex the final drawings to Bongo or to the inker.

I then sit around waiting for my paycheck (which sometimes takes a month) and then a while after that, I end up getting sent a copy of the comic:

This particular Maggie story is, by far, one of my favorites to have worked on.  It had maybe three or four dialogue balloons through out the story and the rest was all pantomime.  Not only that but it was a sci fi story and I got to spoof all kinds of 50s and 60s sci fi troupes.  From Mars Attacks to Flash Gordon.  It was a blast to work on.

The story was first published in Bart Simpson comic #15. It has officially been reprinted in Big Beefy Book Of Bart Simpson trade paperback.

What do you think?

How do you approach your comic?

BLOGS

I’ve just recently been made aware of some really cool blogs by some fantastic artists.

The first artist’s blog I want to point out is:

Rad Sechrist’s blog Rad How To - A fantastic site by a Pixar Storyboard artist. Great for anyone who’s trying to learn to draw.  It breaks down the drawing process into small studies and approaches that work for the artist. A lot of his advice is something many really good artists in the animation industry do all the time.   (Thank you to Krishna Sadasivam of PC weenies for the link)

The second artist’s blog I want to point out is:

Sam Nielson’s blog Sam’s Tasty Art - Though there are SOME tips on painting and drawing in this site, the reason I’m calling attention to it is mostly because the guy’s painting and drawings are just INCREDIBLE.  I love this guy’s work. Check it out. Very inspiring stuff.

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Survived another deadline week.  We’ve moved on to yet another crew to help out for a week before moving on to my long term crew. Worked overtime last week so I’m looking forward to my paycheck.  I thinks it’s going to help us out quite a bit.

ART

Here’s my new Superhero Versus Superhero drawing (click on the numbers to see what I’m taking about: 1,2,3,4,5,6).  Well…not exactly superheroes but comic book archetypes never the less:

Betty and Veronica (Archie Comics) Versus Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy (Marvel Comics).  They fight because they’re the same archetype.  Betty and Veronica are rivals for Archie’s affections while Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy were once rivals for Peter Parker’s (a.k.a Spider-man) affections. 

This was a really fun drawing to do, but it was a difficult one to come up with.  I learned a lot about how badly I draw. I also learned a lot about how great Dan Decarlo’s early Archie drawings were.  It was tricky to draw Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy and have them “read” as Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy because they aren’t superheroes and they don’t have a “costumes”.  In the end, I chose the closest thing they have to an iconic look. I doubt anyone but comic book geeks will know who they are  just by looking at the picture.

The thing I learned the most from drawing this, by far, is that I need to do more figure drawing. That and drawing in the Archie style is really, really fun.

ART

The ANIMATION GETDOWN happened this weekend.  The  ANIMATION GETDOWN was an independent animation film festival created by fellow  Cartoonista, Jim Lujan. Both Raul Aguirre and Jim Lujan worked hard to put it all together.  It took place at Geeks, a comic books store in Whittier, California. It was an enormous success. Over a hundred people showed up to watch the indy cartoons that were presented there.

For the full story (or as close as you’re going to get to it) and a lot of pictures from the event (including some with me in them), go to Jim Lujan’s blog (Jan. 17 2010).  Also, if you want to listen to some audio interviews recorded live at the event, listen to the Ghettomation podcast episode #5 (I’m in that too).

Unfortunately while I was there, I felt like a zombie.  I had been working on my comic earlier that day and my head was still on the job (more on that below).  The fact that it all took place in a comic book store, didn’t help either. All I wanted to do was look through the comics for more inspiration.  I also wanted to buy a bunch of them since I saw a lot that I thought looked great.

Still, it was great to be there, even though I was not totally there.

MY WEB COMIC

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on my comic.  It’s going to be eleven pages long and I’m enjoying myself immensely.  It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn a comic.  In a way, it’s a very familiar process, on the other hand I’m doing things I’ve never truly done before.  Like putting in word balloons and sound effects. I’m also using 2 ply smooth Bristol paper to draw on, which is also new to me.  Because of this, I’ve had to reinvent my process. There is a few things I really wanted to do that is different than what I usually do.  Usually I plot out a page, then draw a tight rough on another piece of paper, then I get yet another piece of paper and clean it all up.

I will be showing this process perhaps next week.

This time around, I wanted to stream line the process so it all happens on ONE sheet of paper. Trying to figure out if I can do it is the hard part.

When I was growing up, I used to do my own comic strips. Beginning from when I was in 5th grade up until I graduated High School.  I had developed a method on how I approached doing them that worked well for me over all those years.  Later I started doing Simpsons comics and my method changed a bit since I didn’t have to “do it all” the way I had to in a comic strip.  That, and the fact that a comic page is a different “animal” than a comic strip. Now that I’m doing my OWN comic book story, I’ve found that I’ve got to marry what I used to do in my comic strips and what I learned to do when doing comic book pages.

For example, when doing a comic book page, I never truly worried as much about word balloons as I should have. Mainly because they were the last things put onto the page and it was done by someone else. While, when doing the comic strips, the word balloons where almost the most important thing for me.

Working on my personal comic, I tried to approach it in the same way as I did the Simpsons comic pages, only I’ve discovered, as I go along, that the word balloons almost need to come first in a similar way to how I used to do comic strips. Not exactly the same way, but similar.  Especially since I’ve made up my mind to NOT use digital word balloons.  I have chosen to make the word balloons, part of the original art; since they ARE. I’m making a comic book after all. I’m going to attempt to hand letter the words in the balloons, but I have awful writing, so if doesn’t look good, I’ll use digital letters.  That said, I still need to know how big the balloons should be to accommodate the words.  This means writing the dialogue out  so I can see how it will read.  It’s a time consuming part of the process I didn’t anticipate, and I’ve found myself, to my great surprise, enjoying it.

There is much more to think about, besides that and I’ve gotten lost in thought about the process for hours. Which means I become even LESS social than I usually am. I’m so absorbed in this stuff right now. It’s really fun, I can’t wait to finish. I might write about this some more, later.

VIDEO/WRITING

Chris Oatley linked to this on Twitter sometime last week (Follow me on Twitter). I thought it was great tips on writing stories so I thought I’d share it.

You gotta love someone who has to refute relativism in order to teach storytelling.

VIDEO

And now for some random silliness. Here is Hitler’s reactions to some bad news about what Marvel Comics up to. Warning: There is some bad language in this but it’s darn funny.

Hitler really takes his comic seriously:

…and from Hitler to Star Trek as the A-team:

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Worked overtime Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.  It was pretty brutal but it’s worth for me for the money.  I’m getting a lot done too.

I was made aware of this video earlier this week.  It freaked me out.  This is what the Simpsons studio looked like during it’s first season. I wasn’t there, obviously, I was still in high school (or was it middle school?) in any case, I recognize some people in this video and I was really tripping out.

ART

This drawing gave me lots of problems, but after drawing it ten times, I finally got something I liked.

So continuing with our Superhero Versus Superhero Challenge my friends and I have been doing at work (click on the numbers to see what I’m taking about: 1,2,3,4,5,6), I did this drawing:

It’s Mary Marvel (DC comics) versus Ms. Marvel (Marvel Comics) playing Marbles. They’re fighting because they have very similar names and very similar powers.

I’m working on the next drawing already.

The drawing above gave me so much trouble that I learned a lot from it.  At first I started getting frustrated but then I remembered something that Chris Oatley wrote or said on his Twitter page or his podcast, that made me calm down. Something along the lines of, “The process is the reward”. This made me stop and  consider what the process was telling me. If I was having trouble, this meant I needed to study up on something which made me realize I was going to learn something.  Suddenly I was excited that I was having trouble because I couldn’t wait to discover what I would learn. Turns out the Chris was right, the process can BE the reward. If I had not succeeded in drawing something I was satisfied with, I would still have been rewarded for having tried.

PODCASTS/ART

So I listened to the latest episode of the Big Illustration Party Time Podcast #43, and at the end of the episode, I was made aware of a link to some Famous Artist Course pdfs on Cartooning that you can download for FREE! I thought it was awesome so I’m providing the link to it as well:

Famous Artist Course on Cartooning free pdfs

VIDEOS

Fellow Cartoonista, Jim Lujan, has done it again. He’s finished and released his latest animated cartoon titled SEVEN SMILES. This is my favorite character Jim has come up with so far. This ones a fun one:

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

It’s the first week back at work for the new year. It’s been business as usual…sorta. I’ve been asked to work overtime to try to make up for the time lost because of the holidays. So much for our time of rest.  I guess it’s okay.  I really need the money anyway.

MY WEEK

During my time off, I had all the time in the world to work on my comic.  It was the perfect opportunity to  work on my project and get it done faster than in any other time.  So what did I do?  I spent all my free time reading comic books.  I got through about 60 comics or more.  On the one hand, it was a complete waste of an opportunity, but on the other hand, not only was it relaxing, but I was ready to start drawing by the time the holidays were over. It really recharged my batteries.  I got very little drawing done but it was a good trade off.

In case your wondering where I got the comics, they where the ones I picked up at the kitchen at work for FREE.  The ones that Drew Johnson leaves there because he has too many. Therefore, all the comics I was reading where DC comics.

Best thing I read was the New Krypton Superman storyline.  It had me pretty hooked.  I may or may not write more about this. I also read a few Blackest Night preludes and one Blackest Night story so far.  It looks like it will be a fun read.

Reading the comics, I was made aware of the fact that Dick Grayson has taken up the mantel of Batman. More on that below:

COMIC BOOKS

Before I begin, I’ll (very quickly) explain who Dick Grayson is and I’ll give a quick explanation on Robin the Boy Wonder.

Who is Dick Grayson? He’s the original Robin.

There have been four Robins so far: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and now Damian Wayne.

Damian Wayne - He’s the current Robin and Bruce Wayne’s (Batman’s) son.  His mother is Talia Al Ghul.  Bruce married her in a story a long time ago called: Batman Son of the Demon.

Tim Drake -  The third Robin. He’s been the Robin you’ve seen in most modern Batman stories.  My personal favorite so far.  You can see Tim as the younger Robin in the Bruce Timm Batman adventures cartoon. He is currently running around as the Superhero Red Robin.

Jason Todd - Better known as, the Robin that died.   Jason was the second Robin and was a huge jerk.  He was such a jerk that when the readers where asked whether  Jason should live or die, the readers voted him dead.  The Joker, beat him with a crowbar then blew him up.  He’s came back to life a while ago and has made the “Bat Family’s” lives a living hell.  He seemed to have died again recently but it’s very unlikely that he’ll stay dead.  He’s still a jerk.

Dick Grayson -  The first Robin. The Robin most people think of when they think of Robin.  He’s the “Holy (insert random word) Batman!” Robin.  In the comics, he had a falling out with Bruce Wayne and went his separate way.  He later became a new superhero called Nightwing. He’s been Nightwing for about 30 years now.  I really liked Nightwing and my brother and I would get into arguments about where or not he was a necessary character.

In a way, my brother was right, Nightwing seemed like he was just a bench warmer character waiting to come into his own.  He was just sitting around waiting for Batman to die so that he could finally become Batman himself–which he now has.

It thinks it’s AWESOME. I was getting tired of Bruce Wayne and I thought he was a bit “played out”.  I wanted him to go and become the Gandalf/Obi Wan Kenobi character, that way, a new Batman could take over and maybe surpass him.  Besides, Dick Grayson is a cool character and it’s pretty much what he was created for isn’t it? To become the next Batman.  It’s about time!  I haven’t gotten to read any of his stories yet but I really want to.  I haven’t wanted to read any Batman comic for a while, until now.

ART 

So when I got back to work I thought it would be fun to draw a new Superhero Versus Superhero drawing , like the ones my friends and I did last year (click on the numbers to see what I’m taking about: 1,2,3,4,5,6). I started the drawing and I even began to ink it.  I took a break from it before it was done.  A few hours later, I looked at the drawing and wasn’t happy with it.  I was planning to finish the drawing at home but as the day went on I disliked the drawing more and more to the point where I was considering abandoning the drawing.  On the drive home I decided to give the drawing another shot. I needed to adjust the characters so that they were better designed and better drawn.  When I got home, I put some tracing paper on it and gave the characters another pass.  I was much happier with the drawing after that.  As of time of this writing, I’m still working on it.  I’ll put the drawing up next week if it turns out okay.

ART

I’ve written about the podcast Big Illustration Party Time.  It’s a podcast where the hosts talk about being freelance illustrators and give tips on how to survive  being one.  Well, both hosts have a passion for drawing comics.  They both have comic projects they’re working on.

One of the hosts, Kevin Cross, has begun a web comic of his character Monkey Mod.  I think the character has a cool look to him so I decided to try drawing him as a fun bit of fan art:

Check out the Monkey Mod web comic.  I highly recommend it.

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I was VERY grateful for our two day work week this week. I’ve been feeling burned out and the time off really helps.  This week I started on a new crew.  Time to start building up another show.

ART

I got working on my sister’s second logo this week. I told her I kinda liked what I had originally done with the logo in my first pass. She then told me she did also BUT she didn’t think the pose itself captured the Yoga pose quite right.  She told me it lacked the right energy.

I gave it another shot.  I even added a yellow “energy” wave to try to sell the energy. I pushed the pose as much as I dared and then after I was done I grabbed the drawing (I drew this on the computer) and I pushed it some more. This is what I sent my sister:

She told me she like it but she didn’t want the yellow so I took it out.  I then went in and cleaned the drawing up just a little bit more and it was done:

MOVIES

I’ve made no secret that I’m not a big admirer of the newest Star Wars movies.  They’ve kinda messed up Star Wars quite a bit.  I do enjoy watching  both versions of the Clone Wars Cartoons (the 2D ones AND the 3D). Especially because they are made by Star Wars geeks that KNOW what makes Star Wars cool. I happen to know that the Clone Wars guys actually argue with George Lucas over some of his lame ideas. They’re my heroes.

Anyway, one of the worst Star Wars movies ever made was The Phantom Menace. If you don’t believe that it’s a bad movie, watch the film below. If you DO think it’s a bad movie, watch the film below as well, it’s going to make you laugh. If you are interested in film making or storytelling and want to know what is needed to tell a good story, watch the film below as well.  It will learn you something.

WARNING: The following movie contains bad language but is darn funny:

MOVIES

I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. as  Holmes.  I enjoyed it quite a bit.  I’ve read a few Sherlock Holmes stories as well as watched a few Sherlock Holmes TV shows and movies. The familiarity with the character’s previous adventures, helped me feel like I knew the back story of a lot of what is spoken about by the characters in this new movie. This new version of the characters  is very different and yet I still think it felt right.  Still, it was definitely a very  “American” Sherlock Holmes and Watson.  They acted more like cowboys than British gentlemen but then again, it DOES take place during the TIME of the wild west, so it wasn’t too inappropriate. In any case, I enjoyed the movie, and I hope they make more.

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

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If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.