I had a crazy last day of work last week. I spent the entire work day plus extra hours working on The Couch Gag I was assigned. Everyone had forgotten that Good Friday was going to be a holiday and I didn’t have the designs for the Couch Gag until Holy Thursday morning, about an hour before lunch. I started working on the Gag before I had the designs, hoping I would have them by the time I needed to clean up the characters. I had the rare opportunity of animating a lot of the Gag. In the end, I didn’t get to fully animate it, but I got all the keys and timing down the way it ought to be.
The Gag didn’t have a standard family run in. It had a slightly different version of the characters and I had to redo the run in. I ran it past the director and he gave me his notes on what he wanted. I redid the run in again, and he approved. At that point, it was already two o’clock. The problem was that the run in was only the first half of the Gag, the second half had an animated pull out and some action after that pull out. This gave me only two hours to finish something I really should have had at least two days to do.
It’s one of those mixed blessing. On the one hand, I got to do some fun animation. On the other hand, they gave me no time to do it, which kinda killed the fun a bit.
I got done by ten o’clock. I timed it and even made a mini movie out of it. I was very very tired at that point, but also very happy with how the Gag had turned out.
The irony came when I was about to turn the Gag in. Usually when we’re done with an assignment, we just upload the work onto the server. The problem was, that since I wasn’t officially working on the show after that day, I got logged off the server. They didn’t know I was still working. Everyone was gone by that point and I had no way of letting anyone know I had a problem. So I couldn’t turn in the Couch Gag.
I decided to go home and left a few messages informing production what had occurred. Monday, I was informed that they had retrieved the work and everything was fine.
What a way for me to end the season.
MY WEB COMIC
Below is the rough for the page above. Not much else to say really, except that I didn’t use a red pencil under drawing on this one. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask:
VIDEOS
Yet another great animated short from the Animation Workshop. Not exactly a topic I would picked for an spoof on superheroes, but I enjoyed it anyway:
WRITING
I decided to watch a few movies to see how the Magick was handled visually in them. I looked at, LORD OF THE RINGS, HELLBOY, and the DOCTOR STRANGE animated movie. I didn’t really like any of their solutions, BUT I did get an idea from the HELLBOY movie. It actually came from a line at the beginning where the narrator says something about how the Nazi’s where using technology and magic.
This got me thinking. I told my wife about the line and she pitched me the idea that the Sorcerers can be wearing machines that take out their blood so that they could do magick. THAT was the key I was looking for. That would make it both practical and visual. The Sorcerers use machines to do magick. GREAT! Now, the question was, what will the magick be? Could I still use the fireballs? I kinda don’t want to, because it’s a bit generic, so the hard part now is to come up with interesting attacks for them to pull off. At least I have unique visuals now. Perhaps I’ll have them do some sort of incantation and gestures when they do it too. That would help.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
This is my last week before I go into the second part of my hiatus, which will be three weeks long. We have Friday off so it looks like I’ll be going into my hiatus a day early.
I managed to finish all my board work by Monday. Tuesday, instead of laying out the Couch Gag as I was suppose to do, I was given layout work on Act 2. We do layout on a different program than the storyboards so it took me a bit to get used to working on the program again. Since we have Friday off, I really have to make sure I get everything done by the end of today.
VIDEOS
THE SAGA OF BIORN is a fantastic Bachelor film project from The Animation Workshop. It’s funny, fun, well animated, well acted, with incredible designs. I’m just amazed:
MY WEB COMIC
The finished page 1 of the new Black Terror Kid comic:
Last week, I put up a rough of page one. This week I thought I would show you the tools I use to make my comics:
Well, sometimes I tend to use a regular Color erase red pencil to do under drawing work and a mechanical pencil for clarifying. Other times, I just go straight in with the mechanical pencil (lead 0.7). For erasers I use a white rubber eraser and an ever so useful kneaded eraser (can’t live with one). I also use a green or a blue pencil when putting in my perceptive grid and a transparent ruler to do any straight lines during the penciling stage:
For inking, on the other hand, I use all kinds of fun stuff.
I don’t like using felt tip pens when I ink comics. I use them all the time otherwise, but not on my comics. I like to use dip pens, brushes and my non felt tip brush pen. So here are my tools:
By FAR my favorite tool is the Pentel refillable brush pen. I use it for EVERYTHING. Including field sketching. My comic was 90% inked with this pen. I LOVE IT!
If you’ve never heard of it, the pen has a synthetic brush on it and you unscrew the base to input an ink cartridge. It’s fantastic. I had to put in a new cartridge, half way though my inking. It was half full when I began.
The rest of my tools are a LOT more traditional. Quills, dip pens, brushes, and ink.
1. The ink is Pelikan black ink. It’s not as black as I would like but it’s better than the Higgins ink I was using before. Problem with the Pelikan is that it’s a bit pricey.
2. These are the nibs I use to letter with.
A. Hunt dome point. (which I forgot I had and didn’t use this time. I sure could have used it).
B. Speedball A-5 was used for all the letters in the balloons except for the bold lettering. It’s the smallest Speedball nib and the “A” series has a square tip. Speedball nibs are interesting because they really retain a lot of ink. It takes a long time for them to run out once dipped.
C. Speedball B-4 was used for all the bold text. The “B” series has a round tip.
3. Speedball B-3, I used to draw the border and the word balloons. The Speedball nibs are good when you want your line to stay the same width the whole time. No thick and thin effect. I didn’t use any rulers when inking my work so these came in handy.
4. Gillett #170 nib was used mostly for lettering slightly smaller letters, like the ones on the signs. I also used it when inking a scratchy sound effect in page 3. It unfortunately cut into the paper on a page and caused a smudge to happen when I erased the pencil lines two days later.
5. Not sure what the technical term for this one is, Gillett 291 perhaps? In any case, this tiny little crow quill was the first kind of ink pen I ever used. My parent gave me one when I was in Junior High. I rarely use it now but it DID come in REALLY handy when inking tiny little details. Like The Black Terror Kid’s skull and crossbones logo on his outfit.
6. An old beat up brush I’ve had for years. It’s tip is all crooked. Once upon a time, I used it to ink with, now I all I do with it is fill in big areas with black ink.
Hope you liked the small tour of my tools.
WRITING
Didn’t get much done on my “Illustrated Film” this week. I started revising the treatment but the Magick system I came up is different enough, that I have to really rework some of the fight scenes. Including the first attack upon Rob. He is no longer going be dodging fireballs. I made it so that the Sorcerers now use blood magick and sacrifice animals to make their magick work. It’s a bit less “practical” to do. I’m still working on it. I’ll keep you posted.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
First week back on a new episode this week. Next week will be my last week and then I have a three week hiatus. The episode I’m on has a very lite rewrite. It’s a very special show for the Fox producers and they are very happy with it.
I’ve been assigned Act 1, Act 3 and the Couch Gag. I’m halfway done with all of those assignments and it’s only Thursday of the first week. Like I said, VERY lite rewrite.
VIDEOS
The following video is a really good talk about how an artist can protect themselves from being taken advantage off. Especially if their client decides to NOT pay them for the work they do.
As can be seen from the title, the talk uses very rude language. Still, the content of the talk is such that I thought it really needed to be shared:
ART
I’m taking a small break from my “Illustrated Film” to finish up my BLACK TERROR KID comic. My film is taking so long I really felt like doing something I could finish. If there’s something I know how to do, is finish a gag comic. I’ve been making them since I was in fourth or fifth grade.
It’s coming along nicely. I thought I’d share a bit of my process this week, and next week I’ll start posting the finished pages. I plan to return working on my film sometime next week too.
Alright, so how did I go about making this comic? Well, I came up with this one by looking at a list of Black Terror Kid gag ideas I have. I looked around for something I could do that would be short. Some of the ideas are fleshed out while other are not. I would read the idea and play a scenario in my head until it ended with a punch line. I had a few ideas but they would have been too long.
Finally I came upon this idea:
BTK tries to make The Claw cookies. Punch line?
This lead me to think about, what if BTK would try to SELL The Claw cookies. I played the scenario in my head and it was short. I liked the punch line so I started writing the dialogue. I worked and reworked the dialogue until I was satisfied. I let that sit for a few days and rewrote a bit. Then let it sit and came up with an idea for the last page that made me laugh out loud to myself. I went back and rewrote what I had again.
When I was done with the rewriting, I finally decided to start thumbnailing the comic. I did this on sticky yellow notes at work, during my lunch break, with a ball point pen. This is what they looked like:
Once I was done with the thumbnails, I assigned each thumbnail a number and began trying to work out what the pages would look like. I did this on my sketchbook and it looked like this:
Once this was worked out, I made photocopies of some page guides I had made for myself and started drawing roughs of the pages with the panels broken down as I had planned. Below is page 1:
You can see the “ghost” of where I changed BTK’s head and turned it more toward camera. I realized that, for the gag to work better, he needed to say something in the panel. I then added a word balloon and wrote in the dialogue.
The title was the last thing on the page I came up with. I had, in fact, forgotten I should put one in. It was a pain in the neck coming up a pun that worked with the theme of the strip, but I did it. After page one was done, I started work on the last four pages. I’ll show the roughs of those after I’ve posted the finished pages. Meanwhile, enjoy the sneak peek of page one. For the next five weeks, I’ll be posting up a finished page and it’s rough.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
The last show I worked on before I left the show was the show that stars Neil Gaiman. I really like his stories so I had fun working on the show. It’s one of my favorite shows of this season.
I’m now on a one week break and then I go back to work next week. I had originally thought I was going to be out for two weeks but I guess I’m not. When I return to work, it will be for two weeks. I’ll be revising the last show of the season. Once that’s done, I’ll be out of work for three weeks. I might open myself up for commissions, I haven’t decided yet. Especially since I’ve never done it before and I don’t know if anyone would be interested.
MY WEEK
I’ve been very busy this week. Besides working on my new BLACK TERROR KID comic, I’ve also taken on yet another job. This time it’s for my wife. She has an 85,000 work novel manuscript she’s finished and has been sending it around to agents. She’s had a few close calls but not bites yet. She’s decided to e-publish the book herself. She now needs a cover for her book, so I’ve volunteered to help her with that.
Monday we had a friend of her’s come over to model a photo shoot. That took up a lot of time. I hope to get started on that cover soon.
VIDEOS/ART
The very beginning of this video has one of my favorite artists Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) drawing on a Cintiq. The man is (as of the time of this writing) 73 and is a master of his craft. The best part about it, is simply seeing his process. Being a master draftsman, he could have simply drawn directly what he wanted, but he didn’t. The piece he draws is a bit more involved and so he chose to not only put in a perspective grid, but he also drew a quick, rough under drawing of what the wanted to draw.
Why do I point this out? Because after so many years of drawing and being a master draftsman, he STILL relies on the basics. I’ve experience, to often, fellow artists who have been professionally drawing for over ten or twenty years that seems to scoff at the idea that they need to put down a perceptive grid or set down an under drawing because they think they are masters themselves after so many years of drawing. Yet I doubt anyone of them has as much experience as Jean Giraud and HE still uses them. If it’s good enough for him, why not us? Are we better draftsmen then he?
WRITING
Alright, before I begin, I have to apologize to everyone who has read my treatment so far. I have recently reread the whole thing since I first wrote it and discovered how awful the writing in it is. Again, I apologize. It’s all written in a stream of consciousness sort of way and I guess I hadn’t realized how reader unfriendly it actually is. The problem is that I didn’t really want to labor over it too much, since:
it’s not the final product, just a guide for myself, and
it’s the first draft.
My hope is that the ideas presented are good enough for you to realize what I’m after, even though the prose style is completely awful.
Okay so, on with what I did with this part:
After beating my head against the wall writing action, this last scene was a piece of cake. It was pretty straight forward.
I developed the hot dog vendor a bit more here. Gave me ideas for sight gags.
If you read the synopsis below, you’ll notice it’s a bit different than the final treatment. It’s basically the same thing, just in a slightly different way. There’s only so much planning you can do. You have let the story do it’s own thing:
Scene 9 (Thought/Actuality)
Rob puts down his weapon, walks away. He helps the other Sorcerers up and then starts picking up his things, which are now all over the destroyed area they fought on. By the time he’s done, the Sorcerers are gone. When he begins to walk away, the hot dog vendor calls out to him. He has two hot dogs for him, seemingly bought by the Lead Sorcerer. (Resolution)
Outdoor Shopping Area – Day concluded
The Sorcerer stares at Rob as he walks away. How dare he say those things. Who does he think he is? How DARE he. After the MERCY he has shown to Rob. The nerve. This shall not stand!
The Sorcerer begins to cast a spell. He’s going to strike Rob down once and for all.
Rob kneels down to check on his raven friend. He doesn’t notice what’s going on behind him. The hammer has since returned to it’s minuscule size. The raven seems to just be stunned. It blinks up and squawks happily at Rob. He looks a bit scuffled but otherwise, he’s okay.
The Sorcerer aims and is about to strike. But stalls just a bit too long and sees the way Rob treats his bird. He thinks about what Rob said. He looks around at his companions. One is still knocked out and the other is so self involved with himself sobbing, he hasn’t even checked on the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. He sees the destruction around him. He looks at his hands ready with the spell. He takes a long look at himself and reflects on what’s happened in the last few minutes. He’s about to strike a man in the back. He drops his hands and doesn’t cast the spell. He hates to admit it, but Rob was right. The injustice was theirs.
Rob gets up and takes the raven over to his backpack. He sets him down and the raven shakes itself. Rob unzips a pocket in his pack and takes out some gauze, tape and disinfectant. He begins to apply the disinfectant and cleans his wounds. Once done, he wraps up the wounds. He doesn’t manage to wrap them all up, but he gets enough of them. He then puts the disinfectant away and unzips another part of his pack. He reaches in and takes out a clean shirt. He carefully puts it on. The process is obviously painful. He dearly wishes the Sorcerers would just leave him alone. He doesn’t have a lot of clothes to spare. When he gets a chance, he’ll have to change his ripped up pants also.
He zips up his pack, painfully gets up, and delicately puts the pack on. He forces himself to look around for the Sorcerers. They are gone. There’s no sign of them. Good riddance. His stomach grumbles and he feels the hunger again. He sighs. It’s bad enough he feels the pain all over the outside of his body, but he still has the pain on the inside and he can’t do anything about it. Maybe he could find a water fountain somewhere to fill his belly. He calls to the raven who gingerly lands on his shoulder and he begins to walk out the of the shopping area.
He hadn’t taken two steps before he hears someone call out to him. He turns to see that it’s the hot dog vendor in his stall. Miraculously, the stall survived the chaos of the fight, unscathed. Rob goes over to the stall. The hot dog vendor hands him two hot dogs on a plate. The hot dog vendor still has the same expression and attitude as he did earlier. It’s as if the crazy fight and the destruction around him, hadn’t happened. He tells Rob that the hot dogs are his.
Rob asks the vendor if it’s a gift from him?
The vendor looks scandalized and denies the accusation as if he’d been insulted. He tells Rob the hot dogs were bought for him by the skinny guy with the eighties pompadour. Rob looks around again for the Sorcerer but he’s no where in sight.
The vendor asks Rob if he’s going to take the hot dogs. If he isn’t, he’ll just throw them away.
Rob looks down at the hot dogs. What if it’s a trap? What if they are poisoned or worse?
The vendor takes them and says he’s tossing them. Rob stops him. He’s so hungry he doesn’t care. He asks for them. The vendor hands the hot dogs over. Rob asks the vendor why he’s so calm after what just happened. The vendor tell Rob he grew up in — El Salvador and that he’s seen worse. Rob just kinda thinks oookay and then turns and walks away.
He looks down at the hot dogs and his mouth begins to water. He wonders what made the Sorcerer buy him the hot dog. Perhaps, this is a sign of good things to come. He smiles. He walks over to the fountain and sits down on one of the walls that surround it. He tells the raven there’s enough for each of them. He hands the raven a hot dog and takes one himself. He takes a bite.
Best thing he’s ever tasted. Life is awesome.
THE END
At this point, it’s tricky for me to say how much out of story “business” like the hot dog vendor should be in the final story. On the other hand, he’s kind of important since he give Rob the hot dogs.
Okay, so the next thing there’s left for me to do is figure out a good magick system. Once I do that, I’ll rewrite the parts of the treatment that are effected by the new system. I’m so glad I’m finally done! At least, with the first draft. I think the reediting will be much easier. I don’t think I’ll post the second draft. I might just make a note of the changes (perhaps).
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.
