Tuesday I was sitting at my desk looking at artwork on DeviantArt during my lunch break. I was suppose to be writing my blog but I was procrastinating. I heard a knock at my office door and in comes the head of production. She looked a little serious at me and sat down on the couch I have,
“Something has come up.”
Uh oh, I’m losing my job, was my first thought. She went on,
“I think I might have a storyboard job for you. Not just revisions but a whole Act.”
Woah! I thought surprised.
“One of our board artist has taken a leave of absence to be with his family and for health reasons. We don’t know how long he will be gone but that opens up a position. The specific show that will need to be boarded is show 500.”
My face was like a statue, but my thoughts and my emotions where all over the place. Holy cow! No way. Oh my GOSH!
“We gave the director a list of possible candidates that could do the job and asked him who he wanted. He asked for you.”
I just about fell over but I kept as cool as I could.
She looked at me, “It’s show 500 so it’s going to be a big deal. You’ll have four weeks to do the Act. Two weeks to do the roughs, for the meeting with the director and Head Director. After that two weeks to do the clean ups. The first meeting will take about three hours or so. Do you want to do it?”
My thoughts went racing. The last time I was given this kind of responsibility over a board was on the movie. I was terrified when THAT had happened. I thought, shouldn’t this be easier? Not really, the movie had time to finesse boards a bit. Boards on the show felt like a bigger pressure cooker. BUT hadn’t I been in a storyboard pressure cooker situations in the movie as well? Yes. Didn’t I handle it okay. I think I did. Okay then.
“Yes, I’ll do it,” I replied.
“Okay then. You start Monday. You’ll meet with the director and you’ll get on your way. If everything goes well and the Head Director likes your work, you’ll get more,” she got up from the couch, opened the door and smiled as she left, “no pressure or anything.”
“HA, yeah no pressure,” I replied nervously. The door shut behind her. SHOW 500! Oh man!…I hope I don’t blow it.
I covered my face with my hands. An overwhelming urge to hide came over me.
VIDEOS
I’ve now officially started developing a webcomic. One that will update regularly. I don’t know the exact specifics but I’ll figure that out as the time to publish approaches. Right now I’m in pre-production on it. I’m taking my time since I’m still working on something else right now. That said, I’m very interested in other people and their approaches to webcomics. These videos, which interview a webcomic artist with a fantastic idea for a webcomic, intrigued me.
It’s an interview with Dave Wachter who has an Eisner nominated webcomic The Guns of Shadow Valley. Superheroes in the wild west? Count me in! (wish I’d thought of it):
ART
Here’s the tighter rough for my Alice in Wonderland illustration. From this point on, I get a lightbox, do a light under drawing on bristol paper and ink it.
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When we have a day off like Memorial Day, it’s nice, until we get to work and realize we have lost a day and the schedule hasn’t changed. I started on a episode two this week and Act 1 has a major rewrite. Pretty heavy duty stuff. I’ve been assigned some of it and my partner has the other stuff. I doubt we’ll be able to get through it this week. I hope I can finish most of it by Friday. I’ll need the extra time for the revisions in the other Acts I’ve been assigned.
VIDEOS
Here’s a video of Jeff Smith of BONE fame, explaining his comic making process:
A few more preliminary sketches for the ALICE IN WONDERLAND illustration I’m working on. This time, I drew a few quick sketches of Alice and the Mad Hater.
I’m satisfied with the look. It’s functional and it fits the style I had in mind.
I reworked the page comp so I could see a better representation of the positive and negative shapes. I think it looks good. Now I just have to do is draw it and finish it up. I hope to be done by Friday.
WRITING
Looks like I’m going to have to go over my treatment one more time for another rewrite. Why? Because I’ve been reading yet another book on writing. This one is THE TV WRITER’S WORKBOOK by Ellen Sandler. It was recommended by a friend of mine who is now a screen writer.
I must say, I love the book. Very practical advice. It even tells you the red flags you want to avoid when writing your treatment. My treatment is FULL of them, so now I have to go back and fix them. There is plenty of other advice from structure to dialogue to many other things based upon personal experience writing TV shows. It’s a very different book from the other ones I’ve read because it’s focuses on writing for TV, which is actually very different than writing for movies. At least, it seems that way to me.
I’m really hoping that all the work I’m putting into getting the foundations of my story in place, will eventually pay off in the long run.
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I’m having a pretty intense week. Act 2 has a BIG rewrite. My director wanted it all done by Wednesday. I gave it my best shot. There is a LOT of new scenes. I thought I was going to have all week to work on the Act. I wasn’t so lucky. Seems like my board revision partner got borrowed by David Silverman to work on something with him. I didn’t realize I would have to pick up the slack. I really like this show and I wanted to take my time to do it justice.
VIDEOS
For those of us that are really interested in the art of writing comedy, this is a great set of videos:
Last Friday, I finished revising the second draft of my story’s treatment. It works and reads better. I decided to proofread it on Monday, only to discover that some of the things I changed didn’t get saved in parts. That was irritating. It took me an hour and a half to proof read. I didn’t think it would take so long.
Another thing I discovered while reading it was that I REALLY got specific at that end of the treatment with the action but I was much more vague about it at the beginning. I’m not sure what I ought to do about that. Should I start adding more specific action at the beginning as well or should I leave it the way it is and work out the action during the drawing process? It would save me a lot of time in the end if I figure it out now. Although I might change my mind when I actually start drawing and then it would kinda be a waste of time.
ART
I have an illustration to finish, as soon as possible. It’s a ALICE IN WONDERLAND drawing.
I’ve been asked to illustrate the following paragraph from the book without using any text what so ever:
‘Tell us a story!’ said the March Hare.
‘Yes, please do!’ pleaded Alice.
‘And be quick about it,’ added the Hatter, ‘or you’ll be asleep again before
it’s done.’
Below is my first pass for the page. I still have to work out the comps a bit but it a good starting point:
I’ve also started some quick, exploratory sketches of the characters. This is what I have so far. The March Hare:
The Dormouse:
Below, is me, trying a rough of what might be the top part of the page:
I want to get done with this by the end of the week so I can get back to my cartoon. The ALICE illustration is due in three weeks but I’d rather get it over with now.
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First week back on the show after having three weeks off. Hit the ground running from the get go. I had to be done with the first part of my assignment by Wednesday. It took me longer than I wanted it to.
It didn’t help that I came in on Monday a bit brain dead.
I managed to get done, and was handed Act 2. Big rewrite but the episode is REALLY good. I’m happy to be working on it.
Okay, so below are two page five. The first one is the version I drew first:
I didn’t end up using it because I realized that it didn’t read the way I wanted it to. I wanted the eye of the reader to read the punchline first and THEN see the bunnies. But the way it actually read, you saw the bunnies first and then you read the punchline. I didn’t like that so I chose to move the panel up.
I was much happier with the final version.
Below is the under drawing:
Oh, and in case you where wondering why I hand draw the word balloons in my comics…I do it because it’s a comic. The word balloons ARE part of the art and part of the composition of every panel. Seems wrong not to do it.
VIDEOS
My dad is a fan of Juan Esquivel. I find his music fun and I own one of his cds. My dad showed me the video below on Friday because he said he found someone online that likes Juan Esquivel WAY MORE than him. Who IS Juan Esquivel? I’m glad you asked because the video below answers that very question. WHY am I putting this video up on my blog though? Because I thought this was a fantastic example of how one guy’s charisma can make simply talking into the camera and telling someone about what he’s passionate about, darn entertaining.
WRITING
I would be lying if I said I’ve spent every moment I had a little time, on finish up the second draft of my treatment. I got a little sidetracked wanting to start on my next project and I ended up spending the weekend trying to solve the “A” Plot. I got it to the point good spot. I told myself I would dedicate the rest of my week on my Illustrated Film. So I have. I’m happy to say the revision is coming along nicely. Hopefully I’ll have it done by the end of the week. I’m adding adjusting and generally enjoying this part of the editing process.
Since I’ve made some big changes, I’m going to have to go back to my old designs and made the necessary adjustments. I’ll probably have to do that next week.
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I got a call this week from work. It seems there was a revision that needed to be done a section of a board in a show I worked on. Turned out they were looking for the original artist that revised that part of the board. It wasn’t me. False alarm. I return to work next week. My hiatus went by surprisingly fast.
MY WEB COMIC
Below is my roughs. The blank panels I left blank, knowing that they would have panels that where the same as the ones before:
And below, is the under drawing I inked.
Next week comes the final page.
GHETTOMATION
Jim Lujan did it again. He finished this almost a month ago but I thought I’d post it up for anyone who hadn’t seen it:
WRITING
The time I SHOULD have been using to finish the last itty bitty bit of my treatment last week and this week, I spent, framing artwork, writing my process comic process for a booklet that will be displayed with my artwork, writing this blog or reading my new book on writing.
The first two things really took up a TON of my time, and they NEEDED to be done. I had a deadline to meet. This REALLY messed up my momentum in a big way. It made me stop thinking about my story, and that was no good.
On top of that, the book I ordered SAVE THE CAT! by Blake Snyder, came in the mail. I flipped through it, read a little bit of it and then couldn’t stop. The info in it is fantastic. There are some things in the book that I’d rather use DRAMATICA for. There are also some things I really disagree with, but overall, there is a LOT of stuff in this book that isn’t in a lot of other books on writing. Very good info on how to SELL an idea and put it together. I highly recommend it. I’ll be using this book a lot, along with DRAMATICA.
This left me with the dilemma of finishing my treatment somehow. The thing is, that after reading SAVE THE CAT! I have a few slight adjustments I want to make to my story. Nothing big but they need to be done. I just didn’t want to get to them until I finished the big changes I AM making.
My goal was to finish fixing the treatment before I got back to work. Well, I’m glad to say that I managed to make the fixes. I had a print out of the treatment I wrote the fixes on and I had a sheet of paper that I wrote anything new that didn’t fit on the print out. Now, I just have to retype the treatment and make the adjustments so I can have a cleaner version, but I consider myself done, since the hard part is over.
Feels good.
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No word on what’s going on with the show. This is my second week off the show. One week left to go. Seems like time is passing by fast.
MY WEB COMIC
Below is the rough of the page above:
This next page is the under drawing for the page that I inked. I increased the levels of the line work because it was drawn very lightly:
I forgot to put the under drawing of page 2 last week so I’m doing it here. I was half way through the inking process when I scanned this, so it’s not JUST the under drawing:
VIDEOS
I had heard a lot about this documentary but I had never seen it. I was made aware of it through the Man Vs. Art Facebook page. Raul Aguirre Jr. posted the link there. Now I’m posting it here as well. I recommend you take a look. It’s a documentary called IN SEARCH OF STEVE DITKO. It’s the fascinating story of mysterious comic artist Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-man. It’s very cool:
It’s about how Alex Toth, one of my favorite artists, learned. It’s something I myself have discovered from experience but I think it’s very good information to know if you don’t know about it.
Here’s the quote that ends the article. It’s great:
“It was great fun, to learn anew. You think you know enough, but you don’t. You must open up; let it in. …be receptive, admit what you don’t know, which few are willing to do. Start from square one. Again!” ~Alex Toth
WRITING
I was finally able to work out the new versions of Scene 6 and Scene 8. It was by far, one the more difficult things I had to do to date. The reason was because I had to really pin down how the magick would work in my “universe”. I knew it was blood magick, and I new it has to do with binding one’s self with a demon. I also came up with a way to make the blood rituals “practical”, but I STILL didn’t know what magick was actually going to be used against Rob.
In order to figure this out, I thought I should give each Sorcerer a “theme” or “skill” of magick they were best at. I just didn’t know what they were going to be. In order to get ideas flowing in my head, I decided to go to my bookshelf and take three Role Playing game books down. These were CONAN: THE ROLEPLAYING GAME, MUTANTS AND MASTERMINDS RPG, and MAGE: THE ASCENSION.
The Conan book helped quite a bit. It’s basically a book of the Conan universe. The chapter on Sorcery in the Conan universe was very helpful since I’m basically taking that type of magick and having it play out a in a modern setting. What I got most from it was the idea that not all a Sorcerer’s magick is done on the spot, some of it is “prepackaged” and ready to use ahead of time, in the form on alchemical items that they carry around. That would help. Only I thought that in MY universe, these items had to be “activated” with a chant and some of the Sorcerer’s blood sprinkled on it. The book also gave me good examples of spells and themed magick that I might be able to use. For example, the “serpent” themed mind control magick in the book was perfect for my Lead Sorcerer. The section on magick poisons, also got me thinking as did the section on necromancy. Unfortunately it didn’t help much more beyond that. At least it gave me a flavor of what I was looking for.
The MUTANTS AND MASTERMINDS book is a book like a catalog or buffet of superpowers which you can mix, match, and modify to your heart’s content in order to come up unique powers for a superhero character. I was looking through it so that I could better theme my Sorcerers’ powers. I was hoping to come across a power that would get me thinking. Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for. Somehow the powers where a tad too overpowered and if they weren’t, they were too subtle or generic for me to want to use any.
By this point, after thinking about it for a day or so, I knew I wanted the Other Male Sorcerer to have have Necrotic like powers. But I didn’t want him raising skeletons or anything like that. I wanted him to be more of a destroyer of life. When I opened my MAGE: THE ASCENSION book, I looked specifically into the section on Mages who could control Entropy. Though the description and the powers weren’t exactly what I had in mind, they did give me a jumping off point for my character’s magick.
As I looked at all these books, I would write down things I thought I wanted and began making a small list of key words. This is what I wrote down:
Summoning
Kothic Demon fire
Necromancy
Entropy (Focus?)
Beast Claws
Poisons
Hypnosis (Serpent)
Domination (Serpent)
Alchemy
Acid?
Knives
Wall of Blades
Dancing Blades
Flying Blades
The terms in bold I had circled, meaning I was definitely going to use them, while the other things I was trying to fit together and make something I liked with them.
I the end, this is what I concluded:
The Lead Sorcerer would have domination powers and would use mind control and hypnosis as his main form of Magick. He could also summon the giant serpent creature, but only if he sacrificed a live serpent and mingled his blood with it and chanted the correct incantation.
The Other Male Sorcerer would have power of entropy. He would throw “Entropy Orbs” which he activates with his blood and an incantation. These Orbs cause whatever they crash into to prematurely age thousands of years in an instant. He also has claws in his hands which can rot whatever they touch. He uses them in conjunction with an alchemical mist, which he hides in to reach his target. He can summon a Winged Ape by infusing some of his own blood into the ripped out heart of a gorilla and saying the correct incantation. The resulting Winged Ape would look a little zombie like.
The Female Sorcerer’s magick consists of her control over blades she throws. Due to the nature of these blade, they tend to disintegrate once used. Her main form of attack would be poison tipped blades which she controls by sprinkling them with her own blood and throwing them with an incantation. She can also control larger blade with she can send spinning or dancing, anyway she wishes, as long as he concentrates. They must first be sprinkled with her blood. She also has a blinding powder she uses, when she needs to buy time for her magick to get going. Just like The Other Male Sorcerer, she can also summon a Winged Ape by infusing some of her own blood into the ripped out heart of a gorilla and saying the correct incantation.The resulting Winged Ape is silver and has sharp metal claws.
Once I had these details worked out, it was much easier to come up with the modification to Scene 6 and Scene 8. Scene 6 I finished first. I changed the focus of the fight so that it was more about destroying the hot dog than killing Rob. I’m not sure how well that will flow but I guess I’ll find out once I have the first visual pass of it done.
Scene 8 was much tougher. The hard part was coming up with the “super attack” the Sorcerers hit Rob with, by combining their powers together. I settled with some spinning blades keeping Rob in place while the Lead Sorcerer combines his mind power with the Other Male Sorcerer to try to disintegrate Rob. The rest is similar to what I had originally written, only with the new powers.
I’m a lot happier with this version.
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Comments Off on Black Terror Kid #2 page 3 plus roughs and underdrawings. How Alex Toth learned. Steve Ditko documentary. Solving my last story problems.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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. It was recommended by a friend of mine who is now a screen writer.
, came in the mail. I flipped through it, read a little bit of it and then couldn’t stop. The info in it is fantastic. There are some things in the book that I’d rather use 
, 
, and 
book, I looked specifically into the section on Mages who could control Entropy. Though the description and the powers weren’t exactly what I had in mind, they did give me a jumping off point for my character’s magick.
