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:

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