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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