Jordan M Dalton

Hardcoreasaurus 2 Update!

2011-07-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

Well, sadly Hardcoreasaurus 2 is on the back burner for a couple of weeks. Here's why:

A.) I've decided to rush through my back log of unfinished projects for other people. This is: the Clark College shirt, the Put Your Foot Down image, secret birthday gift commission for a friend's husband, Valerie Frost's tattoo design, and some images for Krysalis Moon, Lego Character for Jennifer Pipes, and anything else I'm forgetting at the moment.

B.) I found an open anthology of ghost tales that will be ending on the 15th so I have to come up with and finish that 4-15 page story in two weeks. (More on that in a bit)

and

C.) I have a bunch of crappy crap to do to get on unemployment and food stamps.

So, about the ghost story. I think I'm pretty settled on what I'm doing now. My idea is to do a story about a couple who tables at the Olympia Comics Festival and while they are in town the purchase an art desk from an antique store. They take it home to Portland with them and soon discover it is haunted. They drive all the way back to Olympia to return it only to find that the antique shop has closed down and has apparently been closed for years. It at some point possesses whichever of them I decide is the artist and they start drawing symbols on them selves and drawing demons over and over again. I won't ruin the ending but I really like it. SO I'll keep you updated on that when I start working on it.

Also while thinking about the ghost story I had a cute idea for a flash animation. It's a spoof commercial for a game called "Wii-ji Board" that is basically a Ouiji Board for the Nintendo Wii. I'll have to check to see if it's been done yet but hopefully not.

Inking Woes... AGAIN?

2011-07-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Okay seriously?

So I'm trying to ink the first page of Hardcoreasaurus 2 and I keep running into issues. First, the brand new ink I bought bleeds on the brand new comic art boards I bought. I tried the ink on a piece of Strathmore bristol board and it works fine, so I'm like "Who the eff makes these comic art boards?" I look and it's effing Strathmore! And the comic art boards are BRISTOL! So why is there such a huge difference? I would just switch to the bristol but I already penciled on the comic art board... Okay, so I think, "maybe different ink will work." I try it and I find out that in fact, different ink works great... Oh except I can't draw more than a centimeter before it runs out. It's not the ink or the pen that's the issue. They both worked incredibly well on some crappy nondescript paper for the Circle of Awesome. It's these stupid art boards! I would use microns but I really am not fond of how UNdynamic they are with line widths and such. It's like when my driver that controls pressure sensitivity on my Tablet PC randomly quits working. They have they're purpose but right now, that purpose is not drawing super heroes and dinosaurs. It's actually drawing the panel borders. Given that borders are supposed to be consistent and all. I can't find any other nibs for my quill pen which I'm hoping makes a difference. Maybe the generic paper screwed up the nib that's on it or something. I really won't know until I find those nibs. So anyways, I'm shelving the inking for now and focusing on writing (like I should be).

Any artists reading this let me know what infuriating problems you encounter in your art processes.

I'M BACK!

2011-07-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Yep, I've finally returned to my blogger after three years of neglect.

I've been working on Hardcoreasaurus 2 finally. actually started inking pages even.

I'll be back later with a more legitimate blog, but mostly I wanted to say I'm back.

New drawings and such

2008-05-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

The definitive Frogra picture. Seriously, I couldn't be happier with how this turned out. I decided the line work called for something better than my usual cell shading. This way took longer and really pushed my endurance, but I feel like I went up like 300+ EXP lol.

Heres a little thing I did in illustrator. I sketched it first in Photoshop but I didn't really like how it was looking so I decided to vectorize it. Check out my deviantart or flickr page if you want to even know what the heck a feti is.

Eh I'm not really happy with this one. I was just trying to apply some of the things I learned from Stephen Sanchess's's's Tutorials but I think the heads too big and the legs look off. The things I do like are the clouds and the textures but otherwise I could have done better. This is one of the drawings that really made me want to avoid cell shading on the Frogra picture.

Box Full of Jesus!

2008-05-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

So with Olympia Comics Festival coming up in a month I decided I'd ask the Publisher of Jesus Hates Zombies if I could maybe get a few copies this time around to sell. Originally Stephen told me that they don't like doing that but when I got the e-mail from the Publisher he said it wasn't a problem. Well, today I got a box with 20 copies.

Something about getting a box full of comics that I worked on direct from the publisher who put them out makes me feel legitimate.

Especially when my story is the first one people read.

From My Dad's Camera

2008-04-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Also:

Goodbye shirts and pants! I'm getting rid of a bunch of clothes. Hopefully this helps me clean my room so I can get my computers in there.

Stumptown '08

2008-04-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

So I'll start where I left off. After making all those CDs for the Manual for Robots, I began work on more copies of Self-Aware.

Then it was on to the T-shirts

I made a screen and tested it out, but I didn't like the font and when I tried to fix parts of the skull I ended up ruining the stencil. So I washed it out, started over and this time traced a print out of the text with one of my handwritten type faces.

After that I got kicked out of the front room so me and my dad set up a space in the garage where he got my computer working again so I worked on my website and bussiness cards.

So I spent all my time getting ready for the con all the way up to the last few hours before set up. So I get there and what do I see?

Haha the whole place was empty save for like 10 tables. Apparently there was some mix up with the table guy but they soon got the tables in and I even helped put them up.

I did eventually get my table all set up and ready to go and someone even took a picture of me.

So yeah, I didn't sell very much. Infact I didn't sell any of those comics I was making the CDs for. Apparently the vague cover and steep prices weren't enough to attract any attention. But I garnered a lot of interest for Jesus Hates Zombies (so much so I had to make new bussiness cards Saturday night with JHZ info on them) and I sold a couple copies of Hardcoreasaurus and Self-Aware. We had free cookies and pretty much ran out by the end of the convention. And that's actually after getting two more things Sunday morning. I made a lot of connections, though. I met Stan Yan, one of the artists who contributed to the JHZ pin up gallery. And I made friends with the couple who shared a table with us. Sunday Jenni spent most of the con playing WoW but I don't really blame her. It was pretty slow at our table and we both got tired on Saturday.

All in all I had a pretty good time. It's really got the fire under my butt to do more comics and illustration so hopefully I'll be working on stuff a lot more.

I actually have a table at the Olympia Comics Festival in June. Hopefully I can manage it with my surgery recovery and all. It shouldn't be too bad. And I have some ideas to help me meet people and get people to at least come take a look at my artwork.

Just in time!

2008-04-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

I finished www.jordanmdalton.com (click the pic above) save for the links section which I plan to update after making contections at Stumptown which is tomorrow >_< I can't believe it's really tomorrow. What the crap?

Getting Ready for Stumptown

2008-04-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

For descriptions, click the pictures and check them out on flickr.

Working Stiff

2008-03-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Heres a new drawing from my upcoming comic called Working Stiff.

2008-01-29T14:28:00.000-08:00

Woah... what happened... let's see... I didn't die... I didn't fall off the face of the earth... so why did I suddenly stop updating? Because there has been nothing to post about. Yeah the past several months have yeilding quite a bit of drama and excitement but alas not much on the comics front. I finished up last quarter of school by getting my classes dropped for not making my final payment. My girlfriend dumped me and started going out with someone else. I had a suedo relationship with the roommate of the girlfriend of the drummer of a band I was doing art for and potentially a comic for but that relationship thing ended sorta bad and now I'm not doing art or comics or merch for free for the band. And now I'm taking the quarter off from school and working two jobs. Subway and GameStop. Oh man am I burnt out though.

Stumptown is coming up again since they switched it to spring this year and I'm a little stressed. I'm gonna get a table and all but I have to fill it out a little bit more. So I'll try to keep this updated as much as I can remember but don't hold your breath...

Le-Crunch duex!

2007-10-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

So work is underway on Hardcoreasaurus 2. Just figuring out the plot for now and doing a few character sketches here and there. I figure now is the best time to do it while I don't have any professional work going on. Also because it's full of inside jokes and I want to get it done before all the people involved with the first one move away or grow up too much. Not only that, but it's been 5 months since I finished the first. If this one also takes me a few months, then I'd say that's pretty good timing for a comic book sequal.

I also have some exciting news (for me at least) but I'm gonna stay hushed up about it for at least this weekend if not all this upcoming week.

Ben Grim

2007-10-25T08:11:00.001-07:00

New drawings.

2007-10-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

I might color them soon.

Stumptown Report

2007-10-01T03:53:00.000-07:00

First of all I just want to say that no matter what, I need a booth next year. But more on my next year plans after the report.

The first day was pretty horrible. Not the con (fest?) itself, just my experience of it. I didn't sell any Hardcoreasaurus books (I did trade a few, though) and I was really nervous the whole time. It was hard talking to people to make any contacts. I brought $40 in singles to use as change for people buying the book. I ended up spending it all on comics and taco bell. I'm glad I did spend so much in the long run because I got some awesome stuff, but since my brother gave it to me and I was supposed to pay him back... yeah. I did meet a couple of cool people, but mostly I just felt like an ass most of the time and I felt annoying when I tried hanging out at the RCC table. I mean I know I was kicked out and all but I'm still friends with the guys... I thought.

[drama]

Okay I think this needs addressing since it was a pretty big issue for the con. Now... I want to be proffessional and mature about this, so I don't want to say anything out of anger. BUT I am pretty ticked about the whole situation. As much as I understand that it's my own fault I got kicked out since I didn't finish the creature feature, I do have a couple of things to say in my defense.

I was trying to finish the creature feature the day before it was due while I was at my brothers chemo therapy. I realized that while I'm at my brothers chemo therapy, comics should NOT be my biggest concern. I realized that the two page comic was causing much more stress than I needed at that point so I simply decided not to finish it. I HAD been working on it for what it's worth.

Also, I met the requirements of an original member. I had something published by stumptown.

I really feel like BT is hurting the group by kicking me out. I was really dedicated to the group while I was in it. I always participated as much as I could. Just look through the recent Jam comics and you'll see my name pop up pretty often. I feel like my presence at the meetings was never really appreciated actually.

All in all I'm glad I was kicked out. I know in the long run it's going to be a better situation and if BT offered to let me back in the group I would-- without hesitation-- refuse. The only thing that really bothers me now is that he kicked me out a week and a half before stumptown leaving me without a booth to sell a comic I had ordered to be printed a month ago and had been planning long in advance to sell at the RCC booth. If I would have known he was going to do THAT I would have figured something out, gotten the money together and paid for my own table. Other than that I really do understand the need to kick some people out. I mean, I saw how full the table was and that was even with a free extra table so it was pretty damn full.

[/drama]

Oh and the Dr. Sketchy's anti-art school figure drawing was pretty cool and I'm gonna start going on wednesdays to the one at Dante's.

The after party was pretty fun. I had a beer since I could tell the place was gonna fill up and it helped with the whole fear of crowds thing. Unfortunately the only person I even hung around or talked to was BT. And once he left (after the awards I think) I just sorta stood around by myself. I really just didn't know what to say to anyone. The comic battle was pretty fun to watch, though. Next year I'll volunteer.

The second day was better. Mainly because this time I didn't expect to sell anything. My dad gave me 20 singles and a 20 dollar bill to bribe either BT or Noir from Sacramento to let me have a foot of table space to sell my stuff and set up my button making machine. After I saw how full the already-set-up tables were, though... Yeah I knew it wasn't gonna happen and didn't even bother to ask. Although I will say I could tell Noir was considering it when I brought it up in conversation and that's pretty cool of him.

So this time my plan was just to find out about some cool lookin comics and grab bussiness cards and post cards. I did buy a few really cool things that I seriously couldn't pass up, but mostly I just had some cool conversations with local artists. I made some more trades and I went to some more workshops and panels. I even talked to someone from the sequential art gallery who really liked my comics and even bought the first and only PURCHASED copy of hardcoreasaurus. I gave her Self-Aware since I just printed that on the laserjet and I think eventually it might pay off. That'd be pretty cool since I really like that gallery. That's where I first saw Painkillers. The guy who makes that one is actually pretty cool by the way and a genious at getting people to go to his booth (live digital art on a huge LCD screen). I walked by just to see what he was drawing.

Eventually I got bored so bad that I went home an hour early.

Okay well this entry is pretty long so I'll save my next year plans for later on.

But yeah, basically this years stumptown started out pretty crummy for me but at least ended pretty good. I felt a lot better yesterday than I did on Saturday. Hopefully next year is better.

Stumptown Stuff Update

2007-09-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

I finished the messenger bag! And I finally got Hardcoreasaurus!

Stumptown is tomorrow and as such there are some things I need to do TODAY. Here they are:

Bussiness cards
Website
Money Envelope
Bind Self-Aware pages
Buy binder clear sheets from walgreens or clark bookstore
Envelopes for Robot Manual
CDs for Robot Manual

more or less in order of importance.

I have to get ready for school but I'll probably post a bit more later on.

2007-09-20T15:03:00.000-07:00

Projects Update

Mystic Slide for Positive Brand:

Um... I declined due to too much to do what with school and surgery and family stuff and all.

PopGun letters:

The dude is a good artist but his cominication skills, man... jus' kidding. It fell through because of lost e-mails and busy schedules on both ends.

Lincoln Hates Werewolves:

Not exactly sure? But probably not doing it. I'm too unreliable. :/

Robopocalypse Creature Feature:

Didn't finish. Got kicked out of the club. Kinda pissed.

The Hardcoreasaurus:

SHIPPED! Yay! Finally some good news. Should be here in a couple of days. So now I have three things pending publishing. Self-Aware in the PNCA anthology, My 6 pages of JHZ and Hardcoreasaurus. That fortune cookie the other night was right. My hard work really IS paying off.

Lincoln Lincoln I been thinkin'

2007-09-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

So this week is going to be a busy week. On monday I need to turn in concept sketches for a book I may or may not end up doing for positive brand. I'm still undecided about it. My main concern is how much time I'll have for it with school and surgery and eventually a job coming up pretty soon. Not to mention everything I still have to do for Stumptown.

Also Stephen is having me work on a new project. It's Lincoln as a werewolf hunter. He hasn't written it yet so that could be a month or two off right now but I'll still be doing some concept stuff for that (which I'm going to post some of at the bottom of this entry).

And I have my creature feature to do. That's going slow.

And I have 20 pages to letter for a popgun comic.

And I once again have access to my website... so I have to completely redo that. yay.

Busy.

Anyways, here is the Abe stuff I have so far.

I'm pretty excited about it.

Jesus on Zombie Action!

2007-09-05T17:25:00.001-07:00

Jesus Hates Zombies is finally off to the printer and the writer/editor is taking pre-orders through indie horizon now.

http://www.indiehorizon.com/jhz/index.html

They are only $17 for over 140 pages of zombie bashing action! Hurry before this run sells out.

Picture Post!

2007-09-01T14:42:00.001-07:00

Printing Woes

2007-08-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

So things aren't exactly going as smoothly as planned. I'm having trouble with Hardcoreasaurus and Self-Aware.

Hardcoreasaurus:
So first off, I need a site to host the 50+ MB files. Even if I still had access to my own website, I'm only allowed 100 MB on it. So basically, unless I send them a CD which make the process even longer, I'm screwed. Jenni might be able to help me out with this part though. She has a comcast website thing she never uses.
The other problem is that they only let you pay with PayPal. And my paypal acount is linked to a non existant bank acount as I no longer have ANY bank acount. Besides, it takes 3-4 days to transfer funds and I'm down to like... 19 dollars. Which is actually more than I thought I had. My brother and Jenni both have paypal acounts ready to go but it still takes time to transfer the funds. So WTF. I'm gonna go see how much Kinkos would cost and if they even have the means.

Self-Aware:
So I was going to print this one on the laser (and then make photocopies) along with my creature feature and Jesus Hates Zombies and make like a minis book to give out at stumptown. I was also going to make some Self-Aware books individually. The problem is that I deleted the freaking high res files. So now the only person who has anything even printable is PNCA. And thank god for that. I e-mailed the person who I last gave the files to. Hopefully she can help me. But it still means, since they are just tiffs and not psd files, that I won't be making any edits. oi. Maybe I oughta just redo the whole thing anyways. It was kind of a peice of crap except for like the first page. I dunnoh.

Needless to say, I'm not having the best of luck lately. Don't even get me started on my horrible Monday. You don't want to know.

Preparing for Stumptown

2007-08-26T16:16:00.001-07:00

Now that I'm done with the comic, I need to get ready for Stumptown Comics Fest in a month. I always have trouble with written checklists so made myself this:

I know nobody is going to understand all of that but it's what I need for the con. or uh fest. I wonder why they don't call this a convention.

Anyways, I have hardcoreasaurus buttons made already. I'm going to sell them for 2 dollars a peice. Here are those:

Also, here are the buttons for Robopocalypse, the comics colelctive I've recently joined.

I still have a lot to do but I think I can do it all in time.

Toning is like an onion.

2007-08-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of some of the steps I have to take when I make these things. I'm going start with a completed panel (actually 2 thirds of a panel) and go down from there.

This is the completed panel.

First I take away the lettering above the art.

Now the lettering that's integrated with the art is gone. Things like shirt logos, poster text, etc.

This one's subtle on this panel, but I've taken away the glow on the Zombies' eyes. On other pages the glow effect is used a lot more.

Next the highlights and shines are taken away.

Now the shadow layer.

Now the shade. Notice how flat it all looks now.

Now the blood is gone.

Sometimes there are complex patterns that will screw up the rest of the base tone if I don't do on a different layer such as the first zombies plaid shirt.

Here is the lineart. No tones, no lettering, no shadows. This is what I start with.

Here's what it looks like when I'm working on the shadow, shade and highlight layers. It's easier to do them on green instead of the base tones or even grey.

There's a lot more that goes into it but I thought I'd give everyone (the two people who read this thing) an idea of what I do when I tone these crazy things.

Finished!

2007-08-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

After over four months I've finally finished my 6 grueling pages of Jesus Hates Zombies. If Stephen is fine with it, I'll be posting the pages soon. Otherwise it'll just be a tiny preview. It's been a stressfull four months but I'm just as sad to see this one go as I was when I wrapped on Hardcoreasaurus. Which, by the way I still have to fix typos on and make the fanart page for. And I'll be addressing that pretty soon since I'd like to get it printed for Stumptown. I'm also printing Self-Aware and the Manual for Robots. I still have so much to do to get ready for the con but I still have a bit of time. Next up on my agenda for comics is my creature feature, then either Hardcoreasaurus 2 or Punk is UnDead.

INKS

2007-08-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

So for the past couple of days I've made like a squid and inked. I finally today finished the last of the inks. Now I just have to tone the pages and Letter them. I'm hoping to have it all done by the 25th. I'd keep my fingers crossed but I kind of need them uncrossed to finish up the comic.

Defeat

2007-08-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

So it's taken me way too long to get these 6 pages done. I know that. Infact I'm considering getting a "normal" job and quitting school at this point. That's mostly because I need to move out. And ironically one of the reasons I need to move out is because I never get any time to work on my comics while I'm here. It's hard for me to work with other people in the room and since this is also my mom's craft room and the family computer room, I hardly get any time in here by myself. Top that off with the fact that nearly every day my brother needs rides which take up a good chunk of my day and the fact that I have other responsibilities by living here makes it really hard to get anything done on comics. Sooner or later I'm going to have to get a normal job anyways and if I'm still going to school than I really don't know what I'm gonna do.

The Learning Continues

2007-07-23T21:24:00.000-07:00

First, a progress report:

Page 1 - Done
Page 2 - Inked (save for one panel)
Page 3 - Done
Page 4 - Nearly done. Needs letters and cleaned up tones.
Page 5 - Um... still panels.
Page 6 - Yeah, same deal here.

So, yesterday I went to a meeting for a comics collective that some of my PNCA buddies have started. It was actually pretty cool. We made a Jam comic and I worked on Page 4 inks while we shot the shit about nothing in particular. It was nice to hang out with people I could talk comics to. Really nice.

Stumptown is coming up. I'm a little freaked out. I was hoping by stumptown 2007 I'd have Frogra issues 1-3 finished and I'd have enough money to get a table and tons of cool stuff for the table. Maybe it'll have to wait for the next spokane comics show. Here's a list of what I want to have for this years Stumptown:

Portfolio
-JHZ pages
-Hardcoreasaurus Pages
-Various Illustrations

About 10 copies of Hardcoreasaurus

About 20 copies of Self-Aware

About 10 copies of the whole JHZ anthology or 20 copies of my 6 pages

50 bussiness cards

10 copies of the manual for robots

30 buttons

Some Stickers

A sweet handmade bag to carry it all in.

Maybe I'll get a table if I can come up with around $150-$200 dollars by the middle of August. We'll see. First thing's first, though. I need to get my pages done for Jesus Hates Zombies.

Nevermind

2007-06-02T14:02:00.001-07:00

I'm not as worried now.

Just to give anyone reading this an update:
Page 1 - Done
Page 2 - Half Pencils
Page 3 - Pencils
Pages 4-6 - Panels

On a somewhat unrelated note: I had a layout that needed three equal panels horizontal. I was trying to figure out what 9.5 inches devided by 3 was in fractions, when I realized that blue line already marks thirds for you. That makes things easier on a couple of these pages.

Frustration

2007-06-02T12:10:00.001-07:00

I wish I had the time to treat comics like a full-time job. Unfortunately I still have four years of school left and I don't get paid for comics.

I've been way too slow with this Jesus comic and I'm afraid that I'm gonna be replaced. Stephen hasn't come right out and said that, but I know I'm the slowest artist of all of them and he posted something about needing a new artist to pull the comic through the finish line. Unless someone actually bailed, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who's slowing the project down.

This really sucks... Maybe he took that last little comic too seriously.

EYE JAY!

2007-05-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

Well maybe it's not exactly finished... But the inks are done and that's what's important... for now. Here's a rough idea of what the tones will look like:

Jesus Hates Zombies

2007-04-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

So after some internal debate about what to do for my next project I ended up stumbling across it on comicspace. It's a comic called Jesus Hates Zombies and it's written by Stephen Lindsay and Michael Bartolotta. It's about Jesus... fighting zombies. That's right. So basically they broke the story down into like 17 smaller stories and for each one, there's a different artist. I'm actually working on the first 5 pages of the book. I'm really stoked. I'm really flexing my comics muscles on this one too. I actually have to DRAW THE BACKGROUNDS!!! DUNDUNDUN! Luckily if I have a ruler handy and some good reference I'm not half bad at it. And quite frankly I'd rather do it this way then the pixelated route. Those backgrounds kicked my ass both technically and compositionally.
So far all I have is a couple of roughs. I mean I have the dummy dummy pages finished so I know where everything is gonna go but since I'm not flying this one solo I'm polishing the dummy pages a lot more. I'm practically doing full pencils on them but it helps give the writer a really good idea of the direction I'm going. And that way if something isn't quite working, I can fix it.
Anyways, I'll keep updates here. I know I'm basically talking to myself but one of these days there will people who read this. I'm finally making some good progress on this comics goal of mine.

2007-04-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

IT'S DONE!

2007-04-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Comic will be unvieled on Tuesday.
I'm posting it on myspace, live journal, blogger, deviantart, and comicspace. check it out at any of those.

Anyways, this is pretty big for me. I printed out the cover last night on some slightly glossy cardstock and it was such a surreal experience finally seeing it as something tangible. It's going to be really awesome when I get it printed as a book.

Anyways come back tomorrow and you can see it here!

2007-03-29T02:59:00.000-07:00

So tonight I watched that movie Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger and there's this scene where he's blowing the fuck out of this port with these big ass rails guns and then James Kaan gets on this shipping crate and is all "drop the guns" or whatever and I kept wishing Arnold would look up at him with a big grin and say "Holy shit, dude, you gotta try these fuckin things"

And this has to do with comics because... uh.. maybe I'll write something like that into a comic. I dunnoh.

Oh but okay well how 'bout this: I have pages 1 through 7 of the Hardcoreasaurus comic colored. I have page 1 lettered too soo hot damn I'm gettin this shit done.

And also, I went to the comic store today and finally got the conclusion of the five part DMZ arc that's been going on and I got POCI 5. So that was cool.

INK PARTY!

2007-03-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

You know what this is?

It's all freakin 11 pages, 2 covers and one ilmeasured pages of Hardcoreasaurus in INK! I'm done! Well, with this part. Here's what the next part looks like:

I have to sit down with that glowing rectangle and color each page. THEN I have to make the backgrounds in a pixel art program, put those in and finally after I'm satisfied with all of that I get to do my favorite thing to do in comics: Lettering.

I don't know why I like it so much... Maybe because most newbies don't know how to letter with adobe illustrator and I happen to avoid a lot of the mistakes most newcomers make so my letters tend to look better than expected. Also I guess I just like it because when the letters go on the whole thing really comes together. I remember how amazed I was at how the first page of Self-Awareness really didn't look professional until I had the letters finished. I finally felt like I was making a real comic.

2007-02-25T01:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a little frustrated. I get absolutely no comments on this blog...

Oh well... I'll just have to start cross posting.

Okay so in my first bit of news I just want to say that I've been coming up with a lot of short comic ideas. I have two that I really want to get going on, one that I started with my brother who's writing it aswell as adding some art here and there, and one that I've done a ton of work on that is based on a story my friend Layne wrote. More on that last one in a minute. Basically, though my comics spirit has new vigor. And it's exciting!

Okay secondly check this out:

That's a sweet Chinese brush and ink set that my girlfriend got me from Cost Plus World Market. Now I know this blog is supposed to be about comics but I figure since comics are inked, this falls in an acceptable range of comics related subject matter. Of course, I'm never going to use this ink set because I want it to stay really nice but it's still really awesome and needs to be shared.

So this:

is the real reason I'm making this post. I've got my desk all organized(ish) and in working order. See that? I actually have comics there. Comics that I'm making. So what is all this stuff you ask? Well the comics pages on the wall are the digital pencils from the Hardcoreasaurus comic starring Jessie and based off of a story by Layne. I printed them all out and posted them up there because I have to start over with for reals pencils. So far I have pages cover and 1 penciled. That's what's chillin on the desk there in front of the rubber duckies, the turtle tots and Godzilla. And theres some tools sittin around being useful. I finally learned how to use a T-Square the right way and these panel things that used to be difficult are a breeze! It's awesome.

That Cork-EZ thing is some work I did for a package design for a product that will probably never see the light of day. Under that is an assignment from illustration class. I like that drawling. It's all in sharpie. I have that up to remind me that PNCA wasn't a complete waste of time like I always seem to make it out to be. That basket ball hoop at the top is where I throw a little foam basketball when I get bored. It helps when I get burnt out from drawing or just get creative block. The walls in here are really yellow. It's kind of gross. Because they used to be white.

Anyways it feels good to actually be making comics at my desk. It's about damn time frankly. And I really have to give it up to Layne and Ms. Dole for inspiring the comic plastered up on the wall. And a big extra special thanks to Jenni for getting me that super awesome ink set.

Transform and Roll Out!

2007-01-07T00:37:00.000-08:00

Not to brag or anything... but I seem to rock the sharpies like a bad motha fucka.

Seriously, though. Everytime I make a rediculously large drawing (this one took up a whole sketchbook page) that pretty much requires I use a sharpie to ink it, it always turns out way better than if I use a tiny micron and get all the little itty bitty details. I have this Godzilla drawing I did for a T-shirt over the summer and since it was so big I used a sharpie. Well it turned out pretty awesome even though I still haven't made the T-shirt (I need to get some glow-in-the-dark screen ink) I still think it rocks better than any small drawing I could have done.

I'm gonna do a lot more with the whole sharpie thing but the down side is that I can't really make comics in sharpie. I mean they just don't make scanners big enough for that kind of thing and I'll be damned if I'm gonna stich pages that big all the time. I have learned an iportant lessong, though. Less small details and thicker lines make for a better picture, especially when reduced.

Oops

2007-01-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

So I guess I already posted that one. At least I posted a link of it. Oh well. No one is really reading this yet so I won't sweat it too much.

Oh, yeah. There's this...

2007-01-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

Yeah so this crappy little thing is a comic I wrote and drawed for the PNCA comics anthology. PNCA is the school i up and left. Keep in mind I penciled, inked, toned and lettered this bad boy in one sleepless fuckin' night. Otherwise I swears it would look much better. And hey it was good enough to actually make it in. I think it was my sweet lettering job that helped me make the cut, though. The lettering I did with ILLUSTRATOR and not COMICLIFE. Because ComicLife sucks to no end. No fucking end. the end.

But yeah, I figured I should post this to prove I actually do make comics. Like for reals comics. But it aint something I'd want to show Rick Spears, who I've decided I'm gonna art for someday. His storries are the badd-ass-est I've ever read.

2007-01-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

Well it sure has been a while since my last post. I'm actually lucky I figured out how to post again. Blogger wouldn't recognize my name and password but I fortunately can get in through Google for some reason. That's what I get, though for playing Zelda for nearly four days straight. But at least I beat it.

Anyways, COMICS. So since I've had so many video games I've kind of slacked on comics. Oops. But I decided I'm gonna start working on some old story I started when I was like younger than 10. It's just these marshmellows that can talk and walk. I figured out a way to make them look less like Kirby than I had originally drawn them and not disturbing like all my other attemps at reinvisioning them. I just making them for my brother's kids for now but I'll post the pages up on here as I get them done.

In the meantime I'll leave you with something me and my brother made with ComicLife at OMSI. Don't mind the typos:

VASILIS' FOOTSTEPS

2006-12-12T00:49:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from Vasilis Lolos and making my own comics blog. I was gonna make my deviantart my art journal but I hate using that freakin thing. So here we are.

I picked up Pirates of Coney Island 1 & 2 today and I forgot Rick Spears wrote 'em. When I realized I was like "no wonder I like these so damn much". My favorite comic is Teenagers from Mars. And these are swiftly becoming my second. It's for serious one of my goals to some day draw a book or two for Rick Spears and Brian Wood. And to swap drawing with Vasilis, Becky Cloonan, Ross Campbell, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Ryan Kelly. Nononono WAIT. No it would be awesome if I was doin fanart in the back of their books. WAIT! It'd be kick ass if they were also making fanart in the back of my books. Holy shit, that would be the best right there.

So far the only comics I've made, though, are this and this. Oh and this other really old one that I made like sophomore year and it's all anime-ish. It's stupid. You don't want to see that.

I'm working on a giant monster book. And I've been throwing around a ghost story. Just a short because ghost stories aren't creepy if they are long. You lose the heebly geebly factor pretty fast if you keep on going with something like that. And none of this the Ring knock off crap. I'm sick of that. Dirty monochromatic dead people and little kids just aint scary. People whispering to you when you're all by yourself is. Or seeing some eyes out the window for a split second.