Cleaning House, Entrepreneur Blogging and Updates.

Yes yes, I know, I've once again spaced out and left this space vacant. In my defense, things have been steadily picking up since the last lengthy post I did here. A quick rundown, for those who haven't been paying attention:

• Stacked Hand has officially launched! The page itself is still in a good need of a website tune-up, I just need to set aside time to implement it. The current update schedule is biweekly on Mondays. (next update is Jun 23rd). 
• There is also a mini comic in progress telling more of the exploits of our yet-to-be-named main character. Don't worry. He gets his introduction soon enough. 
• I am busy at work developing another set of prints for next year's convention season. The first series is based on the art style of Alphonse Mucha. 



Which, while it is visually appealing as all hell is very. Very. Intricate when it wants to be.

• Thought Bubble has also launched over at the Peoria Journal Star's website! Each week I review webcomics and small press books, and take a look at the comic culture in general from where we are now. It's been going for about a month now, check it out. 
• And of course, I'm still teaching, with a few new courses to start up here in the oncoming weeks. I'll have more information on that as it develops in the future. 

If you want to help support me, get access to more updates/WIPs like the one I just posted above, and get monthly request sketches and new wallpapers, give a spin over to my Patreon account.

This past week at 1MillionCups in Peoria the discussion was brought around to doing a community blog that features/spotlights the hundreds of entrepreneurs that are in the local community and whatever projects that they're working on. I would love to try to get a push towards at least a listing of the group in that way, or a site that could be used as an aggregate feeder that would link to the entrepreneur's own writing on their current work. One of the things my teachers used to instill in us was a high value in production blogs, no matter how much of the process you actually want to keep hidden from the general public until the big reveal. You can still do bits and pieces - snippets, really - and get folks interested in what you're working on. At least, I'm guessing that's why you're all here, right? </rimshot>

Anyway. I leave off with a mental note to myself to seriously clean up my label list for this blog. It's cluttered and pretty awful. Til next time!

Mischief: First Impressions, Creative Process, And Gods, I've Taken a Load of Cute Animal Pictures Lately.

I've been telling the story recently of how my site's URL came to pass. In my supposed infinite wisdom upon looking towards college I decided to take all of my gen. ed studies in my first few years of school to get them out of the way at a Junior College. And because of that infinite wisdom my senior ass got stuck with two big-project courses in the same semester as a sound design and statistics course. Translation: on average, I had three hours of sleep at most each night. And when at least two of these days have me doing twelve hours of projects and courses (and attending course lectures) I spent the mornings shuffling into class with a red bull in one hand, Starbucks in the other. By all rights, I probably should've hard a heart attack of some kind by this point. I have curbed my intake since then. I also probably sleep twice as much.

The second reason I feel like the zombie part of my moniker is relevant is it seems that when the seasons change, I turn into a shuffling mass of illness. I had planned on fully plugging through the software I mentioned last time, Mischief, but only managed to get into roughly two days worth of working on different projects in the software itself. I will say that based on my short time in the product I'll probably try to purchase it in the future.

The first picture I tried to work with in it was just a simple sketch and linework study. While it's definitely a great tool there are some things to get used to. Lassoing and resizing parts of the picture is not impossible, just not as intuitive. And I would like a hexidecimal input for colors just because it's how I've learned to keep track of my own colors when I'm working. But I realize I'm not everyone.

I will warn you though - the lineart in this picture was done with their 6.5 brush. All of the lines. It really makes a difference on brush width when you're zooming into what you're working on. 

The second day I worked for a while doing gesture sketches in the software. While I really wish I would've been able to do a full piece (color, et all, blending too) I believe I'd love this software as a sketching tool then importing it into other software as a flat image. Because of the infinite canvas capabilities alone (not to mention the brushes) I would love this software as a way to sketch out future pages and thumbnail projects.

This is the year of changing software - I made the decision to work in the Manga Studio program for the graphic novel I'm working on, and it's made a difference in my layout and drawing style. I started picking up Frenden's signature brush packs for both Photoshop and the MS software - brushes that mimic traditional pen nibs and the like.

Yes, when I can't think of anything, and my brain is still loopy from sickness, I apparently draw my mascot self. One of these days I'll figure out a version of them I'll stick with. 

 I'll be posting some of the panels I had to cut out of the graphic novel when it gets closer to launch.

My personal FB has turned into an explosion of Puppy Pictures. We finally got to hold our Puppy last weekend, and he is incredibly adorable. Between that and the bf's mom's new puppy, I've suddenly made minor popularity as a cute animal photog. Almost reminds me of the ducklings caught in the sewer drain that happened this summer.  I may get the DSLR back out when we get Puck home with us for good and take a few photos of the rascal. Hopefully my eye for composition has gotten better and the pictures will turn out halfway decent.

I mean, this still isn't too bad and all as far as photos go but it is a cell phone picture. (boo. hiss.) 

That's enough out of me for tonight. I've got to sleep still.

Diving into things headfirst.

I am this close to putting reminders into my phone about regular post updates. (You can't see my fingers, but they're a few inches apart. Okay, well, about a foot apart. I'm still kind of lazy.) While I can just as easily throw a bunch of art tutorials and whatnot on my setting on tumblr, it takes more time and dedication to put together coherent writing on this blog. And I'm not entirely 100% sure on that coherent part.

Anyway. hn. Unless you've been blatantly ignoring my posts for the last couple of months I'm working on launching my own webcomic. You never realize how much plotting, planning and prep goes into the general amount of work to get one of these things off the ground. And, unlike "normal" comics (by "normal" I mean what most people think of when they hear the word comic: Marvel, DC, Image) doing it as a solo project can be daunting. You're doing the writing, the thumbnail sketches, the pencils the lettering, and the coloring. Not to mention setting up the website itself. I've got a personal goal of completing a certain amount of pages before the site launches, with a deadline of December 31rst. If I get ahead of myself, I'll launch sooner. You'll be first to know!

Speaking of launching, I'm incredibly close to launching my personal site fully, Caffeinated-Zombie.com. I know I've mentioned before that I'm working on the site, but earlier this week I managed to wrap everything up. The only thing I'm missing at this point is a photo for my about page and I'll be launching the site itself tomorrow. There might be some slight updates to the layout/color scheme of the blog to match, but it won't be too much of a deal. 

That's about all I've been up to this week. Hope to see you around. 

Incorporating 3D in a 2D Comic.

This last week started off lousy with a surprise discovery of a ground nest of wasps in our front yard and a flat tire almost a year after my last one. Apparently, wasps don't take very well to a lawn mower over their heads. Surprisingly, I got away with only a few stings. And thankfully, the rest of the week has progressed in a more positive manner.

Anywho, I wanted to talk about a trend that I've seen increasing in the last year or so, at least with digital artists: incorporating 3D into 2D pictures. A few years ago, Matt Kohr posted a series on how to use Google Sketchup to make the framework for a complex background. As a series based around concept art in general, this term is apparently nothing relatively new - fast and loose, sampling textures and shapes in a piece to get a concept down fully and quickly is a practice not unheard of. What surprised me, however, was after I decided to mix 3D backgrounds into my comic projects that this is a practice slowly spreading in comics too.

My first comic project that I discussed last week. 

Environments are harder when you're starting out. I'll admit, the most I'd ever done with digital backgrounds involved very little in the way of straight lines beforehand. So it seemed like when doing an urban-based story, throwing an environment together in Blender with the Freestyle plugin seemed like a great idea. I wasn't alone, however; people have been using Sketchup to start backgrounds and expand on them for at least a year at this point. 

The only downside of creating your own backgrounds in 3D is it does tend to take much longer than in 2D because you're rendering everything of importance. The one upside is that once you have the piece done, you can use it and re-use it again and again if more than one scene is based out of that area.

Once I get the main character's store and apartment done, I'm set for several chapters' worth of stuff. 

What are tips and tricks you use when dealing with environments? 

Never stop trying.

I've been working on more stuff again this week, including a design for a character I've had running about for a little over two years now. It seems like sometimes, the best mark of improvement is on things that are still around to work on. On the left is a portrait I did while I was still in college. In theory (and ideally) what I thought was one of my best pieces at the time. I thing about December or so.

The one on the right is the piece I'm working on right now. While I am still working with a (more) subdued palette than what's pictured, I wanted to try with what I've learned about faces to color it in. It's encouraging to see how much I've progressed in such a relatively short time.

An Interlude. WIP Composition Pieces.

I work pretty well with a photo reference to start off for a character. I was trying to do a lack of line/blended line test. I went through about twelve sketches of various heads before I finally decided to look up one. Now that I look at him...he kinda resembles Spike. That's cool with me.

Updating Logo Ideas.

Working on updating the sketch I had - refining and making a little smoother form. I'm also trying to get used to a shading technique I picked up a little while ago.

Should I post warm-up sketches?

In another one of those efforts to become a better artist I've gone back to doing what my life drawing class was all about - figure drawing. I picked up via a couple other artists this great site where you can set up timers for a warmup and just go at it. Or, do a thirty-minute class style session with images picked at random. I was thinking about posting them here in weekly batches - as long as you don't mind that they're slightly NSFW. Nude models and whatnot. I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this, thanks!

WIP: A total bust.

It's been about a year since I've done 3D modeling to this extent. I have about a week or so that I want to finish this bust in, and this is three days total work so far.

You want to know who this is? You'll have to wait until I add the hair.

Rumblings in the Works.

I can't say too much at the moment simply because I don't have everything ready yet to unveil the full launch, but this week has been spent less on the two dimensional nature and more on the third. I'm somewhat proud of myself because I'm learning to model in a new program from the ground up. I would definitely recommend it 100% - between the wonderful support community and the bevy of online tutorials, Blender is one of the best 3D rendering software there is out there. Mainly because the damn thing is 100% free. 

There are more than a few things I haven't gotten into yet with modeling (A line of figurines to start with) but there will be time soon when I unveil this mess! Soon! 

I Should Be Resting More.

I should be sleeping since I still feel like ass, but I've been doing enough research into working on a site relaunch for my portfolio that I wanted to test something while I still had enough energy in me to do so. This is what came of it so far. I'm digging the side on the left, although I will always be partial to green. It's just trying to find a balance between interesting design and not distracting from the actual work being placed in the site.

Rambling, yes. Back to bed for me.