Phoenix Jones is on patrol!

Seattle is the best because we have real Super Heroes!

Not Much-Manga Studio Balloons

Simple as can be but still is officially the pain in the butt about comic books.

This web page talks about using Surface Pro and Manga Studio

Blue Sky Days Comic Story- Published for the FIRST Time

On my Tumblr

The Original Photo

 

 

Marty doctored his last photo post.  This is the original image un-retouched.

New JUMBO Jack Davis Book!!

I don't have a drawing to contribute today, but check out my cool birthday present (a gift from myself to myself):

It's HUGE! The pages are the same size as Jack's original art--a ginormous 15" x 22." They're direct scans of the originals, so they come with all the marginalia, paste-up and corrections--you can even see the underlying blue-line grid (tho' it seems more light gray than blue on a lot of the pages).

 Talk about cool!

p.s. I love all the new, original TAG content! Inspiring!

TonesDay

Manga Studio, You magnificent bastard, I read your book!

 

I did all the panel work on 15 pages in about.... 2 hours. I'll dig up my script and drop in balloons tomorrow. Then the FUN part. Just the inking. I do love this program. Quite the re-birth occurring for my enthusiasm for doing comics. 

  

  In Case You Missed My Post Below. Click This For A Great Tumblr of KIRBY Covers.

I liked this one because Jack found these extra planes for placing his figures.

POW-Templates

Go here. Kirby Covers.

Manga Studio

This plus another tomorrow. Only with cool zip a tone on them

I may go see this one!

Ranjo = Eisner

Congratulations to Jeff Ranjo. I knew him when. He says Ed Brubaker still won't talk to him. Where is Dead Zero? (Old award pictured)

Enjoyed my Manga Install

Hey. I'm sold. Manga Studio is great.

More Manga Studio nonsense

Another silly little drawing out of Manga studio.  I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable in the program, but I haven't had too much time to mess with it.  I'm busy plotting and writing my big comic story!  I think what I will do is get the whole story written and roughed out, then ink about 5-10 pages and then hit those with color.  When i have that many in the "bank", I'll start posting them so that I have a healthy buffer.
Currently I have 15 pages plotted and written.  I've taken Marty's advice and made my panels larger so that the characters have a bit more room to breathe.  Well, I may still be overstuffing the panels, but at least now I have some room to un-stuff them.
I understand that Manga Studio has some word balloon materials that look to be pretty powerful, but I bought the program on sale, so I don't seem to have those materials and I'm not sure if I can get them.  Still, I think it likely that this will be the program I use to generate the line work at the very least.

First Puppet Tool Use in After Effects

This is a workhorse way they "animate" motion comics. I still don't know how to do audio fx. Like how to manipulate my voice and make it sound like a girl. I should have used a Python falsetto when I was recording. The cyclops came out OK.

Freestyle Peregrination: Non-Photo-Rendering in Blender

Coming soon to Blender 2.67

http://blendernpr.org/bnpr-exclusive-freestyle-peregrination-into-blender/

After Effects Hacking

Gotta start somewhere. Why not with Ron Paul with lightning coming out of his eyes.

Spray

Great little 2.5d Movie. Hard not to laugh at this one.

K-20 : The Fiend with 20 Faces

A fun movie worth tracking down. It's got a little something for everyone.

Illustrator Inking

I could probably be a fairly accurate inker with some more practice. I might have a use for producing "tight" inks at some point.

Final line up

Here's all the 3qtr views I did for the characters. Wadda think? Seems like there should be more. Ugh!

Pepperdine Illustration show: Illustrating Modern Life

Jacob, talented artist, documents his viewing of the show. Amazing work.

Illustrator Doodle

Got a lot of fine, 1 pixel thick strokes around most of my fills. Also I have two types of hair highlights. The blobby one is done with the pen tool. The others are the brush tool. The pen tool with patient application would probably make a good hair highlight maker.

Now that our front page is clear of any Mard art....

...I am released to post again.

Some boards for a music video. Did 'em to help a friend. Top one is a "character study."

Playing with Manga Studio

I've had Manga Studio for a while but haven't really played with it at all.  If I can figure out the brush control this might work out as a better comic tool than PS.  This is only an early test... I'm hoping to get more control and a juicier line with practice.  Also, I'm not so keen on the hair highlights... I've been playing with it a lot and still haven't found something suitable.

More fiddling.  It takes some getting used to... still hoping I can get a handle on making some more juicy lines, but I have a feeling that this will only come with sustained effort... like working on some big project!
What I do like a lot is that I can use the same tool for drawing and erasing.  Also, when all is said and done, I'm way happier with the line quality in Manga Studio than in PS.

Everyone should learn Blender

Moved this really long post to here:

My Blender Manifesto

Kinda long, so it should be on its own dedicated page.

Saw a tweet that Carmine Infantino died

He and Gil Kane alternated as my favorite DC artists. Loved all of Infantino's Adam Strange, Flash, and every foray into cheezie, Gardner Fox, SciFi adventure that he did.

JMG:I remember this cover fondly back in the day.

or this.

  

Nice group shot. Everyone unified in that odd leaning run, the villain leaning back the opposite direction.

Color Me Albino

Read the first three paragraphs of Ellis's "The Albino" and when I read this, I was cracking up.

Watch TV and I'll learn something I already know, Brad thought. I'm in the presence of two of the greatest pigs to ever walk upright. (my italics)

It's great! Loving it!

Late, late Tuesday post!

Trying to keep at least a weekly progress report going.

Playing around with the FlexMotion tools (a very cool way of implementing spline IK) in Messiah Studio. I gotta say, this program has shot to the front of my preferred tools list. It's a shame it's been kind of buried by the dominance of Maya (not a knock against the venerable program), because MS easily has the simplest and best tools for animation. And the latest version, Messiah Studio 6, was released yesterday.

So, I'm just playing around with using curves to drive arm movement. Even though this is the dreaded 'twinning' that animators are warned against using, I was only testing the curve tools and not trying for any kind of finished animation. Interesting test and I will probably use FlexMotion for the arms, at least in certain shots.

Tombo Brush-Pen-Photoshop

Tuesday Drawing?

Somehow we've reached a moment on this group blog where 3/4's of the drawings on our first page are by me. That's no good. I'll refrain from posting until we gt this site back into balance. Apologies for previous over-blogging...I didn't mean to look like an ego-maniac!

p.s. if I were to put some requests out there, they'd be along the lines of, "Tom Moon! Share some new pages from Raymond and the Giant Robot Attack!" and, "Ellis, I saw that Fossilsaurus sketch on yr tumblr--how 'bout some more of that Goodson Goodness??" or, "Ronnie: whither yr Surly Bird?!?" and of course more Schmitty, Ron Thompson, Scotty Buncake, et al. (Beata, Ranjo, Dok, as much as we'd like to see new images from you, just knowing you're around is comfort enough....)

It's Tuesday, people! Give!