Yes, I’m very excited about the prospect of having my video appear on the radio.
Realm Chapter 2 Penciling Done!
July 25th, 2010 by JohnI finished penciling Chapter 2 of Realm today. Like the first installment, it has 14 pages, but only 13 full sheets of bristol board art, for reasons which will be clear when it is finished. Before I cover all these beautiful pencil lines with ugly black ink*, I thought I’d take a picture of them so you can see them:
And here’s a closer look at one of the pages:
Hopefully I can finish the inking relatively quickly so all you lovely people can read it.
*I do not actually think ink is ugly. I like it a lot.
Issue 8 cover inked
June 25th, 2010 by JohnConcept Painting: Crater Edge Lighting
June 24th, 2010 by JohnSunrise: Issue 8 sketches
June 23rd, 2010 by JohnSunrise never sleeps. I finished Issue 7 yesterday and already it’s time to start working on Issue 8. Here’s some sneak peeks for you. Here’s an image of the new medical officer, Suri Sudeshna:
Suri is my replacement for Kuruschov, who, as you may be aware, I decided to eliminate from the main cast. I did this for a number of different reasons, the most prevalent of which is that Kuruschov never really managed to interest me as a character. Admittedly he never got much of a chance, but at the rate he was going I’m not sure he ever would have. Secondly, I wanted to add another female character to the main cast, so it made sense to replace Kuruschov for that reason. Hopefully Suri will be a bigger success than her predecessor.
And here’s a rough sketch for the cover of Issue 8:
That’s Hamete and Suri in the background, and a visiting character in the foreground.
The Indiana Jones of
June 4th, 2010 by JohnIn the tradition of Randall Munroe’s “Died in a blogging accident” I’ve embarked on a brief Googling experiment to document the snowclone “The Indiana Jones of ______.” You’ve seen it before, no doubt. Journalists adore labeling people the Indiana Joneses of their disciplines, I suppose because it makes things sound more exciting than they actually are. The experiment turned up more than I expected, though: 1,300,000 search results (0.12 seconds). Admittedly there is some repetition (and even a few references to Indy himself) but still, there are a lot of Joneses to keep up with. First result: Chris McKay, the “Indiana Jones of NASA.” Second: Mark Moffett, the “Indiana Jones of Ants.” (Moffett also comes well-recommended by Margaret Atwood, which certainly perks up my interest. Maybe I will check out his book. ) Third: Ron Wyatt, the Indiana Jones of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. (And one of the few people on the list who’s actually an archaeologist of sorts.) Exactly how Google ordered this particular hierarchy would be interesting to know in and of itself.
What else is there? You name it. There are, apparently, Indiana Joneses of knitting, photography, alternative energy, finance, rabbis, botany, the internet, fishing, and paper. Exactly what makes one the Indiana Jones of knitting I’m not sure, but there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. (Unfortunately I found no Indiana Joneses of quilting or cartooning. It’s time someone picked up the slack there.)
And if you ever wondered, the Indiana Jones of Shakespeare is Pericles.
Ink test
June 2nd, 2010 by JohnI’m still hoping to switch Sunrise to physical inking, which should make the art better and make me happier (despite being somewhat more expensive). This morning I did this little test to try some more potential methods.
The characters are inked with a nylon brush, the background with a nib pen, and the cross-hatching with a pigment liner marker. I tend to be kind of sloppy with a brush, so I probably will just use a nib for characters in the future. I’m planning to start doing all my crosshatching with markers, though, as that might potentially make my nibs last longer. (Whether Sunrise will begin to use extensive crosshatching remains to be seen.)










