I Make Awesome - Comics Blog

I Thought This Was Pretty Awesome

2008-03-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

I know my favorite candidate Ron Paul is out of this race by all reasonable means, I still think this video is awesome. Enjoy.

For The Times They Are Changin...

2008-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Well I return to the blog world at last. Sorry for the lack of encouraging words and insight, but alas I've been busy. But here's the catch-up.

I've left my teaching job, which we pretty difficult considering how much I knew it wasn't the right job for me. There's a lot of kids there that I enjoyed quite a bit and I hope they continue to grow as artists and mature as people. I pray they don't need to make foolish mistakes to learn what they ought to do.

I took the last three days of the week off to kind of relax, collect my wits and be productive. If the last few days have taught me anything, its that I love being an artist. Man, my days were going by so fast and I was loving the work I was doing. I finished four pages of FDTN and worked on my wife's book as well as a portrait. Things were getting done.

I'm really really wanting to get my update schedule to two pages a week with the comic and its something I hope become a reality soon, but my new job is going to impede that for right now. I'm going to work in a financial field and the first four months of the job I will studying for two licenses; a series seven and sixty three. From what I've been told, this stuff is time consuming, so I'm really going to try and get my pages up to two a week, but gotta keep the new job first place for now. So I don't, you know, get fired.

Other than that, my wife and I have gotten hooked on Settlers of Catan. This board game is pretty darn addictive. Some friends from church got us into it and it really is a fun mixture of strategy, luck and back stabbing apparently.

Well, I have another post coming up soon... I wanted t o discuss in more detail my thoughts from the latest I Make Awesome Podcast.

I don't know if I should do this or not but...

2008-01-25T15:55:00.000-08:00

I felt this was a very good video about a little known candidate for the presidency and I wanted t o share this with you. I'm usually not a big fan of talking about my politics openly, especially on this type of thing, but I wanted people to at least know what he was about. Why? Well because when you watch the primaries the man might as well not even be there. They don't ever talk about him, even though he'd beating Guiliani! After much thinking about this and wondering who would get my vote in the primary, I have decided Ron Paul will. And here's why...

Vacancy

2008-01-23T18:50:00.001-08:00

My wife and I rented Vacancy after a friend recommended it to us and might I say, I need to watch something funny so I can ease up. This movie was intense. It reminded me of what made Hitchcock's films so terrifying and yet its so completely different that its interesting to watch. Everything is handled with the belief that this could happen and so it's played out in a very straight forward manner. Nothing is really over the top, or unbelievable. And on top of that the characters are pretty well fleshed out and are handled as important to the film as well.

At the end my wife and I were just so worn out and there' s a moment when you think things are about to get bad again... I looked up at the DVD clock and realized the movie only had like two minutes left. We sighed in relief. It was that good. Pick it up.

Rethinking Comics and The Web

2008-01-15T18:27:00.000-08:00

I was talking with Josh on the phone the other day about how excited I was about comics recently and I was expressing with him some frustrations I feel sometimes as I work on my comics. As much as I love the graphic novel format (which is what I am using for FDTN) I almost wish I could do the more traditional setup of the single issue type comic that we're so familiar with here in the states. It's kind of aggravating to me the creator to know that you the reader have to wait months to get everything I have planned out. AND that you will read thing at the pace of one page a week. I feel like everything you could gain from that experience has kinda been lost.

I know that the argument from some creators is that you, the reader, can always go back and reread the scene, or chapter from the beginning. I'm not too fond of that idea. Maybe I'm just not with the movement, but I want you guys to read the scene in one fell swoop so you get the weight of it in proper pacing. I would love to go with a traditional format like that but as I write/draw/shade/letter etc everything for this book, my output isn't up to the level I wish it was.

Which brings me to my next thought: I'm envious of writers. I was listening to some interviews with the creator of Y the Last Man, Brian K Vaughn and he was rattling off the list of books he's working on. It kinda made me sad because I have all of these ideas in my head that I just wish I could pour out into reality, but because the comics creation takes so long to complete because I do everything, I'm lucky I get one page a week out.

A lot of this is making me think about what I can do to up my output and finish some stories so I can move on to other projects. I love From Death Til Now, but I want to finish it in a timely manner so I can devote myself to the other projects on my mind.

Do any of you have thoughts on this sort of thing? What are your thoughts on From Death Til Now and reading it at the pace that you do?

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas And A Store!

2008-01-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hey all!

Well, I have finally settled back down after a very busy and not so productive Christmas break from my teaching job. I wanted to get so much done during my break on From Death Til Now, the new graphic novel and a children's book by my wife that I am illustrating, but I ended up running around like a chicken with my head cut off, fixing things around my house and yard, visiting family and watching a lot of Lost season 3 on DVD and playing Mario Galaxy. Hey I have to be honest! Not to mention I deserve a little bit of a break after all of the craziness of teaching high school. I did get quite a bit done though. I have finished writing all of chapter 2 of FDTN. Plotted out all of the next scene and most of the final action sequence (yup we got action coming up). I also finished a couple of pages for the current scene. On the other graphic novel, I rewrote the first couple of scenes and I feel much better about how the characters are fleshing out. The children's book is coming along, but there are a lot of things to draw and plan out! For me its a bigger task than FDTN!

Now for good news! For EXCITING NEWS!!!!

From Death Til Now has a store! Finally. I caved in and started a Cafepress store after seeing just how easy their products were to design and I liked the way they build their service. I even ordered a few of the shirts to see what the quality of the products are like and I gotta say that I am pleased. I've tried to put together a variety of products at reasonable prices. There's even a shirt that's only $12.99 that is quite nice as well (I ordered one of these to check it out)! So if you like the comic and would like to support it, please do by purchasing a shirt or hat! Also, please let me know what you think of the shirts themselves.

Visit the store: Http://www.cafepress.com/fromdeathtilnow

Transmission X Comics

2007-12-19T21:42:00.000-08:00

Hey all...

I wanted to point you guys to a great site called Transmission X Comics. There's some great comics on the site and they do some really cool videos, like these videos on storytelling in webcomics. It's a cool discussion on the challenges comic artists in a digital realm.

So check out the site and enjoy!

The Proof Is In The Work

2007-12-17T22:17:00.000-08:00

Hey All! Well Josh and I finally got together to podcast and work for a bit and I thought I would show you all some pictures from us working. We typically will podcast at one person's house and then head out to the local Barnes And Noble to get some work done in their fine coffee establishments. Enjoy the pics, but beware there's some spoilers if you look too close at my work!

As you can see, my setup is pretty simple. I work on 8.5x11 bristol board and a layout guide that I created for myself using a blue line for easy Photoshop removal. I draw all of my pencils in blue lead too. Those two microns are all I use for inking, except a Sharpie for large black areas.

Josh, however, works pretty large and I gotta say I love working small, but I equally love seeing large finished art work. So I'm slightly jealous. Here's Josh working on a new page of "Newman."

And finally a big prideful nudge towards our Jacksonville Jaguars and their victory against the Steelers. Note the hat.

Well, Josh and I had fun today. It's been about a year since we first met and its really cool having another comic artist living nearby who thinks remarkably similar to you. If you guys have a fellow artist nearby I recommend getting together to work just like this. It's really fun and gets you away from feeling so lonely at that drawing table.

Two Reviews And Other Thoughts

2007-12-07T20:02:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back and sorry I have been kinda absent lately. It is the holidays and things are busy. Apologies for the lack of an podcasts lately, but Josh and I have plans to get back on that in about a week. We'll both be on winter break, which should open up time. So hang tight, we're doing the best we can! In the meantime however, the next From Death Til Now podcast should become available next week as we close chapter 1!

Which brings me to my question to all of you readers. How did you like the first chapter?! I'm very proud of it and I gotta tell you when I finished it up a couple of months back it was a great feeling. It was nice to see a good chunk of content finally finished and out. So now we get strapped in for a much more dramatic chapter 2!

I also hope to have a nice treat for all of you very soon, so be on the look out for something different very soon.

Now on to the reviews...Just got back from a screening of The Golden Compass and I have to say I feel some where between pleased and unfulfilled. The book I think is pretty high minded for a book written to a young audience, but much of that stuff is kinda changed for the movies. I don't wish to give much away, only to say that they very cleverly snuck around much of the controversy that has been building up.

I feel unfulfilled because I think it was beautifully done, but the director lacked a lot of pacing in his storytelling. Things moved too quick and he never really lets up to allow the world to captivate us at all. Something I think really set Lord of the Rings out is that Peter Jackson has a great sense of pacing, of letting moments breath or burst on by. This movie felt very much the same tempo all of the way through.

I was pleased by how much this movie felt like reading the book. I kept waiting to know what dust was and all that just like I did in the book.

I'll do a more well rounded review with Josh once we get back to podcasting.

And finally the mother of all graphic novels that have interested me has finally arrived and I gotta say that this is an amazing well crafted graphic novel. It breathes life with each page and the energy of the story never lets up. My only regret with it is that it went by too fast. I blazed right through it, which I think is something really hard to get your readers not to do in comics and will have to be a part of discussion with Josh and I later...

Back to the book. The opening prologue is very very well crafted and I found myself quickly pulled into the story with it. The overall plot I think works really well and I look forward to sitting down and rereading it at a slow pace. I think I gobbled the whole thing up quickly because I was so excited it was out.

Other news...
FDTN Chapter 2 production continues and I'll be putting some final touch ups in on the script and working my way through the new scenes. The next page I'll be drawing is, in my opinion, the most epic image yet in the comic. I'm really looking forward to the challenge that chapter 2 is going to bring to me as I move forward. Each chapter and each new scene of this book feels like climbing up hill all over again. I feel challenged by it all the time. Which is great!

On another note I'm currently working on the script for a graphic novel series that is aimed at a younger audience. The fun thing with it is that I am writing this book so differently from how I usually write; no planning! I have a general idea for the story and what the end is, but that's about the extent of my planning. Instead I'm letting the story write itself and I'll go back into it during the redraft stage of the writing process. This way I hopefully maintain a sense of enthusiasm in writing the script and discovery at new twists the story can take as I go.

The Symbol Delta Documents

2007-11-24T14:15:00.001-08:00

The Symbol Delta Documents are a series of 'top secret' documents detailing some of the back story that we begin to learn about during the current flashback. Most importantly they explain how the man Thomas and his affiliates came into possession of information regarding the fate of our world. As you can see from reading the first page (posted above and in the extras section of the comic's site) this is something that has gone back a long time.

I love the way these things have turned out. I'm a huge fan of UFO lore and the majestic documents and such. I find it always interesting to see some extraordinary thing plastered on an official sheet of paper. It lends a whole lot of weight to it me. Whether it's true or not isn't the point so much. So knowing that there was an official involvement into the subject Virgil is expected to pursue I felt like 'government documents' would be a fun way to show some of these facts.

So I will be making the next two pages available through vote incentives. The first one is up now and has been for about a week I think. The last page will be up real soon. But please vote and show some support for this story if you enjoy it. It helps and if anything makes me feel good that I've got people who read this story and enjoy it.

On a side, these documents will be made available on the website very soon as well.

Building A Mythology In Webcomics

2007-11-14T19:28:00.001-08:00

When I think of 'From Death Til Now' and what it is that particularly excited me about the project, I think of how it provided me a way to build a mythology. It gives me a place to totally geek out and be myself. And what I like is a good epic mystery. So what became so very important to me early on when I was writing this story was that I presented it in such a way that it revealed itself as a mythology story from the beginning. Knowing that the webcomics world is largely a place where you are lucky if you get one page out a week regular from your favorite comics creator it became a bit of a challenge for me. What's difficult is trying to communicate in a fairly fast way enough mythology information so that it works somewhat on a week to week basis. If I were to, say, not reveal much at all of the mythology of this comic, or if i didn't have the first four pages as they are, I think you the reader would be left wondering why these two old guys are important for a very long time. As it stands I think I am finding very easy balance between revealing information and holding things back. The web actually helps me in this regard because if you just had the first book in your hands and could read all two hundred pages of it I think the build up a mystery wouldn't be as satisfying. I could, however, be wrong.

In outlining this story I have spend a lot of time making sure only certain pieces of information are revealed in a timely order. So the first book will operate very much as the set-up. You'll get bits and pieces here and there so that when the mystery is revealed later you'll be able to look back and see that I was building to that all along. I hope that it feels very natural in the end. Something that drives me crazy about some mythology type stories is that they just kinda throw crap in there that hasn't been supported at all and try to act like they had been building to it all along. I think the Harry Potter books do this a bit more than I like. That being said, I love me some Harry Potter.

So what am I setting up right now? Well, it is most obviously what is inside of that box. That's gotta be a pretty daunting thing for someone to say to you in telling you that your destiny is inside of a box. Much less that the fate of the world is in your hands because of it. Like Virgil needs more things to occupy his time! He doesn't have much of it left, poor guy.

So I hope the mythology of the comic is intriguing so far and I hope its building up well for you the reader. Please let me know what you think of it.

Thoughts On Being Content

2007-11-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've arrived at where I am today. A long time since the journey and the excitement of growing at my craft has overshadowed the desire of being a full-time artist now, and I MEAN RIGHT NOW! lol. Honestly, for the past year I have really struggled with semi bouts of working depression and it all came to a head last week. I knew I was wrong and I was tired of feeling that way. It brought with it a certain desperation which doesn't really help one be creative or get better at your craft, but rather a desperation that says this is the only way to happiness. I simply know this isn't true. Though I lived like it was.

Since graduating college I completely forgot what I was all about and concerned with then, which was to just improve. Now it's; how do I get out there? Who do I contact to get further exposure? What events do I attend so my work gets noticed? When? How? So on... Completely devoid of the necessity to grow, my thoughts centered around how do I get to the next step. All the while forgetting that I've gotten to the next step by being concerned with growing as an artist. The next step comes organically. Now, I've been reminded of this many times by people I admire. Both friends and other artists who were kind enough to have an open ear. Though it never really sank in until recently when I realized that I had made success as an artist a bit of an idol in my life. I'm sick of that. I've reverted myself back to my college attitude of working to improve, challenging myself with difficult drawing projects, continuing to paint in oil and in the digital and overall enjoying my life NOW. Success isn't where happiness is. It can't be. It has to be here and now, and if success comes, it comes as beautiful icing on the cake.

So I've been busying myself with finishing off some commissions that were on my list of things to do. I've been rewriting From Death Til Now; it's my first real project and I want it to only get better. And I've been experimenting and working on other projects that hopefully are pushing me to get better. Other than those things, I am enjoying my wife and trying to get back to enjoying a day job (which is what I think really caused a lot of these feelings). So I just want to say to anyone else who has or is going through what I did (and still am honestly, these changes don't happen overnight) that while success is something to desire, it isn't something to be coveted or something that blinds us to what's important. So thank you to everyone who has talked with me throughout the past year and encouraged me, you're words have finally landed.

I know I'll always be that boy who in third grade saw a friend's homemade comic and knew what I wanted to do with my life... So now its back to the drawing board.

A Clean Space Helps The Brain Work!

2007-11-11T17:28:00.000-08:00

So, since I had a little bit longer of a weekend from work because of the holiday, I decided to take some time out and clean up my painting/drawing studio. As you can see above, tis clean. Since moving into my house this year, I haven't had much time at all to clean or a unpack everything. But my wife and I felt this weekend was the end of that. And let me tell you, I feel so much better now, because I have a space that I can sit down and work without things all over the place. Hopefully I'm moving past my cluttered phase of life. Probably not though, lol.

So work continues on From Death Til Now and my new project, as well as some commissioned paintings that have finally worked out. From Death Til Now is getting exciting for me personally. I have been taking a short break from drawing it because I really feel like Chapter 2 is not where it should be. I got really rushed with it when it came to writing it, because of all of things I had going on and I just don't feel like it would do it justice to keep going at it like that. I really think George and Virgil's story deserves better treatment than that.

About this new project. I don't feel too ready to talk about it yet as I'm still drawing the character designs and getting the story nailed down. That being said, I have had a BLAST working on it. The project is going to be a completely colored in comic and is something I am aiming at a younger audience. I'm not sure where it'll go or what I'll do with it yet, but if I had to guess I would say don't expect to see anything for a little while. FDTN is still priority #1.

Finally, I want to say just how much I am looking forward to Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi. It's due to come out in January and if you haven't been paying much attention to his posts on it, I highly recommend checking his site out and looking over what he's doing. Kazu's work ethic and perspective are sound and always keep me on track.

Also, check out the last part of the interview Josh and I conduct with with Joseph Brudlos of Alpha Shade in the I Make Awesome Podcast. Joe and his brother Chris have equally been a big source of knowledge and encouragement to Josh and I as we stepped forward into our own comic adventures. So thanks Joe for taking time to talk with us.

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship?

2007-11-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

Thus I have caved in. Why? Why do I now join the many who have blogs across the web? Well for one main reason. I want to share some of my work and process here, as well provide a place where people can comment, including myself, on the general state of things.

Much is going on in my life as a creator and I want to show you guys just how hectic things can be. And you know blogs are a fun thing. When a artist I appreciate has a blog, it always brightens my day to read whats going on in their life. That sounds awfully pretentious to think anyone cares about mine, but maybe some do!

So strap in and prepare to join the ride with me. We have much to share together in the coming months.