Tha Shiz

New stuff!

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I just finished  a poster class at risd. one of the three final classes i need in order to have all the credits for my certificate. Taking a letterpress class right now and then one more. Maybe a professional Identity?

Went through piles of work and found a stash of about 16-20 unfinished comic pages and a bunch of other stuff. Planning some new design for the site in the about and landing page, as well as some new navigation. Stayed up late and finished a couple of pages last night over the course of the next few weeks will update all the comic pages. This should make it so that I have a decent preamble for a couple of stories. Started putting school work up on behance/risd site. Photographing some actual professional work to put up. I might also be teaching a class about zombies to kids in the spring!

Been reading a lot of Usagi Yojimbo. It’s like a master class in making good comics. Pretty much every aspect of that book is well thought out and masterfully executed. The amount of research is staggering and meticulous. The artwork, while it started very solid, becomes more lyrical as the series progresses. Stan Sakai has an very intuitive grasp of what to show and what not to, reading flow, composition, and line. He has also won Eisners for his lettering.

Off to work. Will post some pics tonight.

Stray Bullets

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stray_bullets_41_coverso, yeah. Stray Bullets by written, drawn, and lettered David Lapham, and published by him and his wife. Not sure how I missed this.
The first issue in like nine years came out recently and all the comic blogs I read flipped the fuck out. So I picked it up.I also found a hand full of back issues for pretty cheap. Well, I read every issue I bought. This says something when I have a stack of new releases that I’ve had for a month or two that I havent bothered with yet.

The premise is a series of standalone crime stories set in a shared universe that when read together form a larger story arc. They are set in and around the late seventies and the eighties. Ultimately it feels like a crime noir version of freaks and geeks, or a seventies gangster movie crossed with the bad new bears, or John Hughes making a detective story. It is extremely cinematic. It also takes it’s time with the characters but in that each story is self contained you don’t get that “last cookie” feel of the tune in next week bullshit.

The art is solid and expressive but doesn’t compete with the story telling. Only after closer inspection and divorcing your attention from the story itself do you realize that David Lapham is a really talented and solid cartoonist. Comic artist can be really “show-off-y” but the best are the ones who are both brilliant and almost invisible.

I kinda understand the collective freakout, now. It’s a title that now will forever be in my pull list.

Read the first four issues for free here.

No new comic page today (LATE)

Blog, Lessons Learned From Dreams

(Edit: this was supposed to go up jan 18. but some things took longer, there was a snow storm and a zombie apocalypse! really!) yeah, so I need to make a set -in-stone character sheet for my main character as I’m noticing he’s drawn pretty off model in every thing so far. ( I am still drawing a character sheet, but here is the new page. Need to keep that forward momentum. I would like to take this time to mention that I am not wearing pants.) Probably due to there not really being a model. The vikings are pretty developed but its not a comic about Jeff and Bob, the ambiguously gay vikings; it’s a barbarian revenge (yes thats a genre) comic about a mildly psychopathic rabbit. In its stead I’m publishing the first LLFD page. It moves! horray! This is gonna get its own page. I have two more of these in scripting and story boarding currently. One a month seems to be reasonable for this amount of work. ( this is a generous assumption. this was the first one and my first real attempt into animation. As a result I am now taking two animating classes and have a couple of hundred bucks worth of books. The first thing you learn is how much you dont know.)

As I look at it (DB) some elements are really starting to gel and others need…simplification for lack of better word. Less detail but more information.

Here are some of my new DB Banners. I’m also working on custom navigation.

DB_STONEHENDGE_HEADER_WEB
DB_BONES_HEADER_WEB
DB_BONESBLACK_HEADER_WEB

And a tattoo I’m doing for my friend Paul

3swords

and some little monsters

LITTLEMONSTERS_LINEUP_1_2_web

seriously I could this shit all day. you know if I could get paid for it. sigh. ——-> Goes to work.

heya its the shizz:

I amy have added this before, if so read it again

Cool indie comics shizz

dope ass metal comics stuff

DB page 5

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meh wordpress, you make me crazy, I have this “publicize” plugin which does not do that. or more specifically it will publicize my posts but not my comics and as much as like to have an audience when I rant about nonsense I would much rather people see my comics. So new Deth Bunny page here. I was working on anew page last night and it feels like it might be a good a idea to do some character sheets. I do a lot of guessing and guessing sucks cus maybe its right and maybe its not so right. I drew a bunch of new headers for the strip this weekend because the one I have is a stacked logo in a landscape box. its awkward.

Finished one of two final animations last night for my 1st LLFD comic. The last one is spinning cycle, that should be fun. you know like surgery. then i am going to rip the whole page apart and reconstruct it piece by piece and color it. Which will take less time than it sounds. I also started an animation class this week and I think that it will push everything forward quite a bit. Huzzah for forward motion.

Shiz I’m into this week:

bird boy really well drawn webcomic

white tower not so well drawn webcomic, but it works cus everything is on model and the story is compelling.

ugh, not much this week, I’ve been buried in work and havent been reading/watching/listening to anything new.