My Comic Book: Page 7 final colors

Ugh.

My wrist is still not back to 100%. I really need to rest it for a bit, so I'm not sure when my next progress post will be... sigh...

Here're the final colors for page 7:

It can get pretty frustrating when I go online or to the comic book store and see so many great artists doing their thing, and I can't finish my pages. I feel like such a slacker. Anyway, I'll be back in action soon enough.. until then, keep on battlin'!

The budding potential of webcomics

When I started doing work for videogames, I've always been so involved in keeping tabs with that industry through a number of websites. I've been doing this for a few years now and I've built up some go to sites.

What's funny is that I never did that for comic books before. It's only lately that I've been catching up on finding all sorts of websites out there, a lot are a little too fanboy-ish for me and a handful that are just fanboy enough.

Anyways!

Through those sites I've stumbled upon some interesting 'mutation' that comics have gone into: digital comics! I'm not as well read on this stuff as some people are out there, but it's very interesting seeing this new medium start growing and evolving. Most bother me because of the format, and honestly I am more fond of flipping through printed pages myself, but there are some that are exploring the digital medium is interesting ways.

I'm pretty much last on the scene but I wanted to share a few links on some of these that I stumbled on:

This first one's a korean horror webcomic that really utilizes the act of scrolling to immerse the viewer. Pretty cool little gimmick. There's no need to understand it, it's still pretty readable. Unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the person or the studio that did this one, sorry!

Scroll down, down down!

This next one's by Vincent Giard. I like his art style, and storytelling but he also adds to his sequence with some cool motion to enhance it.

Vincent Giard

Turbo defiant Kimecan by Feran Daniel makes the viewer click to get panels to show up in the order they should be viewed. I'm not too big of a fan of all the clicking to read a sequence, and I kinda like being able to see the whole sequence altogether, but it does present certain interesting things, that are almost manually controlled storyboards.

Feran Daniel

This last one's pretty neat. I think I liken it to being the pop-up book equivalent of web comics. It's called "never mind the bullets" by a studio called Steaw Web Design. Cool use of parallax scrolling (brings out the inner video game nerd in me), to reveal some things or even play motion forwards and backwards.

Microsoft and Steaw Web Design

I'm really quite a traditionalist when it comes to making comics, but seeing these webcomics definitely opens my mind up to it's untapped possibilites. It's all very exciting to me! I can't wait to see what new stories and storytelling techniques pop up.

Until the next post, the neverending battle continues!

My Comic Book: Page 6 final colors and Page 7 WIP

Posting up some pages real quick! I kind of messed up my right wrist when we had a company outing to a trampoline park (no lie). And I kinda didn't take care of it when we had a team outing and went bowling last week! Plus work's been kinda nutty, as I'm the only animator (for now) on the crew! So I haven't really been working too much on the book.

I just started coloring the pages in again, and I'm hoping to crank up the speed a little more...

Page 6

Page 7 (Work In Progress)

That's it for today! Good Morning and God Bless you as much as He has me! The Neverending battle continues!

Sleepy Genius' 1942: Joint Strike step by step design

I'm taking a quick break this post. And just wanted to focus this on a friend of mine's blog.

Before I started worked at Zynga, I was working for a console development company called Backbone Entertainment. I was there for around 10 years, and a I worked on quite a few games there. A few didn't turn out so hot I have to admit, and even though I never got to make the perfect game, I do have a handful of favorites from that list! One of them is 1942: Joint Strike for XBLA and PSN.

I was the art lead on that project and the lead designer on that project was Marcus Montgomery. He's set up a post recently that details a very cool step-by-step of the work that went through some of the decisions he made for that game. It's a great post and really opens up the nooks and crannies (trials and errors!) of the intricacies of designing a game.

I mean, how crazy of a responsibility is it to be a game designer, right? Design makes it all work. For design to function correctly, it pulls all the disciplines together and makes 'em sing. While I love making the art and all, what really sticks to me as a player is how fun the game is, how balanced it is, how challenging it is, how unique it is; usually everything else once I get past the visuals! Basically, art gets me to look at a game, but it's the design that gets me to love it.

Anyhow, click the link and have a gander at the sleepy genius.

I also have a couple of old posts here and there on this blog for you to check out too. Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 4 and 5: Final colors

I finally got page 4 and 5 in the can! Work's been a little crazy the past 3 weeks, but it's somewhat slowing down now. Somewhat since work at Zynga doesn't really slow down...

Anyway! I shifted the hues of the hook and the 'rope' attached to it from my last post because my focus seemed off. In the previous version, my eye was drawn to the rope more than the hook because of the color contrast. A blue hook against a green background versus an orange one on the same background? C'mon now. Color theory 101.

So I switched the warm color to the hook since I want the reader to follow that, while reading the sequence. Then I got into nitpicking colors again and contrast:

Version A

Version B

So it's probably not very recognizable, even with two versions right next to each other, but there is a slight nit-picky difference! 

In version A, the lower left corner has a higher contrast between aisle and the floor under the chairs. 

While contrast is nice since it brings out objects and focus, in my case I actually wanted the crowd to just be a monochromatic color so the background as a whole contrasted with Bombgirl. What the contrast in the floor did was bring unnecessary focus to that area and not to Bombgirl (more like her feet and the screaming dude's face on the corner). It also made a heavy line that cut that panel up that I didn't really need.

In version B, the colors are a little bit closer in contrast, so that area is a little more uniform, so my eye goes back to Bombgirl since she has the most contrast within that panel.

OR. I'm just crazy. The Neverending battle continues! Good morning and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Page 4 and 5 WIP

Just a quick progress post for the day:

Just laid down the base colors and started filling in some shadows. Colors are probably gonna be tweaked some more as I work through it...

My Comic Book: Page 3 colors

I'm going a bit slow on the coloring process, but I'll post up what I have so far.

I've been messing with ONE shadow on this page for a few hours already, and I caught myself futzing too much with it. Still not the best shadow, but the point of these colors was to move fast and to aid the story. A somewhat misplaced shadow wasn't going to destroy the flow. (the shadow in question are the ones on the upper right corner of the last panel of the page if you're curious.)

I'm starting to fall into the mode where I'm nitpicking things too much. I need to constantly remind myself, that while I want a certain quality, I need to lean more towards fun and flow. Otherwise, I get stuck way too long on the process, and I bog myself down. I started to draw The Bomb Squad to loosen up, so I didn't get too anal retentive on things. I hated that I would cripple myself artistically and mentally when I thought way so much about what I drew, that I ended up not drawing (Heh, though I'm sure some people would say my art would be much better if I did think about it more!).

As it is I'm already taking too long with issue two! Alright, that's enough for the battle today. Good night and God Bless!