The Animatic Press

Comic Making Process #4

by Frank on June 8, 2011 at 3:12 pm

Here are my rough layout pages for the comic “Bitter Cartoonist” (I think I should have come up with a better name).

I first wrote this out with no pictures (not shown) pretty quickly. Revised it a few times and decided I needed to do a rough of the whole thing to see how it would play out. This helped the whole process but in the end it is still not as tight or funny as I had envisioned it in my head. I have sense come up with endings that may have worked better but life is about learning right?

Anyway, I was originally going to draw the whole comic very rough in the hopes I would finish quickly and encapsulate all the energy and timing of the original idea. But instead I created this cartoonist character and drew the whole thing in a very clean manor which is typical for most of my work. But this time I used the previous panel drawings as my rough underneath anytime I started a new panel so I could retain the character design but also push the expressions. At first I thought it wouldn’t work and my drawing would come out stale but later it did work as I warmed up and I think I pulled it off for the most part. This technique is nothing new I just never used it this much in my comics work before. I really like my work to be free from rules and have my emotions/energy I feel the drive the work I do.

Well there it is. Nothing too ground breaking but it can be fun to see how other artist tackle their work.

Take care.

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KIDS READ COMICS – event in June

by Frank on April 27, 2011 at 1:20 pm

Posted In: Blog

KIDS READ COMICS

I’m really excited about being able to attend this event on June 17^th & 18^th in Chelsea, Michigan at the Chelsea District Library.

This is an inspiring event was started a few years ago by youth and teen librarian Edith Burney of Chelsea, cartoonist and educator Jerzy Drozd of Ann Arbor, comic shop owner Dan Merritt of Dearborn, and comic book writer Dan Mishkin of East Lansing.

Although this is a long way from LA I think the people behind this and participating in it are people who believe in showing how comics can be used as an alternative creative story telling device and the advantages of doing that. There are so many things ways a story can unfold in a comic that a creator can express and a reader can enjoy. This industry like all entertainment is changing fast and as some models diminish others are growing and opportunities are taking place in areas and ways no one ever considered before.

This even will also be packed with super talent creators and artist creating their own work and inspiring young people to do the same. It’s still a medium of storytelling that can be completely created by one person with one vision and this allows different ideas to bubble to the surface and turn some traditional concepts on their head. Some of the artist/creators I have gotten to know on the web and social networking that I’m really looking forward to meeting are:

Denver Brubaker, creator of Tales of a Checkered Man

Chad Sell, creator of Mantra Man

You should check out their work. Both bring so much artistic talent and a different take on comics, story telling and humor that is worth a peak. These guys demonstrate what makes comics a format for telling stories outside of the traditional super hero world.

Check out the entire list of guest that will be there. You’ll probably recognize a few names. If anyone is in the area when this takes place please stop by. It’s free!!.

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Appearance at Free Comic Book Day

by Frank on April 25, 2011 at 10:57 pm

Posted In: Blog

I wanted to send out a quick post to let people know that I will be at Brave New World Comics in Santa Clarita on May 7th for Free Comic Book Day. I’ll be there selling books of my work and making sketches for adults and kids. This is a great opportunity because Brave New World Comics is not just an ordinary run of the mill comic book store. They promote comics and their store almost daily with events, class and guest that keep comics vibrant and alive for the Santa Clarita community and beyond. If you don’t believe me, get on their email list and you will see I speak the truth. On top of that they were 2008 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing award winner and owner Atom was named a judge in the 2008 Eisner Comic Book Industry Awards.
Come out if you are in the are and visit, say hello and see a store that will have your re-thinking what a comics books store can look and feel like. They are located at 22722 Lyons Ave., in Santa Clarita, California (about 20 miles from LA). Or follow them on Twitter.

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No Post Title

by Frank on March 23, 2011 at 4:09 pm

Posted In: Process

Comic Making Process #3

It has been awhile but here is a another behind the scenes of one of my weekly comic post. This one is a look at the process I went through for last week’s post.

IDEA: Below is a pic of the paper where I first wrote down the idea for the “More Screwed Up Than You” comic. As you can see it was one very simple sketch and a lot of writing. Since the main point of the comic was in the idea and the characters do not move much it made more sense that this was fleshed out in writing first. I needed to do this to find out if this was worth doing. Originally I was just going to have one guy out do the other in ‘how screwed up my life is’ and have him declare victory and then weep as he realizes his shallow victory. But as I drew it out it just seemed that that ending was too anti-climatic or down beat.

SOME CHARACTER DESIGN: Here are some character studies I did. I ended up throwing out some of the ones I did on paper and delegating a few others I did in Manga Studio EX.

SKETCHING THE COMIC OUT: I sketched each panel out and then combined them in order to see how it paced out and read before doing the final inking or any dialogue. This helps a lot. I usually print this out and look at it with the text I have over and over and see if it works and make changes.

SKETCHES OF ALTERNATIVE PANELS: Here are two sketches I did in MS that I did not end up using. One is a panel that I was going to use as a ‘beat’ between the final back and forth of the characters and the final victory of the skinny character for having the most screwed up life. Next was an idea that my wife gave me about having a waitress or someone coming over and telling the two she had the most messed up life because she had to listen to these two. Seeing this again perhaps I should have tried harder to make that idea work because I think it might have been better than the one I used.

I went back and forth on the last panel many, many times. Like many skits, the general idea is good but ending it can be difficult.

Also – regarding the text. I had to hand write it in Photoshop instead of MS and it did not come out too good. I’m going to create a special font of my own to avoid this in the future.

And that’s it. Please comment if you liked this post and I’ll keep it going. Have a great week

[ 5 Comments ]

Comic Making Process #2

by Frank on February 17, 2011 at 3:21 pm

Posted In: Process

Here a little bit of the sketching work I did for ‘Getting it Done’ comic that I posted on 2/14/11.

I decided to do all of my sketching process right into the computer using the Wacom Cintiq (20”) and Manga Studio EX. Although it is harder for me to get warmed up sketches drawing on the Cintiq I wanted to force myself to do it because this is where I’m going to be creating these comics.

The following are two images from me showing how I tried to find the character or basically the character design sketches. I like the more cartooning wacky ones I did on these pages but somehow during the process this was not the style that ended up in the comic.

Below is an example of how I tried to figure out the action of the ‘shove’ panel I did in the comic.

And here are two pages with examples of the sketches I did below my final inks. I do this much like you would on a traditional light table; I lower the opacity of the sketch layer and draw on a new layer over it. Nothing too original in this method.