Although I do not post here often, it does continue to be the hub for my work. Facebook is where I do most of my socializing and sharing, but here is where I go to archive the really important stuff to peruse later.

Also, some of my oldest and closest online friends still poke around here, and I can occasionally confide in them things that I would not share with other social media sites. LiveJournal remains the most secure method to do this, partly because of its growing obscurity.

Anything that you can see below is yours to read! Comment, and I will be notified.

Thank you.

click to visit larger image Harmless Free Radicals: an introduction From the Fenworks

This is not a promise. It’s an experiment. We’re gonna see what I can do.

My aim is to do two things, here:

1. I’ve always wanted to retell the Harmless Free Radicals story in a more coherent way. Couching it in the context of Fenmere telling Sally Robertson about her parents gives it a plot that it didn’t have before. And also, it gives me more of a reason to reveal lots of mysterious things much more early on in the story.

2. I want to have a playground again. I need a comic where I can goof off with the artwork. So, not all of this artwork is going to be my best stuff. In fact, most of it is going to be pretty scratchy. But I’m going to do my best to keep it high resolution, in case I want to put it in a book later. I’m going to try to keep it in a consistent page or panel size, in case I want to put it in a book later. And I’m going to try to keep the style of the art consistent for each chapter. Assuming, of course, that I manage to keep this up!

The Epic of Sally Robertson is a higher priority, of course. But, if things go smoothly, we may see more updates to Harmless Free Radicals proper.

I’m not feeling overly excited about this idea, but I’m definitely feeling really good about posting this first page. Both of which are actually good signs. The challenge that we face here, though, is my schedule. I have a mortgage, among other respectable bills, and no “real” job. I am trying to turn my business into a viable source of income. There is a lot of work to be done in that regard, and right now most of it is not cartooning.

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

Sorry for taking so long to pick these up again. If you will recall, Brian received a guitar from his dad. Now we see him using it in the way that he is moved to do so.

I think this is a good strip to start talking about the details of the backstory, to let you know what was going on in my head as I was writing this. It’s a lot of stuff that is very relevant to The Epic of Sally Robertson, and while I hope to cover it in the course of that comic, it may help if other people have it in their heads as well, to help me craft it better. Bare with me, this is kind of lengthy, but it’s really good catch up! And we’ll get to what Brian is doing here in the end. It’ll be well worth it.

So, Harmless Free Radicals really started out as a conglomeration of three or for different ideas. One was to make fun of me and my friends without using any characters besides Ian that could be remotely linked to us (Ian is a caricature of my worst tendencies). Another idea was to have it about a group of people who start a band to make music but have adventures instead (that didn’t work out quite so well). Finally, I decided to wrap this all up into a great story I’d been working on regarding the creation of the world, the gods of the Arts, a battle between those that want to bring ascension to the world and those that want to preserve it, and one lone individual’s nearly futile attempts to bring peace between his brothers and sisters.

So, Fenmere is the Poet of the Dragon People. He is sick of the bickering between two factions of the Dragon People, the Order of the Hunter and the Guardians. The Order of the Hunter is led, actually, by Bone Jackdaw, the Story Teller. The Guardians are led by Jade Crow, the Diplomat. So Fenmere cracks a plan to use a powerful magic that humanity has within itself to scare his siblings into listening to him. This magic, incidentally, works very much like new age theory. Whatever humans dream of and believe in tends to become reality. Also, because the Dragon People are nearly forgotten, Fenmere’s plan is also an attempt to preserve what is left of them.

Deciding that comics have a slightly better grip on the human psyche than the traditional poetic form, he declared that comics are a form of poetry and then proceeded to attempt to make a comic, a webcomic, in order to influence the world in his favor. Thus, Harmless Free Radicals was born. This comic wasn’t very popular or effective (probably because Fenmere is NOT The Cartoonist), but it was influential enough to actually create the city of Fairport, an echo of a real Pacific Northwest town, which exists “half way between the Canadian border and the land of dreams”. Since then, this bubble of “narrative reality” has extended to include an entire county, Liberty County, which also includes a town by the name of Jam.

Something begins to happen. Some of the people featured in the comic begin to learn that they have abilities that are somewhat beyond the scope of human capacity. There are several reasons for this, which have not been discovered or discussed yet. One of those reasons is because of humanity’s magic. Because Fairport is isolated from the rest of the world, its reality is more malleable. There are fewer imaginations dictating what is possible there, and those that read the comic have the strongest influence (that means you, by the way). Another reason is because the Dragon People have indeed started to take notice, and are exerting their own magics on the events in Fairport.

Brian using his guitar as a weapon of justice, as depicted here, is just one of these events. Aside from the comic itself, it is the first foreshadowing of the things to come in The Epic of Sally Robertson, and the struggle that Sally herself will have to face.

As I’ve said before, Ian is Sally’s dad and Brenna is her mom. Brian is Marshall’s dad. A bit later in the comic, Brian will meet Dakota Barnes. I haven’t written the comics about their marriages yet, but these two couples do get married and have kids nearly the same age. Ian and Brenna are roughly ten years older than Brian and Dakota, but Brian and Dakota also spend some time in Vancouver, outside of the influence of Fairport and it’s fairy like bubble of time, and… I’m getting ahead of where we’re at right now! We’ll get to some of this in time. Both here in the Vintage Comics review, and in The Epic of Sally.

Cheers! And thank you for reading,

Fen.

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

click to visit larger image Stuck in Jam, page 30 From The Fenworks

With the advent of this page, I’m debating with myself about how the plot is going to unfold for the next 22 pages. I’m waffling between intriguing exposition told in the form of flashbacks that explain the background of the story, or keeping it to a short set-up followed by a lot of weirdness. I have the exposition all written out, but I’m leaning toward the latter. And if I take the more action packed approach, it’s going to take longer to make the comic, because I have to write new stuff. But that’s not why I’m waffling. I’m waffling because I’m really not sure which would truly serve the reader better. And the answer to that question kind of depends on whether I’m treating this like the “weekly” serial comic that it currently is or like the graphic novel that it will be!

I’m fairly sure that most of my writer friends would slap me upside the head and shout, “Go for the action! Bring us exposition in the parting shots!” Which is how good T.V. does it, and many of my favorite comics, so that’s probably how I’m going to go.

It’s just that I recently read a very good example of gripping exposition used early in a comic, and I thought it would be cool to follow that example. But my instincts are now telling me that that is trickier than it looks.

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

click to visit larger image A study of Ian drinking coffee incredulously From the Fenworks

Just drew this, using my Pose Tool 3D model from my previous post. Here are some snapshots of the progress:

click to visit larger image Progress of a study From the Fenworks

Following the advice of Ken Christiansen. Establish your good fundamentals and then lay your own inking style over the top of that. I still want to improve my inking, mind you, but this works!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

click to visit larger image Pose Tool 3D and Mara3D Facial Expressions on a Samsung Galaxy S From the Fenworks

I’d like to thank my colleague and friend Ben Hansen for alerting me to Pose Tool 3d! It’s a very useful little app for recreating a pose and then changing the camera angle and lighting. It’s important to note that it allows for a range of movement beyond human capability and it doesn’t have any default poses that show proper weight distribution and support, nor does it test for these things. So you do have to work from a reference or be relatively familiar with human biomechanics to get natural poses (thank you Superfeet for employing that one time and training me in such things!) You also can’t bend the toes, so you have to adjust that in your drawings. But you can adjust the neck and shoulders separately from the head and arms, and the abs have separate adjustments from the hips and chest, so it’s way better than your typical mannequin or action figure! There’s also a female figure that I didn’t opt to show. And you can choose five different body types (no children, though), but I don’t like how it distributes fat and you can’t alter that. But again, this is mostly for basic proportions, lighting and angle, and if you’re any good as an artist you can take care of the rest with your pencil!

And in the process of looking that up in Google Play, I also found the facial expressions software. A bit less useful, if you have a mirror or a phone with a camera, but still fun. In this photo, the model on my phone is disgusted with the state of the dishes in my kitchen sink.

I wish I’d had this before I started inking the next page of my comic. But I have it now!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

click to visit larger image Stuck in Jam, page 29 From the Fenworks

So, for warm-up sketches next week, you guys are gonna get at least one proper rendering of a hurricane fence.

I took some extra time on this one because, aside from me still feeling kind of ill this week, this is an establishing shot and so the detail in the background was rather important. Now, you’ll also note that I eschewed my usual treatment of metal and skin, leaving them flat and unadorned by extra airbrushing. The reason for this is that I’m using detailed airbrushing to emphasize elements of each scene. Normally that’ll be the people talking and the tools that they are using, including Sally’s deely-boppers and her tutu. But in this scene, it’s the sky I want you looking at, and the clouds are a pretty subtle effect. Everything else, being flat and darker, pops out from the sky, creating a kind of depth.

Now, this page also indicates to me that I really do need to switch over to my new website soon, where I can post larger copies of these pages. The compression has played havoc with the hills and made them fuzzy.

Anyway, if you need an explanation of the gag, there are several places around my home county that bear descriptive names that are somewhat inappropriate. One in particular that inspires this is Bayview Cemetary, from which you cannot really see the bay. But also, in the town that Jam is a thin parody of, you can see the mountain very clearly just about wherever you go, and it’s really very stunning. In fact, there is a school here by the name of Mountainview Elementary, which is just a few blocks from where I’ve placed this school. The city is planning on shutting it down, though, much to our chagrin. I was hoping that if I had kids, they’d go there. On the other hand, they’re putting a trail in leading to the school, so at least the playground will probably remain open!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

Here are the practice pieces I assigned to myself after last week’s comic page. There isn’t much to say but, here they are, and I’ll keep working on this stuff!

click to visit larger image A Bill Waterson style tree From the Fenworks

click to visit larger image Quick tree life drawing From the Fenworks

click to visit larger image A cartoon study of trees From the Fenworks

click to visit larger image Sally Yelling From the Fenworks

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

click to visit larger image Stuck in Jam, page 28 From the Fenworks

Originally, I was thinking of giving Marshall the middle name of Nicholas, after a good friend of mine. That way, his initials would be MNM, which would be kind of funny. But, not funny enough. And Marshall’s mom, Dakota, likes “Sappho” better, and since “Marshall” was Brian’s choice, she gets final word on that. Anyway, Marshall’s demeanor and sense of humor are largely modeled after Nick’s. This is the kind of thing Nick would have pulled off during a game of tag.

It also has not been lost on me that Marshall Musante sounds like the name of a super hero’s alter ego. This was an accident of my naming conventions, but a very happy one.

And now, a quick critique:

I’m rather proud of this page. It’s not my best art, but I deliberately put more study and effort into it than the last page, and I feel like it shows. Now, to pick one of its many flaws to tackle next. I think this could use more work:

It’s not very polished and doesn’t seem very accurate. As a piece of artwork, it’s awkward. Which is no wonder, because it’s the one pose in the entire page for which I didn’t use a reference. So, I’m going to redraw it, using a study.

Now, normally, I’d pick something that I can work into the next page, but I can’t here. The next page doesn’t involve that pose. What it does involve, however, is a mountain that keeps appearing in the background, and some trees. I think maybe it’s also high time I do some studies of those two things, and ramp up my treatment of them. My goal with the mountain is to draw it the same way every time from here on out. And my goal with the trees is to come up with a better way of drawing them in more detail in a style that I admire. I won’t draw trees in great detail all the time, but I am looking to make my readers want to reach out and touch them when it is needed for the setting or story. You’ll have to let me know if I manage to pull that off!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!

I’m still trying to get this comic done by tomorrow, so I am stopping somewhat short of my goal. The key is to spend more time on the pencils so that the inking goes faster and with more confidence, and I already feel as if this page is a dramatic improvement over last page. So, as a continuation of this previous post, here’s the somewhat refined pencils:

click to visit larger image somewhat refined pencils From Grass Dog Studio

It may look subtle to some people, and maybe I should really scan this properly so that you can see the detail well enough. But, I’m gonna have to do that with next page, when I have more time to futz with such things. Also, you’ll note I’ve left out three panels and all the text. That’s because I don’t want to give away the comic before it’s published!

See? I’m smart and considerate.

Anyway, if you compare it to last post’s photos, you’ll see that I’ve removed a lot of the sketchy lines. I’ve refined it even more by the time I put the lettering in. Now it is time to drink some rum, put on some cartoons, and ink this sucker.

Enjoy!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it's all the same!