Last Saturday, I participated in a B.S. of Comics comic jam! Here is page two of my contribution:

click to visit larger image Page 2 of my chapter of the B.S. of Comics comic jam booklet Issue #1 From Grass Dog Studio

The format is essentially that each person gets four pages to tell a story. It’s only part of the larger story in that it must have one of the characters from the previous comic in it. And you can use any of your own characters in your work. Also, it’s good to respect the branding of your fellow cartoonists characters.

It was a whole hell of a lot of fun, and it felt good to get some concrete comicking done during my extended deep hiatus. Clearly, even though I’m still feeling burnt out I’ve still got what few skills I already had. I’m not rusting. (I’d complain about my lack of patience, but dude, this was a Jam, we were somewhat required to rush it)

For now, if you want to see the rest of the comic pages, you’ll have to wait for the book. If you can make it to the B.S. tonight at 5pm at the Black Drop Coffee House, you’ll get to see the prototypes!

Also, if you want to participate (which I highly recommend), we’ll almost certainly be doing this again! And definitely, as with nearly everything totally sweet, the more the merrier.

I just remembered that there is this really cool thing I can do with comics and flash that I haven’t seen hide nor hair of since the prototype was first posted to the web. I’ve been wanting to try it since I first saw it, but hadn’t learned Flash yet. And it uses the simplest of Flash’s capabilities, which I now know.

Now I just need to find the time to make it.

It’ll be easier to show you than to explain what I’m talking about. Not sure I can find the link to that prototype, though. It was cool.

Oh, and if anybody uses the term “motion comics” at you, flip them off.

The Bellingham School of Comics meets tonight, as it does every monday night, at the Black Drop at 7pm. I will not be able to be there.

However, it is an important meeting, and I urge everyone to show up. Member Tony has been planning a 24 hour comics jam of sorts to be held next Saturday at his house, and this would be your last chance to jump aboard! Or you can comment on his thread at the community blog (which is also a great place to learn more about it).

If you need to meet with me specifically, I’ll likely be available most other 5:00’s this week (except Thursday). Just let me know and I’ll schedule something with you.

I’ve updated the parking lot with objects from the Google Sketchup Warehouse, and replaced the old models of the modular classrooms with a new design that I made yesterday:

click to visit larger image Southport High School student parking lot, for comic Nothing Harmless From Grass Dog Studio

Pretty happy with this progress!

I’m putting in more detail, so that I have better reference to draw from. Clearly, I won’t be tracing the people:

click to visit larger image Classroom Design for Nothing Harmless, Outside View, Looking In From Grass Dog Studio

I’ve got the complete script for the sequel to The Dragon & the Radical and it has been sitting in a sketchbook for the past year. One of the only reasons I haven’t tackled it is that I want to set it in a fictional high school and while I had a strong image in my head what the campus would look like, I didn’t have a good model to work off of.

I finally found Google Sketchup. This seems to have solved my problem:

click to visit larger image Sketchup of Southport Highschool Campus for comic Nothing Harmless From Grass Dog Studio

This isn’t finished. But it is close enough I could probably get started sketching out the pages of the comic if I wanted to.

Here are some other views of the campus:

If you are part of the Bellingham School of Comics, and you are interested in working on a collaborative project with the rest of us, please go here right now and show your support by suggesting which weekends in November will work best for you.

Thanks!

If I drew a 24 page comic book, spending 6 hours on each page (sketching, inking, and lettering) — never mind the time it takes to write the thing — and then hand bound it (even with staples, though I’d do better than that), if I wanted to make minimum wage based on its sale and pay for the overhead of running my business, it would come to a final price tag of about $2.5K.

Looking at industry reports, that seems about right.

So, the trick is to find a person who’d spend $2.5K on a one of a kind, hand built comic book. Do you know anybody who’d be interested in such a project for its own sake?

Jason Thibault, of Masters of Ink, linked to this article on writing comics by Denny O’Neil.

In it is this nifty basic structure for a comic book story:

Hook -

Inciting incident.

Establish situation and conflict.

(Major visual action.)

Develop and complicate situation.

(Major visual action.)

Events leading to –

Climax.

(Major visual action.)

Denouement.

He explains in a bit of detail in his article how it’s different than your basic play script structure, or your basic novel structure, but that’s not what’s revolutionary to me.

See, what’s important is how it’s also almost exactly the same, and this article being put in front of my face on at this time on this day, when I’m fretting about why I don’t like any of my comics currently, serves as an extremely timely reminder that I’ve forgotten all of my schooling.

I think, while I’m busy drawing a bunch of illustrations for various other projects (which I shall be sharing shortly here), I should declare an official indefinite hiatus on all of my current comics. It’s been about three months for a couple of them, anyway. And then I should write a couple of basic stories that adhere to that structure up there. I should probably even rewrite a couple of my existing comics to fit it.

I don’t know if I’ll complete or publish any of these rewrites or stories, but that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve got something I need to actually learn, because I’ve been writing by throwing scenes and dialog on the wall like someone who doesn’t know how to test if spaghetti is done.

And then, when I’m done learning, I’ll be more conscious about how my stories are structured, and I’ll be able to make them work better, whether in a traditional format or not.

And on a critical level, I think I’ve noticed that I’m more engaged as a creator, more dedicated to finish a comic, when it has a good story structure. As an author and an artist, I need to be engaged in it at least as much as any reader might be, after all. Otherwise, I don’t finish it.

I’m seriously thinking about a sequel to The Adventures of DR_SPIN.

I have some pretty solid good ideas for where it should go next.

However, I’m not entirely sure how DR_SPIN comes off to other people. I know a few people who’ve really enjoyed the comic, but I haven’t had many comments now that it is complete. And I’m still too close to it to be able to judge if it is a well paced story or not.

It really doesn’t take long to read, and please do not be shy with any questions. I don’t mind explaining the story, and I won’t be appalled if you don’t understand any part of it. It would be pretty easy to add, remove or alter any pages if I need to, so any and all feedback really helps.

Thank you!

I haven’t been drawing a whole lot lately, so I haven’t had much to post about. Except this!

On Thursday, I will be hanging what I think is the sixth Bellingham School of Comics October Group Show! It will be down at The Black Drop Coffee House on 300 W. Champion. The artwork will be up for a month, and some of it will be mine. But only some.

This show is always a hoot. I let each individual interpret the requirements as they will, that the artwork must be comic related. Some of the artists try to submit the most traditional comic artwork they can dig up, the others push the envelope as far as they can go. The result is always that the show has a strong defining unity, but some pieces are really strange and experimental. It’s worth taking a look and thinking a little bit about what constitutes a “comic.”

And it’s worth considering what constitutes a comic because comics share so much of the same discipline as more mundane visual arts and literature: Movies, novels, portraits, illustrations, photography, music, ads, etc.

Anyway, when I’m done with this craziness, I’ll get back to my usual program.

Book pending:

click to visit larger image The exciting conclusion of! From Grass Dog Studio

Hugh MacLeod posted this, to which my response:

click to visit larger image In response to a Cube Grenade by Hugh MacLeod From Grass Dog Studio

Let’s keep this simple. I could put a whole lot of explanation behind this, but people would just focus on the explanation and not the revelation. And the revelation is this:

As charming as my comics have been in the past, they are not all that unique. There are other comics out there that deliver better. But I seem to have hit upon something I’m not seeing much of in my dragons!

Have you seen much like them these days?

It’s not that the images are of dragons, exactly. It’s more the media and presentation and purpose I’m talking about: clearly illustrated, wordless, single panel cartoons.

Even better, I think I am getting more ideas for this kind of project.

I will need to experiment and be patient and see what the process is before I can make any promises to myself or to others, but I haven’t been quite so happy with my drawings in a long time as I have with those dragons.

Anyway, if they do remind you of someone else’s work, no matter how old or new, please do give me links and/or names! I’d like to study what other people have done in the genre. Norman Rockwell is a given, and that guy on the back of Reader’s Digest, but my style and subject is definitely different.

I’ve been working pretty hard on the new B.S. of Comics community blog and we have a meeting today, as usual!

Also, we’re down to the last few days before our group show and I don’t have much artwork to hang, yet. That is, I don’t have much of your artwork to hang. I do have lots of stuff to plaster the walls with, but I’d rather wait to use it for a show that’s officially all mine.