Dead Squirrel Studios

I'm starting a project I hope to have done by october. Every day in Arabic class (at lunch, not during class), I produce at least one work of art of some kind. I excell at graphite, but I happen to be pretty good at "black and white style" ink with relief highlighting work. So anywho, I want to draw a page of a comic book every day, and eventually give it to my little brother for either his birthday or Christmas. Here's the two ink drawings I did of the two main characters. I might post the pages here too. They are done completely in pencil, dialogue and thought boxes, borderlines, all. I scan and fiddle with the contrast, but since this is my best medium I figure I'll stick to it. Maybe I'll switch to ink when I get a good set of pens- doing the comic by episodes (which would make it possible to have a switch).

Here is Cathán Valentine, a young man scraping a living out of the holographic maintenance field. His life would be pretty good, were it not that he has a virus that has an interesting side effect of handing him a completely unpredictable and barely controllable set of psionic powers (seemingly unregulated by physics). It doesn't sound too bad, but when you sneeze and your body reacts to the percieved threat by shattering like a clay pot and you have to spend the next couple hours putting yourself back together, you'll see. And it seems to never do the same bizarre thing twice. The next time, whatever surprised you might bloom into peonies. You never know.



In any case, Cathán's life is forever changed and set on the road to becoming that ^ when he meets Klip Harper (yes, I named this character three or four years ago as a repayment to Allison Harrington for something or other, and goshdarnnit, I keep my bloody debts). Klip is very different from the rest of us. I won't tell you why, you'll just have to wait and see (if I post the pages here).



By the way, those two are meant to go as a set, facing each other. I know the winds in one picture blow opposite to the winds in the other, I did that intentionally. I like Cathán's picture the best. So, hopefully I can bring the comic to you as I produce it!

-Wood

So, it changed to pen right away, cause they look way better. I'll just use graphite for one shots. I'm gonna post the first four pages here so you can get a feel for the art. I will not be posting any more of it here after that 'cause that would be rude to Jojo. If I want to post a comic online I should get my own website.









The rest of it will be available as it updates on Facebook under the name "Nicholas Zachary Wood", if you want.

i know the page sizes are off. One day I will correct all that with photoshop, but for now, when I print them, they print all the same size ish. When I get photoshop, I will also straighten out the borders. But for now, since its all manual freehand except the final scan, the imperfections will have to do.

Pretty interesting stuff! Keep it up!

Thanks. This is my first journey into the crazy world of writing comics. I like the medium, though I'm trying to develop a distinctive style. I hope I can get most of my artistic struggles under control before I introduce Klip. She has to be perfect by the very nature of her character. Maybe I'll post a few pinups.

-Anansi

I got some very good advise at Comic Con, which I will now pass to you:

Everyone has 200 bad comic pages in their system. Keep drawing until you get them all out, and then you'll start to get good. It looks like you're already on your way, just 196 to go!

Keep drawing pages, and you'll find what works for you. And most importantly, don't worry about making something "perfect." That's what's held me back for a NUMBER of years. Just draw it, you can always go back and re-draw it if you feel you need to =)

Thanks for the advice. I'll see what I can do with it.

It's an intriguing beginning. (And as long as you just host the images on your own space, go right ahead and post away. ) Might I make the suggestion that you leave a little gutter space between panels? It really helps a lot with clarity (generally speaking. When panels run right up next to each other, the eye can get confused and think they're looking at only one frame. This breaks the reader out of the story while they try to reorient themselves visually.)

Le sigh, 200 pages. I think my total, there, is somewhere around 500 (specifically comic pages, not including other art.) I still churn out a lot of rotten ones. I think I need to do at least another 200.

I like it so far. Seems interesting.

As for the pages, they weren't bad. I don't know if I was alone on this but the last page in particular I had trouble figuring out which way you wanted me to read initially - my eyes hit the first frame and were then drawn down to the "My Name Is" and "Thud" instead of to the right to the "that's usually when I usually wake up" - I noticed after the fact that you did try to put some border to direct the reader, at least, but my eyes just didn't follow.

Yeah, my girlfriend noticed as well. I did my best to fix the problem, but apparently my efforts were for naught. Eventually I will redo those pages.

Actually, I got a hold of some Prismacolor art pens, so my art looks like thirty times better than when I was just using one pen. At some later date I will revamp what I've done. But for now, I will see if I can post my updates today or tomorrow after class.