So the next WWFJ comic will be only 1 page. It will be a sendup of those old Hostess Fruit Pie ads from the comics of yore. It is going to feature zombies and that nefarious of demonic ruminants, Elk Diablo. The only thing I am having trouble with deciding is who should be the hero. Here’s my short list:
Go-Rilla
Shaolin Monkey
Haardvark
Tasmanian Daredevil
also considering Invinci-Bull.
Thoughts?
Oh, by the way, Wednesday is the last day of the Historyonics exhibit if you want to see some of my original comic book art hanging on a all (actually also in the window!). You can buy copies of the comic there but, uh, I have copies too and I actually make money when you buy them off me – so do so now and often! Don’t forget Hexmas is coming up in just a few short weeks.
Yes those are CTHULHUPALOOZA buttons!
That’s right suckers! WOOOOOOOOOOO!
Added to the list
As you read this, I am in Portland at the HPL Film Festival, where Mike Mignola is a guest. I really like Mignola’s art, and have since Cosmic Odyssey and Rocket Raccoon. I liked cool before it was cool to like cool. I set aside an evening to ignore my girlfriend and draw this picture, which I am going to give to Mike. Secretly I hope that he will draw a picture of Rhinosferatu for me, but I’ll be jazzed if he accepts the drawing regardless.
I wasn’t helping Deanna pack, move or clean for almost 5 hours this weekend. During those 5 hours I was as Word Under the Street at the Cloudscape Collective table showing off my art. Right across from my table was Steve Rolston’s. Steve has done work for TMNT, Queen & Country, The Escapists, and a host of other stuff. He taught me everything I know about comics (that I didn’t already read in books) in his Introduction to Comic Book Production course at VanArts. I recommend it!
Steve was kind enough to contribute to my Rhinosferatu sketchbook. Click to make big:
You can visit steverolston.com and read his livejournal where he often posts sketches and whatnots at http://steverolston.livejournal.com/
Here are all of the pages to Secret Files from the World Wildlife Federation of Justice: The Ominous Origin of Rhinosferatu, including the newly uploaded Page 4. In print there will be titles and credits, but this comic is designed with no words.
Notes on page 4:
Panels 1-3: Another decision made from drawings defying comic panel conformity, but I think this comes across as three things happening virtually simultaneously. I had to look up photo references for splitting wood on google. I really like the hand grabbing the bat – it’s very Bruce Timm.
Panel 4: Look at all that flying pointy wooden debris. What could it mean?
Panel 6: This is the submitted version. I am on the fence about whether to keep that white blob in the middle of the panel or just have it 100% black. Vote!
Panels 7-9: I’m happy with how the dead bat turned out, even if this panel, like many of them, has shitty crosshatching which is something I’m trying to get away from. I’d like to gravitate toward the Steve Rude/Mike Mignola style of inking – flat blocks with tight, abrupt feathering where necessary. This last panel is one I struggled with a bit – this is supposed to be really the end frame. The stop. The period. Rest here. The end. So I tried to pull out a bit for a long shot that makes that sort of statement. Really the problem is pages 3 and 4 should have been stretched out to three pages not two.
Panel 10. The epilogue. I think that rabbit is hilarious. He’s such a prick!
THE END. Hope you enjoyed. Buy the “Historyonics” issue of CLOUDSCAPE COMICS – from me! – when it comes out.
Notes:
Panel 1: I cannot draw parallel lines it seems.
Panel 2: This is supposed to portray the climbing of the stairs and the nervousness of the rhino, more or less at the same moment, I’m not sure if I pulled that off. I thought the stairs would be a cool graphical divide between the two images but it might come across as if there are two rhinos in the same shot?
Panel 3: This turned out better than I thought it would, with all the cross hatching. I always save the perspective until last.
Panels 5-7: These are four panels. Does it look like there are four panels here?
Panel 8: Probably my favourite panel of the comic. Definitely my fave of the page.
Panel 9-11: Just realized I forgot to put a white border between panels 9 and 10. Oops.
Notes:
Panel 3: I had hoped to make the croc darker to better illustrate the torch went out, but I decided that would be overworking the art.
Panel 4: I like the swoosh and splat supercede the panel border. I was unhappy with my inking technique on the croc here.
Panels 5-8: I did a little Mignolaesque trick of throwing in bits of stuff to take up unused space, since originally this was two side by side shots of Rhino face getting splattered, but I couldn’t get them to fit in the space here until I broke it up and put in the sword and splortch.
Panel 9: I thought this was going to look awful, but I kind of like it. I pretty much traced the pillars from some random jpeg on google.
Panel 10: I hemmed and hawwed about putting that ‘ouch’ star in. You’ll notice there is absolutely no sound effects or word balloons in this story. This is the closest thing to one.
Steve Lecouilliard writes and draws the excellent Much the Miller’s Son comic, which you can and should read at http://whadiwannablogfor.blogspot.com/
Incidentally his recent sketchbook excerpts book he was selling at Comix & Stories has quite a few Lovecraftian beasties in it.
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