12.5% Done!
After having done three big 100+ page graphic novels in the Raider series, doing 24 page books sometimes seems like a breeze. Now, it's not, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to draw three pages and feel like I've made significant progress. On the other hand, the deadline's a lot shorter. (Why must February have only 28 days? Damn you Pope Gregory and your calendar!)
This page turned out pretty well, and the dialogue is pretty sharp. Well, not evidenced by this panel, but trust me, the other stuff… pure Sorkinesque gold! And, in case you're wondering, Abby is wearing the latest in Old Navy clothes. Mark is wearing the glassic denim and khaki look from darn near everywhere. Sure, it's boring, but those denim shirts cover your superhero uniform pretty well, and the deep red uniform makes a good looking undershirt.
And, for those of you interested, this panel illustrates why I love the computer. The brick wall and other wall are not on the original artwork, and are added in computer. I can't tell you how many hours of drawing that saved me.
In other news, my monitor adapter came yesterday, so now I'm typing this on the combined monitor desktop of a 22" and 23" monitor. I feel so cool.
Do You Want a Shag, Baby?
One of my regular clients is Catapult Learning in Baltimore. I've designed postcards, banners, logos and more for them. One of the cool things about them is they give me a fair amount of free reign designing things. So, when they said they were having a beach and bowling themed party in California and needed an invitation, I decided to try something different. Inspired by the work of Shag and some of the Vegas designs in Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, I designed a solid color shaped, vaguely 60's retro, postcard.
Some of my designs for the girls needed to be tamed down. (Hey, California and beaches, I think bikinis. Sue me.) But other than that, it was relatively painless. I think the solid shapes and paper textures that make up the design pretty well.
Love and Capes #4 continues, and you should see a panel from page three pretty tonight or tomorrow. I'll be getting #3 from the printer Monday, and it should be in stores shortly thereafter.
In the Spirit of the Season
One of the things I've been trying to do with Love and Capes is to make the title pages kind of like Will Eisner's The Spirit. Grand Art Master Eisner never designed a logo for The Spirit, instead making it a design element on every introductory panel. I hid my name in the newspaper of issue one, and decided to make that a recurring theme.
In #2, it's on a billboard. In #3, it's on the last page. (Where? Buy the book, baby!) Here's the splash page from #4, and you can see that my name is on the credits of the Arachnerd movie. Why, I even threw some other people's names in.
Okay, that's all I've got from here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to fantasize about that iPhone. It's so slick, I might switch to Cingular after my contract ends next year.
Didn't We Just Do This?
Love and Capes #3 is at my printer, Activities Press, right now. And frighteningly enough, it's time to start #4! Like I've done with the last two issues, I'll be posting some selected panels here. To the right is part of the fourth panel of page one. Usually, I won't preview the punchline, but without context, and by cutting off Abby's dialogue, I figure this one is okay.
In other news, the New Year has been full of many things. I made a bunch of resolutions, and so far I'm doing okay on them. It's been a week (since I'm one of those people who start resolutions on the 2nd, since the 1st is no place to start a diet) and I've managed to keep on my diet, take a walk every day, and kickbox five times a week. My organizational skills seem to be improving because of the GTD procedures I've been using.
Let's pause on that one for a minute. I know it seems silly, but one of the things I've done that seems to have spiked my productivity, is I set my e-mail to check for new messages every thirty minutes instead of every thirty seconds. As a result, there are less interruptions, and I get more done. Like I said, a little thing, but one that's really helped.
The only resolutions I've been less-than-stellar on have been flossing and trying to read a little bit before bed. I did read Frank Miller's 300
And today is Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld, and I am so looking forward to that. What will he debut? The iPhone? What's in iTV? And anything else? Oh, this is going to be so cool.