A Sick Child pages 1-3: Inked.

I was able to get three pages inked, and although I’ll possibly make some changes to this stuff somewhere down the line, I know it’s way more important to move on to the next thing right now so that I don’t get mired in these forever and fail to complete anything new.

I’ve done more than enough pencils and now with the 3 samples in ink, we can send start sending this out and see what happens. If it doesn't get taken, then hopefully Dustin and I can agree on a kickstarter plan and then get it done. It’s likely that we would have just as much or greater success (monetarily and also the size of the audience) if we do it as a kickstarter. We’d have more control as well. But, I do also know, it will be a lot more work for us because all the editorial, mailing, formatting etc., will fall on us.

Here are the first three pages, inked.

Whoa! I am way behind on this.

Currently this is the cover. It’s the first page I have inked, and I will do a few more before Dustin and I discuss further what we plan to do re: pursuing publication. I have a lot of illustrations I need to start hammering out before the SJCPL Bookcon next month. So I want to make sure I don’t overcommit to anything. Not too mention I also have a couple commissions and I want to make sure I get a couple paintings submitted to the Art Around the Bend event that the museum is putting on. Of course as I am looking at this presently I feel like I need to get a bunch more birds on her, but I’m gonna let it go.

Pencils post #2

After a rough week, I am pretty happy to report that I’m 6 pages into this thing. The pencils are going well so far. Some of the poses and things will likely change once I get farther along, but I want to make sure I get as much of the big ideas down as I can before I get down to the business of inking this thing. This is page 1 at the moment. I regretted the angle a bit once I started in on the frogs, and I intend to get this thing a lot “froggier”, but I think this angle makes the most sense for the story. When I see the way it looks paired with the text then I’ll know if I need to redraw the image from a “frog’s eye view”.

Pencils Are Under Way

I started in on the pencil work for “A Sick Child”. The goal here is to do an illustration for each paragraph. That will make the book about 25 pages depending on if I do any full spreads or not. I’ll probably get there, but I’m plugging away one at a time now that school is (mostly) back in session. Once I get ten pages in I am hopeful that I’ll have all the stuff worked out that I need to work out to try and get this kickstarter worked out. What I want to accomplish mostly is to get paid for the work I am doing and also to have the printing costs covered so that the book is printed at a quality level that I can be proud to hand to people when it is completed. I have done none of the math on this yet, but it’s going to cost me roughly 50 dollars an hour for the pencils and inks (the book is going to be black and white, although I might be persuaded to do a color cover and sell the oil painting (as a reward for the highest tier or something). I’ll likely make the original pencils rewards as well and then some prints or something. I do not know, though. I am still very early into this process and haven’t had a ton of time to think about the details of the kickstarter rewards or the campaign. But I am excited about it, and I am hopeful that once I talk to Dusting about it in more detail that he’ll be excited about it as well.

If this one goes well, then it’ll be motivation to work on more of them down the line. If it doesn’t go well, then we’ll figure out another way to get it done. But I assure that this book will get out into the world. I’ll start to post more of the art as it’s completed and talk more about it as I go. This is cover that might not actually end up being the cover since Naomi is drawn a bit too young for the close of the book. But I do like this image regardless and will likely take it to finish.

I’ve nearly finished pencils on 4 of the pages now, and I think it’s going to just make the most sense to do the inks digitally for the purposes of formatting the book later, and also because when I make a mistake at some point or want to mess around with some different ideas it’ll be easier on me.

Here you can see Naomi’s prosthetic leg and her eye patch, and she is about to take flight at the story’s close. And, as I type that out, I wonder why the cover would give the ending away? Not that anyone who wants a copy of the book and supports it on kickstarter will be surprised by the ending anyway. I don’t really believe that surprise endings are a hallmark of things worth reading. So if that is your thing then this isn’t likely for you, and that is okay. I love you regardless of your reading preferences.

A Sick(er) Child

The amount of time to assume rejection has elapsed with Dark Horse for our submission, so we’re going to head off in another direction, and it’s my hope to get this one done by early March. Instead of doing it as a graphic novel, I’ll just do an illustrated version of the story, something along the lines of an image per page or so. Dustin and I will have to discuss it more, but I’m looking at possibly just doing the whole thing ourselves rather than fooling around with waiting for someone else to tell us it’s good enough. Obviously I would prefer to spend most of my time making art and not editing and formatting the book, but I’ve done it before with much larger projects than this, so if it feels worth it, then I’ll make my case to do it that way.

Maybe we’ll do a kickstarter to do a big book that’s hardbound and see how it goes.

Looking forward to a great year of art making and reconnecting with friends and family.

I hope 2024 is an amazing year for as many people as possible.

The book is out of our hands now

Dustin and I have finished our submission for Dark Horse Comics and sent it out for consideration. I’m really pumped to have accomplished this small step with Dustin and grateful for the time I’ve been given to work on this up to now. Obviously we hope for good news. So that’s all I have to say about “A Sick Child” for a while. I’ll do some more random drawings and paintings related to the book as time passes to make sure I don’t completely lose track of how I was drawing the book. But for now, we wait.

Back at it again

Things are back in full swing over here with “A Sick Child.” I’ll post some of the work completed in the next day or two. I had a bit of learning to do with Clip Studio Paint regarding the frames after I realized doing them all by hand was going to take way too long. But now that I have that sorted I can just do it correctly from the outset.

Glad to be digging back into this work with Dustin.

Spread for page 5 and 6

I believe this is done. Thought I may work at it a bit longer but there is plenty more to go and I think this tells the story we want it to tell.

Naomi sees her reflection in the swamp and is pleased to see she looks like she’s as ill as her parents told her she was all this time.

Onward! Page two!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dustin and I have to figure out where we’re gonna put the text and “what” portions of the text we’ll be including, but things are moving along quite well so far. I think I have my pages formatted the way I need them. But in the end I’ll just be doing the first six pages first anyway, so if I have to make adjustments it will at most be to the first 6 pages anyway. Time to get wart-tacular.

Inks for Page 1

Dustin and I decided to submit this to Dark Horse Comics for our first shot at publication. The submission process for that requires six sequential pages of the story. So we’re just gonna do 1-6. Here is the first “final” version of the inked page. I need to move some panels around and get it to the correct page size and so on, but this is pretty close. Hopefully by page 3, I’ll have streamlined my process enough so that I don’t have to redo any of the formatting business. If I would have taken a breath and figured it out before jumping in then I’d not have to do it now, but I was excited to start.

Medieval village research drawings

I was just trying to get a feel for the way houses looked (supposedly) back in the 14th/15th century. And did some minor clothing stuff as well. The rooster on the far right got cropped out, but the hog made the cut. These buildings are not supposed to be located in the same physical space as one another or anything. That church was just tossed in so I could remind myself of the stone and roofing contrasts later on. And that magpie scratched up there is likely headed toward the church to steal something.

Swampy

Naomi ends up living in the swamp with the toads and magpies not too long after she’s big enough to take care of herself. Here is a rough swamp idea that I did to give me something to look at to see that environment and cement it in my head.

A backpack full of birdies.

Here is an inked version of Naomi carrying her huge backpack of magpies. In the original story she has them in her arms, and as much as I wanted to keep it true the original there was just no way I could figure to draw enough magpies in her hands and arms to create the kind of feel I’d hoped to achieve without adding the backpack in. So. She has a backpack.

Rough Pencils for pg 1

I made some progress today since my youngest daughter was kind enough to nap. I’m not sure we’ll end up doing the book in this comic book style or if we’ll end up doing something completely different, but we’ll never know how it’ll turn out unless we try.

Magpies and magpies and magpies, oh my!

Here are some sketches I did of magpies for reference and to figure out the mood of the art. I’m probably going to go much sharper with the lines when I get to inking. At least with the beaks. I’ve not totally decided how loose I want this to be when all is said and done, but I like the way it feels at this stage.

A couple magpie sketches for “A Sick Child”

New Project with Dustin M Hoffman

My friend Dustin and I have started work on a graphic novel. Not sure how this will take shape as we forge ahead since we’ve never done anything like this before, but I’ll keep posting stuff here and on instagram as work progresses. The book will be a close adaptation of Dustin’s story “A Sick Child” which is available to read online at Masters Review here: “A Sick Child”

I’m pretty excited to be working on a project with one of my best friends. Most of the writing I did in the past was partially shaped by Dustin’s comments, so it would be silly to say that we’ve never collaborated before, but writing is a pretty solitary process for me most of the time, and this approach to making art has me pretty pumped. Now I have an excuse to talk to my friend about the art we’re making, and this time it’s something we’re actively making together. It’s taken way too long to get something like this started, but I am grateful that I’ve finally got the time to dig in and work on something new.

This is an 18x24 charcoal drawing on newsprint to capture the mood of the story and to establish some basic character details.