Art for Art's Sake

Megacon ’10 After Action Report

kotaotan — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:57:37 +0000

So this is two months late. Sue me. Instead of going on a day by day report as I meant to, I figured I’d go over the highlights.

First, I got to sit next to my dearest Kit for four days. How awesome is that?! Kit was a huge encouragement to me in the face of diversity. I didn’t think things would go too well and she kept me in a good mood. I tried to do the same for her. It was a more subdued con than in ’08. Several of the nightgig crew were not able to attend or didn’t come. KC wasn’t there. Karl was but even he had a more subdued appr0ach. There were some great highlights though. I got my copy of “The Life and Time of Scrooge McDuck” signed by Don Rosa himself. I did NOT get to meet any of the Star Trek folks there though. As excited as I was about LeVar and Brent being there I nearly flipped my wig when I saw Robert Picardo. Alas, I did not get to speak to him. Maybe next time.

On the whole the attendee’s weren’t as forthcoming with cash this year. People would pass by and talk about how awesome something was and then not buy. Seemed to be a running theme. I did meet some very interesting people though. There was a nice young lady dressed as a Team Fortress 2 engineer who commissioned several Transformers sketches from myself and others at the nightgig row. I also met . . . THE FRO!! An awesome dude who gave me my own afro. Check out the guy’s stuff.

I also managed to re-meet the guys from Stuck-on-Anime. These are some great folks who’ve bought some of my fan art and turned them into stickers. I’ve got several adorning my Macbook now. If you happen to catch them at a con, look for my Dalek and Hellboy. They turned out great.

There’s tons more I don’t remember so I’ll go ahead and close for now. More later today or tomorrow about last week’s Free Comic Book Day.

Shifting joy and still working.

kotaotan — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:11:26 +0000

First off, Megacon report is going to be late.

So I’m currently REALLY enjoying the tactile sensation of drawing again. I get so much joy from it it’s ridiculous. I also have started looking for excuses to use my long neglected Copic markers. there’s something terribly satisfying about drawing something and coloring in the same sitting. For me it’s just pure creativity channeled and put in one place. It feels like magic sometimes and I suppose it is a kind of magic (all apologies to Queen) when you get down to it. You’re taking nothing tangible and making something that literally did not exist a few minutes before. The image that seems to be a culmination of this feeling is this:
I did this for one of Kit’s friends. Her name is Alice and she absolutely loves Daredevil. I’d tried tackling this a few times in one pose or another, but this time it just seemed to click into place. It was probably the commission work I did at Megacon that finally get my juices to the point where I could handle this. At any rate, I got a lot of joy and satisfaction from doing this picture!

There is a down side though. I realized it after scanning the next page of Errant Apprentice. I nearly dread having to do the digital work and editing necessary to finish the comic. I just doesn’t thrill me the way it did. This isn’t too big of a surprise though. I tend to go through swings between drawing and coloring being my favorite part of the process and I always end up just having to slog my way through until I come out the other side. I’m a little upset about it though this time. They’re both part of what I do and what I enjoy doing and I shouldn’t really need to look at either as a chore. It’s an odd thing when your hobby sort of starts feeling like a job. Anyhoo, that’s all I’ve got for now. More as it happens and expect the blog to pick back up now.

Megacon Bound

kotaotan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:40:38 +0000

So here I sit all anxious, excited, and nervous. I’m going to be flying out this afternoon to the only con I know. Megacon in Orlando. I’ll be in the brown row. Megacon’s always going to have a special place in my heart no matter where life takes me. I found friends there, I got to do a crap load of art, and most importantly my life changed forever when Kathryn White came into it. Before I was a web cartoonist. Now, thanks to here support and suggestions, I’m a graphic designer who does comics. Makes you wonder what’s going to happen this year.

The Beat and How to Swing It.

kotaotan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:11:59 +0000

Music is such a huge part of the process of creation for me. I keep forgetting that. I’ve gotten back to listening to music on a more regular basis since I got the Mac book. It’s lead to some rewrites and other ideas cropping up and that really is a good thing.
I suppose one of the earliest instances of this was Dream Theater’s album “Images and Words”. Every single series I’ve written has in someway taken an idea from the music from that album. EA and Mailbox included. “Take the Time” is still one of the most epic songs I’ve ever heard and it still makes me get all goose-bump-y when I hear it and picture action sequences happening set to the song. Another song that changed everything was “Greenman” from XTC’s “Apple Venus Vol. 1″. I’d had the idea for Errant Apprentice for many moons. The idea of a knight and magic in a modern setting has probably been done to death in one form or another, though I personally have never seen it. The problem with the series was I had no real direction or reason to tell the story. I’d gotten the title for Errant Apprentice from an Irish song I’d heard Jim Flanagan perform, but other than that I had nothing. Then I heard “Greenman”. In the span of about twenty minutes I had the whole reason for all of it. I suppose Andy Partridge deserves a co-writing credit on the series just for that.

Something else about music that is interesting is that it’s not always the lyrics. A LOT of times it’s just the flow of the song. The feeling and colors that come from it. I can see what’s happening to it. The mood effects the mood of the story. I suppose the funny thing is that all these comics are just a substitute for my inability to do an animated series. Ah well. The point is, take your brain off the hook every now and again and see where the music takes you.

PS: I’m currently absolutely enthralled with Imogen Heap’s work, so let’s see what happens with that.

Methods and Madness

kotaotan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:57:41 +0000

One of the things my instructors at school have told me on several occasions is there are several ways to skin a cat. I’ve been discovering that over the years of working on Kota’s World and The Errant Apprentice. Originally, I was just futzing about in Photoshop. I’d just color right on the line art and pray to God I didn’t go over the lines. I started duplicating the art and setting it to multiply and coloring below it. Finally I hit on http://www.polykarbon.com. It told me how to make the line art a transparent layer. The site claims the tutorials there are old and stupid, but frankly I find they’re just as informative as always. By the time I’d hit Errant Apprentice I was doing things I was very happy with and was convinced I’d keep using it for ages.
Then they showed me Illustrator. Michelle and Susan showed me the things I could do for drawing and coloring and I decided to give it a shot. I toyed with inking on the computer, but the time it took to do a comic went from four hours to eight to ten! I’ve started hand inking again and coloring in Illustrator.

Currently my method consists of scanning my inked art at 300 DPI and moving it to the Mac. In Photoshop I adjust the curves into and “S” shape to brighten the whites and darken the blacks. From there it’s straight to Illustrator. I run livetrace and set it to “inked drawings. I adjust the path fitting to around 5 or 6 and check ignore white. It makes it all a bit cleaner.
After that I use the expand feature to shoe the paths and points. I copy the line art and paste it into a template I use from Ka-Blam and color on a layer behind the line art. The color is just shapes. I can apply effects and the color ends up much more even and is easy to manipulate.

All this being said, I keep buying these books about how to color comics. I notice that everyone keeps coloring with Photoshop. Am I the only one who’s using Illustrator like this? I know Jeph Jacques from Questionable Content uses Illustrator to completely draw his series. I’d love to see the guy work but I never really get to watch Ustream stuff. Actually, I wish I knew some other web cartoonists who worked digitally, but that’s another rant all together I suppose.

No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to die!

kotaotan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:41:50 +0000

Last night I watched “Quantum of Solace”. I enjoyed it for the most part but, like the title, I have no idea what in the nine hells was going on! I didn’t realize that until Warren pointed it out. We did come to a very interesting conclusion though. James Bond is not a secret agent. He’s a natural disaster and the most deadly sexually transmitted disease known to man.

Let’s take a look at it for a minute. In QoS James comes to any given location, Italy for example, and within ten minutes it lies decimated and littered with the dead. Even churches are destroyed. Mike suggested that it wasn’t Katrina that hit the coast. That’s a cover story for Bond vacationing in Biloxi and New Orleans. Since this seemed to set a riffing mood, I was on the verge of making a comment about Haiti when I’ll be damned if James doesn’t head straight for Port au Prince and proceed to work his magic. Five minutes later there’s a wrecked hotel, coffins lining a street, and boating accidents left and right. That’s right. James Bond may well be the source of all global catastrophes. Don’t even get me started on the building toward the end. Five SECONDS inside and it’s all ready on fire and exploding! FIVE SECONDS!!
Then there’s the poor women. Oh God, the women. In these new films every woman James is sexually involved with is killed in some horrible, brutal, or depressing manner. The only women in it he didn’t sleep with were the Bolivian woman and M and they both lived. What does that say? It says that this man’s “area” should be marked as HAZMAT and sealed under two miles of concrete. Women should carry a gun JUST for 007. M pointed out herself that women seem to lose their minds and do anything for him. The hell, man?! The hell?!
That being said, I’m putting a call out to everyone. I want this man stopped! Bring me the head of James Bond, agent 007 for the safety of the masses!
Unless he’s actually a Time Lord. In that case we’ve got seven more Regenerations before he can be stopped. In which case someone find his TARDIS or something. STAT!

Driven

kotaotan — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:31:04 +0000

I think the subject of just why artists do the things we do is probably the subject I’ve written the most on in the last ten years of doing comics. Far be it from me to stop now given that I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Every now and again I have to reaffirm why I do this. Call it reviewing my mission statement.

Ten years ago I starting reading Sluggy Freelance and I decided “Hell, I can do that! He sucks!”. Bare in mind that was his early stuff. The next day, Christmas Day, I drew a comic. It was crude and was going to be about the behind the scenes of a comic that never seems to happen. Ironically, that comic never happened. What did happen was I didn’t touch it again until sometime in April. I drew another comic with a version of myself and Austin. I showed my friends and they thought it was, well, there. I told you that story so I could tell you this one.
I did another one a few days later. I assumed I’d stop after that like I did everything else. Then I showed the second one to Austin. “You did another one?!” I think that did it. I liked the shock. I liked the idea that I could do something on a regular basis. Five years later I finished the story I started. I’d had problems finding motivation all during Kota’s World. I’d thought about quitting the thing several times. Then it was gone. I was going to take a year off. I didn’t make it. For all my belly aching and moping I needed this.
I still do.
Sometimes I forget this. Like now. I keep looking for reasons to keep going but, when I get down to it, all I should do is look back on that six months where I didn’t do comics. I don’t know what exactly it is, but I absolutely need to do this.

Insecurity Coat

kotaotan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:34:08 +0000

So I used to wear this trench coat. . .

Probably not the best way to start this, but one of the biggest problems I’ve had through my life was one of self esteem. I suppose it all goes back to my childhood, but that part is for my therapist to hear. The real point is that I don’t have much of it. Sure I have an ego, but that’s not the same thing as self esteem when you get down to brass tacks. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself or my abilities. I don’t really respect myself to some degree and that’s where the coat comes in.
I had this trench coat that I wore on and off for years. Part of it was I thought it made me look cool but mostly it was a shield. I used it as a form of armor. I felt separate from everyone. I eventually grew out of wearing it, as one is oft to do with childish things, but it left it’s mark.
My dearest Kathryn pointed out to me once that in my two series, Kota’s World and The Errant Apprentice, both of the main characters wore trench coats or dusters. Somehow this had escaped my attention. On some deep level the armor had made its way out. Despite what a friend once mentioned, all of my main characters are an idealized version of myself or contain qualities that I wish I had. Terry especially. The coats are a way of identifying myself with them more. Interestingly, I’ve started drawing Terry without his coat more and more lately and now that it’s time to work on Mailbox Rocketship I find myself designing Keith without that signature piece of clothing. In both cases it’s a conscious decision. It’s time, once again, to take of the coat and put it away.
The question is can I really put it down? I’m not physically wearing it anymore and neither are the characters, but as I sit here and type this I can feel the sleeves. I feel the long material draped down the sides of my chair. I feel the collar around the back of my neck. I still have my armor on. I’m still trying to be cool instead of trying to be me. I’m still trying to please people instead of pleasing myself. I have to put on a show on some level and that’s what the coat is all about. It’s a character that I still haven’t stopped being on some level. I’m still trying to be the snarky main character of a TV show that doesn’t exist. There is no audience. On some level it may be why I started making comics in the beginning. I need that audience. I need to be seen to exist. Otherwise, who am I?

Art for Art’s Sake.

kotaotan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:06:21 +0000

So, welcome to my blog and such. I’ve been trying to figure out what I was going to do with this thing for a while now. I’ve considered rambling, I’ve considered Elton covering Errant Apprentice, I even thought about doing a story blog to tell a Lovecraftian story. In the end I’ve decided that this is my art blog. I’ll post drawings, I’ll wax philosophical about the craft, and I’ll talk about my attempts to become a professional. Other than that I’m not sure where this will go, but I hope you’ll come along.