Stephen Hawking - disabled comic

I loved drawing and making Stephen Hawking for Blue Water but the lettering/script and my not leaving enough space didn't make much of a finished readable comic. Here's some of the pages, the worst being the one where the lettering is right over the hands in the middle of the page. I'm very proud of the art, specifically a boat rowing page - I insisted on inking this one because of how the others had gone. I'm pretty sure most comic shops don't carry Tidal wave as they are now called because of their reputation for books like this and not paying their artists (also like this) but I found these floating around the web and it's almost half the issue so I figured I'd post my learning experience.

Shakespeare and Manga

"Brevity is the soul of wit" - meaning be brief and efficient - and in media I take it to be - "don't waste my time." It is a problem I have with most all media today. Especially tv and movies (a lot of anime specifically), and comics (a lot of manga specifically). Its been called a post-literate or a-literate world, a world of instant gratification, visual and not written information, and for that reason stretched out stories. What old creators used to do in one issue now takes an entire tpb to do, and makes them that much more from each unnecessary additional issue. I think the format of manga is made to make you feel like you are gaining progress, like a pat on the back as you read. you seem to get so far in so quickly that you can't stop because you've read so much - but you haven't. There are usually 3 or fewer panels per page, all with one or less word balloon that probably has less than six simple words in it. I am speaking in generalities but when there is so much of something its easy to do. Every manga is a series, and I don't mean 6 issues, I mean volumes upon volumes, bookshelves long. And most Anime is not feature film, it's a series, not 13 episodes like a season of tv in the states but 20-60-300 episodes long. And you watch them waiting for the 2 minutes per episode when the budget blows up like a fire cracker and spend the rest of the time in anticipation and disbelief of how little could happen between those scenes and in the 1/2 hr and episode takes place. I have enjoyed my fair share of anime, manga, comics and movies but what I can't stand more than anything else are those that take for granted your effort to experience them. That save anything interesting till next issue, episode, after the first hour of the movie etc. That thing will go on the cover guaranteed, then you will read, watch etc a good portion that doesn't involve it and if it all possible probably totally avoids the thing they've conceitedly dangled in front of you on the cover to get you to read it. It's the worst! Its so disrespectful to the reader and I feel like a cow being pushed through the gates in just the way they want me to with no way to turn around or make a choice. If your lucky they give you just enough at the end to get you to forget how bad it was the entire rest of the way so that you'll do it again next issue, or hour of the movie, or episode. And now they've got you invested. Now you don't want to stop because your hoping your effort was all worth something that will help you overlook all the mistreatment instead of just giving the reader what is advertised and moving on from there. Now I bashed anime/manga a lot just there, but no comics are more famous for using the cover gimmick than american ones. Sometimes featuring something that doesn't even happen in the issue or ever. Marvel used to put spider-man's head in the upc box just so kids would pick up issues thinking he was in it when he wasn't. People that say, oh just wait, it'll get good soon - keep going are the worst. If it was good it would have been already. I appreciate a good start/hook to a story as much as the page turn, but some of the stuff today just seems like the page turn. No payoff, just incentive to keep reading and not stop. I could go on but I needed to atleast point out in the ironically not brief post, that creators, writers, readers. we deserve better. maybe this economy and this tough time on the arts is good and will make companies only put out what is good from the start, because you might not make it to a second season if you don't give us something worthwhile in the first or even first couple episodes as we've seen recently. So don't hold out just assuming we're so incredibly interested in your amazing story that we'll wait till the end to get anything else but filler and fluff. The journey is more important than the destination, and readers/watchers especially need to make their voice heard, we don't have enough time for it to be wasted. If you're not getting what you set out for/payed money for/or tuned in for/ stop, turn it off, return it, or just get it from the library. We vote with our money and time, and in these days, choosing to stop something and realize that it's not turning up, is just as loud of a vote as tuning in to see if your interested. if the creators appreciate you and there is something there, you will see it. if not, call their bluff and move on. your time is precious, so dont let anyone tell you/sell you/or write otherwise.

"Real Books"

So I'm now noticing after basically only reading comics for a few years out of college I'm now having a hard time going back to novels. I championed comics as a gateway to literacy when you're young, but at my age it can almost be a crutch. And I do believe that there are different processes in your mind when combining pictures and text but now I've developed other problems. I have found reading books with larger font helps me but that might be just my eyes. Even my attention span has shortened, I don't know if it is conditioning from the fairly fast reads that today's comics are but I can't bring myself to be interested to read for a novel for more than 10pgs to a chapter or so in a novel before I get bored. I can't keep track of names or visualize characters or scenes that arent pictured somewhere. Am I just used to comics showing my exactly what's going on that I've lost the ability or become lazy to the point that I don't fill in the details with my mind? I have the same problems I had in high-school, I'll space out in the middle of a paragraph and have to reread. Part of it may be that I'm doing most my reading in my bed, which I've heard to never study in your bed, because your mind associates locations with actions, such as sleeping. Though I am able to make it through novels with terse fast paced short sentences like the Parker novels. Is everyone getting to be like this, and will we have to actively fight to not be like this or have I just overstimulated the visual part of my brain and, like a drug, am not getting the same high off of purley text reading material.
And on a last note, me and my little brother tried to read the Megamind comics, which are funny but aimed at an audience who can't read or understand the words megamind uses. Though I heard Stan Lee used to do that specifically to get kids to look them up and expand their vocabulary - but do kids really do that these days, or just put it down and move on?

easter eggs, art and everything else -finally

heres a wallpaper i did for my bubbie, she's so beautiful.
heres the roughs for 24 pages of y the last man, done on 1 and a half 8 1/2 x 11's

and heres the tight roughs - done 2 to a 8 1/2x11.



heres my "tight" roughs, lol - for the just in time script which i peciled in one night and did tights and blew them up the day before.

heres the 10 mins sketches we had to do to come up with an original astronaut, mine won when the class voted ,and then a spaceship to match, mine lost - big time even though i liked the ship more than the astronaut. they were for goto for an inclass storyboard assignment.


and here is the original sketches for noah, the 1st is more of a Charlton Heston thing going on - he's fun, not necessarily animatable but fun. then goto said to push him farther and i did, loved it, blew it up on the artograph and inked it.
figured now that im posting some stuff id add a few easter eggs as well for those of you interested enough to visit this page. so heres how i originally drew and inked the parts of the drawing. because i was in colorado i didn't have the size paper nor did i know the dimensions of the art or if he was going to want me to change anything so i did it in pieces.
next i assembled the pieces in photoshop using the multiply layer option.

and then made blocks of color under the ink layer so i could color each effect seperatly and on their own layer without messing with or effecting the rest of the art. this was an alternate idea i had for coloring based more off some old marvel silver surfer stuff that i was inspired by for the line art as well. you can find the final image with title and everything by followingthe link in the previous post or checking my deviant art http://xaqbazit.deviantart.com/

this is my drawing of kate that i tried for my lost animated characters, and the 1st sketch of ben that actually looked like him. i also dicovered men were much easier to characterize and make extreme and exagerated, women just got ugly really quick - however i felt this version of kate was too close to generic female and wasnt as close or iconic of a look as the others i did, which i will post on deviant and link soon.

i also posted a few more videos on my youtube account, have to get back to ga to split up drown and scan storyboards for it. http://youtube.com/user/xaqbazit

Square One - 24 hr comics competition

square one is posted at webcomics nation - you can view it here i posted the origional cover that i scrapped because i didnt want to do color printing so instead i op\ted for a b+w cover on different color paper. ill post an image later. anyway here it is, its a 24 hr comic. i did this fall semester 07.
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/xaqbazit/square1/series.php

editor's day

mike o'sullivan from devil's due reviewed my portfolio, i showed him my pages from the 2000 ad script and the justin time projects from larrison. i had the pages on the right and then scans with word balloons on the left. it went really well, he said i had "phenomenal energy" and that they just needed to be tightened up, which i could agree with since i did each of the projects in a night. but he really like the composition of the 1st just in time page and said i also need to work on anatomy a bit, some more life drawing. especially my hands, which kind of hurt because i was in hudson's hands class but they have gotten kinda wonky. anyways gave my second appt to james, with someone from alternative comics. im sick now and had to cover for someone at work the same night of editor's day, after i asked for it off. sliced my arm at work and am just so out of it today - fever etc. not to much hw so ill probably rest. when i get the stuff up on deviantart ill post a link.