Wow, nearly Christmas.
I have four days of work next week, then I’m off til, the New Year.
Adam has drafted the outline of the remainder of this part of the wychwolf story, so hopefully we can push through during the holiday and get everything finished an into a buffer.
I’m going to need as much slack as I can have come the end of January as I start the Further Object Oriented Programming module of my CS course.
Anyway
Happy Christmas
I listened to a podcast with John Allison who creates “Bad Machinery” talking to Dan Berry this morning as I walked the dog across the frosty fields. It was strangely depressing for me, as John is very forthright, and honest in criticising the UK Web-comic community, for it’s lack of professionalism, and the inability of the artists to sell stuff. Having been on the table next to John at the last UK webcomix thing I understand what he is talking about, and feel I am definitely in the poor performing camp. But what do I do about it? Do I knuckle down and pull out the stops and only produce the very best work I can? Or do I give up? I’m not sure. I’ve enjoyed learning in public, whilst working on the Wychwolf story, but sometimes it really is a lot of old bother.
Just realised I’ve already drawn this pic somewhere before.. not sure if I posted it here. Will dig it out and stuff it up as a blog pic.
It’s been another busy week, lots of trips out and about, combined with a dog that seems to live for going on walks and doing enormous poos.
Had another test for my CS degree this week too.
Anyroadup, longing for a bit of a break around the beginning of April.
Adam seems pleased when I don’t tamper with his script… I ran out of space for a couple of words this week, and you have more of a time tunnel effect than a puddle of water, but that’s just the way it goes.
Back to actually drawing stuff this week, on real paper with faber cast ell pigment marker, and a bit of scribbling from a mitsubishi uni-ball eye pen.
I feel a lot happier with the result even though I had to cover some nice bits with Adam’s words…
will try and leave more space for the yapping..
I first drew the gates in this picture about twenty years ago. They are the back gates to Appuldurcombe House on the Isle of Wight. I drew them for my friend John who runs the dairy farm there, and wanted some postcards for his B&B business. I’ve always thought they were very well balanced, and rather splendid, even though they are hidden from public view down a nettle bound track.
So back in the wychwolf universe, it’s a month or so after the events at the end of wychwolf part 1, Florence and Brian have been recovering in the Institute’s (London) infirmary – Brian under observation by Eric (since he’s the only one to come out of this un-injured in some way) and the research team for his werewolfism (or whatever). Gerald and Brian have just collected Brian’s stuff, and we pick up the story as they arrive at the BrightAngel Foundation.
So we meet again…
I’ve tried quite hard to squeeze as much corny dialogue into wychwolf as is possible. I think it comes from a childhood imbibing the wonders of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes.
This week I decided NOT to run in sepia.. I usually colour everything then remove the colour to get a range of grey tones, then enhance, using a couple of reduce blue, increase red filters. But this week I wanted the brain to be nice and pink, and whilst that would have been a nice highlight, I thought the colour was actually ok.. just for completeness I’ll sepia it up and add it as a separate post.
I know, I know, canopic jars didn’t store hearts anyway, they stored livers and such like.. but they certainly didn’t store brains… brains were just picked out of the nose with a hook and ditched. There’s a really good “stuff you should know” podcast on the the evolution of mummification processes, can’t find a link.
Sketched during the Royal wedding, and inked with my trusty old Rotring 0.5 and 0.2 isographs.
I’ve installed photoshop elements on my powerbook now, as I prefer it to CS3, which is quite a discovery… the general view is that CS3 is better, but I just found it needlessly complex for the workflow I’ve got in place. I guess I could re-learn, but there seems little point.
It makes me wonder what other premium items would be worse… I’ve always fancied a bigger tablet or even a Wacom Cintiq, but it might be I’m more suited to the titchy bamboo… it’s certainly portable.
Dog Soldiers was on last night.. I missed it, but the term has been in my mind throughout the story.. WHY has Duvall been making these Dog Soldiers. Well for a couple of reasons.. or three reasons.
1. He’s barking mad…
2.. well you’ll have to wait and see.
Lots of DELETER no3 black ink in todays pic, in fact a lot of it all over my hands. I looked at a “how to make your own cintiq” site last week… this week I find myself far too busy to even consider starting another project I might not finish. Looks like my day job has an extension till March 2012, so I have a job for another year. I guess that makes me one of a very lucky few.
Powerbooking this entry, with my new super cheap G4 1GHz ebay special.
I love it.
Artstuff: Windsor and Newton indian ink, Deleter G nib and Windsor and newton sketchpad.