DRAW-FAST-NOW-YES!!! This Saturday!

Happy New Year! If one of your new year’s resolutions is improving your drawing skills, I’m teaching the perfect class for you if you’re in the NYC area. DRAW-FAST-NOW-YES! at Classeteria in Bushwick
is a short & sweet class on how to draw faster this Saturday 1/12! Only $25 ! Only 1 hr long! Drawing fast is more about quick thinking than about technical skill XD We'll do lots of drawing exercises to loosen up & it'll be lots of fun - please join! 2-3p. Classeteria is 284 Suydam, between Irving and Knickerbocker, 11237. Take the L train to Jefferson or M train to Central.

Please register here: http://www.classeteria.nyc/draw-fast-now-yes?fbclid=IwAR3MUyvgGeNd6j0FeJLsIFB1cKzGB2PVGFwUVWi-kLOlF4JN3QvtDwm2fQs

NYCC Day 1 recap

I'm writing this post Thursday night, but people on the email list will get it Friday.  Today was Day 1 of New York Comic Con, open only to Professionals.  It was pretty slow, and is mostly a time where professionals can meet new professionals and reconnect with old friends.  In the pic above, you'll see some new items on the table - my drawing sign and my friend Ellen Stedfeld's comics (she's helping promote my work by handing out fliers and sitting in for me at the table :)

I'm next to a really cool guy, Scott Zambelli, who's also from Michigan!  He was really encouraging today and had lots of helpful advice on exhibiting at large conventions.  He suggested drawing mainstream characters interacting with the misfortune cookie, because fans are drawn to more well known characters first.  He even drew Batman looking scared of a misfortune cookie!  Such a nice surprise!

I'll try drawing Deadpool with the misfortune cookie, because I've done Deadpool work before.  I did draw a little bit of my own stuff:

It's the pomeranian from the first Misfortune Cookie comic:

Since it was so cute, Scott suggested I draw My Little Ponies to sell.  Going to be drawing a lot tomorrow!

Luckily, I was smart enough (and allowed enough time) to use the elevators this time, for the stations that HAD them.

Misfortune Cookie Animation!

I've been working on a very special project - a Misfortune Cookie Animation!  I love doing hand drawn animation and use a light table to see through the drawings on paper.  It takes longer than animating on the computer, but I want the drawings to look like how I drew the comic.  The animation is part of a larger project, which I'll reveal in the next few weeks :)  Part of my plan to get stuff ready for the Baltimore Comic Con that I'm in September 8th and 9th!

New Aer Head Sketch and Scanner

Yesterday I drew this in the park.  Drawing outside is a great way to enjoy the summer weather and still be productive!

Also, I scanned the new drawing with my "new" scanner that I FOUND ON MY DOORSTEP!  FREEEEEEE!!  This is a HP Photosmart C4280, is in good condition, and works pretty well so far!  Yay for rich people buying the latest gadgets and giving old ones away!  Awhile ago, I bought a complex scanner on sale (Epson Artisan 725) and it was WAY too complicated to use and didn't even print right (jagged lines).  After being frustrated with trying to figure it out and tech support saying it would take months to a year to tweak the settings and learn how to use it, I returned it.  I just want to press a button and have it scan or print!  User friendly is my main priority - I'm picky about colors, but not THAT picky to have the printer be a pain in the ass to use.  As for this new one, I need to get a black ink cartridge to test the printing, so we'll see.  My main need was the scanner anyway.

AER HEAD cover

Back to drawing more AER HEAD!  I've been sketching thumbnail tests of the cover for awhile, and decided on the layout.  I wanted the cover to have lots of important points that occur in the graphic novel.  Aeryan is dreaming of the future up in the left corner, and his dream merges with the waves (so the rest of the cover is his dream).  He's surfing in the middle, but with a look of determination because near the end of the novel he has to warn people of the solar flare (giant sun on the right).  You know how some covers just have a big picture of the main character looking cool, but not really doing anything?  I want all my covers to have a definite purpose.  Also, all the artwork will look the same INSIDE as it does on the cover!  My biggest disappointment in picking up a cool looking comic is that it has an awesome cover, but the inside looks nothing like the cover and is black & white with a crappier art style.  Aer Head will NOT be like that!

AER HEAD the boxer

I've just finished drawing this page!  Aeryan boxes as well as surfs.  Rocky was my main influence on this aspect of his character :)  Aeryan can predict the future sometimes in his dreams, and I wanted to balance that mental power out with physical strength.  This comes in handy for Aer later in the series ;)

I wanted to post a recent drawing in time for MoCCA Fest this weekend.  It's a smallish comic convention that focuses on more independent cartoonists and small press.  It raises money for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, the museum I teach at.  Last year, I thought "next year, when I have the first book of Aer Head all done and published, I'm gonna get a table!" ... and I'm saying the same thing this year :/  I drew a lot this past year, but I need to push myself harder.  It takes serious discipline to focus on drawing at the end of the day when I'm tired from working other jobs.  But mark my words, when this comic is finally finished, it will be totally awesome :)  Just tonight, I was at a comic book release signing at Desert Island Comics, and I told the owner, Gabe, "when I get Aer Head published, I want to have an event here" and he was cool with it :)

AER HEAD chronology

A new addition to mindy indy is a new page just for the finished pages of AER HEAD!  There's a link that says "AER HEAD" on the upper right corner of this webpage.  Click it and you'll see all the pages in order, instead of having to skim through old posts backwards.  Yeah... I know it's still the same 5 pages.  But know that I'm making progress! In other news, the New York Comic Con is coming up in 2 weeks!  I'll be there trying to get more coloring work and learning more about self publishing.  I think I need to self publish AER HEAD first, then once people see it, other publishers may want to pick it up.  I need to keep my rights though.  That's super important, because too many artists sell out their dreams to big companies and the artist gets nothing in the end.  My boss (Kyle Baker) keeps mentioning the Super Man creators.  Near the end of their lives, they were homeless while Super Man was known as the most popular comic character, making movies and lots of money for other people.  I've learned so much, not only by being his assistant, but just by being around Kyle because he tells me lots of history about the comic business and about his own experiences.

In other OTHER news, I started taking a "Figure Drawing for Graphic Novelists" class at the School of Visual Arts.  It's taught by Tom Motley, and I'm learning so much!  At first I was apprehensive about taking this class in the middle of drawing AER HEAD, because I didn't want to feel compelled to redraw the whole thing again after I got better and realized all the old drawings sucked.  But I brought some of my comic pages to class and Tom recommended some tweaks, but I wouldn't have to change the whole positions of characters (so far).

So lots going on over here!  Stay tuned.

Surf's Up!

I've been drawing lots of the surfing poses lately.  When I get into a groove, I like to draw similar pages or subjects all at once.  I looked online for reference pictures.  And this is the first "full" page I've posted in quite some time.  I felt this page doesn't give anything away, so it's safe :)

I actually haven't surfed before, but I'd like to learn someday!   You may ask:  why would you make a comic about that, then?  Well, surfing is something the characters DO, but it's not the main focus of the comic.  It's like how I love to go to concerts and go jogging, but it's not part of my artistic work.  I want to make my characters well rounded.  What IS the main focus of the comic, you may ask?  There are many foci, but one is about learning how to discover your true abilities.

Drawing up a Storm!

Do not adjust your screen - that drawing is purposely sideways :)  I had to scan it sideways and realized it looked even cooler that way!  Looks like Aer is pouncing on/fighting with Andy rather than warning him about something (dun dun DUNNNN!!!).  As my hero Bob Ross says, gotta love the happy little accidents in art.  I've been drawing up a storm for the past week!  15 pages!!  YES!!  Well, 15 almost complete drawings out of about 45 pages (the first 5 of which are completed and posted on this site).  So that's about 25 (wait... check the math..... yes!) more pages to draw.

I couldn't even fit all the pages on my desk.  This is the way to go though - I love working on multiple pages at once.  That way, if I'm stuck on a pose I can work on something else and go back to it later, and I'll reach a better solution.  I'm also working backwards - these are the last 15 pages of the comic, because I felt like doing the real action sequences now :)  The life of a freelance artist is constantly changing, and since my other work has taken a break for a bit, Aer Head kicks back into full gear!  You will see more!!

AER HEAD is NOT DEAD!

Hello everyone!  After such a long summer hiatus from drawing Aer Head, mindy indy is back in the game!  There are many reasons why I dropped out of my usual routine of drawing, but the main one is that I have lots of paying comic work.  That's a good thing, but I was usually too exhausted after 12 hour days to get much done with Aer Head.  New York's freak hurricane pushed me back into drawing more, because what else am I going to do cooped up indoors on the weekend?  (It's true that summer weekends usually involve me going to the beach or an outdoor concert or something, instead of sweltering in my non-air-conditioned apartment trying to draw).  And now I'm going to be working from home more, so that cuts 2 hours of wasted subway time to and fro my mentor's studio (albeit no more free lunches... until he finds a new studio).  Deadpool Max #11 just came out yesterday, so please check that out!  I colored the whole issue of that one!  Kyle (my mentor) has also been teaching me 3D animation.  Now, I'm a 2D person, so I was very intimidated about it at first, but I caught on quickly.  We're working on a short 3 minute animation of his to send to animation festivals and pitch to networks.  It's exciting!

There's a ton more to catch up on, but I think I'll try to keep my posts shorter and more frequent, so I can spend more time drawing rather than writing stuff for the blog posts :P.  It's good to be back!!

Layouts

I've finally moved beyond the storyboarding part of the comic this past week!  I filled in all the gaps of the first episode and made sure everything flowed well and made sense.  Onto the next stage:  page layouts!

A layout is a general page composition.  I use circles and boxes to fill where characters and speech bubbles should be.  Layouts are important before doing detailed drawings so I don't have to erase them later if the composition isn't working.  Sometimes if I have a really clear layout, I get carried away at this stage and start to draw details, like below:

This is Pipsy remembering Aeryan growing up.  And yeah I can't deny that that page looks like anime :P

Sometimes I daydream about how great it will be when my AER HEAD graphic novel will be complete, but then I remember that the fun is in the journey and process of making the comic.  I'll continue to work at a steady pace, but I don't want to rush AER HEAD because I keep thinking of more cool ideas to help its story grow.  Rome wasn't built in a day.

Keep on Truckin'

This past week I've been working so much at my day job that it's been wearing me out!  But lots of work is a good thing.  Whenever I get a spare moment on the subway, waiting before an event to start, and in the late hours of the night, I've been fleshing out my storyboard.  I have most of the first episode of AERHEAD storyboarded and am filling in what  happens in between main events.  Last week you saw me take the pages off my wall and spread them on my desk.  This week I stacked all the pages on top of each other to see how it would read sequentially as a comic, which was super helpful in figuring out what I was missing:

It's pretty thick!  This makes me happy.  Here are some tidbits of drawings that are better than scribbles:

Storyboarding Storm

NYC has gotten hit with a couple bad winter storms lately.  One day, the heat in my apartment decided to take a vacation and left my roomies and I in the cold!  Hence the gloves (I love the finger/mitten ones!  You can actually grab things with them!)  I wished the sunny beach scene I was coloring could radiate heat.  I usually sketch in pencil but if there's a particular scene I need to test out I'll use color.

I've been storyboarding the rest of what will happen in the first episode of AER HEAD.  I took all the pages off the wall that would be in the first segment and spread them on my table so I could better see what I needed in between.  I counted 30 pages on the table, and I'm not even done with the whole thing, so it may be 2 comics instead of one, but I'll worry about that later.  The important thing is that I get all the important elements down and edit out over-explanatory details.

Oh and the heat was fixed by this picture.  I was just wearing the hat due to a bad hair day.  People suggest putting photos and videos of themselves on their blogs, but for me that requires looking presentable, which isn't how I usually look when I'm just in my apartment drawing.  Who really gets all dolled up just to sit at their desk and do artwork?  You're getting the real story here, people ;)

I've also made a tentative time line of when to finish storyboarding this segment and move on to comic page layouts.

Until next week!

New Year's Resolutions

The new year is a great chance to get a fresh start on many things.  In the past I made long lists of resolutions and didn't get to half of them.  This year, though, I will only officially make one I think I can keep:  My goal for 2011 is to finish and publish the first comic of AERHEAD!

I've also decided to return to my original method of making comics, which is to draw multiple pages first, then ink them, then color them.  I'll do this in batches - I've divided the story into three parts, and I think the first segment should amount to one comic of the series.

When I started this blog, I altered the process of making my new comic to match up with posting each week.  Creating a new page every other week from start to finish was a good way to make quantifiable progress.  However, it's not the most efficient way to do a long graphic novel.  A friend I met at MoCCA said I was "starting and stopping" all the time and couldn't seem to get into a good work flow, and I realized he was right!  For example, when I was drawing page 5, I really wanted to draw page 6, but had to hold back because if I did I wouldn't have time to finish the current page in time to post.  Doing many pages at once will also keep my style, story, and details more consistent.

So you've gotten a taste of what the finished AERHEAD comic will look like from the first 5 pages.  I know you are hungry for more AERHEAD!  I'll keep you updated on my progress, but my only fear is that I'll lose readers if I don't post finished pages in awhile.  Any thoughts?

Page 5 is finally done!

There are so many things to say about the making of this page.  My main struggle was the setting.  I started to draw the page and was like "Oh crap, I have to draw their kitchen!"  I had to realistically think of what kind of apartment they live in like an interior designer.  I know what it looked like from the outside (see the left cone structure on page 1) but I hate drawing interiors!  I'll get better at it the more I just do it, though.

I started with how I wanted the characters to interact.  This is Dr. Pipsy's intro, so I wanted a close up of him and then Aeryan entering in the background.  I wanted their environment to be more realistic, so I looked around my own kitchen and thought of futuristic versions of the appliances.  But all those little details took forever to draw and then ink!  Also, there was the problem of the background getting too busy when I inked it.  In the top panel, Pipsy has lots of gadgets in the foreground and I didn't want the background to compete with them, so I didn't put any spot blacks in the furthest kitchen clutter.  Spot blacks are the filled in black areas of a comic page.  I usually looooove putting lots of spot blacks in my comics, but in this page they didn't fit the background well.

Another interesting note is Pipsy's dialogue - he's an Englishman!  I looked up American English vs. British English online and even asked my friend Ariel who's studying abroad in London for suggestions.  One difference is using words like well, right, and jolly in place of "very."  And you can bet the trousers off your bum you'll see spellings like colour and aeroplane in the future ;)!

The Process (Don't try this at home)

Here's a little about the process of how I did the first page, and I'll answer last week's question at the same time!

1.  The left page is colored by computer, whereas the right one is water color.

Now, backing up a bit, why did I color this twice?  Backing up even further, I usually draw directly on the comic board, but I was inspired by some people in my class who used transfer paper to save their drawings (instead of inking over them).  I've been told by various people that my drawings are better than my inking skills, so I wanted to save it.  First, I drew the page on newsprint, as shown here:

Then, I traced it on transfer paper to transfer it to the comic board:

It kind of looked like a blue print!  Then I inked it on the board:

But then I realized if I wanted to use water colors, I had done the page on the wrong paper.  EPIC FAIL.  I didn't think ahead to the coloring process.  I really wanted to use water color because it was a strong aspect of my previous comics, but it would buckle the current paper and pieces may start to rub off.  So I tried coloring on the computer:

And this looked fine.... but it just didn't feel RIGHT.  And it looked like coloring I'd seen in other comics before.  So I took the original drawing and REtraced it onto better paper (vellum bristol), RE-inked it, and finally water colored it, ending up with this:

All in all, I do NOT recommend the transferring process.  True, it's cool to keep the drawing instead of inking over it, but it's totally not worth the time and AGGRAVATION.  Although, if I hadn't drawn it on another paper, I wouldn't have been able to transfer it a second time to another board...  Anyway, the rest of my pages won't involve this ridiculously insane process - I was just trying out something new.  I hope I can save some poor soul from making the same mistake.

Another thing that I changed when transferring was:

2.  Different buildings in the foreground and mid-ground.

The story begins in the futuristic city of New San Diego.  But in my first draft, the buildings didn't look... San Diego-y enough, even for it's future.  My sister lives in San Diego so I've been there many times.  I tried to incorporate the Mexican influenced architecture more in version 2.  Some have also said that the city looks more like San Francisco, but there's a reason for that on page 9.

3.  Replaced "Part 1 Aeryan the Dreamer" with "A Mindy Indy Production" and my signature.

At first I tried dividing my story up into little parts of 4 or 5 pages, but the end format will be a graphic novel, so the "parts" seemed unnecessary. That, and having a title page so often seemed kind of ridiculous.

4.  I made a black outline on the title (version 2).

Not sure how noticeable these next two are to others when scaled down on the computer:

5.  I made a broken outline on the shiny parts of buildings and other things (version 2).

6.  I gave Aeryan's hair more texture lines (version 2).

7.  I added another bridge and more city on the smallest island in the background.

So those are the major changes!  There are countless smaller details too - one of my friends also noticed I had added a new sign in place of some buildings.

Stay tuned for page 2!