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!!

My first work in mass publication!

Today is a momentous day because my first issue of coloring for Marvel is out in print!  Go and buy Deadpool Max #8 right now!  Even though my name isn't on the credits (yet... ;)) know that I played a big role in coloring pages 8 through 20.  More work to come in future issues!

As for AER HEAD, I've been getting together with one of my other cartoonist friends for drawing sessions.  We work on our own stuff but are in the same place.  It helps motivation to be around other cartoonists :)  Because with all the other projects I have going on, I end up pushing my personal comic work to the side, which isn't good in the long run, because it's super important for me to get my own work out in the world.  Life is a balancing act.  In the grand scheme of things, though, I think I'm on the right track.

Anniversary

You can see a preview of Marvel's Deadpool Max comic that I colored here!  It's #8 and will be out on May 18th - mark your calendars!  Here's a page out of five that Comic Book Resources posted.

I'm currently coloring #10 right now.

In other news, today, April 30th, is the one year anniversary of me moving to NYC.  The year has flown by!  As I reflect upon the year, I accomplished a lot.  Even though some times were slow for paying work, I was always meeting new people in my field and made valuable connections, sometimes without even realizing it!  The major freelance jobs I eventually got were a combination of preparation and luck.  Who knows where I'll be a year from now!

DeadPool Max

Some of you have been telling me "I want more AER HEAD!"  I know - I do too!  My freelancing has been picking up lately, which is great news for me, but it also means that AER HEAD takes a back seat for a bit.  When I was making a page every other week back in the fall, I was also unemployed :/  I wish I could work on AER HEAD full time and somehow get paid for it, but in the meantime, I'll keep trying to find a good balance between work projects and personal projects.  But I'm excited to say that I'm getting comic and animation work:

Recently, I became a colorist for Marvel!  I'm an assistant to Kyle Baker, who draws some of Marvel's comics.  I just colored DeadPool Max #8, which should be out next month.  (#1 is shown above.  All DeadPool Max characters © Marvel 2011)  It's so crazy - I never thought I'd be working for Marvel because our styles are so different.  But I can color in any style!  Kyle draws in Photoshop and sends me the files, and I do the "flats," which are the solid colors.  Then I do some shading, send it to him, and he touches it up with his personal flair.  You can see an example of a panel I colored here.

I've also gotten an animation gig, animating the end credits for Heart of a Doll, the film I was an art assistant for (see last post).  One thing leads to another :)  I'm so glad things are finally starting to come together for my career, after a year of being in NYC.  What will the future hold?  Only Aeryan knows ;)

Being an art assistant

I had an awesome time being an art assistant for the short film "Heart of a Doll", directed by Ash Mayfair.  I learned so many new things and got to work with great people!  Since it was a period piece set in 1965, I made a lots of props like a fake photo and helped make a fake newspaper.  Lots of work went into converting a family's kitchen into a 60's looking kitchen - painting, putting up temporary wall paper, and lots of other details.  I was "on stand-by" for a majority of the shooting time, meaning I had to be ready after a "take" was done and had to reset the props back to their original positions.  I also needed to fix things on set (changing a light fixture, trimming curtains, cleaning glasses that were used as props).  I also sawed part of a flat (fake wall), and felt so macho like I could build my own house!  I loved the variety of tasks, and it kept me on my toes!  Even though I brought my comic boards with me, I didn't get a chance to do any work on AER HEAD :P  I did manage to get a few quick sketches of some of the crew, though:

I really liked being a part of this project, and would like to do more work as an art assistant for films.  But probably not too much, because the long hours (literally from when you wake up early to 11pm, even all nighters sometimes) don't leave me time to work on my true passion, which is comics.  But I love trying all kinds of freelance projects and learning all sorts of new things!  It's important as a freelancer to be versatile.  (Sketch of Lauren © Mayfair Pictures 2011)

In other news, Max West featured my work on his blog, Sunnyville Stories!  You may have seen Max posting some useful tips on this AER HEAD blog - he's really on top of things like blogging and progressing on his comic.  His stuff is worth checking out - I think it may be a big hit with kids in the future.

Rush

Layouts have been a breeze ever since I finished storyboarding!  For some pages, I had a pretty good idea of what kind of layout I wanted, but I'm trying to make the others the best they can be.  Also, doing them all at once will make them more consistent.  Right now I'm in a rush to get things ready for a film shoot that I'm an art assistant for (random, yes!  but awesome!).  I'll be helping create the sets for the film and changing sets from scene to scene.  In the downtime between changes, I hope to get more layout work on AER HEAD done - we'll see how that goes!

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.

Little bit of this, little bit of that

Since I've been using markers more for freelance sketches, I thought I'd do a little test on blending:

They're Prismacolor markers, and they blend kind of well...  I'll practice more in the future.

In other AER HEAD news, it seems like whenever I start storyboarding for the current issue, I keep sketching ideas for events waaaaayyy later in the series, and even for my other comic series!  This is still productive in the long run, but stretches things out for the short term.  But hey, I'm my own boss when it comes to personal projects, and I've learned that when I get inspired I need to just run with it.

In other other news, I've been going to a lot of lectures about the business of art by the Graphic Artist's Guild.  I have a thirst to learn all I can about this subject.  One lecture was how illustrators can survive in today's marketplace.  Basically, if you're great at illustration, just keep trying for projects and learn from your mistakes.  And if you're not great, try for work in other fields, because it takes everything you've got to make a living as an illustrator.  Another lecture was about "creative briefs" for large scale graphic design projects.  Even though it was mostly geared toward small design firms, I learned a ton about how to handle many kinds of business situations with clients, some I would never have imagined.  I even went to a "fashion roundtable" one time, where I got to talk with designers in the fashion industry.  Even though fashion isn't my niche, I went anyway because you never know where something will lead.  It turned out that some designers were able to point me to some interesting things I may not have looked into otherwise.

One of the reasons I'm so glad to be in NYC now is that I can learn so much from so many talented people from all scopes of the art world.

Custom Comics

So far mindyindy.com has focused on AER HEAD, the graphic novel I'm (slowly) working on.  My freelance work has been picking up, though, and I want to share some other comic work I've done recently - a custom comic!

A custom comic is a comic specifically made about someone, usually as a gift.  In this case, the client wanted one about her boyfriend for his birthday.  The client told me many details about her boyfriend's personality and life, and sent pictures for reference.  We discussed the format of the comic (3 panel strip vs full page, color vs black and white), I drew it, and voila:  the perfect birthday gift!  Both the client and her boyfriend love it and intend to hang it in their new apartment.  There was even talk of being Action Alex for Halloween!  This was super fun and I want to do more of these projects!

I put a new Custom Comics page in this blog's upper right corner, listing my rates and more details.  If you would like me to create a custom comic for you, just send me an email (mindy@mindyindy.com) or call 734-776-6477 so we can discuss details.

"Oh, it looks like anime!"

That is what many people say when I hand them my business card:

To which I cringe, because while I love and have been greatly influenced by anime and manga (see my Inspirations post), I am actually trying hard to make my comic NOT look like anime!  I'm trying to emerge my own unique style, and I don't like it being categorized like that when I know there are differences between my style and anime style.

"What about it looks like anime?" I sometimes ask.  The character's eyes aren't showing on the card, so it can't be huge typical anime eyes.  People are usually stumped here and say "Um, it just does!"  One guy said "The mouth looks like anime!"

When I invented my AER HEAD characters years ago, though, the style was VERY anime:

Those eyes are GINORMOUS!  Now THAT looks like anime, no doubt about it!  That's a screen cap from an animation I did in 2004 called "Cute but Deadly."  Btw, the character on the left in green (Andy) is the same one on my business card.

But even now, when I sketch characters really quickly, the style tends to look anime-like, maybe because it's more simplified:

But to me, my final comic pages these days don't jump out at me and say "anime."

There is probably the underlying anime drawing style still there, and as much as I try to change it, it still shines through.  One of my professors said that sometimes you just have a certain style, and nobody can beat it out of you.  But hey, maybe the anime-like style will attract some anime fans :)

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?

Chilling out

Sometimes it's important to take a break, especially during the holidays!  I'm not gonna be a scrooge and work on anything during Christmas.  Or the days before and after :P  Times like these are good for slowing down and enjoying life and the real things that matter. This week I flew over the rainbow back to Michigan (literally - I saw a circular rainbow beneath the plane!) and have been having a great time chillaxin' with the family and visiting friends :)  I love the hustle and bustle of NYC, but it is good to be back home again for awhile.  It was super weird driving my car again though!  At first I was like "OMG will I remember how to drive?" but it was just like riding a bike - you never really forget.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy (belated) Hanukkah!  Here's to more exciting AERHEAD adventures in the new year :)

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 Art of Time Management

This is how far I've gotten on page 5:

I've realized this past week that I need to spend more time trying to find freelance work and less time making my comic.  I love creating AER HEAD and it's my true passion, so I'll definitely keep making progress on the comic and posting something each week, though.

I've been very good at dividing up my time between projects at various jobs in the past, but since this comic is my passion, I let myself be a perfectionist about it.  It obviously takes a lot more time and care to create than a typical stick figure web comic ;)  I have considered cutting corners by drawing at half the size.  That would cut half the work, and in this case that's better than doing a sloppier job faster.  Usually cartoonists draw at the big 11in x 17in scale and shrink it down so the art will be "super tight" when printed.  But I've heard more than a few cartoonists say what's the point of drawing so much detail if it almost disappears when shrunken down?

More plans for AER HEAD include merchandise like stickers, T-shirts, prints, and the comic book itself, that people can buy through PayPal right here on my blog!  But until then, I gotta pay the bills like everyone else.  Recently, I have managed to get a part time job at an art store :)  I'm very happy because it's art related, I work with super nice people, and I get an amazingly awesome discount!  If you must get a day job, try to get something related in some way to your passion.  It will be so much more rewarding than a daily grind because you'll still feel connected to your goals - more than just the money goal.  You could also meet more people in your field and even potential clients.  And I can't overstate the awesomeness of a great discount on supplies I already buy - it just makes sense.

But even so, part time won't cover all the rent, so would anyone like to hire me for any projects?  :)  I can work long distance too!

Inspirations

Many animations, comics, tv shows, movies, places, people, and other things stirred around in my brain to form AER HEAD.  My main inspiration is Daft Punk's animated music video of their Discovery album -  "Interstella 5555:  The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem."

I already loved Daft Punk's music and was totally amazed when I saw this anime-like music video in 2003.  I can't even begin to describe it's awesomeness, so watch the animation here.  I love the style of the characters and how colorful everything is!  The film was produced by Daft Punk, Cédric Hervet and Emmanuel de Buretel along with Toei Animation, under the supervision of Leiji Matsumoto.  Interstella 5555 © Toei Animation 2003.

Another influence is Colleen Doran's "A Distant Soil" graphic novel series.  Isn't that picture so beautiful and sparkly?  I LOVE Doran's work!  I'm mainly inspired by her vivid color schemes, fluid coloring style, and collage-like page compositions, where panels can be any shape and meld into one another.  I even got to meet Doran one time at last year's New York Comic Con!  I totally geeked out :) A Distant Soil is published by Donning/Starblaze © Colleen Doran 1989.

Another visual inspiration for AER HEAD is the light of late afternoon summertime.  Not quite sunset yet, but like 5 in the afternoon.  When it's super hot out, the sun is blazing and casts a golden light over everything, reducing objects to wavy silhouettes.  This is why I love to use so much yellow and shadows in AER HEAD!  It definitely gives that summertime feel.

Also, I took this picture looking at Coney Island from Brighton Beach.  That old Parachute Drop ride even influenced some buildings on page 1 of AER HEAD.  That structure looks so sci-fi!  Doesn't it look like a space ship that just landed there?

AER HEAD's story is greatly influenced by Lost, or the first few seasons anyway.  I got busy with college and work and stopped watching all TV, and just never got back to the series.  However, I was very intrigued by what I did see early in the series.  For those who don't know, Lost is a sci-fi drama of plane-wrecked survivors' mysterious encounters on an island in the middle of nowhere.  I loved all the bizarre things that would seemingly happen without explanation!  Like the random polar bear on the tropical island and the mysterious hatch.  The writers of that show were excellent story tellers that mastered the art of suspense.  In terms of AER HEAD, let's just say that things are going to get weird.  Very weird :)  Lost © ABC Studios and Touchstone Television 2004-2010.

Those are the main AER HEAD inspirations, but there are many others like outer space, manga creators Rumiko Takahashi and Osamu Tezuka, the movie Inception, and even Scooby Doo!  And I already mentioned San Diego's influence in my second post.

Oh, there is another major influence... but I can't reveal it yet because it may take away some of the surprise later on ;)

This week I've been drawing page 5, which you'll see next week!

Page 4: Aeryan's Dream

I always learn something new each time I create a comic page.  This time I was wondering about natural dialogue vs. screenplay dialogue (taking out interjections like well, um, and so on).  I just read a chapter about dialogue in Richard Walter's "Essentials of Screenwriting" book, which says to take out interjections because they bore the audience.  This makes sense for movies, but comics are different.  I took some out, but kept a lot in because I think it makes the characters more realistic if they speak naturally.  Aeryan just woke up, so he's a bit fuzzy and slow in the morning.  To me, it would be weird to have him dictate every detail of his dream to the alarm clock without hesitation.  I'd like to know what you think about this matter - do Aeryan's ohs, ummms, and hmmms make him sound more natural, or do those interjections just distract/bore you?  Or do you think something else? On a different note, the middle of this dream was inspired by a dream I had, combined with The Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight music video.

Happy Thanksgiving!

How Great Thou Art

I was in an art show this past Saturday called "How Great Thou Art" at Old St. Patrick's.  It was super fun!  I loved meeting everyone and talking with people about my art and their art.  It was a great way to get my artwork out to some people who may not have seen it otherwise.

I practically got a whole wall to myself, and I displayed the originals of the surfing promo illustration and the first 3 pages of AER HEAD, along with print outs of the final pages below them.  This was especially important for page 3, where I edited the sound effects in Photoshop.  If you just look at the original without context, it doesn't really make sense for Aeryan to get jolted out of bed in reaction to... nothing.  I hand drew the words in the margin of the original instead of typing them.  I could do a whole post about why I prefer hand lettering over computer lettering, but that's for another time :)  Also, here's a strange but true fact:  the sea green wall color was practically the same color I used for the water in all my pieces!  Yay for coincidental color coordination!

These next 2 photos are courtesy of George Goss, who had a large vivid photography piece in the show.  The guy in the fedora I'm talking with, Mike Lahey, sung and played guitar very soulfully.  There were many other great performances throughout the night including opera singing, a rock band, and poetry reading.

George was also taking pics of lots of people in front of this chalkboard that had artsy writing all over it.  I think people wrote about whatever art meant to them.  All I know is that I was called there and then posed like a diva.

So I want to be in more art shows now :)  I never really thought the gallery would be my scene, but I'm loving it!  If you know of an art show or gallery that fits my work, I'd love to hear about it.

In the meantime, I'm drawing page 4 - what's Aeryan's dream like?  Find out next week!

Page 3, now with more panels!

It's part of your balanced breakfast!  So pages 1 and 2 are "splash pages," where most of the page is taken up by a single image.  Page 3's layout begins my more regular use of comic panels to tell a story.  Although they aren't the typical square panels you see in other comics - I love to play with compositions of all kinds. And I'm not a morning person, but at least my alarm clock (phone) doesn't usually try to attack me.  Usually. OH although sometimes in bed in the morning my arm ends up over my head somehow and it goes numb and I wake up to something hitting my face:  "OW!  What's that?  It's AN ARM!  AHH!  It's MY ARM!"  (end pointless drama).

In other exciting news, I'm in an art show THIS SATURDAY 11/13/10!  The show is called “How Great Thou Art” and will feature live performances as well as other fine artists like myself.  I'll exhibit the first 3 AER HEAD pages and a special AER HEAD illustration.  If you're in the NYC area, please stop by!  It's from 6pm to 9pm at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral School House, on 32 Prince Street (Between Mott & Mulberry Streets).  Here's the facebook event.  I'm super excited - I haven't been in a show in quite some time!