Back in January, I did a short, 9-page comic called 狼来了, or “the wolves are here.”
That comic, along with Sunflowers and Rainbows, will be included in the second volume of the Sugar Ninjas anthology, which is due out by the end of the month. To celebrate the release of the book, Howl Gallery/Tattoo will be hosting a month-long exhibition featuring artwork from selected creators included in the book.
I apparently didn’t need to submit art relevant to my included comics, but I figured it’d be for the best anyway. Since I recently finished up Rainbows and Rainclouds, I kind of wanted a break from that art style and those characters and did some work inspired by the wolves are here instead. This triptych did not originally start off as a triptych. It was just a single painting — the one furthest to the left — but I thought a companion piece would look nice, so I painted the center image. I liked how they looked together, but then I thought it would be pretty cool to balance the whole thing out with a third piece. Thus, a triptych.
Unfortunately, as far as the exhibition goes, I have a limit of a two-foot wide area to display my work, which means that if I want to include all three pieces, they’d have to be printed for smaller frames, probably 5×7 or so. After some deliberation, I decided to just use the first two paintings in 8×10 frames. So at the show, it’ll just be a diptych, rather than a triptych.
The prints turned out great and I really like how they look framed!
Sadly, I won’t be able to attend the opening reception for the show on August 6th as I’ll be in Austin, for Anime Overload that weekend instead. But if you’re near Fort Myers, Florida, you should definitely check it out! I hope people take good pictures though, because I really want to see the rest of the art included in the show. I’m mailing off this diptych tomorrow and have included very limited number of prints for sale at the show, but I may do a second run of prints for conventions next month to accompany the minicomic version of the comic. If anyone’s interested though, the originals of all three paintings are for sale, so feel free to email me about it. I should eventually be getting a small storefront specifically to sell off originals though. Maybe by the end of the year?
Yesterday, I finished up a series of paintings I had been working on for the past few weeks. I wanted to try out some more message-oriented, magazine-style illustrations, so I figured this was a good way to go about it. It was also a good way to get back into doing watercolor paintings since I didn’t get to do much painting while I was working on Rainbows and Rainclouds (which, by the way, is still available for preorder). There are five paintings in the series, though one of them is debatably a painting at all.
I’ve never really painted text, so this was interesting. For “Write It,” I was more concerned about getting it to look good than I was about the fact that there’s no way a typewriter could 1) produce copy that big, 2) change fonts, 3) change inks. The text here was outlined with quill and ink first and then filled in with waercolor, which is why the edges are a bit uneven. I rather like that look though. Read the rest of this entry »
Heeeeey, so after a month of corrections, edits, sending off for multiple proofs from multiple printers, and wrestling over price VS quality issues, Rainbows and Rainclouds is finally ready for preorders! For previews of the book and comic, you can dig through the “rainbows” tag here on this blog.
The books are softcover, perfect bound with awesome full color interiors for the entire 40-page comic and two bonus illustrations. They are $20 each, and shipping is $5 (added at check-out) within the US and +$2.50 per book for international shipping (sorry, guys). All preordered books will be signed and include a free sketch. Don’t forget to include a note with your order if you want me to make a dedication out to someone! I’m going to also try to include the printed minicomic version of Sunflowers and Rainbows with every preorder. It will depend on a few factors, but I’m gonna try!
An eBook version is also available in PDF format for $4. The eBook will be automatically available to everyone who buys a real book, so you won’t have to wait long at all to actually read the comic! (It might be more exciting to wait for the physical copy to ship though!)
Preorders will end Sunday, July 11th at 11:59 pm CST. Hopefully, this leave plenty of time for me to get the books to you before the end of July.
After preorders, the book will mainly be available at conventions or other events I attend. I may eventually make them available for regular purchase online, but I haven’t decided yet, so it might be best to snag your copy now!
This was my final assignment for a basic computer class. It was my first time using After Effects and I did this very leisurely over the course of a week, so it’s super simple and not very exciting, but I’m pleased with it. Man, animating characters via puppeting sure beats tweening and frame-by-frame. If I had known about this earlier, I would have probably done a lot more random animated shorts in my free time. XD But with this, I am 100% done with all of my school work for the rest of forever. Ahahahaha…
Considering I ordered it on Sunday, I’m really surprised it got here so quickly, even with expedited shipping (since expedited shipping doesn’t mean expedited printing). I kind of wonder if I could have gotten away with just getting ground shipping, but whatever, it’s here with time to spare, and I don’t regret paying extra for it.
I worked steadily all last week coloring 3-5 pages a day, and I meant to work through this week also. If I had stayed on schedule, I would have finished coloring by Thursday, but I ended up finishing late Friday night/Saturday morning instead and then doing the cover this evening. It wasn’t that big of a deal though. I just wanted to finish everything earlier so I could have plenty of time to prep the files for printing this weekend and then send everything off to Lulu by Monday so hopefully they’ll be able to print and ship it before my final critique. As far as the class goes, I could have stopped coloring on page 30 because that’s all that will be due on the final critique, but whatever. 40 pages and a cover, done two weeks early, how about that.
So I was probably a little annoying on Twitter last night and this morning constantly noting the progress (or lack thereof) on these pages. It was really my own fault I ran so close to the deadline though. I had actually managed to ink six and some odd pages over Kami-Con and so finished up all of the inks by Tuesday of last week and by Thursday had cleaned and fixed up most of what needed to be fixed digitally. One of my periodic deadlines for the class was today and I was supposed to have a minimum of six pages colored in addition to the finished inks. Personally, I wanted to have eight pages colored.
But basically I had the entire weekend, Friday-Sunday to color those pages. Long story short, I put off starting them until midway through Sunday afternoon and stayed up all night to finish the required six before I had to go to my eight o’clock art history class Monday morning. But heyyyy, I finished. I always finish.
We got back into Savannah at 3:30 am last night after driving for like eight hours. Kami-Con was the furthest I’ve traveled for a convention thus far, and losing an hour between Alabama and Georgia didn’t help either. Despite that and the ridiculous weather over the weekend, Kami-Con was a good time and I even managed to get a few more pages of Rainbows and Rainclouds inked while I was there! And I remembered to take more photos of things other than cosplayers and my table this time, though I’m not sure they’re all that interesting and I also forgot to take pictures of a bunch of commissions. Can’t have everything, I guess.
Here is a picture I took while we were driving. Hanging all my paper crane chains in a gigantic mess from the rearview mirror is the easiest way to transport them without crushing them. My Wedgehead Uglydoll chills by the clock because I decided that Meg needed some dashboard decor.
Actually, “Rainbows and Rainclouds” is still just a tentative title. I like the alliteration a lot, but there actually aren’t that many rainbows in this comic. Come to think of it, there aren’t that many rainclouds either, but they’re considerably more relevant! I’m not really sure what my other options for titles are though. The first comic was “Sunflowers and Rainbows” so I kind of just wanted to follow the “noun and noun” pattern. And if “rainbows” moves up from the second word to the first word, then maybe the hypothetical third comic would be “Rainclouds and [other noun]“? I have no idea. So I guess I’ll just stick with “Rainbows and Rainclouds” since that’s the best I’ve got.
In case you missed it, this is my Senior Project. So I guess it’s the last piece of creative work I’ll do as a “student.” After this, I’m a “graduate.” Damn.
