Back to the Moonshine... For a little while, at least.

I've only got a few weeks before the SCAD Fall quarter starts up again. I'm already up to my receding hairline in paperwork for the forthcoming school year. I'm still trying to wrap up assessment stuff from last spring.

Since I got back from San Diego I've traveled back to Alabama for Kristie's brother's wedding, I've been fighting a nasty cold (a post-San Diego tradition), entertaining guests (my parents came in for an extended weekend), dealing with SCAD paperwork, prepping for classes (I'm re-working a few of the courses I'm teaching) and other such distracting endeavors.

I hope to get as much done on this Moonshine story as I can while I'm out of class. You can see one of the more recent pages on the desk above. I've got another project that I'm hoping to start up with a friend in Alabama. I need something to give me a break on this big project. I don't realistically see myself finishing it for at least a year or two. I'm counting on at least one more summer to work on it, maybe two. Given that amount of time, I imagine that a side project would keep me sane. I'm really looking forward to it.

I've read most of the books I got from San Diego. Maybe I will take the time to write a review of one or two of them. I'm back to reading the Cerebus collection - which I hope to finish before classes being. I'm up to Rick's Story, so I don't know if I'll make it but I'll get close.

Kristie's still plugging away on stuff for her show. We're both sick of this summer heat. I hope to find myself in Atlanta next summer. I want to teach for a quarter at SCAD-Atlanta. I don't think I'll get a chance to teach the Survey of Sequential Art class here in Savannah any time soon (except as an online class). I think they'd let me teach it up there if I can get enough people to take it. Maybe I could teaching some other basic course up there as well to give Shawn the opportunity to teach something else he'd like to run. I guess we'll see.

I'm officially on Jabber these days under the scad sanctioned id: daduncan@im.scad.edu
If feel inclined to say hello, feel free.

RSS.

Well. I've finally began to organize my rss subscriptions in a formal way. I must say that I am enjoying it. 

I think all webcomics should be broadcast on some sort of rss or atom or whatever else sort of 'feed.' one could imagine. I find that I am able to actively check all of the newssites, blogs, webcomics, and such (that I so often neglect).

The one side effect is that when I find that one of my regular checks doesn't have a RSS feed, then I get flustered. If you run a web comic or a blog I want to read that doesn't have an RSS feed, you should get on that now. I won't name names (Jarrett, Barbara, Seth, Meghan).

More Moonshine Stuff.

The week before Comic-Con, I decided that I didn't like how Rob's shirt was looking. I thought that I'd try using zip tone instead of hatching. Then I thought I'd try using it on all the characters. Well I spent two days going through and changing the textures on the boys.

I thought that it looked alright - and I still think it looks okay on screen. When I printed them out, however, I think it looked like crud. All that time wasted. Ugh. So I decided to go back to the original hand-drawn hatching and just change Rob's shirt (seen below).

Here are a few more random pages.

San Diego Report.

It was a fun trip to San Diego this year. This was the first time that I've ever stayed less than 2 miles from the Convention Center. We were right next door in the Marriott. A very special thanks to Ray for organizing the accommodations, and to SCAD for picking up the tab. Easily the fanciest hotel pool I've ever graced:

The weather was really great. It was nice not being sweaty and hot all the time. A nice cool breeze is something that we never get in Savannah.

Although the convention was sold out on Friday and Saturday, I think the crowds were actually smaller than previous years. Maybe the organizers restricted the number of attendees or people just didn't come because they were afraid of the massive crowds. Who knows. Keep in mind that it was still too crowded to move around. It takes more than 30 minutes to walk from one side of the convention to the other.

As per tradition, I have a lovely shot of Rob Liefield's sad eyes.
If you see Ray ask him about the Rob Liefeld bathroom incident.

Speaking of Ray, we got to go to the Warner Brothers party, which was really fun. That's Anna with Ray - she's working at Cartoon Network on Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. I didn't want to use a flash in the party, so that's why the pic is so dark.

I must thank all of the SCAD students/Alums/Faculty who helped work the SCAD Press table. Next year we're going to have a big honkin' booth. It was great to sell students mini-comics (I'll be returning profits and unsold books to their owners soon, so don't worry). We had countless helpers. Andrew, Hunter, Justin, Chris, Jamie, Doug, Kevin, and many others. If I've forgotten to list you, then please let me know. The biggest award goes to Geoff for being there whenever he was needed and picking up everyone's slack and being the best seller for out table. If you see Goeff tell him he's a great fellow indeed. Here's shot of Hunter and Justin at the table.

I managed to come away from the convention with these goodies:
- Flight Vol. 4 (thanks Kazu!)
- Scott Pilgrim by Brian Lee o'Malley
- The Clarence Principle by Fehed Said & Shari Chankhamma
- The new Chris Sanders sketchbook
- The Effigy Mound (new Sam & Max Sketchbook) by Steve Purcell
- The Replacement God (ironically it's replacing a copy that I lent out) by Zander Cannon
- Black Cherry by Doug TenNapel
- When I Die I'm Going to Mars by Shannon Wheeler
- TMNT Artobiography by Kevin Eastman (who actually wrote 'cool beans' in my book).
- Sky Doll by Alessandro Barbucci
- A cool Cartoon Newwork Bag (thanks Anna!)
- The Penguin Book of Comics - an old 1960s history of comics. What fun!
- Some other stuff I'm sure...

I'm glad to be back in Savannah with Kristie (who's working hard on getting her September show together), but I wish the weather here was nicer. Compare this shot from last night to the San Diego pictures above:

From Dallas Fort Worth.

Once again, as is custom, I am trapped overnight in Dallas/Forth Worth on my way back from San Diego Comic Con.  This time it's a much nicer hotel, but no food voucher. ugh. I'm looking forward to getting back to Savannah and back to a regular schedule of work and such. I am also looking forward o shaving my beard - it is out of control.

A few Pages.

Here are a few out-of-order un-cleaned-up pages.
I know there are some problems (like the disappearing and reappearing collar on Dan).
We're in Alabama for a few days (I'm here fore a week) and I wanted to at least put something up here.






For anyone is Savannah who wants to send mini-comics to the San Diego Comic-Con can put a stack of them outside Trisha's office (Norris 1a) before the monday before the convention.

Moonshine page process.

I wanted to show my process for this book that I'm working on.
I usually work on two pages at a time, but I'll only do one for this explanation.
Here is the drawing table that I work at.


The laptop on the desk is used primarily for reference. I've taken almost 1000 reference pictures on my trips back to Alabama over the past year. I will probably continue to take more as I go home. It's nice having all them right in front of me as I need them.
I have a general plot/script that I've written:
I've gone through and made notes that brake the script down in to specific scenes that I later intend to break apart in to flashback sequences.
I then work on a series of thumbnails for each page, working out pacing, composition, page flow and dialog. I carry this little blue American-eagle notebook (a x-mas gift to Kristie from her family) in my back pocket so that I can work on it where ever I go. I'm using a tiny Pilot pen that my dad ordered from Japan (Hi-Tec-C 025mm). Since this whole Moonshine book will likely be more than 200 pages, I'm trying to stay as far ahead of myself in thumbnails as possible. Some artists thumbnail the entire book before they ever get to work on the actual drawings. Craig Thompson did thumbnails for Blankets for 2 years before he started drawing. I'm not doing that.


After I choose the layout that works best for the story and what I want to convey on this page I then pencil out the page onto a 14"x17" piece of Canson Smooth Bristol board. This is my favorite paper. The total panel area is 10"x15". Standard comic book size. I've tried working smaller on some of my other stories, but I always find that I usually like working bigger.




After I'm happy enough with the pencils, I then rule out the panel borders using a Speedball B-2 nib on a dip pen. I know this is a little larder, but I tend to like thicker panel borders. For my Gobnobble stories I never ruled my panel borders, but for this book I think it looks much better. I'm using an ink mixture of of Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay Black India Ink and Winsor & Newton's 951 Black Indian Ink (the one with the little spider on the bottle).

I hand-letter the page using Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph tech pens. I primarily use the .08 for dialog and balloons. Once again this is a little larger or standard lettering, but I think it works best for me. I've upgraded to the Koh-I-Noor Black Drawing Ink for these pens because the standard ink that comes with the set is too thin and watery. These pens require a great deal of care and maintenance, but I've noticed that the Savannah humidity keeps the pens from clogging. Even when I was using these pens back home in Alabama, I had a heck of a time keeping them clean. I destroyed a set of these when I was in high school. Note that I'm using all-caps lettering for this book. I used mixed case lettering for my Gobnobble stories, but it just didn't feel right for this book. I think I might switch to all-caps on my other stuff when I go back to it. If I need more control for something specific, like on larger sound effects ("UNGH."), I draw out the word with a .60 and fill it in accordingly.

Once I start putting ink to the paper I being to make notes on the sides of the page regarding errors or other problems that I'll fix after all the inking is done. I use a red color pencil for this because it won't show up when I scan the page into Photoshop.

After I finish lettering the page, I move to a brush. I've been using a Winsor & Newton Series 7 No. 3 brush for a while. It gives me the line weight that I want while still being able to give a pretty thin line when I need it. I only ink the primary characters, black areas, and other prominent elements in the panels. This is the fastest stage of the inking process.


I then come back with my Rapidograph pens to build value and texture in the images. I've been getting much of my inspiration from Gerhard's background for Dave Sim's Cerebus. This takes forever sometimes. I rarely go below 0.6mm and never below 0.35mm. The largest pen I have is 1.2mm. These are all from the same pen set (40 bucks online!)

Once the inks are through, I erase the whole page. This is where the quality of ink is important. Many inks will fade or erase away during this stage.

Finally I will clean up the whole page using Winsor & Newton Permanent White Designer Goache. I fix all of the errors I have noted on the side of the page (those notes are super handy), clean up the borders and gutters, and given each panel a once-over looking for problems.

Once the correction fluid dries and any other fixes have been made, the page gets thrown into the pile.

Then I start again.

Heroes report.

Here's a view of the SCAD table on Saturday. (Sean, Arf, Sean, Joe, & Shazz):
The star of the table was Tom. He organized the SCAD table at Heroes event.

Kristie took a few pictures during my workshop. I showed around 125 slides during the lecture portion of my presentation.

Some of the workshops on Saturday had as many as 60 attendees. I only had 25 show up for mine, but that's pretty good for a hand-lettering discussion early Sunday morning.

Then I did a digital-lettering demo (until my battery died) and then I showed them how to hand-letter their work.


I must say it was a pretty fun trip. Also present were many other SCAD students and faculty. Now I can get back to working on my own stuff!

Heroes Con this Weekend!

I'm super busy getting ready for Heroes Con this weekend. I'm nervous about this workshop because I don't know how many people will show up or what sort of people will care to hear me speak.

If you are around Charlotte for the Con you should come by and see the SCAD table or even drop in on the Workshops. If you've already had any of these teachers before, I doubt any of the teachers will be covering anything in 1.5 hours that wasn't covered in the 50 hour SCAD course.

I'm doing Hand-Lettering and Typography for Comics
Tom is doing Basic Superhero Anatomy
Ray is doing Cartooning for Comics and Animation
John is doing Basic Maquette Making
Mark is doing Comic Script Essentials
Shawn is doing Composition and Design in Comics

Mike Getty drew this one (John Lowe inks):

The second poster here is drawn by Josh Dunbar, inked by Tom Lyle.

Finally this one is drawn by Ted "the fancy cook" Helard, inks by Lowe again.

More Sketchbook.