Category: My Comics

Lunatic is Available!

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Special Limited Edition or Fanfare edition….

My graphic novel/wordless book “Lunatic” will be published by Fanfare Presents and available in stores this winter; I’ll have copies this month, and it can be pre-ordered on Amazon as well.

But RIGHT NOW I have a copies of a Special Limited Edition, printed before Fanfare picked up the book. One feature of this version is that it’s printed at the actual art size (the book is 12″x9″). The regular edition will be slightly smaller (approx 9.5 x 7.5″). It’ll look great at that size too of course.

Relative sizes of Limited Edition (left) and Fanfare edition (right)

The trade-off is that there will be a 10-page “making of” section included at the end of the book when it comes out from Fanfare, which includes some of the process material found on this blog.

Relative sizes of a 2-page spread in the Special Edition (above) and Fanfare version (below)

Both editions are hardcover, and both will cost $20, plus shipping & handling ($5 in the U.S., contact me for overseas shipping). I don’t have many of the limited edition ones though!

LUNATIC SPECIAL EDITION (while they last!)

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LUNATIC FANFARE EDITION (pre-order, coming soon)

Lunatic Chapter 9 Process: Spatter, part 2

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I’ve gone back and added a few pages to the final chapter of Lunatic,… a chance to do more spattering!

Pencils:




Inks:

The globe-y thing in the middle is supposed to be casting light, so I want to shade the character’s clothing and face using ink-spatter. I mask off the areas that will NOT be shaded, using lots of little pieces of blue tape (and a piece of paper to block off the rest of the page):

Then pull out the old toothbrush-dipped-in-black ink and flick it at the paper a bunch of times:

Continue reading “Lunatic Chapter 9 Process: Spatter, part 2” →

Lunatic Chapter 9 Process: Spatter!

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For the last pages of this, the last chapter, I’m doing toothbrush ink spatter effects, for an alien/spacecraft that shows up (spoiler, sorry). Here are some process shots:

First the basic black ink on bristol. drawing, as the alien pulls the character toward the spacecraft:

Next I cut masks or stencils out of paper, and taped them over the page in the configuration I desired, to get the spatter effect around the alien & craft:

Then I dipped a toothbrush in white Kuratake ink, and (wearing surgical gloves), flick the ink over the paper:

Peel away the paper, and it looks like this:

(OH I didn’t document the process of getting that black spatter around the opening in the space-globe-thing, but it was about the same).

Getting very fussy now: I want to get that white “glow” around those objects, but I also don’t want the edge of the spatter to be too sharp, so I replace the paper mask, but peel back the tape for a slightly larger spatter area…

And repeat, another light dusting of spatter:

See…?

One last thing though. I wasn’t happy with the figure of the character, so I decided to redraw, first brushing black ink over:

Then re-draw it in white ink:

All done! Here’s a proper scan:

Lunatic, chapter 8: Process

Posted on by Dan

For this chapter, since I’m changing media or style in each chapter, I decided to try black, white and gray acrylic paint. After trying some different kinds of paper I settled on Borden & Riley vellum film as the best support.

Here are some process steps for Chapter 8, page 4

First, a rough sketch with watery, black acrylic. The borders are marked off with blue tape, so I don’t have to have a pencil line in the image.

One great feature of working in acrylics is the ability to paint over and make changes. I decided the figure of the woman was too tall in the sketch, making the doorway seem not as large as I wanted. So as I added detail gradually to the overall picture, I was able to paint over the figure in white, and re-draw at a better scale:

Gradually building up tone and texture:

The final image. Lots of little adjustments to tone and texture, and thanks to the flexibility of acrylics I was able to mess around a lot with the positioning of the front figure carrying the piece of sheet metal, until i was happy with it:

And page 5. She gets to work. I wanted to convey strength, like the WPA murals of Diego Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton, etc.

Page 5, first loose sketch. With acrylics, you don’t have to “pencil,” just start right in.


…and gradually refine, add tones…
I decided the wild hair was too much, and with the background gray paint, reshaped it.

Leaving the window unpainted, so that when scanned it will be the lightest spot in the image, the light source.

Close to final….
Finished, and converted to grayscale.

Page 6. The first thumbnail (in acrylics), and a more detailed sketch in pencil and pen (with a revised composition):

Page 6, final. Starting with a loose sketch and adding layers of paint, pushing and pulling the contrasts until I think it’s right:



Lunatic, Chapter 7

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With my one-page, transitional chapter 6 out of the way, I can move on to the next sequence. I want to get away from the cinematic, storyboard approach that I’ve been getting more and more into, pulled by the inexorable attraction of the filmic model. In other words, get as much information into a single image as possible.

At the Boston Comics Roundtable meeting on Jan 10, I doodled these sketches. Looks like a single comics page, but ideas for two pages of Chapter 7:

Here is the finished spread, based more or less on those sketches:

Lunatic, Chapter 6!

Posted on by Dan

I have been away from the project since the summer (it’s now January), for one or another reason. Getting back to something after a while always presents its challenges.

Luckily, I left off at the end of a chapter, so I can start somewhat fresh, and in this case “Chapter 6” is a transition… actually a single-page, single-image chapter, so not a bad way to ease back into the process (and to drawing in general).

Basically, it’s a graduation “photo,” to mark the end of her “youth” and into the next phase of the story. I looked at some circa 1900 graduation pictures for reference:

Some sketches:

Continue reading “Lunatic, Chapter 6!” →

Lunatic, Chapter 5: process

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JPG p 1 v2 shading 2 - DETAILAfter the last chapter ballooned to 34 pages, I decided to compress my story-telling for a while.  The next section is transitional, showing the character’s college career, as she knuckles down and studies hard.  I knew that it would be showing her studying long and hard in the library, and I decided it to do it in only 3 images, a progression taking place over a few hours.   I chose to draw the same scene 3 times, from the same vantage point, a bird’s eye view of the library, with the character far below, close to the center of the image.   The changing positions of the characters, and the changing light, tells the story. I have some ideas how I will add tones/shading, sticking to my principle of changing techniques or materials in each chapter.

Some pencil sketches:

p5 pencil sketch 1

ch5 pencil sktch 2

I want the drawing to be precise, the line clean.  An ink test:ink test

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“Lunatic” process: chapter 4

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(A diary of the making of this chapter, which begins with the first day’s work at the bottom, and moves up)

March 13: summing up the last 6 months of work.

Yes, six months later, and I am still working on chapter 4. The slow pace partly because of interruptions and creative blocks, but also because this chapter turns out to be the longest so far, and I run into certain problems.  And I’m still not finished with it!

So I’ll bring this up to date, starting with page 2, which I completed in late September. Pencils:

2- pencils only 9-26

Inks (still just inkwashes, the line work remains pencil):

2 -washes

Page 3.  I went through several versions of this, over the last couple weeks of October (MICE season.  A pencil version that I abandoned. I don’t really remember what I didnt like about this. The placement of the figure, maybe?  3 - pencils v1 abandoned

More pencils:

3 - pencils

And the ink washes added to that version:3 -v1

Again, five months later and I’m not sure why I wasn’t satisfied with this. But, apparently, I wasn’t.  The shape of the skirt is a little blobby, maybe that was it.  Anyway, here’s the final version.  Maybe I’ll end up using the previous one, I don’t know. I got options!

3 v2 2

 

Onto page 4, which was pretty simple, just one try (11/2/17):

4

 

 

September 20: Page one, at last!

After the slow process of the last few chapters, I’ve resolved to be more spontaneous, and allow myself fewer “re-do’s.”  Here’s the first page, drawn in one try, without any additional rough versions.  I changed the composition from the rough I’d done for the mockup, from this: 1

To this, the pencils for the final page:

1 - pencils only - 9-20

Before diving straight into the washes, I did a little digital experiment with tones, just to see how it might look, leaving the ground white and darkening the gate in the FG almost to black:

1 -digital tones- 9-20

Good enough, so I did the same thing with washes.  I made some other changes first.  I added the professorial figure with the cane, on the right, to reinforce the academic setting.  Then, digitally, I adjusted the lettering on the gate a little, because it felt out of perspective to me (by the way, that’s Latin for “knowledge is power.”)  Final page:

1 - washes touchups

Looking at it now, I think I might digitally darken the washes, and erase the pavement lines, to leave the ground a solid white shape with darker figures against it — more like the digital-tone version above.  That’s more of the graphic look I’d like for this.

Continue reading ““Lunatic” process: chapter 4″ →