More more more!!!
Maestro Rick Worley is hard at work scribbling wonderful little sketches for us. Three more are in the can:
Gillian X and Nuts the Wonder Squirrel
Rick’s second go at Gillian X, our heroine. You’ll recall from the first CountUP that we thought she was a touch stumpy-lookin’, and as Mr. Worley had admitted to a Frank Quitely inspiration, we pointed him toward this Wonder Woman cover the FQ did. And up above you see the evolved result. Pretty nifty, eh? I adore the little pooch above her belt line. And I swear it took me a solid ten seconds before I even noticed NUTS, THE WONDER SQUIRREL hovering up there in the far right corner. I laughed out loud when I saw it.
If you haven’t see Rick’s older (but so incredibly cool!) first and full take on Nuts, allow me to correct that:
Nuts the Wonder Suiqrrel battles Hitler (in his dreams)
That has to be one of the coolest character sketches ever. ExPECT to see that sucker on a t-shirt and mugs and more when the time is right!
Next up is plain clothes sketches of Gillian’s nemesis, Mr. Right, in his civilian identity, Walden Montgomery:
Walden Montgomery - "Mr. Right" Civilian Identity
Rick was modeling Walden up there off of…Rock Hudson, I think? I may be wrong about that, but some famous 40’s, 50’s male star, giving him that classic cleft chin and wide cheek bones. Now if only Rick can have his every charcter not slouch (he’s a slouchy skinny guy, it rubs off on his characters – he did a good job with Gillian X, and really anyone in costume, it’s the real-world stuff he suddenly reverts on).
Then, lastly, we have Walden’s main squeeze/love-of-his-life and Gillian’s boss at her job in the offices of Fortis Fashion Magazine: Crystal! Ta-daaahhhh!
Crystal! Mr. Right's honeysuckle. Smarter than him in many down-to-earth ways.
Rick definitely got her dead on. Crystal is the more naturally fashionable bewteen her and Gillian – not arm candy by a long shot, but she can work her way through the haute couture and not have it seem like she’s faking it just to get social acceptance (like so many others). She adores Gillian and takes her under her wing in the Fashion Magazine world, which is good, because Gillian would be a rather hopeless cause without dear Crystal. Things get real interesting as the Mr. Right/Gillian X feud begins. And poor Crystal, stuck there in the middle!
And that’s it for now. Except to say – PAGES 2 and 3 are in the can! Whooooo!
We’re on our way, baby! –Dave B.
Continuing my postings of all the DP stuff. Go read it!
The Desert Peach #1 Page 2
Let it begin: the first of the webcomic sites which I designed, built, and currently keep running smoothly + update. This one I was very proud to have the honor of making: Donna Barr’s THE DESERT PEACH. Xeric Grant recipient and multi-award winning series, originally it ran for 32 issues published from 1989-2004, and today it continues as an annual Graphic Novel called AFTERDEAD.
I first picked of the PEACH when Donna won the Xeric and published her first self-published GN, SEVEN PEACHES, collecting the first seven issues of the series. It was offered in PREVIEWS. I was intrigued. I ordered it. It blew my young, never-before-exposed-to-such-comic-book-wonderment mind. THIS was comics as I never knew they could be.
And now, here comes the whole series, republished online for free reading, one page per day, every single day. New print printings of the issues will become available as we progress as well, meaning the WHOLE SHEBANG WILL RETURN TO PRINT! Plus PDF digital downloads, of course. Look for PEACH to come to mobiles via ROBOT COMICS to boot! Whew!
Without further ado, THE DESERT PEACH, ISSUE #1, PAGE 1:
Beautiful DONNA BARR shared this with me. TOO f&*$ing funny!
YES! At long last the official countUP to the GILLIAN’S HEART WEBCOMIC launch date begins!
What will be the date? That’s unknown as of now, but within a few short months one way or the other. The artist is getting ahead of himself, to give us some lead time (first page is in the can! Whoot!), and as soon as we’re about 2 months ahead, we’re shoving this puppy out the gate. So look for an approximately early July kick-start. Hell, maybe we can make it happen right smack on my B-day: July 3rd (day before the 4th, my naked-suit day being the much more important day, IMHO).
So here’s the first update, the first official character sketch of lead characters, Gillian and Dave:
Rick Worley's GILLIAN AND DAVE Character Sketch
Rick usually has a Robert Crumb/Bill Watterson vibe going on with his work, so he was in particular need of finding “superhero” art styles to inspire him to find his way to drawing his own superhero series. He was apparently riffing on Frank Quitely for this rendition. I love it to pieces, though we pointed him toward a Frank Quitely WONDER WOMAN COVER to get a slightly less stumpy look for “Gillian X” (Gillian’s superhero alter-ego in the comic – it’ll make more sense when you actually get to read the series, trust me).
As an example of Rick’s swift evolution as an artist, and just because so much time has gone by since the last time I posted these, let me show you this first character sketch he did of Gillian X’s nemesis, “Mr. Right” – this one was sketched around November of last year in preparation for Rick drawing an 8-page short sort-of prequel to the WEBCOMIC. The short story should see print later this year in the HOPE H.E.R.O. Anthology from RONIN STUDIOS. Here’s the initial sketch:
Mr. Right - First Sketch by Rick Worley
Rick and we we’re going for a militant look, a Nazi stormtrooper outfit with American aviator headgear. A sort of dictator-meets-liberator motif, which is important because Mr. Right is a libertarian Doctor-Doom type: he’s Batman if Batman were willing to break all laws instead of just arbitrarily chosen ones. So then after the 8-page story was complete, and Rick had a bit more time to develop his superhero style and confidence, he would up sketching this little follow-up ditty while we sat in a swank (*shudder*) bar in San Francisco during WONDERCON after hours:
Mr. Right WonderCon Sketch by Worley
He dated the damn thing the wrong year (that was drawn this last March, not 2008’s – we haven’t been slacking THAT badly!), but you can see that, with only about fifteen minutes of effort and half-drunk, as compared to the previous first sketch which he labored and fretted over for HOURS, and this one comes across with a far more fluid grace and dynamic effect. It’s a throwaway sketch and it’s superb. So just imagine what this guy’s comic pages are going to look like, many more months later and whole issue’s of experience behind him?
As a final, parting gift, because it’s here and I might as well share: JASON COPELAND’S sketch of GILLIAN X and MR. RIGHT, which he did for me on the inside cover of his recent MARKS ON PAPER SKETCHBOOK (which you can still grab a copy of along with a custom sketch of your choice, all for yourself, but hurry as he says only a few a left of the print run!). Anywho, here’s the sketch he did for moi:
JASON COPELAND'S sketch of GILLIAN AND MR. RIGHT!
Not bad, eh? JASON’S the guy behind the upcoming, much ballyhooed BRAIDS OF THE GORGON, so look for it!
And come back soon for the next CountUP toward the GILLIAN’S HEART WEBCOMIC release! Whoo-hoo! We’re on our way!
In my neverending quest to teach myself web design, and therefore Photoshop (and soon stumbling into Illustrator and Flash…sigh…long road ahead…
, I’ve been DYING to figure out how folks were creating those nifty, trendy “rounded-corners” boxes for their menus, backgrounds, and borders. It took a while to find what I was looking for – I know there’s some super-cool “moz” and “webkit” HTML commands (I think they’re super-cool) that basically do the same thing, but I also knew that many, many good-looking websites had background images that contained obviously pre-made-elsewhere rounded-corner boxes as only a part/piece of the whole background image. This meant people weren’t using HTML or Java to create the effect, but actually constructing the image and then using them however they saw fit (the drop-shadow on many of them were a dead giveaway).
I finally found this video that looks to hold sincere promise. I tried it once, it works like a beut. Not sure if there’s an easier or better way to do this, but this is the best out of about a dozen ways I discovered so far:
Amazing Photoshop Magic: Smooth Rounded Corners With No Aliasing
This just in:
WICKER MAN STUDIOS, publishers of the online comic GUN STREET GIRL, and whose writer and publisher Barb Lien-Cooper and Park Cooper (respectively) are also co-writers of the critically-acclaimed Dabel Bros. and Marvel Comics’ HALF DEAD OGN, have announced the official release of their iPhone Apple Store app, and have mobile-y published the aforementioned GUN STREET GIRL as their opening offer.
There are two comics available now, one for free and one for $0.99 purchase:
- “Where It All Began” which is the origin story, and it’s available for FREE DOWNLOAD
- “The Jealous Dead“, which is the latest and greatest of the GSG yarns, featuring those wonderful horror sensations – zombies! This one’s for $0.99 download on the Apple market or iTunes store, and you can check out a 4-page preview of it HERE.
GUN STREET GIRL has officially been given a sparkly-slick new website to commemorate the occasion, and everyone really needs to head on over and check it out. It’s real purdy. I’ll give golf claps all around for Park, Barb, and artist Howe for the construction and design – very nice, you guys! But what’s more – YOU CAN READ ALL 23 OTHER GSG CHAPTERS, IN THEIR ENTIRETY, AT THE SITE!!!
So lots of free comics to go alongside your meager $0.99 purchase to help support these crazy independent creators who could absolutely use your support. Do you really want to give $0.99 to some bloated corporation so they can realize the profit potential of digital, quickly establish a monopoly, and raise all prices to a standard $3.99 or higher to cover “rising costs”, which they only have because they’re a bloated corporation? Didn’t think so. Or…if you do…please leave me your name and address I can find you to stick a double-gauge shotgun into your mouth at, you freak of corporate-culture nature.
And let me know what you think of their app – as a member of ROBOT COMICS, these guys are competition as well as being personal friendlies, so I’m curious to know how their product clicks with readers. And last but not least -
PREVIEW!
GUN STREET GIRL: WAKING THE WITCH
Page 1 - Click for larger
Page 2, Click for Larger
Page 3 - Click for Larger
Page 4, Click for Larger
Ooooooo! What’s going to happen next? FIND OUT BY CLICKING HERE!
SHOOT ‘EM UP is hands-down the worst piece of self-indulgent pretentious trash American cinema has yet produced. Wait, PRETENTIOUS?!? Isn’t it mindless fun? Wild action? Crazy choreography and ridiculous over-the-top black comedy gold? Aren’t these elements the precise opposite of “pretentious”? No, they’re not. And you know why? Because we as a culture think they’re the bee’s knees. We think they make something worthwhile, inventive, electrifying, thought-provoking, entertaining, and a perfect platform for social and philosophical commentary. Or, well…director Michael Davis sure does.
Shoot 'Em UP - The Worst American Movie Ever Made
SHOOT ‘EM UP is the worst movie I have ever seen. I’ve seen lower budget movies, with far worse acting, wretched cinematography, and production values cheaper than a can of Cheez Whiz. But none of those horrid turd nuggets smelled as bad as SHOOT ‘EM UP, or were as nauseating to sit and consume for 80+ minutes, 80+ minutes that dragged on to feel like 800+ minutes. I’ve seen 300. I hated 300. But SHOOT ‘EM UP was worse. It’s…well, let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
Clive Owen stars in the male lead, a down-and-out, seemingly homeless bum who has a grimy face but still his good looks and entire arsenal of kick-ass action skills (it seems no matter how many months/years/whatever one sleeps on a bench and drinks liquor, one never falls out of shape or even gets tight hamstrings when one is an action star). Mr. Owen spots a women running from armed men, and grudgingly decides to (oh, bother!) stand up and help her, which he does by slaughtering all the armed men, while simultaneously delivering the woman’s baby. He munches on a carrot while he does this to boot. Where does he get these freshly-peeled water-wet carrots? One of the great mysteries of the movie, but to say such a thing is to make the movie sound mysterious, or even kitschy-cool, which it is not.
Lone Wolf and Cub old movie poster - swords instead of guns
So the baby is delivered, the woman dies, the armed men mostly die, and Clive runs away with the baby in tow, beginning a much less dramatic and less intelligent riff on Lone Wolf and Cub (or Shogun Assassin, depending on whether you’ve read the manga, or seen the same-titled movie adaptations, or the later Shogun-titled variants). Following that premise, we’re introduced to Paul Giamatti’s character – a villain straight out of a Garth Ennis graphic novel (such as Preacher, or Hellblazer, or any of his Avatar publisher books). Short, ugly, feral, crazed, sex-obsessed, not terribly smart in the ultimate end but gets around on his crazy-stamina alone – this is supposed to be a memorable Bond-like villain. Instead, he’s simply one-note, and crazed. He does whatever the script asks of him, and the script asks for him to do a lot of things, but all the same things – do something offensive, you’re a villain, that’s what villains do. So that’s all that Mr. Giamatti does. Fondles dead ladies, sticks a burning gun slowly up the inner thigh of a specialty hooker (we’ll come back to her in a minute), shoots his own henchmen in the ass, because asses make things funnier like popes (who are pretty equivalent to asses, I’ll admit).
Then comes Monica Bellucci – the female lead, a specialty hooker who lactates for men, because heroines need to be interesting and making them some sort of sex-based something is the only way to make a woman interesting. Everybody knows that. So in a scene ripped direct from a Takashi Miike flick, Clive and Paul G. duke it out in the brothel, and Clive takes Monica with him, because he needs her to help him take care of the baby. What follows is a very long and drawn out series of gruesome action sequences spiced with that aforementioned pretension – the script never hesitates to take some sort of person, lifestyle, or behavior to task, all while being the most obnoxious thing in the room. It’s like an original punk in that regard, only without any real sociological “cause”, and so without any actual point.
The day after I watched SHOOT ‘EM UP, I was in a coffee house and the people in line before me approached the register, ordered, and then proceeded to stay standing directly in front of the register and hold a conversation. Both myself and the coffee house girl just looked at them, uncertain how long it would take for them to figure out they couldn’t just stand there. It took them a long time: finally, I took out credit cards and started to ostentatiously shuffle them. The guy had to triple-take me and then he finally nudged the woman he was talking to off to the side. Then I ordered, got my coffee, turned, and…they had moved to the condiment bar, still talking, still serving no purpose or having any reason to even be inside the coffee house at all. After squeezing my way into a wee bit of space they’d mistakingly left open in a far corner, they begrudingly scooted a bit more to the side, allowing me a double-wee-bit of space. The point? The whole time they talked, they talked of others, complaining, diatribing, whole-heartedly frustrated with others and their behavior. They were oblivious checked-out grade-”A” assholes, but they were entirely concerned with what assholes everyone else was. That’s SHOOT ‘EM UP. And more over, that’s the American mindset that allows movies like SHOOT ‘EM UP to exist.
Chow Yun Fat and Baby in John Woo'd HARD BOILED
Now SHOOT ‘EM UP was a bomb, and thank god for it, but Hollywood sincerely believes we want movies like this. Even critics showed a surprising level of “this is a guilty pleasure” approval for SHOOT ‘EM UP, obviously believing they’d be too far removed from the common man’s opinion should they “shoot down” (get it?) so wildly trying-really-hard-to-be-offensive-and-lowbrow a film. Interestingly, in the special features on the DVD, the writer/director steps up and explains how it was a scene in John Woo’s HARD BOILED that inspired the whole film (Chow Yun Fat carrying a baby in the big hospital scene showdown), then proceeds to name influence after influence (rip-off after rip-off) that led him to the complete story of SHOOT ‘EM UP. He explains he wrote the script over 20 years ago but only now was he able to make it.
Then we cut to the producers and actors, who proclaim that the movie is the freshest thing they’d ever read and that it would “reinvent the
Clive Owen and Baby in SHOOT EM UP
genre”. Hmmmm. 20 years out of date, inspired by 20-year-old influences that alREADY defined the modern action movie. And somehow this would reinvent that. And it was “fresh”. Actors and producers need to become literate, and get out more And herein lies the rub: anyone who does read and not just watch modern movies, knows this thing was a poor facsimile of better escapist entertainment, taken “further”, but not better. Hell, I almost forgot: Clive Owen claims the script was “fresh” after just shooting SIN CITY, which was a more artful version of the same damn thing! Sheesh.
SHOOT ‘EM UP is everything that’s wrong with American cinema: this is what Hollywood thinks we want. It’s critical and egotistical and overblown, sermonizing and self-righteous, condemning everything not itself. It’s unaware of its own hypocrisy, because it’s fluff, just an action movie, but with heart, and passion – you can’t expect much out of it, but you have to take it for what it is, but it’s got a lot to give, and it’s actually a lot of things, but it isn’t if you think that means the bar is raised and so it comes up short, but it is if you think it’s nothing but mindless crap and a-ha! see? it has more and is more, so you can’t pin it down, or criticize it but it will certainly criticize YOU. It tries to walk away on the grounds that it’s pure fun, but it isn’t fun, or pure – it’s a dedicatedly self-righteous Johnny-come-lately to the neato-cool-wow arena of action flicks. It’s flashy and loud and obscene and completely formulaic, it just does things MORE flashy, and MORE obscene, and by god MORE formulaic.
It’s the most quintisential American movie I’ve ever scene, and in being such, it is the worst American movie ever produced. Thank you thank you thank you American public for letting it bomb and bomb big. This will likely not stem the tide or turn things around, but it’s a start. It’s something. And it makes me just a niggling bit proud to live in this country. A pride I more and more need to recover.
After a 2 month hiatus, KILLING THE GRIZZLY continues!
This should be the last “monster” sized installment. It’s at long last the beginning of the answer to the question: What is the Digital Comics Business Model? Future chapters will be shorter and come sooner, with step after step and suggestion after suggestion on how to run on online digital comics venture. But here’s where we begin.
Killing the Grizzly #4: The Digital Comics Business Model
Inside KILLING THE GRIZZLY #4: THE DIGITAL COMICS BUSINESS MODEL, You’ll Find:
- Are You Ready? (Where and How to Find Collaborators, Build Your Creative Team)
- Do You Even Have a Book? (Graphic Novel vs. the Ongoing Serial)
- Digital Comics vs. Webcomics
- How To Build a Webcomic Site? (Comic Gallery 1.2 vs. ComicPress 2.7)
- Customization Tutorials
- WordPress Advantages and Plugins
Whew! And that’s just the BEGINNING. So let’s get to it! Grab your comics and ideas and let’s get creating online entertainment for readers all around the world! At least you can find your “impossible” audience!
Here’s a exerpt:
HOW DO YOU BUILD A WEBCOMIC WEBSITE?
Unless you’re a web design whiz (and if you are, you won’t need to take in anything I relate presently here, so why do I care?), you’ll need a software platform to place your webcomic site upon, software that can handle the database, filing, and organization of a dynamically evolving webcomic site with regular updates, archives, and more. There are currently two major players on the scene: COMIC GALLERY and COMICPRESS.
COMIC GALLERY 1.2
I’ll hit CG first, as there’s less to say about it, and ultimately this won’t be the best choice for most, but it may be for some. CG is, as of this writing, up to version 1.2, and looks to remain there (the updates have not been frequent since 1.2’s release). Programmed by Stuart Robinson through his company Design Meme, CG is the platform choice for such big webcomic successes as Nate Piekos’ REALMOFATLAND.COM and Joe Infurnari’s Eisner-nominated THE PROCESS (theprocesscomic.com). Both sites, you’ll notice, benefit from jaw-droppingly gorgeous design work, because CG is a software tailor-made for tailor-makin’. If nothing else, CG’s flexibility is bar none, and if you know or know of someone who does know how to manage HTML and CSS and image design, CG may be a solid choice.
Comic Gallery basically creates a gallery from a directory of images you specify, and then it comes packaged with very simple and lightweight PHP code to manage navigational links for your comic pages, custom dividers, images, and more. Overall, Comic Gallery is made to be simple. You’ll need to design the look of your pages, and Comic Gallery will transform it into an actual webcomic site. CG’s allure is in its simplicity: the ability to have free control of the your site’s design with little risk in botching the more complex elements such as the PHP code and gallery databases.
Robinson, on his Design Meme website, walks you through the simple steps to setting any Comic Gallery-operated wecomic site up, and if you’ve got your images ready (Header, backgrounds, navigation buttons, etc.) the time it should take to build your site is a few days. That said, Comic Gallery does little else besides turn a static site into a dynamic webcomic site. While the allure for simplicity and flexibility is great, the rise of the “InfoActive Age” demands a site that does more, and for this, Comic Gallery in facts makes things more difficult. Want a forum? Comments? A blog? SEO and Chat rooms and more? Hmmm…it’s all doable, but you’ll be installing a new program for each function. Which is where the new and current king of webcomic platforms picks up the slack….READ MORE
Each day brings us submissions of very different types of comics. From autobiographies to Silver Age superheroes, from hardcore sci-fi to raunchy humor, there are very few genres and styles that haven’t reached our mailbox. Regrettably, one of the few is Manga.
In anticipation of a planned call for Manga submissions, we decided to add right-to-left support to the Droid Comic Viewer, our comic reader for Android mobiles. With a simply change in “Preferences”, Droid Comic Viewer – also known as ACV – is now prepared for Manga. The above video shows ACV loaded with Mikako-san by Kyou Machiko, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.1 Japan license.
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