I've tried all kinds of exercises and remedies, but in the end, it's clear that my arm won't get better without a prolonged period of rest. Unfortunatly I don't know what to do with myself if I can't draw. That's when it hit me. I have a back up. I have a left hand.

Drawing with my left hand certainly has it's problems. It's painfully slow and awkward. There is a disconnect between the marks I want to make and what my left hand is capable of making. I feel extremely limited. My left hand just doesn't have the muscle memory to draw sweeping curves, or quick presice hatch marks. What I've lost in finess I've gotten back in hope. The work is crude but it's on the paper where I can review and refine it, a problem I can solve once again.

The first draft of MAPS is off to the printers.  Timothy and I have both gone through the PDF's and had a cycle of edits on the book.  My hope is that we have enough time to see this single copy test and then get a few browsing copies to go to Charlotte with.  We need to modify the sketch pages in the back and I need to get Timothy to write his closer, but I'm confident that we are close to a final copy version of MAPS.  Timothy did most of the work formatting and uploading the pages.  The bulk uploading that Ka-blam allows is fantastic in a lot of ways, and I think overall it is superior to the way Lulu uploads files.  The advantage to using Lulu is you can have your files named anything.  As long as you know the order of your pages it'll be fine.  Ka-Blam requires a more stringent file naming structure.

I've also started to organize and filter my strips for the second volume of Public Education.  I've got about 120 of the 180 strips chosen.  There's about three more weeks of school so I'll get about ten new strips or so before I start putting the book together.  My stack to choose from for the last 60 is enormous.  Public Educations have gotten easy for me to produce and so I've made a lot of them.  That should bode well for this volume.  The first book had a few strips I would have rather been able to replace.  This time I'll have more comics that space.  I've considered putting more than 180 strips in the second book, but I think I'd rather err on the side of quality.

The yearbooks also came in.  The ladies in the office were complimentary, but I cannot get jazzed over making yearbooks.

- Jon O'Briant

I drew this character four years ago to the day. 5/9/2008

My philosophy is as long as I try and do my best work everytime then there's no reason to feel ashamed or embarrassed in the future.  Thinking this way really frees me up not only to look at my old work, but also keeps me from having self doubt about the projects I'm currently working on.  I don't have to be the best I just need to do my best.     

Drawn on 5-30-2010

The comics industry encomposses many diciplines and jobs each of which is a rabbit hole within itself. These tangents can become lifetime studies in and of themselves, therefore, it is extremely important to define what your goals are and what you hope to get out of the time you put in.  With that said let me tell you what my goal in comics is.  

I want to create worlds and characters that awe and inspire readers in the same way I was by my favorite entertainment as a kid.  Simply put, world building and story telling.  You might have noticed that my comic goals don't mention drawing and they don't mention writing, or inking, coloring, editing, book design or all the other jobs nessecary to finishing and sharing a completed comic product.  This is where tangents can become a problem unless you clearly define what you're goals are.

Because my natural tendency was towards art I teamed up with a writer and got to work.  As we worked my interest in art increased and expanded to a point where I had completely lost my focus.  I was spending more time painting and doing one off illustations then I was working towards my goals of creating compelling story driven entertainment.  I fooled myself into thinking I was an artist instead of a storyteller.  

If you want to be an artist, draw.  If you want to be a writer, write.  But if you're passion is to transform and inspire an audience through story then you have to take initiative and responsibily for every job in the pipeline.  From the initial idea until you have a product in the audiences hand.  Only then have you executed your goal.

-Timothy O'Briant

The rickety bridge signifies the beginning of the turtle's journey.  Turtle has to embark into new territory, the bridge sets a clear landmark to reach beyond.  I signpost before the new adventure.  On the way to Hatteras Island we crossed the repaired bridge that was destroyed in last years hurricane.  It was a rickety looking thing, but gave my own vacation a very clear landmark to identify with.  Welcome to Hatteras Island!  I wanted Turtle's expedition to start in a similar fashion.

This is probably the least clear panel in the strip.  I was trying to show Turtle ducking into his shell to hide from the crab.  I think I should have shown the limbs or head of the turtle retracting partially into the shell rather than having him completely withdrawn with just the motion lines showing the action.

On a more positive note I like the crab and turtle designs.  The crab is a more elaborate take on the crabs I drew in MERA.  It is more anatomically correct although in hindsight I see they don't have any back flippers.  I saw the husk of this crazy speckled crab out on the beach, but I thought a flat color would better fit the rest of the comic.  I draw lots of turtles, I went with the beak face on this one.  I used a hexagonal pattern on the shell.  It was hard to stay on pattern especially working on the comic in between talking and painting with friends.

No one can hide forever, and as the water begins to rise Turtle realizes that ready or not adventure will come knocking.  I attempted to create different textures with just a few inked lines.  The water is more fluid with tiny circles for seafoam.  The rock wall has sharper angles and fewer markings.  The sand occasionally had little specks of ink, but in this panel I left it blank to help seperate that layer from the waves and wall.  This is also one of the first times I feel I effectively used drop shadows on my characters.  A little black underneath does a lot to ground Turtle into the panel.

I closed the comic with Turtle arriving back home to his log safe and sound, and as is true with any vacation, Turtle returns unscathed but exhausted.  I think using the log and bridge in both the first and last page helped to bring the comic and narrative full circle.  Turtle is no worse for wear, we've just gained one more experience. One more adventure.  I like the pose of the turtle sleeping on it's forearms although I have a terrible tangent going from the forearm up Turtle's beak.  A little more careful revisions, and I'd have been able to correct that when I was moving from the pencils to the inking.

Live, learn, create!

- Jon O'Briant

With my first bulk order came my first request for an invoice.  This was actually far easier than I had feared.  I googled "free blank invoice" and chose a site called Rocket Lawyer.  These guys were fantastic.  Easy questions that fed straight into the document, it prompted me to download the digital file and print hard copies, and cancelling my membership during the free trial period could not have gone more smoothly.  I cannot recommend them highly enough.

I am still not a fan of digital coloring.  Flatting seems a painstakingly tedious process, though it's getting to be a faster one.  Learning to use the tablet is what gives me a lot of my problems.  I've actually found myself switching back and forth the stylus to the mousepad quite often.  This isn't a problem, really, but it doesn't feel like the ideal set up either.  The biggest boost to my speed was learning three Photoshop hotkeys "L" for lasso, "W" for wand, and "alt+backspace" to fill.  The lasso tool lets me block out a section of the picture to color in, the fill command puts a solid color of my choosing into the selected area.  If I want to highlight all of a certain color I use the magic wand, and then I can easily fill the space with a new color if I'm so inclined.  "I" for eyedropper lets you select any color that you can touch.  This makes it very easy to keep color consistent from page to page.

I want to talk about Vacation as well, but I think I'm going to save that for next week.  A cartoonists work is never done.

- Jon O'Briant

The bright colors make the entire shapes pop, and can really draw your eye from one character to another.  The darker shades we use though, the less clear the think ink lines become.  Not as problematic on the outlines, but we don't want to lose the details inside each figure.

The light colors help keep clarity to a maximum but I don't feel have as much energy jumping off the page.  Maps is an exciting tale of adventure and I don't want the images to feel washed out or less powerful in any sort of way.

Other discussions we've had have touched on the shades we've been using (Is there too much yellow in that green?  Do we need a bluer blue?) and how to find a good balance.  We want the pages to feel cohesive, but again too many colors in the same value (I'm guessing at the meaning of the word value here.) and the page begins to blend together and muddy again.

I have very little in the way of advice or pointers in this week's Curve.  I guess the takeaway is to take no aspect of a comic for granted.  Coloring is hard, and the more we experiment and discuss the work, the more questions are raised about it.

- Jon O'Briant

I've been reading a lot lately from two masters of comics, Bill Watterson and Osamu Tezuka.  Both these artists have used such clear, emotive lines to make their comics that you never need or miss color.  Everything is right there, perfectly cartooned.  It's incredible.  Watterson does have color comics on the Sunday pages and I don't feel that it detracts from the work.  Just superfluous I suppose.  Everything Tezuka drew is golden in my eyes, from Astro Boy to Buddha he's earned his place as a legend.

Still just excuses to avoid coloring myself.  It's for the good of the comic whether it's fun for me or not.  I need to be operating with the projects best interest at heart.

- Jon O'Briant

Well, it only took 17 months but I have finally sold through my initial printing of Public Education Vol.1!  It was a complete break even financially but there are one hundred copies of my work floating around the universe now, and that feels pretty good.  Anyone that still wants a copy can order directly from lulu here

http://www.lulu.com/shop/jon-o/public-education1/paperback/product-11922350.html

As I announced this success to different friends and comic creators I heard a similar, startling response from several of them, "I didn't even know this was out."  I'm suffering from a severe marketing deficiency and I need to rectify that on our upcoming projects.

Timothy and I are approaching the final stretch of production on Maps and we should probably start advertising now.  At least, that's what I'm starting to think.  We've begun working on some preliminary cover designs and have begun talking about releasing some teaser sketches and the like.

I really like the clean look to this design, and feel like the composition is pretty interesting to.  It's a very open line eye to design and I feel like a boy running from lions is at least a moderate draw to the book to make someone go over and pick it up.  I think Timothy is looking for something a little more eye catching for the cover art, but I think we're both going to continue playing with this motif.  Here's one of his first takes on the idea.

By pulling the lion in closer he adds a lot more tension to the situation and makes the lion a central character.  The dry brushing he used adds more action to the shot although with that and the drops of black in Elwood's outfit and the lion's mane give it a more rough aesthetic.  I like the energy of this sketch but I may lean toward a more clean look to the cover.

- Jon O'Briant

This past week my inking responsibilities took a dive as my school work (yearbook work) took the forefront.  I'm going to have the yearbook done by Monday to make sure it's published before June.  That's important since the book needs to come out while the students are still at school.  It's a little comforting knowing that I can complete a book, albeit a poor one, within such a small window of time, but of the three books I plan to publish this year, I certainly care least about the school one.  My passions are with Maps and Public Education Volume 2.

So I skipped inking.  I've pencilled two pages the past two weeks, and I plan to catch up on the inking this weekend.  The first page to ink will be a fair amount of work.  Six panels is a fairly typical size and every one of the images has two characters.  Awful takes longer than most characters due to all the fur; I always start inking with him and I'm extremely comfortable with him, even with loose pencils.  Boxy I'm less familiar with but I think has a very strong design.  I need to be careful with pencilling her loosely.  I need to make sure her figure is consistent from panel to panel, and page to page.  I tried hard on the first page to keep the camera moving, since the entire page takes place with them sitting at a table.  Hopefully the changes in viewpoint add visual interest to the page while I indulge in exposition.

The second page is going to be easier to pencil and ink because two thirds is a dancing splash.  I'm happy with the layout of the dancing.  I'm a little worried that some of the poses are too similar to previoius dancing.  I suppose I'll be ok because of the layered effect and the mini splash.  Even if a pose is similar to a previous splash the way it's presented will hopefully keep anyone from noticing.  In a less busy week I'd go back through the entire comic and make sure Awful had never danced this way before, but this week I kind of just feel like it needs to get done.   Boss Hua Hua always requires reference to the first page he appeared.  He's one of the fill in characters that I conceptualized when I needed him.  I have very few pictures of him in my sketch book, and he's far from rehearsed.  I will reference him again when I ink the page on Saturday.

Well I'm getting back to work.  I'll get at least one Public Education done tonight, and then it'll probably be close to bed time.  With any luck, I'll get to read a few issues of the Incal.  Until next time-

- Jon O'Briant