Meccanica, Numbah Nine!

And, voilà, page nine! Buckle yourselves, people, because next week it'll start getting a little weird.

I thought this week it might be a good idea to talk about how I put a page together. I start drawing the page on 11 by 14 inch Bristol board - the final page gets shrunken down pretty significantly to fit in the newspaper. I plot out the panels and gutters, and then get to work on the initial pencil with my trusty blue art pencil! I have no idea where I heard about this first, but drawing in blue is awesome if you scan your work and modify it digitally, because it's easier to blast out a crazy color like blue.
So when I apply the inks, the raw page looks like this:


If you look carefully in the bottom left corner of the panel, you can see some black "X"es showing through the ink wash. That's a note for me to completely fill that area in black. As a raw scan, though, it looks a little washed out. Let's fix that!


Every change in this panel was made in Photoshop. By adjusting the color levels and blasting out the blue (as well as any yellow from the paper), it's easier to select areas in the image as a pure black and white picture. That font is based on my handwriting, and I made it a year or so ago using an online service that is sadly no longer free. This is the first time I've used it on such a big project.


That's it! The final page ranks up at about 600 dpi. After the page is done, I create two different sizes and resolutions - a small one for the newspaper editor to use, and an even smaller, web-friendly size for the blog! And then the page is good to go!

She's a kind of friend indeed

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Italian Scrooge McDuck comics! Yes, really!

Today I want to share something very special with you. Very special indeed. While traversing a downtown market last weekend, I came across a table of pop culture ephemera - movie posters, German VHS tapes, and best of all, Italian Scrooge McDuck comics.
Let me repeat that for you. Italian Scrooge McDuck comics.
If you've never set foot in a European grocery store, allow me to elaborate. Disney comics arrived in the 1950s and they never left. You can still buy little comic digests of Mickey Mouse (Topolino) and Donald Duck (Paperlino) in the supermarket. When Carl Barks, the father of all things Donald, passed away nine years ago, all of Europe mourned.
Anyway, some Swiss kid (man?) in the seventies diligently clipped out these comics and bound them into shiny seventies-style book covers.



It looks like a Christmas present, and it is. A present from God. Check this out awesomesauce after the jump.

Okay, first of all, you may have noticed that this volume specializes on Scrooge McDuck, aka Zio Paperone, and his rival, the almost as filthy rich Rockerduck! This is not a weird Italian name, as I initially suspected. There is actually a character named John D. Rockerduck. Hell yes.



In terms of art quality, the contents of this tome can be hit or miss. I've scanned pages from the two stories I thought looked the best, and are probably by the same guy. This artist's name is probably lost to the ages, seeing as it's Disney's name that appears at the beginning of every story. I'll do some research, though - see who was drawing Paperone comics in Italy in 1975.



My Italian's still subpar, but I gather that Scrooge invites his nephews for a ride on his new ship, which is taking a voyage dragging some floating bag (of what? I haven't gathered) behind it.



Rockerduck wants to sabotage the voyage, so he sends the vaguely humanoid Beagle Boys (aka Banda Bassotti) in a tiny sub to follow them.



The Beagle Boys' expressions are pretty hysterical. And the lines are so sharp and well defined!



And look at the way Scrooge's boat is given some definition from a distance. I totally want to steal this guy's inking techniques!



Look how epic Huey/Dewey/Louie looks in panel four on the right page! "There's a red thingie heading towards the green thingie. I think we're the green thingie!" < / Galaxy Quest>



The guy's expression in the top right corner just makes my life.



Again with the epic backgrounds! Don't you realize you're drawing a children's comic, good sir?



Okay, ignore the somewhat questionable Eskimo stereotype for a second. It's 1970s Italy after all. The story actually get interesting here. After the Beagle Boys accidentally sink Scrooge's ship and they're left floating on that bag thing in the middle of the Artic Ocean, they wake up as they're saved by an Eskimo who warms his igloo with blocks of ice that can mysteriously catch fire. Turns out there's a nearby glacier made entirely of frozen petroleum! So that's what caused peak oil!



We now move onto the next story, with some pretty amazing "Did I tell you I love money?" faces on Scrooge there. The story's about, like, a water shortage? And another competition between Scrooge and Rockerduck to race to the Arctic, for real ice this time.



Another epic shot of one of the nephews at the montors - judging by the red parka, this must be Huey.



The solution to transporting all that ice back to Duckopolis (or wherever the hell they live?) Balloons. Of course! I love how they slurged on some paint-like shading on those icebergs in an otherwise standard four-color comic.



When they hit a rainstorm, the ducks camp under the icebergs - but discover the "rainstorm" is just the ice melting in the desert sun. Okay, here's why I love cartoon logic. Not only can a huge freaking glacier be buoyed by a hot air ballon, not only can it release enough water to be mistaken for a Class 5 tropical storm, BUT! The trail of water they leave behind makes a little path of verdant greenery in the desert. If only, comics. If only.



And finally, explosions! Who doesn't love explosions?



Face it, people, these comics are rad. I love them so much. Can't these be translated to English? America friggin' invented the magic kingdom, and as far as comics go these are pretty magical.

Tales of derring-do, bad and good luck tales (ooh-ooh!)

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Behold... Meccanica Page Eight!

And with that, we're up to page eight. How time flies.
Here's a fun thing Boingboing graciously directed me towards. Someone compiled a bunch of folksy covers of classic punk songs. If a Clash song covered by the Indigo Girls doesn't sound like something you'd be interested in, think again. There's some really original takes on songs you thought had been sung to death - I didn't even recognize "I Wanna Be Sedated."

Can't control my fingers, can't control my toes

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Meccanica, PAGE SEBBEN, y'all!

God, drawing Maimuna and Floor together is so much fun!

Spent the weekend working on various commissions and rewatching Death Note, which you may recall me gushing over more than two years ago. Good stuff. Goooooood stuff. If you have the time, go to Youtube and find the episodes - they're all there.
Speaking of which, I've also really gotten into a new series by the Death Note guys, called Bakuman, a manga about two kids who want to... create a manga. It's totally different, but still really entertaining. It's got a lot of inside knowledge about the brutal world of "getting big" with manga, but also pokes fun at the clash between following your dreams and "being realistic."



Good stuff all around. See you next week!

And if you should survive to a hundred and five

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Halloween Girls!

Happy Halloween, everybody! As promised, a couple of the horror genre's leading ladies in chronological order!
The Bride (1935). A classic.
Christiane (1960). Sure, she's not so much of a monster as her dad was, I guess, but being ugly in 1960s France was probably enough to fit the bill.
Carrie (1976). She was originally going to be red, but it clashed too much with the soft bluish color I picked for the black-and-white girls.
The Witch (1999). Spoooooooky.
Samara (2002). Yes, it's not as scary as the original Japanese version blah blah blah shutup. I don't know why I made her come out of such a tiny TV - I think I was thinking of the itty bitty TV from the Simpsons' Shining spoof.



Oh well. Time to get ready for the obligatory Halloween party!

Her jewels were missin' and her heart was bust

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New Meccanica Page! Number 6!

Okay, I lied. The internet's been fritzy in my room, so Page Six is going live Tuesday morning. Oh well.
Anyway, with page six comes the introduction of Pilot Number Five, someone I've been dying to introduce to the comic since I outlined the entire semester's run.



Yup, meet Floor van Heerden! I realized that Maimuna needed an opposite to thrash against every once in a while, and Floor's about as opposite as you can get! Not to mention I've always thought my Giant Robot Story needed an Asuka equivalent to make things just right.

Also! I'm starting a new feature - something I've wanted to do for a while but decided to finally DO this week. One of my favorite weeklies is Dude-a-Day, which is exactly what it sounds like - drawing fictional dudes for 365 days. It's a great project, but got me to thinking... is there no love for great fictional females out there?
So I decided I'll draw some girls once a week, at least three, if not four or five. Seeing as we've been talking about Serenity Rose, that'll be the subject of Batch Number One:



Stiletta, Vicious, and Serenity, respectively. Witches are appropriate for Halloween, right? I've got plenty more spooktacular drawings for this upcoming week, too.

Oh, fine. One more thing. Don't have a song stuck in your head? You do now. You're welcome.

Darlin' darlin' FREEZE!

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Book Report: Serenity Rose Volume 2

The next Meccanica's going up tonight, I promise, but before I did, I wanted to talk about an awesome webcomic that finally getting the print treatment. More than a year ago I mentioned Aaron Alexovich's then-newly kick-started comic Serenity Rose, back online after almost four years. At the time, it was updating at only a page a week, but after nearly a year and a half, the 122 page comic is complete and hitting the presses.
So what's it about?



In Alexovich's comic, being a witch isn't a lifestyle choice. It's something you're born as, and being such a rare genetic anomaly gets you attention whether you like it or not. Serenity Rose, America's youngest witch, has a special level of infamy after hijacking a schoolbus as a teenager. After the ensuing televised scandal, she's become a recluse in her little Salem-esque town of Crestfallen. The second volume picks up when Serenity, about to begin an apprenticeship with witch/rockstar Vicious Whisper, realizes that her dreams are manifesting themselves in the woods, attacking hikers, and attracting the bad kind of attention.



I love a good worldbuilding exercise, and my god, does Alexovich do that well. The world in Serenity Rose is almost - but not quite - like our own, tweaked by the subtle presence of the supernatural. And the town in which our protagonist lives, as well as its sordid history, is laid out in just enough detail to want us to learn more about it. The story's told really well, too - though one thing new readers should keep in mind is that the volume does not stand entirely on its own, referring to enough characters and events in the first volume to leave a few mystified. Don't let that discourage you, though, most of the blanks are easy enough to fill in by yourself.



Another thing that should be pointed out is the amazing strides Alexovich has taken in art over the last few years. I've been alive long enough to see my favorite webcomic artists make astonishing leaps in terms of the quality of their artwork, and it's so rewarding to see the results. Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade is a great example of this; Dr. McNinja's Chris Hastings is another. Alexovich definitely belongs in this category. If you find his pages from the very first volume of SR and compare them to his newest stuff, it's flabbergasting. His rich atmospheric charcoal drawings (peppered with flecks of vibrant color) have aquired a level of sophistication that comes with experience, but even his storytelling has a more mature aspect to it. The fact that Alexovich can also tell a compelling, unique story with nearly-all-female leads is also heartening in a medium that still has so few interesting heroines.



As I rule, I tend not to purchase books of content freely available online (I make an exception for Achewood), but I might reconsider this Christmas if the print version of Goodbye Crestfallen looks as gorgeous as the jpegs have for the last year and a half. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and read the volume from the beginning.

Instrumental

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BACK!

What can you see on the horizon?

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Meccanica, Page FIVE!

Oh snap! I almost forgot to put up the comic today! Well, here it is, and I hope you've enjoyed the first little Meccanica story.



Less than a week 'til Scotalnd, and life is good. Enjoy.



Tutto è santo, tutto è santo, tutto è santo.

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Mameshiba: Japan's harbinger of trivia and cuteness

So last week I was looking at some internet list, and I found these. Behold the Japanese "Mameshiba" commercials, in which hapless people are subject to the unadulterated cuteness and pointless trivia of a dog-faced bean.
Why? Well, as far as I can gather, the Japanese word for "trivia" is literally "bean knowledge." So that makes sense, I guess. But it's the only thing in any of these commercials that does.



A note to my less Japanophile readers - that word the boy says before eating, "Itadakimasu," basically means, "Time to eat," but it's more elaborate than that. It's a Buddhist custom, apparently, and means "I will receive [the food I am about to eat, which shouldn't talk, let alone tell me some dandelion trivia]." People say it before every meal. Get ready to hear it a lot.







Natto is basically fermented soybeans, a traditional breakfast meal. It's an acquired taste, one that some, like Anthony Bourdain, would recommend for non-beginners. Others would just call it gross.



I just love the sound that little dogbean makes. Oon-gyooooooooooo.



Red beans are another traditional thing. It's a common filling in sweets, as well as an ice cream flavor. It's a much more accessible taste, though, and delicious to boot.





Oh my god that dogbean has a little mustache oh my god.



Did any of you see the lecherous way that dude stared at the flight attendant's ass? Luckily, Dogbean is there to bring him down a peg.



Oh my god that dogbean is trying so hard to speak English! So hard! I love how they set this short in America, too. But apparently, English dialogue wasn't enough to make the point, so they had to have a black kid in there, too, just to be clear.





And thus the Dogbean cycle is complete, as its stomach-turning trivia is not enough to terrify its unwitting victim. That boy looked pretty chunktastic, though (at least by Japanese standards), so maybe Dogbean is lucky that it could distract him from eating it with the tantalizing thought of women's undergarments.

What were these commercials adverising? I still don't know! It's just a weird way to spend five minutes, I guess, but what five minutes they were. God bless Japan. I miss it so.

Mame-chishiki, la la la

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Meccanica, Page Four!

Here's part four. If you're wondering why it's a week early, I've now stepped up production to weekly, instead of bi-weekly. So more Meccanica a month! At least, until Academic Travel, I mean. And then you're on your own. But don't worry, I've got plenty of stuff lined up for after the two-week dry spell. In the meantime, though, you've got one more week to find out if Maimuna wins the race. Will she? (I think odds are good).

Extra sugar, extra salt, extra oil and MSG

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Meccanica, Page Three

That's right, it's time for Meccanica, part trois! And so Maimuna's first race begins. If you're left on tenterhooks, don't worry, I'll start updating more frequently in a few weeks.
What else is going on? Well, a certain incident left me offering a nod of approval towards the Big O (as if he hasn't earned at least one already). And, on a not entirely unrelated topic, I like Glee. Track down an episode of that, if you haven't already.
Til next week! Off to class!

I can tell by your charm

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In Memory of Shel Silverstein

It's ten years ago this year that Shel Silverstein died. I remember how crestfallen I was when I first heard the news, but I honestly didn't remember it until a friend of mine read a poem by old Uncle Shelby last week in a poetry class. And then I remembered everything, and learned some new stuff, too.
Lots of people forget what an accomplished singer and songwriter he was, along with being a poet, an author of children's books, and a Playboy columnist (Stephen King's in good company in that respect).
There's videos out there with Shel rockin' out on the Johnny Cash show with Cash himself. I forgot how scratchy and odd-sounding his voice was. But Shel and Cash were buddies, and out of their partnership was born possibly the best country song of all time.



Here's Loretta Lynn singing "One's On The Way," also by Shel. And on the Muppet Show, no less!



Great Big Sea, doing a cover of "The Mermaid," which first appeared as a poem when Silverstein worked for Playboy.



And finally, an animated version of The Giving Tree. I forget how beautiful this story is.



RIP, Uncle Shelby.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars

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Meccanica Page 2

Page Two! Enjoy.
I also mangaged to dig up this poster I did back in May for a school paintball game. For whatever reason it never got a post of its own, so I'm giving it this one. I think the first panel is still my favorite.



See you in two weeks. Same time, same place.

Aboard my floating house

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Meccanica Page 1

Well, here it is. Page one of my new serialized comic Meccanica. I should be putting up one of these pages about once every two weeks, probably no more frequently than that. I've got work to do, after all. I'm back at school now! But these were fun to do. Definitely expect more soon.

A lion drank a bottle and forgot how to growl

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