Last Meccanica page of the year! (probably). Also, more girls!

And here it is, the last Meccanica page for the paper this year. But don't fear! Meccanica will start afresh in January, and I'll still have plenty of updates in the meantime!
Like the below, for example. Kinda dropped the ball on the "once a day" concept, seeing as my last submissions were on Halloween. But only one thing can truly bridge the gap between the magic of Halloween and Christmas, and that's Tim Burton's filmography!



For your enjoyment, Lydia, Sally, and Emily. Lydia was also my Halloween costume this year, which was fun considering I'd been coveting Lydia's spiderweb poncho since I was five. But it was sad seeing exactly no one recognize its origin. People took me for Spiderwoman or a pumpkin. Feh! Is there no love for offbeat eighties dark comedies anymore?

Oh well, now that it's the season, time to work on Christmasy things!

Still chewing on a red rose

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Double Digits Time! Meccanica Number 10!

My little comic's all grown up - it's in the double digits now. And this is also probably the second-to-last one of the year... though I'll try to keep uploading a bunch of Meccanica-related goodies over the winter.

In other news, I have a favorite new music video, and OH MY GOD.



Tom Waits and Kool Keith, brought to you by the N.A.S.A. music project, and animated by Montreal studio Fluorescent Hill. Hot damn. I don't listen to Tom Waits much, but now I know exactly what they mean when they say he sounds like his voice was soaked in bourbon. I'm'na have to see what this new CD of theirs is all about - I've heard one other song off it, a crazy earworm featuring M.I.A found here. Looks promising.

I'll meet you down at the well.

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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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