Monday, August 20, 2012

Clockwork Queen in a Comic Anthology

I recently was invited by a friend to participate in a Steampunk themed anthology project put together by Neoflux Productions.




My entry was a short, tl;dr version of the intro for a steampunk horror story I was working on back in my early years at SCAD. I’ve redone the comic twice for school projects but it’s been sitting on the back burner since about early 2008 so I thought I’d revive the idea for this, but take liberties and shorten it to just get the basic idea across. I had gotten a small watercolor paper journal recently and decided to draw and ink the comic in that. Working so small was both interesting and challenging but working with ink wash was a pure joy. The colors were added in Photoshop since the entries had to be colored. I really wanted to keep the comic in greyscale but the simple color wash look has grown on me. This project has inspired me to try more watercolor/wet media techniques with my comics and I look forward to doing more of that as time goes on :D

http://www.facebook.com/groups/236795539754275/ (the FB page) Steampunk Originals is an anthology of Steampunk comics. Coordinated by Neoflux Productions. Published by Arcana.

I’ll post updates once it gets published! Also be sure to check out the work of my friend Steven Yarbrough. He was also part of the project and told me about it in the first place. He’s a super nice and talented guy, so be sure to check him out!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Updates!

I can't believe it's August already. Where has the summer gone? Granted I'm pretty ready for fall :P

I just wanted to let everyone know what's going down as things are changing a lot in the world of Fran.

1. Comics
Right now I have a three page update for OMN waiting to be looked over and hopefully put up tonight. I didn't tone or color it like I had planned to because I was invited to take part in a Steampunk Anthology comic by a friend of mine so I'll be trying my hardest to finish up a few pages of comic for that. I'm really excited about it and did a little coloring test to see what kind of style I'll be doing it in.


I've decided to do the comic on watercolor paper with ink and inkwash, and then color flat colors under it in photoshop. This will allow me to have the black and white versions of the comic that I like doing, while providing the book with colored pages that they require. Long time followers might remember this gentleman as he's a hint to what story I'm adapting for this book :)

2. VA Comicon
The Alencia fan art contest ends on the 4th, and any entries I get will be formatted into the book, and it will be sent off to get printed. I am SUPER excited! Also a bit nervous as the con gets closer and things around me get more hectic. But I'm too excited to let the nervousness last too long :P

3. Side Projects
My media studies for the most part are on hold but in their place I've been doing a "30 day monster girl challenge" on tumblr. I've been using it as a character design/media excercise and it's been going well so far. Click the link there to follow the tag on my art tumblr. It will resume after the comic anthology is done (as that deadline is pretty close).

4. Kale
After sitting down and thinking it over I've decided I'm going to restart my Kale story. The first issue, while being an important early mile stone in my comics career, doesn't allow me to take the story in the directions I'd like to. So I'm working on completely rewriting it, and already I'm seeing a massive improvement. I'll bring more news and behind the scenes look at the story as I work on it.

Okay that's all I have for now. Keep an eye open for an OMN update either late tonight or tomorrow!