Continue reading »]]> I will return this summer to the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa CA.

July 11-15, 2011 – Drawing 101

MONDAY–FRIDAY ? 9am–12:30pm

Have a fun-filled week designing and drawing your own characters—from superheroes to cute critters—and developing stories and comic strips. Join cartoonist Brian Kolm to learn the basics of cartooning and create your own mini-comic book.

Continue reading »]]> Been so busy of late I almost forgot to remind everyone that I am exhibiting at Wondercon on April 1-3, 2011. I will be at Artist Alley AA-043 and will be selling comics, sketchbooks, and other goodies as well as taking on commissions. So drop by when your at the convention. I will post more before April 1st, so stay tooned.

Brian Kolm/ Atomic Bear Press

Artist Alley AA-043

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On new years eve I joined a bunch of artist to draw into the New Year. My cohorts were T, Nick Paz, Jeff Plotkin and Jeff Walker.

We meet at Japan Town Center in San Francisco for dinner at Mifune (http://mifune.com/) for noodles then after walking around the mall we headed to Johnny Rockets on nearby Filmore St. where we drew until 11:30, eating fries and drinking shakes. Then we headed down town and into the new year.

A great way to start 2011.

Overheard at Johnny Rockets: (a drunk regular was talking with the staff near 11:30 and one of the waiters told him to “talk with your inside voice” like a school kid. LOL

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Well, another 24 Hour Comic Book Day has come and gone. It was only yesterday that I arrived at Mission: Comics and Art to set up and now the final results are here on-line.

CLICK HERE to see photos from the event.

The challenge for 24 Hour Comic Book Day is to completely draw a 24 page comic in 24 hour. The comic can be in any style, size, or media. The challenge is a personal one with you competing against yourself to push your boundary, learn and grow. The challenge lets you see what you are capable of doing in a limited amount of time. The only rule is that you are to create (write, draw, plan) the comic during the event. The challenge is great since even if you don’t finish you still win by learning a lot about how you create.

This year, my meta-challenge was to do a holiday themed comic, possible based on the classic story of the Nutcracker. Besides reading a synopsis of the original story, I did nothing to influence the creation of the comic. I also new that I wanted to add some sci-fi/fantasy elements that were not in the original story. When the even started I started by doing some quick character drawings of Clara, the Nut Cracker, Uncle Drosselmeyer and the Rat King. To start with this was all ready getting to grand, but I still moved forward, excited for the challenge. I started penciling the pages with a light blue Color-Erase pencil on my templates (24HCBD_2010_template ) figuring out the Beginning and Ending. I quickly began to fill in the gaps, but with the story not working too well and the scale being bigger then 24 page it swelled to 30 pages. I knew that I wanted to start inking the story by 1/3 into the event and at that time I still had story gaps, but decided to ink/render the parts I knew were keepers hoping that inspiration and a better idea of how much time left would be my inspiration.

I started with a pass of inking the panel boarders and then cam back and tackled select panels that would help me get a fell of what the comic might be. Soon I was inking full pages with some relief after another one was completed. I also made an effort to jump around to render pages at the end of the comic too so the last thing someone sees would not be my worst work. The process worked and soon blank pages and holes were being filled. By sometime after midnight I knew that the comic would lack dialog since I had given myself so much art to do, but that is OK since I felt that the work would still be well worth the while. I was sure glad to have things pre-penciled since there is nothing like trying to figure out story when you are lacking sleep.

The final comic is far from perfect, but there are places where I really felt I was in ‘the Zone’ and that I was getting a lot of the process. At the bottom of this post are a few Do’s and Don’t that I got from the experience.

HERE IT IS! READ MY COMIC ON-LINE

(Click on the image below to read the comic, or follow this LINK) Feel free to comment below or on Facebook/Twitter and let me know what you think.

NEW Thought and Do’s and Don’ts for 2010:

- K.I.S.S
- Have and beginning and ending early on.
- Penciling first gives you structure to fall back on when you are tired. Keep it simple, but make sure you can understand what your trying to show/say
- I found that I did not use all the reference I loaded up on my iPod and with the stores Wi-Fi to find specific things it was not needed. I could see having 1 page of reference as part of Meta-Challenge though.
- Limit your art supplies. In the end I only used a Light Blue Color-Erase pencil, White-Out pen, Pentel Brush pen, PITT brush pen, small tip brush pen, a Sharpie Pen and that was it. I also had some black ink and brushes to do some washes if there was more time. I would not bring every tool you have, but have back-ups for when the ink runs out.
- Set a Meta-Challenge to help you get started and focused. This year there was: a Holiday story, a comic based on O Henry, a comic drawn with mostly Bic pens, and a 3D comic with photo material taken before hand. As long as the comic is written and drawn during the event, your OK.
- Bring a cushion to sit on cause folding chairs hurt your butt after 24 hours.
- Take breaks, stretch, eat, and drink water too.
- Go in with a positive attitude that you will get something out of the experience and don’t give-up.
- Have fun.

Continue reading »]]> Finally, here is my 24 Hour Comic Book Day comic from last year, 2009. The story of a sidekick, misunderstandings, and a beautiful goddess. It was almost done in the 24 hours and I am really proud at how good it turned out considering the challenge. I did end up adding a bit of art after-the-fact, but I did also miss about 3 hours of the event last year to teach the drop in class at the Cartoon Art Museum as well as doing too many pages (32), so I don’t feel so bad about it.

There are notes in the back of the book on what worked and what didn’t. You can also read my recent posts for this years 24HCBD HERE.

click to image to read the comic at ISSUE.com

Don’t forget I will drawing a 24 hour comic this Saturday 11am to Sunday 11 am at Mission: Comics and Art in San Francisco this weekend.

Continue reading »]]> I will be drawing and meeting folks at the Schulz Museum for their Sketch-A-Thon to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip.

I am honnored to be joining the likes of artist Debbie Huey, Lex Fajardo, Mike Gray, Paul Madonna, Lark Pien, Shaenon Garrity, Brian Nerelle, Michael Capozzola, and more!

So come by to buy a book, get a sketch, or just chat. I know it will be lots of fun!

Link: http://www.schulzmuseum.org/

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 ? 1–3pm
Second Saturday Cartoonists Celebrate
60 Years of Peanuts
Every second Saturday the Schulz Museum hosts a new Cartoonist-in-Residence! This month meet, watch, and talk to over ten different cartoonists, including All Over Coffee creator Paul Madonna; graphic novelists Alexis Fajardo and Brian Fies, whose graphic novel won the 2005 Eisner Award; Nickelodeon animator Mike Gray; and more! Cartoonists will speak with visitors, share their work, and draw something for the Schulz Museum’s collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of Peanuts.

Continue reading »]]> I will be exhibiting at the San Francisco Zine Fest on September 4-5, 2010. Hosted in the County Fair Building on the edge of Golden Gate Park, come and see the latest in comics, art and zines. Admission is FREE and there is something for everyone!

When and where is the SF Zine Fest?

Saturday, September 4 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, September 5 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
(Labor Day Weekend)

SF County Fair Building
(formerly Hall of Flowers)
9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park) map
We are very excited to be returning to our new home at the San Francisco County Fair Building! The SF County Fair Building is easily accessible by bicycle (lots of parking right out front) and also by public transit: The N train and the 6, 16BX, 43, 44, and 71 bus lines all drop you off within a couple blocks of the Fest! Parking can be more difficult, the adjacent lot is for loading and unloading ONLY. There are some paid parking lots in the nearby Inner Sunset district.

Find out more at: http://blog.sfzinefest.com/

Continue reading »]]> Fan art I did for the ladies of the Moustalgia podcast. I had been given a promo ball point pen at Wondercon by hosts Dave and Jeff, but their co-hosts Becky and Kristin could not make it so I drew these fan-drawings for them with the pen I was given.

If you are a fan of Disney theme parks and Disney in general you should give it a listen. They have great discussions of different subjects as well as trip reports, interviews and other goodness.

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updated 7-4-10

Well, my students this past week were really doing some amazing things, and they wanted me to let them know of the tools and software that was used in class and I want to share with all of you in webland what they achieved.

First off we did some Pixalation and Stop Motion. Those are both the same thing, the moving of objects filmed one frame at a time. For Stop Motion we were using and older version of iStopmotion (version 1). It’s Macintosh based and very simple to use which is why I like it. I have not really had a chance to work with version 2 yet, but would like to try in the future. www.boinx.com/istopmotion.

The program was used with just a DV camcorder on a tripod pointing down at a table surface and connected to the computer with a firewire cable. We animated clip art from Dover: http://store.doverpublications.com/0486995666.html which I printed out from the files that came with the book. There was also a battle of Fish vs. Birds with the students drawing their own art.

iStopmotion was also used to film some classic style drawn animation pencil tests of a ball bouncing. The students also went off and drew some new stuff on their own which made me really pleased.

Next off we enter the digital realm with a demonstration of Adobe After Effects CS4. http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/ The program is used for special effects, animation and motion graphics. One strength of the computer is that it can manipulate and re-purpose artwork. Below is a video sample of some Dancing Bears done with one drawing that was first scanned in and  had it’s background removed in Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/)and then using the puppet tool in After Effects. Then there is a Mysterious Man walking and Spaceships done with the digital version of cut-out animation.

Many of the same effects can be done in other programs like Adobe Flash, but After Effects handles the bitmaps better and is a lot more powerful even with a bit more of a learning curve. I also love the manipulation of flat layers in 3D space to get a ‘multiplane’ effect.

This is the same way they do the Motion Comics, which was one of my inspirations for this class. Artwork being re-purposed for animation.

AFX character animation tests from Brian Kolm on Vimeo.

Last we needed to come up with a simple idea for a short piece of animation in which the students would draw the art which would be brought into the computer and manipulated creating a whole story. After the class agreed to some story elements, everyone sat down to work on some drawings of what characters would look like. The drawings were placed up on the board and assistant artist Chris Conroy and I combined ideas into final designs.

The final result was always planned to be more of a motion comic, but with the art being created specifically for animating. To speed things up I roughed out a simple storyboard and the students worked on making the art which was scanned after class and prepared to be structured into an animation. A big thank to Graham Wong for his help on Friday working in After Effects to animate the drawings and having some of the students assist him.

The voice of the Nanny Ninja is Heather Plunkett and the lip assignments were done in JLipSync, and older java script based program. It’s a bummer since it only uses 8bit mono .WAV files which are very outdated by today’s standards, but it did still get the job done.

The student really did an amazing  job of creating some fantastic art that helped tell our story. GOOD WORK GUYS!

Sadly time and technical difficulties have prevented the finished video to appear yet, but it will be finished up in the early part of July with the missing art and missing music, but a close to finished version is presented here as a Work in Progress.

Note: I also found a few drawings did not get scanned in the last rush to finish on Friday and so they will have to be replaced with something else. No art was left out except for that reason. A final version will be on-line in the next week or two with a few missing drawings, music and sound effects — but will look close to the video below.

STAY TOONED FOR THE FINAL VIDEO!

Continue reading »]]> I just confirmed that there are still spaces available in the Cartoon Boot Camp Classes at the Cartoon Art Museum this Summer in which I will be the teacher.

The classes are aimed at students ages 10-14 who are looking for something that goes beyond the basics. The classes move fast and they are designed for kids who are all ready working on their craft to start with (i.e. intermediate)

The classes are going to be lots of fun and really exciting I think.

June 7 – 11: Character Creation and Design

Learn the engineering of character design: Construction, Costume, Store, and more! This class will focus on learning the structure so that you can draw what you imagine.

June 14 – 18: From Storyboard to Animatics

Students learn to draw storyboards that will be ‘filmed’ into a animatic with sound and posted on the web. Here is the one we did last year…

June 21 – 25: Fantasy Creatures and Mythical Beasts

Gryphons, unicorns, and dragons, oh my! Students learn to draw mythical beasties from around the world and even make up their own. Some of the highlights will be: drawing creatures on all fours, drawing simplified fur and scales, and setting the scene and mood.

June 28 – July 2: Animation and Motion Comics

Thanks to modern technology we have seen a new art form, the motion comics. This class will allow students to learn how to take their own comics and artwork and animate them in both traditional and digital methods. The final video will be available for the world to see on the internet.

Continue reading »]]> (can’t see the images in facebook/email, view it here:  http://atomicbearpress.com/2010/04/11/comicformatquestion/ )

Now that our comic work will most likely appear in multiple formats: print, web, ipad, iphone/ipod touch, Motion Comics, cel phone, e-book reader what is the best format to aim for first?

There is…..

1) Standard Comic Book Format (portrait aspect ratio).

Pros: Works good for print and on correctly formatted screens like the new iPad from Apple. The print copy might sell better in Comic Book Stores.

Cons: Posting it on the web requires the user to possible scroll up and down which could take away from the experience. For smaller screens like the iPhone, the page might need to broken up into single panels.

2) Web format comics (landscape aspect ratio)

Pros: Works good on monitor screens with out scrolling around.

Cons: Harder to print as a book. For smaller screens like the iPhone, the page might need to broken up into single panels.

(example: Travis Hanson’s The Bean. It looks great on screen and the printed books are nice but might take more work to create)

the bean page 100 by *thebeanbytrav on deviantART

3) Panel by Panel (web format) Each panel is a separate illustration which is then can be edited into a page layout if desired.

Pros: Panels are ready for digital formats like cel phones and the iPhone. Can be edited into a comic page if desired. Feels like a picture book or a story board/animation that is reveled as you scroll downwards or sideways. Can control how the reader sees the work since they focus on only one page at a time. Easier to make into Motion Comic.

Cons: Still might have to edit it into a page for print. Would produced full page layouts that are pretty un-dynamic based on their standard shapes. Story telling can possibly go slower paced then a full page of comic. The reader has less control how the view the information since they only see one panel at a time.

(example: Derik Kirk Kim’s The Tune. Cinematic, looks great on screen, can control how the reader see’s your vision more so.)

44) Square.

Pros: Nice, friendly format. Feels like a childrens picture book. Stands out as different then a standard comic. Looks pretty good aspect ratio wise on computer screen.

Cons: Might be harder to print and format for some smaller screen media like the iPhone.

(example: Mouse Guard and Jim Hennson’s Fraggle Rock from http://www.archaia.com)

Are there other formats to consider as a starting place? Which one do you like?

Continue reading »]]> Well Wondercon 2010 has come and gone, ending this afternoon 4/4/2010. This year was bigger and more crowded with lots of fantastic names in comics and pop culture. I had one of my best years and can’t wait for next year. Below is just some highlights of this weekend. I hope to post more this following week.

- Thursday came and got my badge and dropped off some materials at my Artist Alley Table AA48. Was pleased to see everything in the area was set-up and registration was quick and mostly painless.

Friday…
- I arrived a bit late to find that the place was jumping with large crowds. I am guessing this was because many had off from work for good Friday.
- Great to see so many friends and familiar faces.
- I had two amazing neighbors on either side of my table: Lark Pien and Alexis Fajardo (who I have done work for in the past)
- I did my first art commission of a Buddha Cow (below, click for bigger image)

- Went to an excellent event at the Cartoon Art Museum for the Hero Initiative and to raise money for comic great Ed Hannigan. Here Mr. Hannigan talks about the Hero Initiative…

Saturday…
- Lots and lots of folks. The report is that the day was SOLD OUT! It really felt like a tiny SDCC which is a good thing in my opinion.

- Got to do some commissioned art, but I forgot to take pictures of most of it… (click for bigger image)

- Got to meet Dave and Jeff from a favorite Disney podcast of mine…Mousetalgia. Jeff is the creator of a wonderful Haunted Mansion website…DoomBuggies.com and Dave is the webmaster of the wonderful blog mousevinyl.com. There you can listen to Disney Records of by gone days. Becky and Kristen did not make it.

- Got to visit with one of my best friends from Highschool who came to see me. He has a cool hobby…he does Paranormal research.

- Had lots of sales for my black greeting cards and mini prints especially of my 25 Penguins. I only used 14 of them and maybe that was too many. One of the most popular was the Frankenstein Penguin.

- Got to have dinner with my buddy Lex (Kid Beowulf) Fajardo, his publisher and a host of other folks. The meal as a crazy big fest. Buca di Beppo gives you a giant cupcake within 7 days of your birthday.

Sunday…
- Got to create lots more cool commissioned art…

- Got to pick up some cool items: Becky and Frank’s mock little golden book, Tigerbutter. An art print by Darwin Cooke. Issue #3 and #4 of The Bean by Travis Hanson. Book #3 and #4 of Blair Kitchen’s The Possum. Discovered the work of Jeff Prechtel and his pirate drawings.

- Also got some great sketches:

- Emerged to the outside from the convention center to POURING RAIN! Fun. Not.

- Feeling energized and worn out all at the same time.

- Got lots of cool new ideas for the future.

Well, that’s all for now. Check out a few more photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/briankolm/sets/72157623647903357/

Check a nice convention review from artist Colleen Durant.

Most likely more later this week.

Continue reading »]]> Here is a sample of the postcard design I sent off to the printer today. The front features no only Victor Grassroot from Beyond the Great Chimney, but a few new characters for possible upcoming projects. The back has a promo for creative services I provide.

The cards should be available at Wondercon on Easter Weekend (April 2-4, 2010), so come on by and pick one up. Click on the image below to see it bigger.