A post on re-purposing comics and illustration into animation
Here are some new comic book trailers I have discovered on-line…
Mangaman by Barry Lyga with illustrations by Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil). A boy from a Manga (Japaneses Comic) universe somehow gets transported to the ‘real’ world and goes to an American high school. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing http://www.hmhbooks.com/ Just a nice trailer that gets the idea across.
A trailer for dave lapp’s CHILDREN OF THE ATOM with animation by Michael Darmanin and Dalton Sharp. Published by Conundrum Press http://www.conundrumpress.com I just saw this trailer posted on the Canadian comic website/blog: Sequential and found the animation worked pretty well, but the music does get a bit repetitive.
This BD(French language comic) by the artist Stanislas and based on a famous radio drama by Jacques Tardi and Michel Boujut that was broadcast in France in the late 1990s. Published by Dargaud http://www.dargaud.com/ Wow, lots of animation in this one. Very nicely done with good music.
I just discovered Reed Gunter by Shane and Chris Houghton while looking at the latest art at Comic Art Fans. I was surprised I had not seen the comic before and I hope to be able to pick up some copies soon. The art is clean and full of appeal in the tales of a cowpoke and his bear. I really like the animation in this trailer.
Bizarro is a bizarre, imperfect copy of Superman. He is everything that Superman is not–literally. Every thing Bizarro does is deliberately backwards or the opposite of normal.
I love the character since he can be categorized as a villain in the DC Superhero universe, but he really is just dumb and crazy. I have seen him treated more like an anti-hero recently, where in a recent SuperGirl comic he was trying to communicate with her more clearly. He’s the kind of character I see as a weird hero and a failure of a super villain.
The drawing was done at the last Cartoonist Conspiracy SF meet with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and then scanned and colored in Photoshop. I am happy with how some of the texture on his faces came out.
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.
Hey all, I thought it was time to give a bit of a follow-up to the CAM-JAM comic jam at the Cartoon Art Museum that I helped organize with the museum’s bookstore.
I would say it’s the most successful event yet with 16 participants helping create a 40 page mini comic. There is a link at the bottom of this post to read it on-line.
First off, we did not reach one of our goals of printing the book in time for folks to take home with them. We have tried twice and at this point we will probably re-think that part. It was also raining, but that is something we can not control…yet.
Sunday Feb 21, 2010 was a rainy day, perfect to sit inside and draw with new and old friends. We had just the right amount of artists to fill the lobby at the CAM. Most folks arrived promptly which was nice. When you don’t know how many people are attending, having 5 show up right on-time is a relief.
The event was really energizing, fun, and everyone created amazing work. The theme was Samurai and Superheroes, but no one drew any superheroes.
Here is a video of my taken by Cathy. I wish my voice did not sound like a Muppet on recordings.
11:30 am- We started with a character design mash-up warm-up which was great. The drawings feature mixing up established pop culture icons which are twisted in different ways to make something new. Samples can be seen below or in the web-edition of our comic. Thanks to Marti for scanning the drawings during the event.
CAM-JAM character mash-ups
12:00 am- Next up was a break and then Kristin Barrett of General Pencil Co. demonstrated their brand of watercolor pencils and gave everyone a set. She did a great job and was really fun and interesting. You can find out more about their products at http://www.generalpencil.com. A big thank goes out for there sponsorship.
- We broke into groups of 2-4 artists. Everyone started their comic by working from a randomly created Haiku poem generated on-line. This seemed to be a good limitation to get the juices flowing and then we just started to create our comics. We drew actual size on 5.5″ x 8.5″ cover stock and we had a selection of brush pens, ink and brushes to use. BTW Brush and Ink was one of our themes for the event.
- Around 5pm we stopped our work with 5 unique stories of the Samurai. I tried to tape down the pages into a dummy of the book so we could go and make copies at Copy Central, but it too long. But we did have a long Mini Comic of 40 pages, including a snazzy cover to show for our hard work.
We packed up all our materials and put away the tables and chairs. Thanks to Amy and David for helping us and for giving us a bit more time after their quitting time. Afterward a group of us went to Mel’s for some food.
The next week I scanned the files and had them printed at Costco Business (great service and prices) and stappled them in time for the Cartoonist Conspiracy SF comic jam on Thursday Feb 25, 2010. I handed some out at the jam and then mailed others the next day. The book is really amazing and we should all be proud of what we created together.
A big thank you has to go out to Heather Plunkett and the staff of the Cartoon Art Museum and Bookstore for their support, space and help. A shout out to Kirstin Barrett for sharing her products and the wonderful samples. And of course a big thank you to everyone who participated…
Cameron Forsley, Maggie Tran, Lindsey Stapleton, Eric Haddad, Aurora Sofia Alcantar, Jeff Nevins, Rick Lucey, George Webber, Pat Tong, Mike Scagliotti, Audry Soffa, Jeff Plotkin, David Mann, Rena Simon-Igra, Alan Groening, and Cathy Notter.
So 24 Hour Comic Book Day is on October 18th and I will be perticipating at San Francisco’s Comic Outpost.
In my preperation for the challenge I drew a short 4 page comic last night. Each page took about 20 minuets and there was little to no planning. The pages were drawn with blue pencil then with FW ink and brush. I know it is far from perfect, but it does give me some ideas of what I want to do in (aprox.) two weeks.
October 18th has a lot going on. I am both teaching the drop-in kids cartooning class at the Cartoon Art Museum as well as participating for the 24 Hour Comic Book Day at Comics Outpost (more info here).
The problem? The 24 Hour Comic Book Day event starts at 11 am and I need to be at the museum to teach a class at 1 pm to 3 pm. So I am going to possibly loose 3 to 4 hours of time on the comic, meaning it might be more like a 20 to 21 Hour Comic Book challenge for me.
Will I give up….NO! It just means that I am going to be drawing on the Muni. I am also hoping that I can involve the kids in the process somehow too. That would make it double good.
I also hope that I can blog durring the day to let you know whats going on.
The great treasure of the Asterix saga is its inventive wordplay, which has forced translators such as me to adapt freely and creatively. Tintin also contains wordplay, but not nearly as much as Asterix, and the volume of Goscinny’s gags increased as time went on. At first he relied heavily on the simple joke that the Romans spoke Latin: On the first page of the first adventure, after a bruising encounter with the Gauls, one legionary declaims, “Vae victis!” However, his concussed friend has perdu son latin, literally “lost his Latin,” but with the colloquial meaning of being “baffled, at a loss.” The Germans use the same expression; we don’t have it in English. “It’s all Greek to me,” a close equivalent, was no use here. It was done with grammatical references in English: “Accidence will happen” and “We decline.” (“Funny way to spell accidents,” a puzzled German student once commented to me.)
I will be at Supercon 2008 in San Jose this Saturday at the Cartoon Art Museum table right in front (or so I am told). I will be selling Comics and be taking commissions for original art. So come on buy and say ‘Hi”.
