I didn’t do a whole lot of shopping this con, but I did read some cool ass books. Nate Simpson, aside from being a super fella, has an amazingly beautiful book called Nonplayer which most of you should be familiar with because of his Project Waldo blog. Really cool stuff, that guy deserves every bit of work that comes to him. I also read Joe Casey & Mike Huddleston’s Butcher Baker: The Righteous Maker, a book that pretty much oozes kicking ass. I also picked up some indies and minis which I haven’t even thumbed through yet but I’ll plug them later.

The show itself was a lot of fun, if a little bit crowded. But it wasn’t unwalkable like SDCC can get to be. Mostly it was just a little stuffy. The Isotope parties, however, were something else. James Sipes was an incredibly gracious host to a sea of great people. Also I got to smoke a cigarette with Frank Quitely at 3 in the morning and that was pretty much worth my whole trip.

Just as a heads up, I covered a couple of Wondercon panels for CBR! Click below to see what I was doing every evening at the con!
Wondercon – V Panel
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=31671>Wondercon – The Sergio & Mark Show

Hope you’re keeping up with Vapor Trails, the story’s going to pick up soon!

But now everything’s out in the open and I can show some stuff off!

Like Vapor Trails!

Hit the jump for more info and a process article!

The site is fully up and running, with some new features being added over the coming months. I’ll be doing updates Tuesdays and Thursdays.

As promised, here’s the process I used to make the cover for chapter 1…

I started with red Colorerase pencil, like I always do. I love the color it gives and it’s really easy to wipe out when you scan in. Lately I’ve been inking with a Tachikawa G-Nib and Kuretake Manga Black Ink that I got from JetPens.com. I’ve been using mine for about 3 months now and I really like the line variation you get from it.

I scan at 400 dpi, then use levels and the Channel Mixer (Black & White w/ Red Filter) setting to sharpen up the blacks and remove all my pencil marks. I’ll generally do these on Adjustment Layers so that I can fiddle with them later if I find a problem. Next step is to create a layer mask so that I can color the outlines later (thanks for the trick Mr. Sheldon). With only the black & white visible, go to the Channels tab and hit “Load Channel as Selection”. Go back to layers, create a new layer, inverse your selection, and hit the Add Vector Mask button. Now you can paint all over the layer and it will only show up where your outlines are.

Next up it’s flatting time! In this case I just paint in with my tablet and then adjust colors later once i’ve got all the areas filled. There’s also a simple gradient in the background. At this point I’ve also got a white vector mask on the outside of the picture so that I don’t have to worry about overcoloring.

Now it’s time for shading…for some reason I did the background elements separately from the characters in this one. Not what I would normally do but it’s what happened. I selected a realistic brush with a lot of texture, set the opacity low, and started scrubbing away with colors from the gradient I’d dropped in during the flats. I also took this chance to color the outlines so that it wouldn’t stick out so much. That included whiting over the outlines to the smoke silhouettes.

Now the characters get shaded. I wanted to have a pinkish lightsource just offscreen to the right where Pancake is running, so I made sure to add a lot of lighting on his front side as well as a lower level on Jared’s face. The shadows are pretty much the same color as the darkest parts of the background. I didn’t really change brushes at all on this, except at the very end where I went over Pancakes face to smooth the texture out. Once that was done, I added a low-opacity Multiply layer of a texture from Bittbox, and lightened it up to where it wasn’t messing with the colors.

And that’s about it. I added text for the finished product and a cover was made. Hope you like it! And more importantly, go read the comic!!

Work noise:

Current work noise:

First up (and very late), Long Beach was a great time full of great people and I want to thank all the new friends and fans that came by and showed support.  I’m not sure if I’ll go to the show next year, but it’s definitely got me looking at next year’s con schedule with hungry eyes.

Secondly, and vaguely related, I’ve opened up for sales on the Pins N Needles book. It’s $5 for a copy (with shipping) and Lindsey and I will both sign/sketch in it for you. It’s great for teen readers and grownup readers alike, even though there is a panel with tiny cartoon boobs in it. Click on the Buy Now button over there in the sidebar and get your copy for Christmas!

Thirdly, I’ve decided to put up my 24 Hour Comic Day western-ghost-story piece Restless for your reading pleasures.  I’ll have a few copies with me at the next con too if you prefer to read on paper (which is always better).   Go check it out in the Comics section.

Vapor Trails is still on track to launch in January, Goodbye Blue Monday is still alive and kicking, and I’ve got a new secret film/graphic novel project coming out next year. Things are looking up for Christmas!

The 100 Days project was a total success! I’ve got a tally down at the bottom listing all the stuff I got accomplished during the period and though I only got 1 completed comic out, the amount of scripting and prep work I did for my other projects is insane to me. It also gave me some real focus to which projects needed to get attention and which ones could go to the backburner. I’ve already decided that the next 100 Days project I do will involve a lot more artwork, since posting lengthy character descriptions and hacked up outlines is pretty much boring.

I do have a little news for those of you following Mourning Electric. I’ve decided to take it down a different avenue heading for print. After getting reactions at SDCC, it just felt like a webcomic was not the right format. I’ll keep the Zuda entry up forever, but the new version of the script is being tailored for a book.

To take the place of ME, I’m developing the other project that was originally headed toward Zuda, Vapor Trails. Keep an eye out for that soon (first picture posts tomorrow).

So without further ado (and broken up by project so it’s actually readable):

THE 100 DAYS TALLY

Pins N Needles:

Issues 01-03 written
Issue 01 – thumbnailed and in the middle of pencils
Pitch packet at 30% completion

Mourning Electric:

Short story finished and posted
New Script – 21 Pages
Story outlines done

Vapor Trails:

Script – Chapter 1 complete – 33
Character/Vis Dev Art (to be posted tomorrow)
Short script completed

I also wanted to talk a little about the whole Zuda closure and how it affected my work and this project. Scroll down past said big ass picture and click on the Keep Reading link for wall-of-text ranting! YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW, IT’S IN YOUR RACY NATURE.

Click to read the original submission!

Man, what do I say about this? I want to take a minute here and just explain how this whole thing played out.

So let’s talk about this project. I’ll do a post on influences and development later, suffice to say there was a lot of music involved. ME started sometime in the middle of September 2009, when I was trying to figure out what to work on. I knew I wanted to do a weekly and I was itching, like many, for another run at the Zuda deal. So I started work on it and finished over the course of the next couple months, pretty standard stuff. In the middle of it I realized that even if Zuda didn’t want it, I still wanted to do it. I really like this story a lot.

So I turned it in at the end of November, maybe the first week of December, I can’t quite remember. At that point, I knew it would be a wait so I sunk into some celebration. I did what I think a lot of newer creators do, and I didn’t work on anything for a while. That’s the thing I regret most now, but hey, you gotta learn sometime right?

And then the 3 months came up, I saw other comics that I knew had been submitted after mine coming into the competition. I figured, well they’re just looking for the right place for my comic now, it’s not right for the current competition. I sent a few emails to their feedback form to make sure my sub hadn’t gotten lost like some others I’ve known, but I never got a response. Right around February, I started getting antsy, but I wanted to be patient. That’s something that has to be expected in a business like this, with so much material going through so few people.

I had decided to let things ride with Zuda to see where it went. In the meantime, I started up another comic with a friend in the hopes for another contest entry. It was a fantasy/sci-fi thing based on a really old comic of mine. It was right in the middle of that that I found out about the competition end. They told us they were reviewing submissions in the queue, and I believe they did just that. But it meant another 3 months of waiting to see if mine would make it through to their new format.

Obviously, as with so many other really amazing entries, it did not.

And now I’m left knowing exactly what I knew 6 months ago. Mourning Electric needs its own site. It needs to be mine and mine alone, broken free of the Zuda format, the need for ultra-compressed storytelling. It needs to be its own comic.

So I’m hard at work on the new script, I’ll be redoing the pages in a new book-style format that will allow for more decompressed storytelling.

I appreciate the hard work of the Zuda staff and I’m definitely sad to see them abandon their efforts in such a hasty manner, but I want to thank them for giving me and so many great creators the inspiration to get moving on those projects they’d been sitting on. I hope you keep all em comin.

As a special treat, I’ve also decided to post the original Zuda submission that I did way back when. It will be up later today when I get the pages setup.

COMIC UPDATE!
Go read the new pages!.

Click the picture to read the newest pages!

Thanks everyone for reading, stay tuned for more Mourning Electric!

100 DAYS TALLY – END OF DAY 66
PNN Issue 01 – Layouts – Pg 1-8
Mourning Electric – New script – pg 1-14

The 100 Days project continues on unabated, for the most part. The last few days have been full of writing for the most part, with little time to put pictures on paper. That’s what Lindsey‘s for right?

COMIC UPDATE!
Pages 9-12 are available today, with 4 pages being posted next Wednesday and the one after that. Go check it out!.

Click the picture to read!

Make sure to check back next Wednesday for the exciting continuation!

100 DAYS TALLY – END OF DAY 59
GBM – Scripts for 66
PNN Issue 03 Script – completed
PNN Issue 04 Script – p1-3 and some plotting

As many have already noted, this week marked the closing out of Zuda‘s slush pile and I was among that group. It’s an unfortunate thing, but one I was well-prepared for. I wish them luck on whatever it is they’re going to be doing. After waiting 7 months for a reply, I had pretty much assumed that Mourning Electric would not be continuing on as a weekly with DC.

However, that means I can do pretty much whatever I want with it, so it’s going to be getting it’s own site. I’m working on getting a back-stock of pages finished for it so that I can release it this fall before Long Beach.

Pages 5-8 are available today, with 4 pages being posted next Wednesday and the one after that. Go check it out!.

Click the picture to read!

Make sure to check back next Wednesday for the exciting continuation!

100 DAYS TALLY – END OF DAY 53
GBM – Scripts for 63-65
PNN Issue 02 Script – first draft done
PNN Issue 03 Script – p1-14