Merry Christmas in 2013!

 

My annual Christmas Card, 2013 Edition.

The Joy of Christmas

 

It's been said that Christmas isn't Christmas without little children, and there is a lot of truth to that. To a little child, everything is magical. As we grow older, the world seems less magical. I don't think the world loses its magic, but we lose our innocence and our ability to see the wonder all around us as a result. But when we are around little children, we can see some of that magic once again thru their eyes.

Every year I create a Christmas card, but this year I struggled with what to do. I finally reached back into the magic of childhood and pulled out this: toy trains, alphabet blocks, and cute animals. Cully and the tree were inked with a Japanese brush pen while the train and rails were inked with a Zebra disposable brush pen.

I'll be posting the finished card soon, so keep your eyes open!

Philosophy: Discrimination, Priorities, and the Power of Deadlines

 

I remember in Art School several professors told us NOT to say we didn't finish a drawing, painting, or other assignment because we were working on an English paper, and yet students inevitably did. Which was funny, because they were Art Majors too. Their Art projects should have had top priority since that's what they were pursuing as a vocation. I'm guessing it was years of brainwashing from the public school system instilling a sense of "important" and "unimportant" and Art was pushed to the backseat.

There will always be more things vying for our attention than we have time to give. Some are important. Some are less important. Some are urgent, and some can wait. If we make a grid with these attributes, we see four categories emerge. The items in the urgent column seem to get done, because there is a pressing deadline. That's good until we realize we tend to sacrifice things that are important but not urgent for things that are unimportant but urgent. The important things that aren't urgent are the ones that get swept under the rug. These include things like improving our skills, spending time with loved ones, and other self-improvement and family improvement activities. Hence the importance of priorities.

In order to make room for all of the important things, we need to be more discriminatory. Discrimination has a negative connotation today because of decades of misuse, but if you look at the actual definition of the word, it's a very beneficial and essential activity. The definition defines discrimination as "the ability to discern what is of high quality; good judgement or taste". We must discriminate, ie. use good judgement, to determine what activities and other things are worth our time and which aren't and choose those that are of worth and discard or ignore those that aren't. Often we equate importance with urgency, but they aren't the same thing. Just because something is due tomorrow doesn't mean it's worth our time to do it.

Other times we may let others determine importance thru deadlines. Deadlines are a powerful motivator. If you never set a deadline for a task, you'll probably never complete the task, because you can always do it "tomorrow" and instead focus on things that can't be put off. Deadlines are an important and powerful tool, but like any tool, they can be used for destruction as much as construction. To avoid this, one needs to discriminate between the important and the unimportant and be willing to ignore the unimportant even if negative consequences follow. One should also realize many deadlines were contrived and can be pushed back without serious difficulty.

One must look at the important but nonurgent tasks and set aside a time to do those. Set a deadline and make them urgent, even if it's artificial and contrived. It will cause conflict with other taks and induce stress, but in the long run you will be grateful you did it. The alternative is looking back with regret, and who wants to do that?

The comic above is a page from Wandering Koala Digest 2 and a perfect illustration of a typical student/worker/person who did not exercise proper discrimination. He traded the urgent but less important for the less urgent but more important. I drew it with a Zebra disposable brush pen and colored it in Adobe Photoshop. Let me know what you think!

High Society hits a Low

 

I love silent films. (Have I mentioned that before?) One of their many charms are the exotic costumes and set dressings.

This is the third page of the story Honorable Mention from Wandering Koala Digest 2 now on sale. The concept for this party was fancy costumes and elaborate hairdos. It was a blast to draw!

I drew the tale with a Zebra disposable brush pen and colored it in Adobe Photoshop. I really like how the icy blue worked with the black and white. It looks like it's been fully colored and not minimally colored.

Feel free to share your comments.

The Joy of G.I. Joe

 

The 80s had the best toys and the best cartoons. And more often than not, the two were connected. A few meddling people saw these cartoons as nothing more than 30-minute commercials. As a youngster I asked myself what we wrong with that? I still don't see the problem. Ironically many of those same people champion and applaud certain shows that are nothing more than 30-minute or 60-minute commercials for their political and subversive propagandas, but that's a subject for another post.

One of my favorites was G.I. Joe. I've never been a fan of military anything (unless it's World War I) so it's funny I liked G.I. Joe so much. Rewatching those shows now as an adult, I realize they weren't military at all but science fiction. Cobra always had some outlandish base in an exotic corner of the world and used some science fiction McGuffen to blackmail the world, and G.I. Joe would use their scientifically advanced vehicles and weapons to stop them. This was good science fiction filled with interesting characters and exotic locals. I love shows that travel to exotic locations.

The 80s were also the era of the ninja, and G.I. Joe had their ninja, Storm Shadow. Most of the time he worked for the bad guys, but from time to time his honor would require him to assist G.I. Joe. He was always left mysterious and in the shadows with little exploration of his background, and that just made him cooler. I know a lot of people want a full back story on all characters with "character development" (a term people use without really understanding what it means), but that really limits your story options and turns a tale into a factory churned out yawnfest.

I've been wanting to have Storm Shadow meet the Wandering Koala for a while and finally got around to it. The figures were drawn with a Staedlter pencil and then inked with my Japanese Brush Pen. I created the dojo in Adobe Photoshop and colored the characters in Corel Painter.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. What do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Software Review: Manga Studio 5

 

I love trying out new software. I recently purchased Manga Studio 5 and have been wanting to try it out. I've also been wanting to do a little more Jak Phoenix art, and so...

I'm impressed with quite a few features of Manga Studio. First, it has a lot of great tools from pencils (light, dark, rough, and more) to pens (slick to textured) to watercolors (and gauche like paints) to oil paints to pastels (including chalk like strokes). It has an amazing set of rulers from straight lines to curved lines to perspective lines. It masks. It has lettering and easy balloon creation. It has layers and adjustments one is used to in Adobe Photoshop. But it isn't feature overloaded which means one can sit down and start using it pretty quickly. It's kind of like a stripped down version of Corel Painter providing the tools you really need and will use but with the familiarity of Photoshop. And the price at under $50 at Amazon is hard to beat for all this power. Just look at the line work above. That was with a default brush, no adjustments needed.

I still have a lot more experimenting to do with all the powerful features (like 3D models for reference) but so far I'm very happy with the program.

Usually I use a more naturalistic color scheme for my fan work of Jak Phoenix, but I was curious how his universe would look in my Wandering Koala Stark style. It looks pretty good. What do you think?

Art Technique: Filters and Digital Painting

 

So I've wanted to get into digital painting for awhile. I've tried several times with several programs, but have yet to find a satisfying technique. Maybe I just wasn't meant to paint.

Today I tried to do a digital painting of Jak Phoenix, the star of two really fun and entertaining novels. And he's a blast to create fan work with. I created a painting completely in Corel Painter. I wasn't satisfied. So I brought the painting into Photoshop to see what I could do with it.

Needless to say after a few filters and a little simplification later and I was MUCH more satisfied. It worked because the structure was good, the design was strong, and the colors and values were almost working. I'm always amazed at how it only takes a few modifications to make a work go from almost working to working beautifully.

Here is the original. It's not bad, but it's not really good either. The background is from a public domain photo by Lynn Greyling.

But don't take my word for it. What do you think?

Coming December 12!

Art Philosophy: When Universes Collide

 

One thing that makes the Marvel Universe so much fun is how easily and how often characters in one book will crossover into another. In the DC Universe that's always been a lot more rare. Probably why I enjoyed (and still do) SuperFriends so much.

But while I love to see Superman meet Batman and Wonder Woman and Spider-man team up with DareDevil and Captain America, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of Superman meeting Spider-man. I love both characters, but for different reasons. They each have a different tone and feel that just don't mesh well with each other. And I don't mean just because one is heroic and the other is tortured, but there is a different feel to the Marvel Universe as opposed to the DC Universe. Their universes are just so different, that they don't make sense to me together. Am I alone in this? Even when the same writer and artist team work on the different characters, the work is so different. Take a look at Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween and compare it to their Spider-man: Blue or Hulk: Grey--they have totally different vibes.

But there are some characters and universes that make sense to meet. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had a lot of crossovers, and those have made sense. Hellboy has shown up with characters from other companies (including Batman) and it worked. So I guess I'm not against crossovers per se, but I want the crossover to make sense. I want the characters to mesh.

So does Wandering Koala meeting Wonder Woman make sense? I think so, and not just because I created Wandering Koala. I think they work, because Wandering Koala is a pulp-style hero, and pulp heroes seem to have the most flexibility because of the visceral place they come from. Pulp art and pulp fiction is as basic to humanity and human emotion as one can get, and for that reason it makes sense with other characters. Look at Tarzan--he crosses over with everyone in one form or another (KaZar in the Marvel Universe for example) and he works. Hellboy is pulp and works. Spawn in some forms is almost pulp and he made sense crossing over with Batman. The new Arrow series on the CW is a pulp interpretation of Green Arrow, and it works better than any other version of the character.

What do you think of crossovers? Do you enjoy them? Have any ever bothered you?

It's Done!

Have you ever worked on a project and thought it would never be finished?

That's how I've felt working on the second issue of Wandering Koala Digest, which is funny, because I'm actually on schedule. I guess it's because the page count for the graphic novel portion grew to 35 pages instead of the usual 32. Oh, well, the story needed the extra pages.

I'm so excited it's finished that I decided to share the final page as a teaser.

What do you think? Be sure to leave a comment and let me know.

Wandering Koala Digest will be available for pre-order in a couple of weeks from Barnes & Noble, Apple, and Kobo, and will go on sale mid-December.