http://atomicminicomics.com/

The latest mini is over schedule and still not quite finished,...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:09:12 +1000

The latest mini is over schedule and still not quite finished, but at least I have a cover nearly done now. I’m not sure if it’s going to still qualify for the exchange I was doing with the Comics Project group on Facebook, but I am almost certain it will be the first of my minis that I’ll make available for download via gumroad. Lots (and lots) more to come here, as soon as I can finish making the thing!

Some progress shots from the upcoming mini (that’s right,...

Wed, 01 May 2013 22:40:27 +1000

Some progress shots from the upcoming mini (that’s right, it’s still alive!). I’m using a technique I just heard about from Jonathan Rector, using digital thumbnails and traditional pencils then back to digital for inks. It’s more efficient than trying to keep myself in front of my screens for the length of time this will take/is taking. With the help of this technique, I might just finish this in time.

Stay tuned!

Today was Minicomics Day! In the tradition of 24 hour Comic Day,...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 01:04:00 +1100

Today was Minicomics Day! In the tradition of 24 hour Comic Day, creators around the world spent some time today making a mini completely from scratch. The implied goal is an 8-page mini written, drawn and bound/printed in 8 hours. I did mine as one of those single sheets of paper folded to create 8 pages, and I was able to finish it in just under 4 1/2 hours.

It’s rough, it could definitely use some tweaking, but…IT’S DONE!

Available for download right here, just save the image and print.

It’s A4 size, so if you’re not in a metric system, just select “Scale to fit media” when you print it. That should make it play nice with your paper. High resolution PDF here (for better quality, but it’s 4 megs, so you decide).

For assembly help, check out this post. Basically, you fold on the solid lines and cut the dotted line in the middle. I set it up so that the front cover is actually the back of the book, so no-you’re not losing your mind or anything (I am!).

I’m working on stuff for my upcoming mini comic for...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:04:47 +1100

I’m working on stuff for my upcoming mini comic for another swap with the Facebook Group Comics Projects. The theme is “Into Darkness”, and I’m calling my book “DEADEYE”. Don’t want to reveal too many details, but it’s a western with a supernatural twist.

This is an idea for the cover, and the main character.

Update!

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:35:31 +1100

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here, and for that I apologize. The good news is that what’s kept me away has been making stuff. I am involved in a few things at the moment, so here’s an update:

I contributed a panel to a jam comic started by the mighty Pharoah Bolding, creator of The Dot! comic and all-around cool guy.

A jam comic, to those who might be wondering, is a type of collective comic story where each creator makes a panel based on the previous one and then passes off to the next person who does likewise. Sort of like that old game where each person contributes a sentence to a story-but with pretty pi’churs. The comic is called The Great Mashup, and even though Jam Comics can be pretty surreal by nature, you should start at the beginning and read on to see my contribution and beyond. Then read mine again. The comic’s creators are: Pharoah Bolding, Courtney Hahn, Ryan Wheaton, Peter Palmiotti, Jesse Hughes, Michael Wawrow, Marshall Calmplex, Jon Wallace and myself. Names I’m sure you’ll recognize if you’re familiar with me or the Facebook Sketch Daily group where we hang.

If you’re into non sequitur, here’s my panel all naked-like:

I know, I know…ever since he lost that tiger, he’s been edgy.

I’m also working on a short comic story and a pinup for Pharoah’s upcoming anthology of Black superheroes, I believe he’s calling it “Black Tights”. This one’s not far enough along to show much yet, but I’ll keep you posted. I have made some small progress on the pinup, though.

In case that wasn’t enough (and when is it, really?), I’m doing a mini for another exchange with the Comics Projects group on Facebook, like we did last year. This time the theme is “Into Darkness”, which originally figured heavily into my story idea but now I’m drifting somewhat. I think at this point I’m almost settled on calling it a supernatural western. With about 12 pages, I hope to pack it full of spooky action and angst. :) More to come on that, too.

So from across my heaping full plate, I wish you all a good day. Updates to come!

ATOMIC MINI COMICS ISSUE #2 LIVES!

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:50:00 +1000

That’s right, the headline is not a fever dream or wild imagining. You’re not injured or in a near death state of irrationality.

I finished another mini comic.

As I mentioned before, I participated in a mini comics dump truck with some fine folks on the Facebook group Comics Projects. Thanks to the support and encouragement of a peer group in general and some good advice and assistance from these people in particular, I actually finished my planned mini, and with it the 4-page story for my character Z that I wrote as my very first mini comic. That’s right, I finally put that thing down on paper! I’m all giddy, so I’d better get down off this table.

This also made my mini for the exchange the longest one I’ve completed, 12 pages with a specialty cover. No great shakes in the real world, but it’s a 50% increase from the first “book”, so that’s something to me. At this rate, the next mini will be 16 pages and I will be producing a full size comic book issue the time after that. Of course, I may just defy the progression and move directly to full-length next time, we’ll see what story I come up with. Since so far my stories have been simple in the extreme (smashing stuff with monster hands mostly), we’ll have to see how it shakes out.

As for the cover, I had what I thought was a cool idea to make this one a little special for the cool folks in the swap. I printed the line art for the cover on a transparent paper and put the colored blue line sketches for it underneath on the regular cover. People seemed to like this, and it gave me a chance to make something with the blue on black contrast that I’m so fond of. I also decided to include a sketch card with each issue, and then at the last minute I added a new sketch to the back page of each book, just for fun. I would say these came out in a range of quality from “Neat lookin’” to “uh..nice”, assuming that the reviewer was being asked publicly and was a kind person. At any rate, it was a chance to put more of my stubbly little fingerprints all over the thing and they were fun to draw. And since I tried to do monsters for each one, they more or less matched the theme of the mini-probably more than the main story in the comic.

More obsessive detail to follow, including a post mortem, but for now I’ll put up some tantalizing photos in subsequent posts.

A quick peek inside! This was the only tricky part about laying...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:44:09 +1000

A quick peek inside!

This was the only tricky part about laying out the book. Since the 8-page main story was originally supposed to stand alone, I put this double page spread in the middle, so that it would print without any alignment problems. Once I added the 4-page backup feature, it became necessary to print these two halves on different pages, and therefore I had to take care to align and space them to allow for the gutter. I think it came out pretty good, and this way you also avoid having a big ‘ole staple in the middle of the villains head, which I always recommend.

The front and back covers, soon to be supplemented with better...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:40:03 +1000

The front and back covers, soon to be supplemented with better photos to demonstrate the transparency and/or bonus sketches. I know it’s difficult, but try to hold on…

These were the sketch cards I made to send out with the issues....

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:30:49 +1000

These were the sketch cards I made to send out with the issues. Careful observers will note that they have little if anything at all to do with the issue, its content or characters, or my comic books in general. That is the result of their creation being off-the-cuff experimentation and daily warmup sketching. Still some neat images in there, just not related. If you got one, I’d consider it a bonus-like a tiny window into the play-doh fun factory* that is my creative process.

*Play-doh is copyrighted and not by me. Also, it tastes slightly salty and is non-toxic.

The original drawing for the cover. Once I had the actual idea...

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 12:25:50 +1000

The original drawing for the cover. Once I had the actual idea for the sketch edition, I had to recreate the underlying construction and sketch lines for this in Photoshop. That’s right! I used crafty technology to create the illusion of intense planning and foresight!

Not the first time, either.

Screenshot of progress on the 4 page backup feature for my new...

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 22:37:12 +1000

Screenshot of progress on the 4 page backup feature for my new mini comic, which will feature the oft referred-to (and as yet unseen) “Z”.

She will be seen, it’s going to happen!

I just made a mini! Well, more like a “micro”,...

Sat, 19 May 2012 15:50:00 +1000

Printable Scan, all gussied up!

I just made a mini! Well, more like a “micro”, it’s one of those awesome little one sheet types that I reblogged yesterday. And it’s pretty crude-I lliterally just had an idea, sat down for 10 minutes, and boom. I’ll put up some decent shots of it when I can scan it. And then you can print your very own copy, to tuck under your pillow! (Or something)

UPDATE: I scanned the page, cleaned up the art and text somewhat, and added fold and cut lines. You can print your own copy of my crapsterpiece!

joemoc: vickorano: beesmygod: psuedofolio: Got some spare...

Fri, 18 May 2012 18:19:22 +1000

joemoc:

vickorano:

beesmygod:

psuedofolio:

Got some spare time? Make a comic!

Download the sample printable comic right here!

Reasons for doing this?

1: My followers can finally have a printed comic by me.

2: It seemed like a fun activity to do, specially with young kids.

3: It might be cool if interweb folks shared tiny little mini comics with each other. And a whole bunch of people can print each other’s comics and maybe we could collect ones by other artists. So… ya know. Why not?

ahhh cute

Yesss…

This is adorable and awesome. Follow the directions and make a comic!

It’s important that the interweb be used for the dissemination of knowledge and fun comic book activities. This is an excellent method of making a no staple, no-glue minicomic; for creators of all ages! Make ‘em and sell/trade ‘em!

A page of thumbnails from the upcoming mini, wherein we see a...

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:26:56 +1000

A page of thumbnails from the upcoming mini, wherein we see a generic superhero type and a measured response to a threat by the monster.

More to come!

Mini Comics Dump Truck!

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:45:57 +1000

Hi out there in internet land, I just wanted to let you know that I’m participating in a mini comics dump truck, over at this group on Facebook!

What on Earth is a mini comics dump truck, you may ask? Well, it’s sort of a group comic project, where each person makes a mini and then you all send them to each other. I first heard about it on the Art & Story podcast, which as I have probably mentioned before is a great resource for visual storytelling, even after its demise. (Like an undead resource? hmmm…)

At any rate, our theme is “monsters” (big stretch for me, I know) and needs to be at least 8 pages. As far as format, technique, and finish (like color or b&w)-that’s up to each artist. I’m planning on using my unfinished 4-page Z story as a opening and then doing an all new 8 page feature for the rest. I am also considering doing something special for the cover-sort of like in the 90’s when all the comics had those goofy hologram chrome glowing covers, but you know..less sucky.

I’ll be cross-posting my progress on the mini I’ll make for this project here and on the Facebook group, so prepare for the awesome.

This bizarre tangle of stuff is the beginnings of a 24-page...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:05:01 +1000

This bizarre tangle of stuff is the beginnings of a 24-page comic I’m working on for my next big project. I like to use a whiteboard to lay out the pages, and then put some story elements for each, so I can see the whole thing at once and erase and move things around to get an idea of flow and (broad) pacing.

And since I have access to large whiteboards at work, it’s a great way to get work done on the sly. ;) Thanks to my tablet and Evernote, I can also import and keep this type of thing together for reference later when it comes to thumbnails. Oh, and to make posts like this one, too.

More to come on this as it grows.

10 Things I've Learned Making A Mini Comic

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:20:00 +1100

I recently finished my first bona fide, genuine mini comic. While this might seem like an accomplishment on par with matching your shoes to your jacket, I found quite a lot to learn about visual storytelling and drawing in general. These are a few of those things.

Keep in mind, these are about me, and my fumblings towards making something decent. If I appear to give advice or play the instructor, please remember that I have almost no experience at comics, and what training and experience I have at art is not entirely germane. It’s important to note also that almost everything I’m restating here is something I’ve learned from someone recently, and I’ll try to cite them as they come up-forgive me if I miss somebody.

Maybe this will help you, maybe not-but I hope so.

10 Things I learned from making my first mini comic

(in no particular order)

Plan.

Have something in mind, or better yet on paper, for your entire story beforehand. In the case of longer projects or those without much prep time (like 24 hour comic day and the like) you may find yourself weaving it all together as you go. There’s a reason why this is a special style of making comics-it’s a lot harder! If you’re like me, just starting out with a mini comic, you’d do well to plan as much as you can. Try to finish each set of revisions for the entire story before moving on to the next, ie. Make thumbnail sketches of all the pages before you start refining any of them into pencils.

If you find it easier, write out an entire script for the story beforehand and get it finalized as much as possible before even starting thumbnailing. If you like to work looser than that, or you’re impatient to get some scribbles down of your hero punching someone (guilty), at least try to sort out how much dialogue you’ll have per page and per panel as early as possible, since the art will need to integrate that.

Just be aware that you’ll always be editing, nothing is final until the book is printed. It just gets harder to adjust the further along you go, so plan ahead.

This is after cutting two lines. I know, I know..

Digital and Traditional can be a stormy marriage

For simple reasons of expediency, I chose to do my comic mostly digitally. I thought since I was more comfortable with my programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, Manga Studio) and their unlimited ability to edit, I’d have an easier time of it on my first attempt at a complete comic story. Unfortunately, I found that most of the time I had to work on the thing was time away from home, and away from my computer (and more importantly my drawing tablet). So I drew a lot of things on paper, scanned them in to the computer and cleaned them up. And cleaned them up some more. And played with the contrast and levels in Photoshop to try to make the elements I was able to do digitally match. And cursed. It was a really time-consuming struggle. Eventually, by around the last page, I had found a method that was more efficient, but it still took a lot longer than I had hoped.

This is in no way to endorse digital over traditional techniques or even to say that using both is more trouble than picking one, but if I was doing this project over again tomorrow, I would do things a little different in the interest of finishing in a reasonable amount of time.

Some blacks are blacker than others, apparently.

A page is a page, and books are made of them

Speaking of that, my odd mixed method also led me to making a lot of panels independently, drawing them large and then fitting them into panels for inking or occasionally just at the last stage in Photoshop. A lot of independent pros use this method, and I can definitely see benefits to it if you work traditionally (large page of space to work on each panel, less chance of messing up a whole page if you over-erase or spill ink). However, where they are able to keep the entire page in mind and work to it piecemeal, I am not quite experienced enough at this yet to pull it off effectively. I found that a lot of consistency problems resulted from me getting all crazy with the detail (some of which was totally lost upon sizing the image to the panel also) in one panel when the next had little. I know you can use detail to slow the reader, hold their attention longer in a panel-but that wasn’t my plan, I just lost focus on the big picture. In future, I plan to do the page as an integrated whole from as early as I can. Certainly from the pencilling stages onward.

Three panels, three different styles.

You’ll need to warm up, one way or another

When I sit down to draw something, anything really, I need a little time to get my brain and hand to play nice together. Some of it is physical, like stretching the muscles in my arm and hand, but a lot of it is focusing mentally on the task. I like doodling, it’s a lot of fun-but it won’t turn into finished pages of comic storytelling for me, no matter how long I do it. When you’re trying to express something or tell a story with a single image, you really need the control over your tools that warming up can get you. I find that if I don’t do it before starting, that first panel gets done several times as a warmup instead. I’d rather have the practice doing other stuff than the frustration of fighting myself over the very first image I’m trying to draw any day. And some of my favorites, like Jerzy Drozd of Comics Are Great.com use this effort and time to test new techniques or styles, and still produce warmup drawings good enough to sell! I’m nowhere near there yet, but maybe one day. At least if I warm up the hand, eye and brain I’ll have a better time when I draw my little funnybooks.

Do it again, but prettier

Comic book art is about refinement, repetition and refinement (and repetition). Almost all drawing involves a process in which you refine a looser line or tone area into a more defined contour or shape. Comics compound this by requiring that you do that several times per page, for several pages to create a finished work. I start with a loose thumbnail of a pose or background or scene, and then lower the opacity of that layer (or change the color, that helps too), add a new layer, and pick one line from the nest of scratchings that I’ve put down to define a shape. Then I repeat this several times until I get something that (vaguely) resembles what I want to put in the panel. No kidding, until I started collapsing layers (and got a faster machine), I have had Photoshop slow to a crawl due to the sheer weight of the layer count I was using. And my artwork is still unrefined-looking to me. But I’m assuming that the look and quality I want, like all things, will come with time, effort and care.

In the traditional art realm, you’d use a lightbox, which I don’t have. I did do some primitive transparency work using my plexiglass clipboard and a window once, to mixed results. The concept is the same, just with a pile of discarded sketches instead of digital layers. I think at my current skill level it would cost me a lot of paper to get a page done, and that’s before inking!

Speaking of inking, I’ve learned from watching Jonathan Rector’s vidcast Scribbles With Jonathan a technique that is similar for this final stage of the black and white process. Using Photoshop, he goes over the pencils on a new layer with a flat (non-pressure sensitive) brush that’s pretty small (3px, I think) and then on another layer goes over that with a pressure sensitive brush that’s a bit bigger to get line weights and shading. I assume the traditional equivalent would be micro or rapidograph pens followed by brush or crowquill inks. This creates a really punchy high-contrast volumetric look while still keeping all the linework visible in the image. Coming from a fine arts background, I was trying to do it as a finished ink drawing from the start, putting in line weights and shadows (there really aren’t any in my mini comic and now you know why) on the fly, which is a lot tougher, even for my current open line style.

Know your characters

Model sheets are highly recommended, even if they seem like a lot of work for a mini comic. If you want to use these characters again for something, you will be thankful that you have reference like that. Even if you are doing a one-off comic, you will have much greater consistency and characters that remain recognizable throughout if you figure out their poses and expressions beforehand.

Model sheets can come from character development, but I’d recommend that you lock down as much detail as possible before drawing them from all angles, or you might find that once you’re in the book, the hero suddenly needs to be left-handed and you’ve got 2 versions of his powered gauntlet on the model sheet.

I didn’t do a real model sheet for my mini comic, just some character sketches. This was due to a combination of impatience and naiveté. I paid the price by having to redraw quite a few poses just to get the slapdash consistency that I have in the thing as it is. A lot of pros can get by without this, I’m sure, but not me. Not yet anyway.

Have you seen these men? If so, contact the authorities immediately.

Mix it up a little

If you’ve ever seen a stage play (a traditional one, not something experimental that might ruin my analogy) and compared it to a huge action movie, you know what I mean by this. Terminator 2 is more visually exciting than a staging of Uncle Vanya (even if they put back in the scene with Vanya fighting mutant squid with a laser axe). The reason is largely compositional. If you can occasionally change your panels’ viewing angle you will add interest. Instead of a static two-shot (A on the left, B on the right and they talk), maybe you could try using an elevated angle like a crane shot in a film, showing both characters askew to their environment. There is a lot of cinema magic you can use in comics, and sparingly it can be very effective at increasing interest and even enhancing your story. I won’t go into detail about what types of angles help elicit what types of moods, just be aware that they can and do.

Again, this is not to say that your comic needs to be cinematic to be compelling. A lot of great storytelling and art are out there that use a traditional composition, varying the focal point (where you want the readers to look most) little or not at all. I would suggest thinking of both these approaches as merely two of many, many techniques for composing your frames.

I’m just sayin’.

Panel flow makes page flow makes story flow

Leading someone’s eye around the page is really important in comic books. You have to make sure the reader gets what you’re saying or else the story is lost. I consider the story the most important part of any comic, so this would be like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. What I learned on this mini was that you have to try to guide the reader at several interdependent levels. How they navigate the individual panel will affect how they navigate the page, which will affect how the overall story affects them in the end.

I tried (really, I did!) to use elements like text, outlines and contrast between light and dark to guide the reader smoothly. I also mostly stuck to traditional panels, although I did break them on occasion. Whether any of this worked is mostly up to the reader, but I definitely see a few places where I didn’t do it well enough. And without an extradimensional gate to close to keep and ancient god from destroying the world, there’s just no reason for that.

Total Protonic Reversal

Have some fun

It’s a mini comic. Probably only 8 pages, probably black and white, probably not going to set the world ablaze (especially in my case).

I shouldn’t have stressed about it in the amount or way that I did, because it wasn’t productive. Like when your fight or flight response is activated in a cramped elevator full of strangers-you can’t just sock somebody, and you certainly can’t run anywhere, so it’s not very helpful. It’s important to worry a little, or to put it better: it’s important to care about your project. Just don’t ruin it by bleeding all the fun out of it. It’s just pictures and words, and even though the result can be something truly moving or profound or awe-inspiring; I won’t get there if I can’t loosen up a little and have some fun with it.

Keep at it until it is done

It seems really pathetic to say that I almost gave up on finishing a comic book that is only 8 pages long, black and white, and only A5 size (half a sheet of typing paper, for my people back home in the US). But I did, I let other thing, easier things intrude into my time and I lost my will to fight. Luckily for me in this case, I was doing the comic as part of an online class, Comic Foundations at Lean Into Art.com with the aforementioned Jerzy Drozd. (by the way, it’s awesome, check it and all the other workshops out that Jerzy, Rob Stenzinger and lots of other cool folks have put together) And more luckily, there was a stage where they sent an audio review of our pencils. I was totally caught flatfooted by this, and it was great.

I don’t know whether it was the encouragement that it was worth reviewing (it probably wasn’t) or the commitment I felt I had made taking the class (or rather, hadn’t made), or just the simple reminder that it was sitting there like a half-eaten pie (which is a tragedy, as everyone knows). Whatever it was, it gave me the push I needed to get back on the horse and keep at it. And it wasn’t like I was nearly finished and just needed a little nudge, there was a huge amount left to be done. It took a while after that, too. But I was able to stay on it because I had been put back on the path. I think in the future I’ll try to find some way to encourage myself in the middle stages this way. Maybe I can make up a milestone incentive or something. Maybe pie…

This note is especially important if you’re just starting something, I think. When you look out at your plan, even for a little mini-comic that you plan to give away or never show to anyone, you can be overwhelmed by the journey you have in front of you. It’s important to take heart, get in there and keep working it until it is done. The road might be long and winding, but I promise there are some good things to see on the way.

Coming Soon...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:21:00 +1100

I’ve decided to host a little Process Blog here, to show in loving detail my fumbling process as I hamfistedly create little stories with pictures!

Here is where I will ~~moan and whine about how hard it is to make my stuff~~ share the process as I make more mini-comics and a webcomic project I have planned for late in the year.

There will also be tips and techniques featured that I’ve learned from people much, much better than me (currently and probably always)-just to make sure there’s something of value.

Speaking of that, I think I’ll start the ball rolling right here by citing Paul Caggegi’s Process Diary.com, which is just what it says-a glimpse into the process of his comic creations. Cool stuff, and a good resource that I highly recommend. So now you see where I stole the idea for this thing.

So watch your head, make sure your eye protection is firmly secured and join me as I try to show you a little of the method to my madness.

Hello and welcome!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:46:30 +1100

Hi everybody,

I just wanted to welcome you all to the new home of my little mini comic projects. Read here, download or check out some of the people and places I find inspirational and helpful as I learn to make these things.

Thanks to everyone who has made this possible so far.

-Nathan

Photo

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 01:09:07 +1100