Saturday, July 29, 2006

Sketch #2.5 : Going Digital

I'm not going to count this as a real sketch (thus the 2.5) as it's a digital image. I've been trying to create a digital style of my own because I spend more time at the computer with my stylus than I do with pencil and paper. I figure drawing digitally is the next logical step. The real problem is I don't like drawing in Photoshop and I don't like the inking in Illustrator. So I've been inking in Photoshop and I've finally settled on a style I like. I'll be digitally inking the next Tiegre story over Robert Herzig's art a sample appears below.

Back to my sketch... it began as my Ungoodwise character (Rasta) and ultimately evolved into a afroman when I couldn't get the dreads to look right. Oh well... here it is followed by the Tiegre page.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Sketch #2 : Trap-Jaw

I feel like such a slacker. It's taken me a whole week to do another sketch. It's a head sketch of Trap Jaw and took me all of maybe 15-20 minutes. I really should be doing this more often and I really will try. Really....

Friday, July 21, 2006

Sketch #1 : Evil-Lyn


I used to draw more often, but now I don't draw very much. I'm hoping to change that. This is a sketch of Evil-Lyn from the Masters of the Universe (aslo known as He-Man).

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Eden Completed!

I just finished the last of the Eden books and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed them more than any book that I've read lately. In readin them, I found myself engrossed in the story and yearning to read more. A lot of times, I really find myself struggling to read through books ... even books I enjoy. Sometimes I even fall asleep reading them. With the book, I fought off sleep to complete it and now I feel empty. No more stories of Kerrick, the Tanu, or Yílane. Now it's time to move on to something new.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Harry Harrison's Eden Trilogy

I finished up Kamandi a couple nights ago and decided to jump into a prose novel. The novel of choice was Return to Eden by Harry Harrison. I was first introduced to the Eden Saga in 1992 with West of Eden and Winter in Eden. Some point in the last year, I bought all three books off Amazon and read WoE and WiE again. It wasn't until I started reading Return to Eden that I realized that I never finished the series. So now, I'm finishing it.

For those that haven't heard of the series ... The basic concept is what if the dinosaurs did not become extinct. That line of reasoning is followed to the point of the creation of a race of man like lizards (Yílane) that rule the Old World while humans (Tanu) rule the New World. The Yílane comtoot the new world because the Old World is becoming too cold and thus the 2 species meet and go to war. At the beginning of RoE they have reached a truce of sorts. It's an interesting series of novels.

The reason that I picked up the books again was that I was planning to use the Yílane as a base for the Warmageddon bwangs. Now I don't think I will, but I have some other ideas brewing. Right now, I'm 1/2 way through RoE and then I will being catchrch up on some comic reading before hitting the Martian books. I vaguely remember having the Marvel John Carter comic series, so maybe I'll search those out as well (if I still have them).


On the Warmageddon front, I've finished lettering the Asar story for issue #3 and have begun to work on the cover colors. Caio has finished pencilled one page from the Adventure on Roc Island. So that's about it.

Currently, I working on a shopping cart for a new site. This is the first shopping cart that I've built in about 3 years, but everything seems to be flowing well. I've finished the addign to cart and editing/ removing items in the cart functions. Next will be the user login part and address information. I hope to get through that by tomorrow. Time to hit the sack and get another small bit of reading done.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Warmageddon Monday

Did you check out the Warmageddon strip today?
If not then why not? Today marked the 4th strip so get in on the ground floor.

Today was a Warmageddon day. Today I ...
1) lettered 5 more pages of The Golden Egg (the next Asar story)
2) stopped by the post office to grab the contract from the next Warmageddon artist. He will be working on new Asar stories
3) received strip #21 via email today
4) lettered and uploaded strips 19-21
5) uploaded new art to the Warmageddon art gallery

In addition to all that I managed to read up to issue 6 in the Kamandi archives. Only 5 more issues before I move unto to Burroughs's Martian stories and the stack of comics, I sat aside to read. The stack is about 1/4 a short box so I'll plow through those in maybe a week's time.

That's it for today. I'm a little late on the update because, I was watching Leno.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Loooong Sunday

It's been a long day and it's only 11PM.
Today was a complete Warmageddon day. I grayscaled all 18 pages for the next Asar story and I managed to letter one of the pages. The completed page can be seen below.

Funny ... I don't really feel as though I did too much today. With any other comic that would be the equilivant of an entire book worth of grays, but with Warmageddon that's about 1/3 of the 56 pages. I'm thinking Volume #2 (next year) will be less pages (maybe 48), but who knows.

Maybe my day seemed so long because I had to clean up 2 tea spills and changed about 300 diapers and addition to the Warmageddon stuff. Or maybe it's because I decided to watch Star Wars. I started with Episode I around 3or 4 o'clock and Luke has just headed to see Yoda for the first time in Episode V as I type this. I know Lucas has said Star Wars is the story of Anakin Skywalker, but after watching the prequels, I'm far more interested in learning more about Palpatine. Just how did a Sith Lord become a Naboo senator?

It's now time to make one last rounds of my usual Internet spots before diving into issue #2 of Kamandi. The Kamandi reading is going much slower than the Cerebus reading. I love Kamandi but often find myself drifting off. I wish DC would finish up the Kirby issues of Kamandi in Archive format.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Busy Saturday

Weekends are usually slow. I usually sit back and watch a He-Man DVD or something. However, today I had to flat some pages for the BloodRayne comic published by Digital Webbing and latter 3 strips for the Warmageddon comic strip.

What is flatting a page?
Flatting is basically taken the finished lineart for a comic book page that is to be colored and separating by color each element that needs to be colored. This usually takes me about an hour and a half if I'm wrangling with the kids or about 45 minutes to an hour with no distractions. When flatting I try to get 2-3 pages done before noon. One page during the day when the kids are more active and another 2-3 pages after the girls hit the sack. Flatting makes for really long days (as it is boring and tedious work), but the girls like watching it. You can tell if the girls are watching by the the amount of red and pink that appear in the flats. At night, I just stick in any colors (the colors you use don't matter when flatting), and they tend to stay green, brown and blue, but the girls request red and pink so I use a lot of those colors when the girls are about.

A finished flat is nothing exciting. It's just the colors without the lines. But the first one is with the girls watching. The other is without the girls. See how the colors are different? These are 2pages 4 and 5 from a Fist of Justice story.



With the Warmageddon strip, I letter it, upload it to the server and try to keep it on schedule. It's a strip that updates on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so that means every weekend, I should have 3 strips to letter. Monday starts the second week of the strip and I have uploaded all the strips through the end of week six, so we are about a month ahead. In addition, we have a month worth of filler strips and I received the first strip for week 7 on the 5th. That seems to be chugging along nicely, now we just need to get an audience for the strip so it generates money for us all (Richard Nelson, Jon St. John and I). If you are reading this you should stop rerading right now and go check it out.

That's it for now, time to feed the munchkins .... again.

Friday, July 07, 2006

FF/ Iron Man : Big In Japan

With story by Zeb Wells and art by the late Seth Fisher, FF/ Iron Man: Big in Japan is a fun romp with the FF and Iron Man in Japan complete with oodles of big monster and the gigantically huge Apocalypse Beast. As it is, the story is basic superhero fare. The heroes join together to stop the beast who will end the world. What makes this book radically different from those that come before it, is that the creators embrace the absurd and run with it. I've been meaning to checkout the work of Seth Fisher since I first saw the cover to the Green Lantern: Willworld hardcover. Unfortunately, it took his death to really make me look into his work. I enjoyed this 4 issue FF mini series and will be hunting down Seth's other comic book contributions.

And yes I did read this after posting my first blog post. Right now I'm looking for something to start before going to bed. My usual night ritual involves the Tonight Show, but all this week it's been reruns after Wimbledon highlights. With no Leno I've been reading more before going to bed. Up next is Kamandi Volume 1 (Archive Edition) after I finish this then I'll dive into Burroughs's Princess of Mars.

Welcome.. Welcome .. come one come all

We are all wandering the world in varying states of madness and since today is my birthday, I've decided to start yet another blog. I have one for my kids and one about my late father (see the links). This one will cover everything else. At some point, I will move everything to ljamal.com (my web site), but until then.

WELCOME TO MY MADNESS!



I just finished reading all 16 Volumes of Cerebus and Cerebus #0 (6000 pages of comics) over the last 47 days. I started on 22 May 2006 and finished tonight (7 July 2006). Cerebus is a 300 issue comic book, so that's about 6 1/3 comics per day. For those that aren't aware, I had to read Cerebus #0 because it collects the 3 or 4 stories fromt he 300 issues that were not collected in the larger volumes. Without the #0 issue I should have only read 296-297 issues Cerebus.

Now that I'm finished with that monumental undertaking, I think I'll settle in and read some smaller comic collections before diving into the Martian stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs (A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, The Warlord of Mars, etc). I picked up 2 collections but out by Barnes and Noble that collect all of Burroughs's Martian tales and I mean to read them soon. First however, I think I'll spend a week reading the comic trades that have piled up while I was reading Cerebus. First on that list is Seth Fisher's last work (Fantastic Four/ Iron Man: Big in Japan). That will most likely be followed by the latest Conan hardcover from Dark Horse and then who knows. Maybe some Rocketo (Image) as it's starting to back up.