Wormie Page 2

I may modify this one in the future... I had a hard time fitting the letter in without covering up parts of drawings I was proud of. Either way, this is when the story gets good! Can you possibly wait for the exciting conclusion next week?!

Just a reminder... If you CTRL-click the picture you can zoom in and see it better.

Luke's obituary

 

Wormie Issue I p.1

Behold! My first attempt at a graphic novel! Page 1 of the first—and only—issue of Wormie!

(for best results, open in a new window to enlarge)

 I just made this comic as a practice for the real graphic novel I have in mind, which you can see a sample of here. I learned a lot of techniques while making this, which took about 8 or 9 hours total to make from start to finish. It's basically nothing more than the introduction to the Wormie RPG (see the Project List) my friend Jason and I made. I plan on finishing the intro with two or three more pages of the story, and you can plan on a project spotlight for Wormie soon.
This was a lot of fun and I'm glad to have discovered a new form of art that I'm capable of!
P.S. I would love your feedback. Enjoy!

Abelhawk Hand update

So, I found a program called Font Creator that looked professional and easy to use. Unfortunately, on the 30-day trial they don't actually allow you to save your font! What's the point in having a useless program for 30 days? Anyway... I'm trying out a new online thing that seems to work... okay...

Basically it has you fill out a form, scan it in, and then it somehow converts it into a vector font. Pretty complicated, so I give it some credit. If I can just reorient the characters on my computer itself it may work for something.

More Samples: Wormie Intro

Hey there! I was thinking of ways to practice sketching, inking, coloring, paneling, shading, highlighting, and lettering (making a graphic novel's hard work, yo), and I thought of the story of an RPG project my friend Jason and I worked on years ago (see the Project List for details). I've finished 3 of the 5 panels, which is on the first of 5 pages. But it's going very well and I'd like to present you with an unlettered sample of the first panel.

Graphic Novel Sample Art

Hey! I'm really excited about this new art style I'm practicing. I remember always shunning pencil sketching as a kid because I felt like I knew how to doodle well enough freestyle on my own. I think I missed the point though. This way I can plan where lines would normally overlap; for example, if there's a straight spear that someone's holding, I can draw the hand and the spear and the spear will always remain straight. Before, I ran the risk of having it jut out at a weird angle because I drew it after the hand.
I also really enjoy coloring pictures on Photoshop. It's been a lot of fun to be able to experiment with colors, shading and lighting so far. I'm sure my graphic novel will need a lot of all three, though due to time constraints I may just draw out the entire story and then color it.
Anyhow, here are a couple of art samples from my graphic novel concept, starring the main villain Bancotha and another character yet unnamed. Feedback is appreciated!

A Discussion on Handwriting

Recipe written in Old Austinian, c. 1996

My childhood handwriting was like most children's. It was loopy and awkward, and I would often mix up the lowercase 'd's and 'b's. I would also flip my 'z's and '9's backwards. I kept this handwriting throughout Elementary School, and though it got steadily better, it died out completely when I got to 5th grade.

In 5th grade, I began writing the Never Ending Comic. Since the words in comic books are in all capitals, I adopted this new system as my handwriting for everything. Naturally, my teachers were bothered by it, especially since that was still in the age of cursive.

Personal narrative written in Middle Austinian, c. 2000

On a slight tangent, have you noticed that cursive is pretty much dead here in the United States? Its dying out has been so gradual that I didn't notice until I went to Brazil, where it's still a common practice. I think it's an interesting development for America to kill the loopy, connected type of writing in favor of simply printing. I'm not sure if this is contributing to that one type of people who basically contorts their hand into a knot just to write (You'll know this when you see it. Watch people (particularly girls) when they write, and there's bound to be one who it's a wonder doesn't have carpal tunnel), but that's that. My opinion on the death of cursive? Good riddance.

Anyway, this "all-caps" style of writing lingered as part of my comic-drawing personality throughout Middle School, but as Junior High time approached, I decided that I needed to stop writing in all capitals. I distinctly remember the interesting day when I made a conscious decision to design my own handwriting. I sat down at my desk, thinking of various options I had for various letters in the alphabet. I decided that I liked my lowercase 't's to have tails. I decided I liked simple letters like 'p' and 'b' to be drawn without the little foot at the bottom, drawn with a single looping flourish. I designed my handwriting that day in late 7th Grade and have used it ever since.

Early Modern Austinian creative writing exercise, written c. 2003

I am admittedly rather proud of my unique style of writing, most often written with a G-2 07mm black pen, and I decided recently to begin working on an "Abelhawk Hand" font that I can use for my comics, graphic novel dialog, etc. There may be other uses as well, such as cutting corners when having to handwrite something, but for the most part this is just going to be a fun little scheme to add to my list of personalized creative projects.

The font will be available for presentation soon!