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Tuesday, 23 August 2011
Chpater Two Page Two

For those of you who felt chapter one needed more cheerleader action, behold Chapter Two Page Two:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think this ones ready for coloring. So far pages one and two of the next chapter are ready for coloring. Four more to go. If I do one each week, then dedicate a week per page for coloring, it will be ready just in time for my Halloween deadline. Meanwhile, I'm also working the pencils for Chapter Three. Thats just how I roll.


Posted by frankandjane at 12:15 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 23 August 2011 8:45 AM EDT
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Wednesday, 17 August 2011
A New Way to Ink

This is something I've been meaning to do for a while:    I'm shifting the inking to the computer instead of on the paper for Chapter Two. This won't really save me any time. It turns out this is just as, or more time consuming as the old fashioned way, but it will improve the overall quality of my drawings.

Inking is not just tracing over the pencils. ("I'm not a tracer!") Its a process that adds depth and dintinction to the drawing. Its also a good way to quickly ruin a drawing. Inking every line that you see with the same line quality will make it look horribly flat. The best approach I've found is to think of it as redrawing the same picture on top of the old drawing. It takes a lot of skill to ink in a drawing and improve it. Its a skill I don't have. I've made many of my pencil drawings look worse after being inked in. Here's an example: for the bottom panel of page 6, where the robot grabs the T Rex by the tail, I had to make it look right. When I was inking it in, I screwed up the robot by pooping out lines that were too thick all over him. This is what it looked like after I ruined it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't want that panel in particular to look so weak, so I redrew and reinked the whole thing. That new version was acceptable:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And more recently, I started inking in on paper the picture of Molly for Chapter Two. I completely goobered it up. Here's the original pencils:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And here's the goobered up inked version:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Ugh.

Horrible. I couldn't settle for something that crappy looking for that pic. Molly deserves better.

So I decided to take the pencils and do what I normally do on paper with the computer instead. I took two layers of the same picture and put them on top of each other. The bottom one, I made extra dark, the top one was medium. Then I used the program (GIMP) to partially erase through the top drawing on lines I wanted thick and dark to make the bottom dark drawing show up more. Then I used a white "paint brush" to remove the lines I didn't want anymore and to improve the line quality of the ones that were still there. There is probablly a more efficient way to do it, but I'm still learning. There is still something lost in not inking directly on the page, but this lets me undo mistakes and achieves a drawing thats closer to the original pencils. Heres what Molly looks like now. Gaze upon her now in all her hotness:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Posted by frankandjane at 7:24 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, 17 August 2011 7:29 AM EDT
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Tuesday, 9 August 2011
Chapter Two Teaser!

I was excited about whats coming up in Chapter Two. I wanted to show it off without giving anything away. So, here's the teaser with a few key cropped images I plucked out from several pencilled pages of the next chapter:

 

 

 

DH


Posted by frankandjane at 7:51 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 9 August 2011 10:37 AM EDT
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Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Hog Tied!

In addition to finishing the pencils for chapter two, (more on that in a later blog) here are the pencils for an image I've been working on. With the cheerleaders man-handling the dinosaur, its basically the reverse of the picture with the girl dangling from the T-Rex mouth. Its also a variation of an actual scene that will be in the comic at one point...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Posted by frankandjane at 2:18 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, 2 August 2011 10:08 AM EDT
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Monday, 25 July 2011
Comic Con 2011

I went to the San diego Comic Con this Friday and Sunday and had a blast. (see my facebook photo album) Saw some famous people (Mark Schultz, Danny DeVito, Jerry Trainor, Mark Hamil, Billy Dee Williams, Matt Groening) and got some good loot (a battlestar galactica t shirt, comics, manga). My buddies and I sported our DRC T shirts, handed out DRC stickers and it was on like Khan. My approach was to avoid the long lines for hand outs from the big companies. As much as I wanted to get a free thundercats sword, I had no desire to stand in line for an hour to get one. In fact my favorite moments of comic con are always meeting face to face with the creators from the smaller companies. The highlight of this year for me was meeting Mark Schultz, the artist behind Xenozoic Tales, aka Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. On Friday, I picked up a book of his drawings, and brought it by his booth on Sunday for an autograph. He offered to personalize it and was very cool about it. In return, I gave him a couple of stickers for DRC. He liked it. In particular he liked the dinosaur spaceship design, "If a dinosaur would ever fly its own spacehip, that's what it would look like" he said. He also thought the girl I drew dangling from the T-Rex mouth was "lovely". After that, anything else that happened at Comic con would just be icing on the cake. I met some other comic creators and tried to push my comic on them: I met Bobby Rubio, formerly from Pixar, and picked up a autographed copy of his super cool Alcatraz High (bobbyrubio.com, alcatrazhigh.com) He agreed that Dinosaurs Robots and Cheerleaders were three things he liked.  I spoke with Dan Mendoza (toxic candie.com) creator of Zombie Tramp. I met the creators of Archaia's Werewolf comic, Feeding Ground (archaia.com), and the creators of the web comic carpechaos.com, and the creators of Scarlett Huntress (smcomics.com)  I also met with the cool dudes at Red 5 Comics and picked up a couple issues of Atomic Robo (my favorite) to complete my collection. The only down side to the whole event was I never found a Starbuck series two action figure,  or got to see Katee Sackhoff, who I knew was there this year, but I couldn't justify staying past 10 at night to get a glimpse of her at the Batman Year One screening, not to myself, or more importantly, my wife.

 

 

 


Posted by frankandjane at 3:54 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 25 July 2011 3:57 AM EDT
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Tuesday, 19 July 2011
HP7: The End

I saw the final Harry Potter movie this weekend with my kids in IMAX 3D. One word: epic. The problem with Harry Potter movies is if you read the book, you either know whats going to happen, or will be disappointed they changed something. But they played it just right: changed a few things to make a better movie. Not a moment was wasted. After over a decade of movies to set this one up, they jumped right into things. Before I knew it, they were breaking into Gringott's. I think someone who is not familiar with Harry's world will still enjoy it because its one long spectacle of magical battles. The one pause in the action was my favorite part: revealing Snape's secret. It was beautifully done. This was the best HP movie, (as it should be since its the best of the books), and the perfect finale.

Whew. This summer is rough on your wallet if you're a geek. My ranking of the summer movies so far: 1. X-Men 2. Harry Potter 3. Transformers 4. Thor.  Still have to squeeze in Captain America and the San Diego Comic con. More of both of those later...

 

 

DH 


Posted by frankandjane at 2:40 AM EDT
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New Cover: A work in progress

I've been working on a new drawing that I could use to replace the current cover page on the website. Here's my first attempt to color it in. Still needs some polishing, and I'm not sure if its better than the cover I'm currenly using. There are some parts I'm really liking though. Need to ponder this some more......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Posted by frankandjane at 2:02 AM EDT
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Monday, 11 July 2011
Transformers 3: Giant Worms! Robots! Supermodels!
Topic: Movies

Ever since I saw the preview of Transformers 3, with the giat robo worm tunneling into a buliding while people inside screamed in terror, I knew I had to see this movie. As the tepid reviews came rolling in, my excitemet died down a little. Perhaps, I thought, it would be another Transformers 2, with a few awesome moments strug together by an incoherent story. I went into this just expecting cool robot action with a passable story.  I was pleasatly surprised by Transformers 3. The story itself was actually decent. The new girl who replaced Megan Fox did a good job, and to anyone who thought her character was usless, I'd point out that she used her brain to single handedly save Optimus and therefore the world by the end of the movie. I like Shia's character, Sam, the nerd who refuses to be treated like a nerd. While a lot of the story was entertaining, some of it felt like it should have been saved for the DVD deleted scenes reel. In fact, at one point I felt there hadn't been enough robot action, until about half way through, when it really picked up and never let go from then on. The second half of the movie was one ridiculously awesome action scene after another, including the robo worm scene, which was great despite possibly breaking several laws of physics. If it looks cool, the physics don't matter. All in all, a great spectacle of a movie that should be seen on the big screen. So why did it get such harsh reviews from critics? I have theories: Its sort of hip among critics to bash Michael Bay. Especially when he makes movies with a lot of explosions, special effects, and that make the military look good. (I saw a review that called Bay a war monger. Really? So any movie director is a war monger if there's action in it?) That is one of the things I like about Transformers movies: the human military aren't useless against the evil robots; they get some good licks in, especially in this one. Instead of the cliche movie military who just want to nuke everything, the military in Transformers is smart and effective. There is a good chunk of the movie that is just the humans battling the Decepticans with out any Autobot help.  There's a great scene where Sam (almost) singlehandedly takes on Starscream. Another reason for bad reviews: some criticism is justified. Some of the plot lines seemed unecessary. It seemed like it might be important that they mentioned his girlfriend had a brother who went off to war. It wasn't. John Malkovitch's character was in some funny scenes, but didn't contribute much else. There are too many characters trying to be the funny/quirky one. Still the humor was better this time around and the special effects were unbelievable. I'm actually thinking it might have been better than the first one. Definately better robot vs robot battles (and BTW to critics who say the battles were too confusing, its not our fault you can't keep up) so if you judge this just on the amount of giant robots beating the crap out of each other, this one wins. Which leads me to my request to Michael Bay:

Dear Mr. Bay,

I understand you are finshed with Transformers movies. Please consider as your next project Dinosaurs! Robots! Cheerleaders! I think this is right up your alley and I can tell you get it. You know giant robots, explosions, and hot chicks equals entertainment. Thank you for your consideration.

Just picture it: DRC: A Michael Bay film. Starring Katee Sackhoff

 

 

 

:)

DH  


Posted by frankandjane at 3:28 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 11 July 2011 1:54 PM EDT
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Thursday, 7 July 2011
More 3D Dino-ship fun!

Here are a couple more 3D computer images from Frank. This time with a dinosaur shaped pilot. Notice the very important tail sticking out of the back. I'm loving this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Posted by frankandjane at 11:34 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 7 July 2011 11:37 PM EDT
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Thursday, 23 June 2011
Dinosaur Spaceship in 3D!

My boy Frank Gauthier came up with this amazing 3D computer model of the Dinosaur attack ship:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you take a look at the Gallery you'll also see some awesome 3D art he did of my Tinn Man robot.

Frank, keep 'em coming. And take a look at the previous post: you'll see that the dino ship is actually rounded on the bottom, not flat. How does it land, you may ask? Who said anything about landing?

 

DH

 


Posted by frankandjane at 1:25 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 23 June 2011 1:27 AM EDT
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