One of the many style tests I did to find the look for The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue. I spent a few years experimenting with different approaches, combining various analog and digital techniques to land on the look of the final graphic novel coming out in 2024.
You can watch me finish this experiment and hear some of the ideas behind these designs during this formerly Patreon-only live stream:
If you’ve been tuning into my live streams (Saturdays at 3pm ET!) you’ll have seen that I’m in the process of redrawing A Friendly Game, a Boulder and Fleet story I created during October 2016. The original version was made within the constraints of Inktober (or Creative Challenge Season as my buddy Rob Stenzinger calls it). In order to meet my goal of finishing a 24-page comic within 31 days, I threw out the penciling stage and inked over my thumbnails. It was an early experiment in finding what I think of as my “deadline style.” It became a four-year journey to finding a sweet spot between efficiency and quality.
A sample from the live stream, where we can chat about storytelling or why we need bifocals.
The comic came together fairly well considering the constraints. The story explored some of my strong feelings about bullying and navigating conflict, and I got to invent a fun little game kids could play with whatever they find outside:
And the art was serviceable, at least for a minicomic. But I wanted the art to show the same love I had for the story, so I decided to re-draw the book. And I’d revise the layouts so it could match the aspect ratio of Boulder and Fleet: Mining for Trouble.
And in digging through the old materials for this story, I came across several cover sketches I did after wrapping up the minicomic:
For the minicomic I went with no. 4:
But maybe I can go with one of the other designs for the remastered edition!
The Palace of Doom! The Roof of the World! The Pit of Chaos! The Amusement Part of Terror! These are the wild locations in my favorite 100-odd minutes of animation. The Revenge of Cobra mini-series is a huge influence on my upcoming book, The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue. The world-spanning MacGuffin chase, the alliance-building of the heroes, and the internal dysfunction of the villains is just perfect in this mini-series.
I’ll probably be creatively chasing the feeling this cartoon gave me for the rest of my life.
Some years back when I was finishing my first graphic novel/webcomic The Front: Rebirth, I created a series of comic strips as if they were created by Jared, the abominable snowman mercenary with the heart of gold. It was a fun exercise in thinking and drawing like a kid:
These are also useful to demonstrate to my students that you don’t need great art to tell a story.
I hope to eventually get all my old webcomics on here. I have the plugin running, just need to do the work of gathering and uploading all the pages.
(well, not really versus, more of comparison from a taste perspective)
A lot of fun chatting happened during this recent live stream. I was ready for a quiet flatting session, but a lively group showed up to talk about Clip Studio Paint, Procreate, and youthful slang!
I live stream almost every Saturday at 3pm ET. Follow me on Twitch to be notified when the next stream starts, and we can hang out and talk about creativity.
I’m working on a new illustration of Baba Yaga (for an as-yet-unannounced project) and I was taken by the ink lines while flatting. Something has happened in the last 15 years or so where I absolutely love the way ink interacts with different papers.
Back in 2002 when I was penciling, inking, and halftoning my first mini-series, PPV: Pay-Per-View, I thought of inking as a largely utilitarian thing that made the art more printable. This page was where I switched from inking with super-dark pencils to a crow quill and technical pens.
It’s not bad, but I can see how crisp younger Jerzy kept things. Lines weren’t there to express, but to describe. It’s clear work that reads comparatively stiff when you consider the energy and character of lines in Baba Yaga’s hood.
I honestly never imagined I’d ever ?love? inking. But here I am! Let’s all promise to never stop learning, because we’ll always find new ways to love making art.
This snippet of a recent episode of the Emerge podcast does a terrific job of framing the adaptation that I think is necessary for a good experience in a classroom. Yes, I write lesson plans (that’s the algorithmic part), but I change the plan based on what the room needs in that moment (that’s the arbitrary part). Here’s the whole discussion:
I explore this artful way of planning and teaching in a webinar I led for the Ohio Arts Council back in 2020:
While this series of microcasts explores the adaptive, in-the-room quality of being a teaching artist. You can start with the episode below:
Interested in something more interactive? I regularly offer training for teachers and teaching artists. Click here to find out more about how I can help inspire your students!
Prime channels Judge Dredd! Megatron cheats! Starscream won’t shut up! Two Constructicons don’t talk at all! Wait, what are Constructicons?? Find out in this episode of FOUR MILLION YEARS LATER!!
