Alternative Comics Online pages and digital inking

HEY APATHY! online comics, Metropolitan Nightmares

and the disowning of personal possessions...

Another amazingly sunny and warm Torontonian Thursday today. And yes another extremely exhausting and productive work day. The earliest part of my day was spent reading at the cafe (7:30 - 8:30 am) followed by a whole bunch of scanning and digital inking for the online comics pages (9 am -12 noon). I posted two of these pages here but actually did seven in total ready for another instalment soon. Following the inking I put a few hours in on my toy design project (12-3). The toy is the brain child of Jacques Lamour, an investor I met while working out on Queen St. almost two years ago now. He has invented a modern superhero type character and back story and I am responsible for developing the design and potentially drawing a comic to go with the action figure. As an artist (whatever that means) I don't really get involved with typical design projects, however when the concepts jive with my own body of work and can be considered part of the HEY APATHY! mythology I usually get involved. Following the toy sketches I broke down and head for the park, it's + 17 outside for crying out loud. I brought some boards and worked my way through 2 more new comics pages while enjoying the kind and spring like weather (3-6pm). Played with cat, passed out and awoke regretting having not eaten first and here I am. Blah Blah more alternative comics and hopefully more comprehensive writing on the schedule tomorrow (must finish toy drawing, 2 essays, and a back load of comic pages for the scanner before the weekend or else...)  visit http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/  

MONSTER COMICS!

Finally finished the first webpage installment of MONSTER COMICS! The auto-biographical adventure shares my experiences last year working for a strange and particular patron. This ogre-like client called himself BLACKBEARD and hired me because of how fast I am able to draw. I was commisioned to do a number of portraits of people and travelled all over the place to do so. The project was a big one and the struggles aplenty, and eventually I figured out why it was so important to be quick with the pen, but in the end, well you'll have to wait and see.

These two drwings are from the first web-page installment of my new online comic. Although in a regular published book, these image would easily take up two pages, I've set up the online fable as a series of "scenes". and each page will read like a chapter of vignette. I am starting to get into this type of process. In most of my previous works I have spent hours on drawing pages and hour finishing them. Using the computer and small scribbles I can get pretty much the same effect when presenting these on the screen. At I don't have to spend any time nitpicking, and digital inking is way fast. The only real difference is that none of these artworks actually exist out side of the internet! check out the first webpage at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/Monster-Comics.html

MAKING MONSTER COMICS

ESTABLISHING SHOT from MONSTER COMICS

As I have mentioned before, February is one of the most tedious months in my life as an artist. This is a very busy time of year for filling out forms, mailing applications, and booking my public performances and comic convention appearances for the upcoming season. This leaves little time for production and my days generally get divided as follows; morning research, afternoon essays, and night time scribbles. As a result I tend to produce a lot of single panel artworks and take a brief hiatus from my full time comics schedule. Such is the curse of the Ronin illustrator, you've got to push all the papers yourself (if anyone is serious, willing and capable of representation contact me).

Today, however, is a slightly exceptional day as far as February's go. The sun is shining the wind is asleep and I have completed all my urgent application's early, so the whole day has been set aside to draw. Well, that's not entirely true, actually what I really have to do is the lettering for my online MONSTER COMICS. I only had one panel (the opening shot of Williamsburg above) to complete in the first set of drawings. I'll finish all the lettering throughout the day and hopefully post the introduction at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ by Monday. I've drawn most of the story and creature features for the on-line comic but as one often does, I left the chore of lettering a little to long. I usually like to knock off the text one page at a time,as I go so as to the avoid horrendous hours of perpetual calligraphy. Don't misinterpret this as entirely pessimistic though, I actually derive a great pleasure from the task except that I find better results when I work on the word bubbles in smaller sessions. I have also found it a real pain to transfer the letters clearly to a format suitable for online presentation. When resizing the scans the letters seem to require singular attention in order to retain visibility. No worries though, I'll figure it all out and the MONSTER COMICS will creep and seep through your screens soon...

SLASH PAGE from MONSTER COMIC

just got to fix the lettering...coming soon

LIFE of an ARTIST ink portraits Francis Bebey

Francis Bebey & quote playing a flute of one note.

Another February day passes quickly away as I fill out forms, attach attachments, and rewrite proposals accordingly. I actually got quite ahead of myself in the submission processes today, completing not only those which are due immediately but venturing forth into the March deadlines as well. Unfortunately I hit a few minor set backs on the latter submissions which will require human assistance but today is a holiday. My inquires will have to wait until tomorrow. It's a good thing I got on this early, it would have been quite problematic to encounter these minor technical difficulties the evening the applications were due!

Anyways the day was productive enough that I was able to check out a website sent to me by my good friend Hunter Vaughan. Hunter is a long time friend and former fellow street artist whom I met out on the Queen West pavement. Hunter works in clay sculpture & pottery as well as saxophone, flute and percussion. (We practice music socially on a weekly basis with a number of other creative people) He is also an endless resource of information when it comes to world music and all oddities involving sound and performance. I got a wicked link from him this morning and was shortly thereafter introduced to Francis Bebey.

Francis is listed as a musician and writer and proves himself quickly in the little video I saw. I was so taken with this strange new (to me anyways) character that I could not but help capture his words and likeness in ink and post them here for all to see.I'm not going to describe the man nor the documented events , just check him out at www.keyofgrey.com/2010/02/francis-bebey-plays-a-one-note-bamboo-flute/ . If you're already familiar with Francis check out my website instead it is all about "savages in the city" http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ (how's that for a shameless self promotional segue!)