Hot Wax Mealworms.

Okay, just like I did with the last issue, I thought I'd write a post dealing with my experiences producing and self-publishing Dead Man Holiday # -2. Accompanying this article are the drawings I did for people who ordered a signed copy of Dead Man Holiday # -2. (Here are the drawing I did for # -3.) The drawings are in exercise in speed in design and production. There are some I think are really cool. There is one of a skeleton moth playing minigolf.

Production wise, Dead Man Holiday #-2 was much the same as the issue before it. I designed the look of the comic before I knew much about process, and did made some choices that are really time consuming that I am now stuck with. One change I did make this time around was to do some of the inking with brush. I think this sped the inking up a bit, and made the book a little more rustic looking. But what I'm still shloshing through are the grey tones. I really hate doing them, I'm not that great at them, and they're something I did to fill up space. When I first started Dead Man holiday I was insecure about my compositions (and rightfully so) and decided to cover the whole thing in grey to compensate. I do think it's adds a gritty heaviness that serves this particular story, but this method will not be following Dead Man Holiday into positive issues where it will no longer fit my process or the story.

One weird thing that happened while drawing this issue was that things all of a sudden got easier. No reason for it, I didn't change my methods or realize anything new. In the middle of drawing the Koreatown scene everything just became a whole lot easier, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I think all of the pages after that are better than the ones before, too. Still now sure what happened there.













Publishing wise, everything went fine. I found out about using the "Unsharp Mask" filter on my pages right before exporting the final version, which makes your art look a LOT sharper if you're dealing with stuff you have to photograph/scan (non-line art). I tried to be a cowboy and not get a proof from Ka-Blam before I printed, and they came back looking a little dark and muddy. Totally my fault, lesson learned. I was pretty worried about it, but no one seemed to mind. This will be corrected for the collection.













A lot of the reviews I got praised the artwork really highly, which really meant a lot to me, but expressed concern about the lack of story. As I've said, I think this will iron itself out as people get the rhythm of the series down after a few issues. I had good luck personally reaching out to a lot of sites for interviews, and found that it's really the only way to get them. I only did a couple of interviews, but I think they were really substantial and will really help people understand what I'm trying to do with Dead Man Holiday. I used to be of the mind that I didn't really want to influence people's interpretation of the book, but people seem really responsive when Income out and tell them about it, so maybe that's the way to go. I was really honored to be interviewed by The Pulse, which I didn't even reach out for.

I had another contest over at the Indie Spinner Rack boards, and it went slow but ended up going really well. Thanks neil-brideau, Zach Taylor, DBM, Chris Ruggia and Charlito for participating and saving me from looking like a total chump! It's always nerve wracking starting one of those up because I don't know if anyone's even going to participate. This post from Neil was especially nice.

And I think that's about it. This isn't as long as the one for last issue, because I didn't ha veto climb as big a mountain to get the damn thing done. Like I said, the first one took me a couple of years. This one took me eight months, and the next will be even shorter. I'm right now in the middle of drawing a nine page, diologueless zoom in sequence that make up pages five through fourteen, so look forward to that!

I'm going to start posting on LJ again for the first time in forever.

I draw a weird indie horror/sci-fi comic called Dead Man Holiday. Two issues are out with another due before the end of the year.

For more up to date work from me:

colinpee.blogspot.com

Here's an in-progress panel from Dead Man Holiday #-1, as the title of this blog post so deftly informed you:

The panel is partially inked with the pencils still showing through, but no shading has been done yet. Dead Man Holiday is all on the board; the pencils, the inks, the shading, the letters, everything. Someday I may use computer lettering or something, but I wanted to start out doing everything by hand. I'm having to stick to the look that I set up in Dead Man Holiday #-3. The visuals are going to be very different when the series moves into positive numbers, and I'm really excited about streamlining my process and aesthetic.

I am abandoning you. I wish I could say that it's me, but it's not. If you want to keep tabs on me, you can do so at colinpee.blogspot.com

Love,
Colin

Over the holidays, I thought a lot about all the projects I currently have on my plate. I thought hard about what I actually want to be doing, and decided to shift things around a little.
This all came about while I was finishing up page 35 of Dead Man Holiday. I looked at the page, and thought about where it fit in the story. I looked up and saw all the previous pages in the story, taped to the wall. I realized that this would make a pretty good stopping point, both in the story and in the page count. And besides that, I started Dead Man Holiday an embarrassingly long time ago. I was pretty green, and employed techniques that are both time consuming and tedious. I'm sick to death of them. Moving on to a new issue would enable me to start utilizing all the new tricks I've learned (mostly as a result of having this blog). But most importantly, I'll be able to get a comic book produced, and all the good stuff that means- I can start getting feedback, go to comic book shows... make the transition from "guy who sits at home and draws all the time" to "comic book artist". I'm also really looking forward to self-publishing. I want to know everything about the production of comics, and to be able to say that I did every bit of this myself. I've been moving a lot the last couple of weeks on figuring out how to print my comic- but that's going to be a whole other entry.

So, because I was so in love with and excited about doing Dead Man Holiday, I wanted to get to it right away. There was just one thing in the way... my War of the Independents tie-in book The Kosmix Vs. The X-Heroes. I spent a long time working really hard on a nice, formal script for The Kosmix Vs. The X-Heroes. And I'm really proud of it- it's really goofy, fun superhero stuff. Kind of like The Tick without the irony. It had a lot of great jokes and some really big action scenes. Originally, I was supposed to be splitting the art duties with John McDowell, the creator of The Kosmix. We had a great idea: For the first third of the story, before our characters met, we would draw alternating pages (Page one was starring The X-Heroes and was drawn by me, page two was about The Kosmix and drawn by John, etc). Then for the middle third of the story I would pencil and ink the X-Heroes and John would pencil and ink the Kosmix, but integrated on to the same page. So, in the same panel would be CosmoGnat of The Kosmix, penciled and inked by John, and Xxero of The X-Heroes, penciled and inked by me. Then for the last third of the story, after our heroes joined forces, John was going to pencil and I was going to ink, the combination obviously echoing the storyline. The story started with a date between The Incisionator of The X-Heroes and Milla of The Kosmix over which a Jerry Springer-type battle happens between the two teams. In the middle of this they are approached by two characters from the War of the Independents to go to Damascus and apprehend a giant demon. Their failure to accomplish this comprised the last third of the book. It featured Plan B in a giant chicken suit, Space Wraith accidentally disintegrating a small child, and a guy using the watch on a severed arm to check the time. Good stuff! Here's an excerpt from the ad that John and I drew together. It's our characters signing the Declaration of Independence. CosmoGnat is supposed to be looking at the War of the Independents logo and saying "It's Independents not Independence, you goofs!"
Pencils by John McDowell, inked by yours truly. I always dug the way John drew The X-Heroes' hair... But soon after finishing the script, John told me that he was quitting comics. I totally understood his choice, and don't hold it against him at all. So, in that light, it was easy for me to put the nix on The Kosmix Vs. The X-Heroes in favor of doing more Dead Man Holiday.
Rather than abandon The Kosmix Vs. The X-Heroes altogether, I commissioned someone to ghost-draw it for me. After giving him my 35 page script, this is what he gave me:
He didn't even spell my name right! Boy, you just can't find good help these days...

BUT, this doesn't mean that I'm abandoning War of the Independents altogether. Far from it. Where The Kosmix Vs. The X-Heroes was chopped down, little buds have started to sprout... There will be five X-Heroes strips released in weekl installments beginning in June of this year (the same month that War of the Independents #1 hits the stands). They're going to be more true to the original concept of The X-Heroes (which was never really meant to be a straight superhero strip anyway), while also taking that concept way further out than it had previously dared to rear it's head... it's going to be pretty wild. In addition, I'm redesigning TheXHeroes.com, which is also coming out super great.
Here's a sketch I did, to get myself back in to the "X-Heroes mood"...
So, if all goes according to plan, you should be seeing all these War of the Independents festivities and TWO issues of Dead Man Holiday before the end of the year. Whew! Now all I've gotta do is finish Dead Man Holiday #1. You know- scan it, letter it, draw the logo, re-draw some panels, get people to do a couple pin ups, figure out how to print it, make a website for it... uh...

Hello the internet,

Just wanted to drop you a quick line and let you know that I'm enjoying a little downtime from you. Don't worry, I'll be back. And when I am I'll have some big, big news about The X-Heroes and Dead Man Holiday.
Also, saw this the other day and was wondering what the deal is:

Religion of Comic Book Characters published by Colin Panetta

Let me know, hope all is well,
Colin

Here's our card this year. Hope that everyone is enjoying winter, and soaking up the good feelings of this great time of year. See you next year.

Also, every year Newsarama posts a collection of comic industry Christmas cards. It's pretty glorious, and you can view it here.

On a whim, I recently asked buddy Jonah Gregory if I could do the art on the next couple of episodes of his comic strip Space Waffles. I had recently been feeling boxed in and overwhelmed by the tediousness and amount of craft that it's taking me to do Dead Man Holiday pages, and thought something light and cartoony would be a nice reprieve. After about four or five sketches, I settled on a version of Waldo Jenkins, Space Waffles protagonist, that I was happy with:
I indeed found the simplicity and freedom that came with drawing in this style to be extremely liberating. The problem was, that after I finished this and then started on the strips I reverted back to doing more technical-based work to get the characters in different panels to be consistent. On top of that, I never really matched the manic cartoon energy of that first drawing. Also, totally accidentally, the strips ended up looking very kid-oriented. The drawings were already pretty cartoony, and the colors I chose reinforced this.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Here's what I DID like about the way they came out- Because I was working with simpler shapes and in confined spaces I was really forced to focus on composition. I think the panels are really well laid out, and tell the story quickly and efficiently. I think this, along with the groove that comes in achieving it, is going to carry over into my Dead Man Holiday work, which I'm now very much looking forward to getting back to. I'm also a bit proud of the inventive touches that I added to Jonah's scripts- namely the way the second and third panels connect in #20 and the use of photo backgrounds. (Although I do find the vibrant Hubble Satellite photos I used a little distracting, they're all I could find that would work.)
This is a panel from the first strip I drew, but you should go check the strip out in it's entirety over at SpaceWaffles.com. I did episode #20, which is up right now, and #21 which will be up in a few days.
One of the reasons that I wanted to try and tackle Space Waffles, other than my love of Sci-Fi/Comedy (previously discussed in this entry), was because of a previous guest run on the strip by Dan The Man Cartoons. (His excellent run on Space Waffles starts here, and you can read his equally excellent web comic Anything Could Happen here.) Dan's comics are a great example of what I was trying to achieve on Space Waffles, but wasn't quite able to grasp; His characters are drawn to be excitingly expressive and not boringly consistent. I'm probably being too hard on myself- most of these revelations are in hindsight. But if I get another crack at Space Waffles, which I hope to do someday, I'll apply these lessons learned and make some even wilder cartoon fun.

FACA4

Some illustration buddies and I just participated in FACA4, Sam Hiti's battling illustration blog. It's great fun, and tons of amazing illustrators participate, in addition to many great artists that I've admired for years.

Here's a shot of our team, The Brothers McKillstaine:

(From left to right) Old pal Brandon Dawley drew the great Sir Wallace Burns, I drew Rockets Erickson and new pal Jeremy Gregory(Here There Be Robots) is responsible for The Lochness Mobster.

We had a loose theme of "British Isles". Sir Wallace Burns is a leathery old pub hound. His flaming sideburns were intended as a pun on the Smak Talk aspect of FACA. (As in, he would really BURN his opponents in a FLAME war.) Rockets Erickson is a ridiculous spoof on the name of underground rocker Roky Erickson, hence the psychedelic rocket trails. (Read this Wiki article on Roky. He's lived a wild life.) The Lochness Mobster, perhaps much to his credit, is simply that. The Lochness Monster combined with an Irish mobster.

Jeremy is a busy guy, so he handed his character off to us and left the rest of the match in our hands. Brandon and I had a blast coming up with our team and characters. If given twenty minutes on the phone together we can come up with some pretty wild and entertaining ideas.

Here's the Smak Talk we turned in. Brandon drew it, and I colored:

We got spanked.

As interestingly matched as the teams were thematically (lightness vs. darkness), they were totally different in execution. Our characters were complex in depiction and thematically. The Twilight Terrors were one simple idea, illustrated quickly and efficiently (and cutely) which appeals more to the internet crowd, and the especially the FACA crowd. I can't say that it wasn't frustrating for us to get our hard work smacked down so quickly and effortlessly by that little purple booger, but we had a blast playing for the short amount of time that we got to play. See you next round, suckers!