Monday, October 28, 2013

BLOODY PULP MAGAZINE!!!

BLOODY PULP MAGAZINE is returning!

I've been planning this for a while (at least since May, when I purchased the URL from my friend, Jeremy Jusay) and from what I've been working on this is coming together pretty nicely.

A little back story:

BLOODY PULP MAGAZINE was a comic book magazine that was put together by me, Jeremy Jusay and Glenn Urieta back in 2007.  We set out to do a comic that hearkened back to the Golden Age/Silver Age EC Comics which usually dealt in sci-fi, crime, western, horror, romance and war.  We made 1 issue and had plans for others but nothing would gel for any of us so we just sort of started doing our own things.  Jeremy published "Jusay Pulp" and his feature Ghosts of New Wave, Glenn went on to work on his Paper Cut kids property and I went to work on Guardian Knight Presents with my Bugman superhero story.

Now it's a little short of 6 years and I'm trying to get the book together again.  This time I'm working as the Editor-in-Chief with 2 entries and a cover.  Also included will be works by Phillip Lee McCall (he's also writing one of the entries I'm drawing, Shani the Wanderer) and James Groeling (who's webstrip JDGAF is so damn cool).  It's going to be a 60-page black and white monster that I'm planning on selling through Amazon.

I'm really excited about it and I hope you like what's coming up.

Stay Tuned, I'll have some Shani stuff up here or on BloodyPulpMag.com.

laters,

Leigh


Monday, October 14, 2013

NYCC 2013

I ended up going to New York Comic Con this year.

I wanted to avoid it and I thought it would be a great opportunity to stop and think about what I wanted to do with my art.  I mean, yeah, it's definitely going to be about publishing a comic, maybe a graphic novel, maybe a cartoon but what do I REALLY want, you know?

Anyway, I went and helped out Daniel Cooney at his Valentine table and it was good fun.  Dan's a brilliant storyteller and an accomplished teacher and comic booker.  He's been doing it since a little before senior year of college and he's still going strong.

I think I wanna be him when I grow up.

Anyway part deux, I also got to chill with the Florida Comix Scene, the gang from Cosmic Times and Creature, who were doing their thing with a fury!  I got to hang at the Creature table for a couple of days doing sketch covers.  First day was cool, the second was cool but I didn't sell any covers... that's how it goes, unfortunately, but I got to hang out with a brilliant bunch of guys (and girl) that, if I can get more organized, I would like to do some work for.

So the show was fun, funner than usual.  I'm a little upset that I didn't get to hang with the Pronto Comics collective and I'm sad Grayhaven didn't make it.  Next year, Gadget... next year!

The Zombie Years #1
Creature Entertainment sketch cover by me
Ravenous
Creature Entertainment sketch cover by me





















Now for some plugs:









Seeya Soon

Leigh

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The Art of the Sketch!.. or how I learned to to stop worrying and love penciling.

Hiya,

I've been drawing a long time and when I find ways to make it more interesting to do so, I try to stick with it.  Usually, that comes in the form of inking or how I ink or what I ink with.  The W&N series 7 #3 is one of those times I found a tool that really likes me and I stuck with it.

When it comes to penciling, I can't stand it.  I hate the amount of thought and struggle when trying to get the right angle or the right action... it's maddening.  Also, I make the pages dirty with my sinister, left-handedness...

ANY-WAY, I've gone through a dozen or so different techniques to make the actual DRAWING of the page less of a hassle.  The favorite up to this point is the half-page (as I call it).  It's a full comic book page, drawn at half the size of an original and then blown up and light-boxed to create an original.




This was meant to alleviate the amount of time it took to draw a page because all the thinking was done smaller so all the heavy lifting was done in the initial, smaller stage making it, for one, easier to see the whole page as well as the speed in which one can draw a page that measured 5 x 7.5 inches.  It was great.  Also, I believe if you can see what's going on that small then you will be able to see it when it's blown up.. or printed.  That's what counts.

The down side of doing it like this is that there's a bit of time between doing the sketches and doing the finish where you're doing something else.  Whether it's scanning the pages to be blown up or going somewhere to get the pages blown up.  That time, for me, is enough to cool the inspirational fire and even though I can get the page finished, it takes me a bit to get back in the swing of things.

So, because my printer is low on ink, I decided to go back to doing something I used to do in college, that's draw my pages, full-sized, on tracing paper and then transfer those sketches to the board.



It came out, okay.  I used marker to refine what I was thinking in the sketch and it turned into a bit of a mess, but I could see what I was doing so it wasn't that big a deal.  I finally transferred the image to board and inked and... Voila!



It worked.... and what's best was I rode that drawing buzz all the way through the end of the piece.  AMAZING!  I'd forgotten how much fun it was.  I did one, so I decided to do another...

This time, it was comics shaped; 10 x 15 live area border on a 14 x 17 piece of tracing paper with intentions on putting it on a same sized piece of Bristol with a slight kid finish.

I did the sketch on the tracing paper (made a few mistakes, erased the whole image and redrew it on the same piece of paper without missing a beat, I was rolling) and tightened up some of the looser bits with a brush pen.

I liked it. Time to transfer.
Not bad.  I started inking, one thing led to another...



I feel like this step being more immediately followed by the transfer led me to wanting to try and experiment.  I used to do a lot of experimenting with my pages when I was in school and I think it was because I went straight from layout to page without the in-between time of looking for a photocopier.  It makes for a much tougher job when traveling (I'm thinking in those instances it's going to be computer or back to the half page) but while I'm in the studio, this is going to be my mode of travel for the foreseeable future...

... also, it gives me more possible things to sell.  ;)

-Leigh