Huzzah!! Noir

Exciting news! Huzzah!! Noir has gone live, Ian Culbard has started it off with a lovely page...and so, another adventure begins. Click the logo to go see.


Don't worry, Huzzah Noir!! does not mean the end of regular Huzzah!!, they're running in tandem. Have a gander at the latest contributions from Rob Davis, Colin Fawcett and Paul Harrison-Davies, they're a treat!

Huzzah and the Big Baby of Death.

I made my third contribution to Huzzah!! recently. After what Rob had the Baron say in this panel, I wondered what could possibly 'kill death itself'. I thought it may be that the sibling infant was the opposite of death and if it came into contact with the big baby 'o' death (BBOD) something interesting might happen. Having the BBOD ingest its sibling meant I could get a joke out of it and refer back to when the Baron rescued the infant from Xog. It also was an excuse for me to have a go at drawing beams of light shooting out of an evil child.

Hmmm, reading that last paragraph back to myself only confirms my suspicions that talking about Huzzah!! and what's happening in it makes you sound like a gibbering loony.

I've been slowly building up to doing the maximum allowed of 3 tiers per page, per Huzzah!! so this is the first whole page I've drawn although it's actually spread out over two pages as the first panel is the last panel of page 26. Here's the roughs I knocked up in Manga Studio. Everything was done in Manga Studio this time around. Occasionally, I might use a bit of Photoshop as well but there wasn't a whole lot of colouring to do seeing as there's so much solid black. I fancied the idea that the BBOD had been given some toys to play with and the fact that he'd just learned to speak meant alphabet building blocks, of course!





























I went with the fairly rough pencils and decided I'd wing it a bit. Not sure if that was a good idea as I wasn't very confident throughout the making of this page, it took ages to finish, much longer than I expected and I was late in posting it. Lots of black with almost no backgrounds would lead you to think there'd be less drawing involved, that it'd be easier to get done, but it didn't work out that way for me with this page.

Next, the final art, put together as a whole page, that's how I drew it and worked on it but to see it in context, visit Huzzah!!

I had to...

I'm a little bit late in mentioning this but my latest contribution to Huzzah!! is up. It's been a huge amount of fun doing these but that doesn't mean to say I'm not daunted by the setting, it's not the kind of thing I'm used to drawing. And that's all the more reason to take part, being pushed out of whatever comfort zone I may have!

I'm also taking Huzzah!! as an opportunity to experiment with and learn how to use Manga Studio, the first piece was all done in Manga Studio, or at least as far as I can recall. The second was all Manga Studio apart from colour which was done in Photoshop as I was pushed for time and there were a couple of things that I wasn't sure I could do or didn't know how to do with Manga Studio but I knew I could definitely do them in Photoshop. I think there's never going to be a one-stop shop for comics, in terms of software, there's always something one program can do that another can't.

Here's a rough for the first plate I did, this one came together in an ad hoc manner, I had a rough thumnbnail layout that I scanned in, then I added elements and then I changed my mind ooh, about a few hundred times and eventually, found the final picture, probably not the best way of going about things. Click all images to enlargificate:



The finished plate:



This is the second plate, I worked this one out more solidly than the first so I didn't spend so much time 'finding' the drawing. I had to work in a 'what are you doing here' at some point, and this seemed like the perfect time! And a double one too, bonus!



I can't wait to see what paulhd does next! To see it all in context, visit Huzzah!!

HUZZAH!!

It's deadline crunch time so I've been quiet for a little while and probably will remain so until the end of the month.

I've just popped my head out to urge you to visit HUZZAH!!, the successor to Who Killed Round Robin? I've been invited to take part and I'm excited (and not to mention a little daunted) by the whole thing. I won't go into what it's all about here as it's explained on the site. I haven't been able to contribute yet but will do once Dead Pets is done and dusted, around the beginning of Feb. Go see the lovely, unfolding comic strip being created by my fellow participants.

I've just realised that this is my first post of 2009, so let me wish you a belated Happy New Year!