Showing posts with label The DFC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The DFC. Show all posts
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Good Dog, Bad Dog
Just a quick post to plug Dave Shelton's wonderful Good Dog, Bad Dog book. It's the first of the DFC Library books to go on sale. Detective dogs in a film noir world with plenty of humour and milkshakes, what more could anybody ask for? I had a blast colouring one of the stories, The Golden Bone, and I'm overjoyed to see all the strips collected in one beautiful book. Go see Dave's blog for more info, updates and links to (very positive) reviews. Not to mention many of his delightful sketches and doodles.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Dead Pets - Page One - Pencils
I'm still busy finishing the last episode of the current Dead Pets story. I'm probably going to milk what bits and pieces I can for this blog. Sorry, but I've been working on the strip exclusively for a while now so there's not much else I have to show or talk about!
Here's the pencils for the first page of the first episode. I began this page by knocking up a rough perspective drawing in Manga Studio EX, printing it off in light blue and then I drew over that. I've used a couple of applications to help me out whilst drawing Dead Pets - SketchUp for help on a couple of perspective heavy panels and Manga Studio for the same and the occasional rough breakdown too - virtually all of Dead Pets was drawn and inked in the traditional way (paper and brush and pen) and the lettering and colour are all digital. I'm toying with going all digital but I'm having trouble committing fully to working that way. Some old habits are hard to break.
I sought out a bunch of photo reference for the van on the web, I find cars and vehicles difficult so the more reference the better! It also looks like there's a few places where I've redrawn the odd bit or moved elements around in Photoshop.
I wanted to set up the situation as quickly as possible in this first panel of this page, my aim was to avoid having too much preamble. Here's a family, they're moving into a big, old house, one of them is a young boy and his only friend in the new place, is his dog. I tried my best to make sure that something happens, in each episode and that the story progresses in some way and that each episode ended on a cliffhanger or moment of suspense, however slight. Three pages per episode (one of those truncated by about a third) isn't a huge amount of space to work with but limitations are good, you have to think and learn to work within them and hopefully, be creative with how you do that.
That squirrel ends up causing a fair bit of trouble for poor Godfrey, the dog. If only he knew.
Here's the pencils for the first page of the first episode. I began this page by knocking up a rough perspective drawing in Manga Studio EX, printing it off in light blue and then I drew over that. I've used a couple of applications to help me out whilst drawing Dead Pets - SketchUp for help on a couple of perspective heavy panels and Manga Studio for the same and the occasional rough breakdown too - virtually all of Dead Pets was drawn and inked in the traditional way (paper and brush and pen) and the lettering and colour are all digital. I'm toying with going all digital but I'm having trouble committing fully to working that way. Some old habits are hard to break.
I sought out a bunch of photo reference for the van on the web, I find cars and vehicles difficult so the more reference the better! It also looks like there's a few places where I've redrawn the odd bit or moved elements around in Photoshop.
I wanted to set up the situation as quickly as possible in this first panel of this page, my aim was to avoid having too much preamble. Here's a family, they're moving into a big, old house, one of them is a young boy and his only friend in the new place, is his dog. I tried my best to make sure that something happens, in each episode and that the story progresses in some way and that each episode ended on a cliffhanger or moment of suspense, however slight. Three pages per episode (one of those truncated by about a third) isn't a huge amount of space to work with but limitations are good, you have to think and learn to work within them and hopefully, be creative with how you do that.
That squirrel ends up causing a fair bit of trouble for poor Godfrey, the dog. If only he knew.
Monday, December 22, 2008
DFC Preview Site
I've always firmly believed the DFC needed to have some of the comics strips available to read online, and now they have! Go, see! If you like what you see, subscribe! The DFC is a good thing for children's comics and the UK comic book industry in general. They're trying something brave and new and I think it deserves to do well. Of course, I'm biased, but now you can make up your own mind.
Blurby info bit:
"We've put a new previews site up! There are flashbook versions of some of the strips now up, at our fantastic new previews website! There's one episode of some of the strips, in most cases (but not all!) the first episode, to give people a taster of The DFC. We didn't want to put up all the strips at once so as not to blast people with too much content, but the plan is to cycle the strips round, so that it isn't always the same content. If a strip isn't up now, rest assured it will be appearing in the near future! First episodes of new strips will also be going up, a certain amount of time after first appearing in the comic."
I think this is an excellent move and the previews, though in a Flashbook form, look good and work very well indeed.
Blurby info bit:
"We've put a new previews site up! There are flashbook versions of some of the strips now up, at our fantastic new previews website! There's one episode of some of the strips, in most cases (but not all!) the first episode, to give people a taster of The DFC. We didn't want to put up all the strips at once so as not to blast people with too much content, but the plan is to cycle the strips round, so that it isn't always the same content. If a strip isn't up now, rest assured it will be appearing in the near future! First episodes of new strips will also be going up, a certain amount of time after first appearing in the comic."
I think this is an excellent move and the previews, though in a Flashbook form, look good and work very well indeed.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Step right up! For one week only, folks...
...the DFC will be in Tescos throughout the land from Wed 26th Nov to Tues 2nd Dec. They're making it available for the one week only as a marketing exercise. Here's a pic of the cover, featuring a Mo-Bot from Neill Cameron's Mo-Bot High...
This is an opportunity to take a look at this subscription only, weekly children's comic without having to commit to a subscription. There's a great variety of comic strips in the DFC and I think it's worth investigating and supporting. It's all original material, nothing licensed, nothing based on already existing cartoons, toys or brands and its mixture of silliness, adventure and fun is a refreshing change from most of what's out there already. I should mention that I've had some involvement with the DFC, I coloured the first Good Dog, Bad Dog, strip by my good and hugely talented friend, Dave Shelton and I continue to be involved but I don't think I can say much about that just yet.
As much as I might like to.
This is an opportunity to take a look at this subscription only, weekly children's comic without having to commit to a subscription. There's a great variety of comic strips in the DFC and I think it's worth investigating and supporting. It's all original material, nothing licensed, nothing based on already existing cartoons, toys or brands and its mixture of silliness, adventure and fun is a refreshing change from most of what's out there already. I should mention that I've had some involvement with the DFC, I coloured the first Good Dog, Bad Dog, strip by my good and hugely talented friend, Dave Shelton and I continue to be involved but I don't think I can say much about that just yet.
As much as I might like to.
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