Come out to the first Indie Comix Fair at Ace of Cups on March 3rd, hang out with C-Bus area cartoonists, and check out their splendiferous wares!
I'll be selling comics books, original art, assorted cool merchandise - and giving away two free 45s - your choice - from the '50s to the '80s to each customer! I'll also be accepting commissions that day.
The Indie Comix Fair is a joint sponsor of Ken Eppstein, publisher of Nix Comics Quarterly and Bob Corby, head honcho of the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo.
Also scheduled to attend: local cartoonists Molly Durst, Todd Beistel and Doug Hufford, James Moore and Katie Valeska, Dara Naraghi, Max Ink, Bob Ray Starker, Matt Wyatt, Bob and Ken - and the proverbial more.
Indie Comix Fair runs from 1:00 to 6:00.
http://www.facebook.com/events/322653487778736/
Val Crocodile, Associate Professor of Linguistics - a spot illustration drawn today for the inside front cover of The Signifiers #2. It's comin' together.
A pin-up I drew recently for the upcoming second issue of Jamie Gambell's new indy comics project, The Hero Code.
Check out the official Hero Code site for news, reviews and ordering info on this new series! http://www.herocode.net/
Nearly all of the comics I draw are hand lettered, sometimes with a brush, usually with a Rapidograph pen (or a mixture of the two). Computer fonts are, of course, how it's usually done these days. Some of these fonts look mighty stylish, but they all suffer from one major fault: they look like computer fonts. Hand lettering has an subtle organic life you just can't duplicate or approximate with software.
The first pro lettering I did was for a story drawn by Jeff Smith and Paul Pope. Based on my first page, Paul recommended I give the words more room to "breathe", allowing more white space between the words and the balloon. That advice has served me well over the years.
I use a standard size for most dialogue in my pro comics: 1/8 an inch high, with 1/16 inch between the lines. I don't use some fancy schmancy lettering guide for this, but a metal ruler I bought in my first year of college in 1980.
The lettering is then penciled in. If the lettering needs to be placed symmetrically in order to fit an approximate size for a word balloon (which is most often the case), I jot down the words separated in lines somewhere else on the page, count the number of letters in the longest line and pencil that line of lettering first. I then use the ruler to figure out the middle of that longest line, draw a vertical line through the balloon with the middle of the longest line as the anchor and pencil in the other lines, making sure each line has an equal number of letters or spaces on each side of the anchor line (see above).
The lettering is then inked with the Rapidograph pen. What you see above is the lettering in a rough state. After the ink is dried, the pencils can be erased and the letters and balloon fixed up/repaired/perfected with a fine small brush and white and black paint. The end result doesn't have to be perfect, but it does need to be consistent, smooth and professional.
From an issue of Daredevil, starring the Little Wise Guys.
127 Comic Creators for Freedom have contributed their talents to making this epic snowball fight wallpaper (a snippet of the epic pic is shown above) as a gift for those who donate to fight human trafficking. The CCF collects your donations and divides them equally between Love146 and Gracehaven.
Please consider donating to these very worthy organizations and get some cool desktop art while you're at it. Artists include Lora Innes, Max Ink, Katie Valeska, myself and many, many more.
You can make your donation here: http://comiccreatorsforfreedom.com/
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
Born in 1927 and still going strong...
