Vintage Star Comics

I’ve started doing a sketch (almost) every day at work during my lunch breaks. I’m trying to play around with styles when I do these, and not just repeat the same thing over and over. I didn’t get to do one today, since I came home for lunch. Instead I sat down for an hour this evening and drew. I was inspired by today’s teaser image for the new Avengers book Marvel is (re)launching in a few months.

Since this is basically turning into an art blog for a while, until my wife’s school schedule doesn’t have her on the computer doing prep work most nights, I plan to start posting these lunchtime sketches for you to see.

For now though, here is Hawkeye.

My favourite comicbook archer.

I’ve done a little remodeling on the website. It is a subtle change, so you might not notice it on first glance, but it’s there if you know where to look for it.

The design is slowly coming together and the site is beginning to look like what I had envisioned way back when the ideas for this comic started to bubble in my demented brain. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling. Not the kind you get after you’ve had just enough Jack Daniels… but the kind you get when you’ve done something you can be proud of.

Fact is, I am ridiculously proud of this site. I may have a miniscule readership, and I may be terrible about updating right now, but I’m still proud.

I am proud to be creating something.

And I am proud to have my miniscule, but supportive readership.

So thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for making me feel like a kid again every time you tell me how much you liked a certain comic. Thank you for linking to the site. Just… thanks.

mark!

I’ve done a bit of house cleaning, and to anyone who reads this on an RSS feed I apologize for the flood of old posts that just appeared on your reader (that’s what you get for never clicking through to the site Scott!). I’ve removed the blog entries from most of the comics (I gave up when I got back to mid-October… I’ll finish up some other time) and reposted them as their own entities.

Now, a single blog post will appear below the comic on the Home page. It will always be the most recent blog post. Not all comics will include a blog entry. Not all blog entries will have a comic. I’m sure you get the idea. To look back at old comics you can use the navigation buttons or click on the Archives link, and to see older blog entries you can click on Blogification (formerly News) on the menu above the comic.

My reason for doing this? I’m in a little over my head right now with work and life and all that jazz… I’ve been fighting a bad cold for almost all 13 days of this year so far, and frankly it has drained a lot of my creative energy right out of me. My lovely wife is heading into the most stressful period of her teaching program, and while I’d love to say that doesn’t stress me out in turn, it does. Our stress levels have a symbiotic relationship. Nothing to be done about it. Unfortunately, it has meant that putting out a comic three days a week is low on my list of priorities.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it though. I’m just looking at a weekly schedule right now.

Having said that, I’ll be using the blog section more frequently, and I’ll be posting a lot more sketches and art. Some of it won’t necessarily fit in the “comic space” though… like the one below. I want to show off whatever art I manage to create for you, but in the long run, I want my comics archive to only have the comics in it. I want the most recent blog entry to be up on the front page so that you guys know I’m actually keeping busy over here, keeping you entertained an’ all!

Yadda yadda yadda… I’m tired and don’t even know if this is making sense to anyone but me, so I’m going to quit while I am (hopefully) still ahead.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the only thing I did at work today that I wasn’t completely underwhelmed by:

Sketched with ball point pen.

Still no comic. I’m not feeling 100% yet, and I’d prefer to be in bed right now, but I wanted to post something… and whether or not I am able to produce a comic, I should be trying to draw every day.

So, here are some sketches. The two guys in the upper left will probably appear in the strip in some form at some time some how. Or something. I like them. The others are just me playing with shapes. And practicing drawing hands since my characters seem to have evolved into creatures that both have and use hands.

The main reason I am putting off getting a comic done until I am feeling better is the issue of style. Everything that has come before this has been an experiment. I’ve played around with style and form. Everything from the size of the comic itself, to the way I’ve been drawing the characters, to colour, has been altered and adjusted over the course of the past four months.

I want 2010 to start out with a consistent look and feel. I consider 2009 to be Volume Zero of Vintage Star Comics. Volume One launches in 2010. And until I feel ready to present it, you will be seeing sketches and character designs in place of the actual comic.

Hope that’s okay with you.

mark!

I’m sad to say there will not be a comic for Monday, January 4, 2010. Lousy way to start the year, but I’d prefer not to start it with a nasty cold. So after several attempts to draw something… anything… I am going to go to bed instead. I’ve been fighting this all day with lots of Neo Citran and other hot beverages, and now it is time to just let sleep do its thing.

I thought I might post some character designs I am working on, but not even those are in a state near enough to completion to work as a post.

Things should be back to normal on Wednesday.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first ever Vintage Star Christmas special. I’m sure that, many years from now, it will be one of the classic holiday traditions… right up there with Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph, and Die Hard.

To answer the big question on all of your minds… yes, Virginia, that is a real Christmas song they are singing to Colette. “Chiron Beta Prime” became my favourite Christmas carol when I heard it this year. Jonathan Coulton wrote and performs it. It is licensed Creative Commons by-nc (or, Creative Commons, Attribution-Noncommercial) which allows people like me to create work inspired by the song and quoting the lyrics and such, so long as I give credit to Mr. Coulton and do not make a profit off of the work.

I’ve posted the lyrics to the song below, but you should also go here and listen to the song yourself. It is all of the kinds of awesome. Listen to his other songs too, although be warned that some of it does contain content that is a little more PG-13 than this one.

I’m taking the rest of the week off to work on Christmas presents for my D&D group, the Brethren of the Quest… for Snacks. Once they’ve been presented to the group I will post them in the blog section.

So, since you might not hear from me until after the fact, happy New Year all! I hope your holiday has been as wonderful as mine! And may 2010 be the year we get it right.

This year has been a little crazy for the Andersons.
You may recall we had some trouble last year.
The robot council had us banished to an asteroid.
That hasn’t undermined our holiday cheer.
And we know it’s almost Christmas from the marks we make on the wall.
And that’s our favorite time of year.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we’re working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime.

On every corner there’s a giant metal Santa Claus
who watches over us with glowing red eyes.
They carry weapons and they know if you’ve been bad or good.
Not everybody’s good but everyone tries.
And the rocks outside the airlock exude ammonia-scented snow.
It’s like a Winter wonderland.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we’re working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime.

That’s all the family news that we’re allowed to talk about.
We really hope you’ll come and visit us soon.
I mean we’re literally begging you to visit us.
And make it quick before they [MESSAGE REDACTED].
Now it’s time for Christmas dinner – I think the robots sent us a pie!
You know I love my soylent green.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime,
where we’re working in a mine for our robot overlords.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime.

mark!

This was my project on December 23.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to post it because I can no longer find the site that I downloaded the pencils from (and as such am unable to credit the artist), but I wanted to post something this weekend.

The result of this was me coming to the conclusion that .5mm was too thick to be my thinest pen. So as part of my Boxing Day shopping to day I bought myself .25mm and .35mm pens!

The conclusion to the Most Evilest Christmas Ever obviously did not get drawn on the 23rd or 24th. I will be working on it this weekend and will post it next Wednesday as the only comic of the week. Regular posting will resume… wait for it… next year!

I’m learning to become a better inker. Through that I am learning to be a better (I’m so tempted to say “drawer” here) artist in general.

Inking your own work helps… but inking other’s work is even better. Inking one’s own work is less about intuition and instinct than it is remembering what you had in mind when you laid out the pencils. When inking someone else’s pencils you get to interpret their work and add your own flavour to it. You also have to maintain that delicate balance and not stray too far from the penciller’s vision.

I did a Google search for some pencil drawings and discovered that Kevin Nowlan posts LOT of art on his blog. So I snagged this piece (and quite a few others for later):

Batman sketch by Kevin Nowlan

The original (along with Mr. Nowlan’s inked version) can be found here.

I put the pencil art into Photoshop and adjusted the colour of the line work. I printed it out on bristol board in a reddish hue. I’d have used blue but our printer is almost out of blue. Unfortunately I lost a little of the detail in the process, and looking at the original again I see a few things I would have done differently.

Here is my sorry attempt at inking it:

My attempt to not ruin Kevin Nowlan’s art.

To ink this I used my Pentel Pocket Brush and a Sakura Micron 08 pigma pen.

I’ve saved a higher resolution copy as well. Who knows, I might make a pathetic attempt at colouring it too.

Batman is ©2009 DC Entertainment

Fail Blog posted this in their Around the Interwebs section. It was originally on Epic Win FTW and I just had to share it here.

Look at his eyes! He knows his coffee.

There you have it folks. The conclusion to our first major storyline, Revenge of the FYTH. And no, I don’t ever intend to tell you what FYTH means.

EDIT: Oops. Broke the post. I’ll have to re-upload the comic. It will be back up by 6:00pm PST.

UPDATE: So the moral of the story here is, don’t mess around with things unless you have backed up the important things or have access to the original files.