Doggy Workout

This picture was done before I had ever used Photoshop, so the textures were cut out of magazines and glued over a pencil drawing. The line-art is on the paper and on a celluloid overlay. The idea of combining photo-textures with hand drawn animation appealed to me but I could never get anybody else to go for it, despite pitching it on several different projects. This image was a style-proposal for a “healthy dog food” commercial.


Speaking of dogs, I am now working on a MINI COMIC about the dog I got when I was 7 years old. The basis for the tale is a story I had written down a few months ago but didn’t post here because it was too long for a blog post… but just the right length for a MINI-comic.

A mini seemed to be a good excuse to do things differently. So far, I have done the whole thing digitally, all drawn on my 15 inch Cintiq. This has allowed me to play around with ALL the elements – text line and tone – at a much earlier stage of the process than I am used to and I’m enjoying that flexibility. This the first time that I have made a comic this way and it was inspired by watching Ted Mathot working digitally on his Rose and Isabel epic.

The mini will be in landscape format and about half the size of the comics I normally do, at 4.25 X 6.5 inches. Because of the “wide-screen” dimensions, the fact that there is only one panel per page, and proportionally more text, the mini is looking more like a tiny children’s picture book than a standard comic book.

Apart from trying to get away from the clutter of my typical page layouts (which are really jammed with panels) my goal is to draw this one looser than the comics I have made before, but hopefully still have some appealing “drawing” in there. I had in mind the typical level of finish of the storyboards I do professionally, which can be rather scribbly at times.

Depending on how fast I draw, the mini will be either 32 or 36 pages and will be printed at KINKOs or some other copy shop. I will probably make about 100 or so to sell at COMIC-CON.

6 thoughts on “Doggy Workout”

  1. Funny – I’d like to do something animated with textures too. But it’s more an internal struggle with me. It gets tricky tracking all that stuff even with computers!

    I’m lookin’ forward to San Diego again this year. I’ll surely swing by (Dave Pryor too) to see what’s new on the table. Hope you bring those jumpsuits!

    Reply
  2. John>> I’ll put a copy of my MINI aside for you… let’s see if you can actually find my booth this time!

    Bob>> I look forward to seeing both you and Dave in SD. Sorry, no jumpsuits this year but hopefully we’ll have some other means to entertain you this time.

    Amber>> Thanks!

    Reply

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