The digital revolution has made comic book publishing a thing of the past. See and learn how virtual computer technology will revolutionize this field and allow every artist to have their fifteen minutes of fame.

Friday, March 30, 2007

66 THOUSAND miles per hour

"Sixty-six thousand miles-per-hour is approximately how fast the Earth travels through space. At that speed, you'd think things would at least be a little exciting. As we all know, however, all you really get is a blurred landscape and a lot of dead bugs on the windshield.
"Sadly, the old girl doesn't know enough to pick a direction and keep on running. As with most of us, tedious routine maintains a demoralizing effect that keeps the Earth traveling in the same circles.
"Take, for example, New Jersey; where Fate and Destiny are routinely harassed at the toll booths and abandon us in disgust. Here, we have only accidents."

That's what EVIE thinks, anyway. But one night the cycle of "tedious routine" begins to disintegrate in Squareville, New Jersey. EVIE'S stuck in a humiliating summer job. Her dreams of escaping small town life in search of fame and fortune as a great artist in the glamorous cities of the world are seeming more and more unlikely.
Not far away DON PEPE TRIDESTA, a.k.a. "JOEY THREE-HEADS", the shady circus boss with a mind worthy of three master criminals, hatches new money-making schemes in the hope of paying off the price on his head. He is unaware that the infamous "TOOLBOX TWINS", BIG SAL and LITTLE SAL, have already been hired to rub him out. In fact, they've just arrived in town...
Meanwhile, MAYOR JONATHAN BELL continues his strange habit of residing in the two-bit room over Shakey's Saloon. Is he hiding from his estranged wife EMMA? What exactly is going on up there?
Speaking of EMMA, who is the strange, shadowy figure hiding in her cellar?
Of course, all of this is peanuts compared to the arrival this very same evening of RIDLEY VOZZ, ambassador from the distant planet TELEVANIA. He has the paperwork to prove his government's claim to the land now occupied by Squareville -- as of five thousand years ago! He's been sent to earth on a mysterious mission to transport the mile-square chunk of dirt to his planet. But the townsfolk aren't budging, and everyone becomes stranded together when RIDLEY uses his spaceship's energies to lift Squareville away with him!
Sound like a bad situation? Not as bad as what befalls Squareville when EVIE accidentally unleashes a burst of the ship's extraterrestrial energies, causing garden vegetables to grow to the size of buidings, insects to expand to schoolbus proportions, and otherwise inanimate objects -- like EVIE'S art project -- to come to life. As a result, the ship and the space-island of Squareville are out of even RIDLEY'S control.

TO THE COMIC=
http://www.66thousandmilesperhour.com/

VIDEO TUTORIAL: Using the Pen Tool in Flash 8


In the Pen_Tool clip (5 min 12 sec), you will learn the following how to draw straight and curved lines using the Pen tool and how to adjust your line using the subselection tool.

SEE THE VIDEO TUTORIAL=
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/minisites/flash8/f/mtutorials/6074.html

Friday, March 23, 2007

HONOR BRIGADE

Tom Stillwell is "a comic book writing fool!" who created a comic book soooo good it will make you immortal.

There is a money back guarantee if you should happen to perish after purchasing it... Anyway.

He is 35 years old and lives in Chicago with his loving wife and a young daughter that will someday give him a heart attack. The comic book he writes, Honor Brigade, has a silver age tone to it while being set in the modern age.

Tom is a firm believer that you can make a fun, action-packed comic without turning your heroes into sociopaths or derelicts. He wants you to like his characters for who they are and not what they can do.

You can check out free previews at his site.

WHAT IS HONOR BRIGADE ABOUT?

"It's about heroes. Well, duh... a comic about heroes. How original!

The thing is, I think we've forgotten about what makes superheroes special to us. I'm not talking about laser vision or magic rings either. I'm talking about why superheroes are better then us. Why they are icons we should look up to. Why we should aspire to follow their lead. The tendency today is to write our heroes as either saddled with feet of clay or "real", which somehow equates with grim and gritty. Now, I'm not against these things, but they need to be done in moderation, and moderation is something many of today's comic writers don't do very well.

Heroes should have flaws and faults... there's no doubt about that. They are human after all (well, except for the aliens, robots, mutants...anyways). Readers don't need to be batted about the head with the shortcomings of our heroes on a constant basis. They've taken our heroes, our icons, and turned them into people we don't even know if we like. The effort to make things more "real" seems a bit silly to me. Let's face it, if people had powers in the real world, they wouldn't waste their time being heroes. As a race we're not all that altruistic. I can see someone cashing in commercially before they'd throw on a cape and save people.

Honor Brigade is my answer to the current trends. My heroes will have faults but be people you can look up to just the same. My comic will be as real as it can be and still allow the wonder we all felt while reading our first comic.

Honor Brigade is about true heroes. Enjoy the show."

Or if you're really cool like all the popular kids you can buy his comics there too.

TO THE WEBSITE=
www.honorbrigadecomic.com

Sunday, March 18, 2007

CHAPTER ONE-Thomas Behe and Phil Elliott

Toby's filmed the wrong folks on his phone.

Caught recording the transaction of illegal adult videos, he's blackmailed by a ruthless entrepreneur into finding the female activist sabotaging the mobile channel Contraband.

In his search, Toby uncovers a voyeur underground, an "urban theatre" where profit-hungry youths prowl city streets filming erotic and violent events to satisfy society's accelerating demand for sensational on-the-go content.

Mesmerized by the woman, sympathetic to her agenda, his objectives blur. But as graphic footage exposing his darkest secret queues for Contraband broadcast, Toby knows he won't just be running from his past if that video hits everyone's handset.

Follow Toby's adventures in our new "voyeur underground" where profit-hungry youths prowl city streets secretly filming violent and erotic events to satisfy society's demand for sensational on-the-go content.

Where the fun adventures of Tintin meet the anarchic subculture of Fight Club, this quirky under-18 thriller/noir is the one of the first illustrated books to reveal how privacy-invading camera phones use is fuelling a new multi-billion dollar spy-cam industry.

Canadian writer TJ Behe has spent the past few years developing mobile content for global entertainment companies including BBC, Playboy, MTV, T-Mobile and Three UK. UK artist Phil Elliott’s graphic novels include Illegal Alien (Dark Horse) and Tupelo (Slave Labor) and he has several years experience providing illustrations for publishers including Marvel, DC, Image and Fantagraphics.

This tale's updated weekly - hope you enjoy (and we'd love to hear your thoughts)...T&P

TO THE COMIC=
http://www.elliott-design.com/MP.html

AMAZERS

Ryan Andrew Brandt is an author of comic books, among other things.

He has an ungodly amount of scripts in development, ideas that beg to be written, books in the production phase, books out or coming out... you name an element of the production cycle and he probably have something that's in it or about to be in it. His main goal, aside to actually make writing comics his living, is to try to write in every single genre there is... because there's nothing like a challenge!

He has written/overseen/published:
Leesway - Story/Creator of Book
Memories & Echoes - Story "Necessary Horror"
Ronin Illustrated#3 - Story "A Happier Place"
Varied Scaries#2 - Story "My Little Babies"
Other books that don't have links available at this time are Hope: New Orleans, Marcus Midnight: Monster Hunter (original series) and Tales From The Rabverse (collection of various shorts that have been published or still yet unpublished).
You can also find two of his Ranger Dan Danger shorts (one of which is published in Leesway) at www.julio.ws/kiosko, where the further adventures of Ranger Dan Danger will make their debut, but be aware, they are a part of a large e-zine that you have to pay for.

And he just opened up a forum for a new book called the Amazers. If you like what's in the gallery, check out the forum which will be updating with more and more new stuff!

Ryan Andrew Brandt has more stuff in development than a human being probably should and he'll soon be looking for an inker and colorist for a book he's doing. See some fan-comics he did just for the hell of it and see what he does when he's not creating comics. But enough jibba-jabbing.

TO THE AMAZERS =
http://www.comicspace.com/rabguy/

The King and the Tomorrow Lake



The story of a bored King who seeks a way to travel to the future! by Victor Cabanelas.

Aaaaanyway, I`m a comicbook penciler from Buenos Aires, Argentina and I`ve been working on this professionally since 2003. I usually work on 2-3 pages a day so, as you can imagine, it`s rather hard to keep everything updated.

Most of my stuff has been printed through Ronin Studios, but I`m working on a couple things that will hopefully see print through a publisher. Also, I`m glad to announce that one of the series I`m working on: "The Adventures of the Lightning Squirrel" will see print this year through RabidFrog Productions as a 6 issues mini-series.

TO THE COMIC PAGES =
http://www.comicspace.com/victor_cabanelas/comics.php?action=read&file_id=56373

Saturday, March 17, 2007

GREEN COMICS-HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY

Wiggedy Wham!
Clamnut Comix is the home to the most clamtastic Irish Comics in the world. Yep, there are comics from Ireland. We've been vewwy slow in Ireland to start producing our own comics but things are finally starting to change, over the past 4 years theres been an explosion in Irish made comics and here you'll find a few of the best.

MBLEH! was my first comic and it gave me the honour of being the first comic from Ireland to be distributed worldwide by those swell guys in Diamond. This version of clamnuts.com has downloadable samples of MBLEH! and a MBLEH! FAQ where everyone can finally hear how its meant to be pronounced, straight from the gicknah's mouth.

Earlier this year, I released THE SHIZNIT, a free comic available around Dublin, Cork, Galway and a few other places around Ireland. My reasoning for making a free comic was this: Irish people don't read comics, theres only a few comic shops in Ireland so therefore comics are hard to come by.

My idea is to make free comics available in places where people who'd never even seen a comic before would be able to get their hands on them. After meeting hostile reaction to MBLEH! I began to wonder if the average Irish dope would read a comic if it was free?. The answer surprised both me and the dope. It's working.

TO THE COMIC PAGES =
http://www.clamnuts.com/

KING BLASTITALL

Animated panel-at-a-time web comics and manga - what we are calling comicimations - are a synthesis of the comic/manga and the Flash animation. Some don't think they are true comics... others do. We do believe they are true comics if the viewer can control the timing of the progression of the panels, and if there is no human language heard in the audio.

We were not the first to do this... and it's doubtful that we will be the last! Although we consider King Blastitall a comic, we respect the opinion many will have that it isn't. Whether it is or it isn't really isn't a big concern of ours. Our concern is to make web entertainment in a unique way that people will (hopefully) enjoy... regardless of what they call it. We coined a name for this type of work - comicimation - and since the comicimation.com domain name was still sitting out there available as of early 2005, and since we got no google hits on the word - we are pretty sure that we're the first ones who thought of it. What else would anyone call something halfway between a comic and an animation?!

Oh, by the way, the "we" I keep referring to is me, Derrik Dean, aka Abu Spittoons, aka a few other names. Forgive me for using the "royal we": I've been working on a piece about a king! For those of you who have comments, questions, want to yell at me, disagree with the whole premise of the site, etc., you can email me at info@spittoons.com . Or for public comments, leave feedback at onlinecomics.net!

But enough of the chatter and on to the fun! My first stab at a comicimation - King Blastitall - is a fractured fairy tale period-piece satire sorta thing. I've had more fun making this than I've had making anything in a long time... so I hope you read it and that you chuckle as much as you're reading it as I do when I'm making it!

SEE THE COMICIMATION =
http://comicimation.com/KingBlastitall.htm

Digital Storyboarding: How to Make a Smooth Transition

Making a Smooth Transition From Traditional to Paperless

For some artists, the transition from traditional to digital can often look daunting. Using a digital storyboard has many advantages; a paperless environment, ease of correction using the undo feature, ease of drawing reuse by copying and pasting. In this article, we’ll show you how Toon Boom Storyboard can facilitate the transition from traditional to paperless methods. Its elegant interface, intuitive tools and practical shortcuts will make your shift to digital storyboarding a breeze.

Capturing traditional techniques using digital drawing tools
Toon Boom Storyboard tools are derived from the tools used in traditional paper storyboarding, enabling the traditional storyboard artist to feel more “at home” while drawing.

Pen Tablet, Texture Pen and Pressure Sensitivity

To maintain the traditional feel of drawing on paper you can use a Pen Tablet. This comprises a tablet and a digital pen. This partially, or completely, replaces the mouse. A pen tablet gives you more control than a mouse, even to point of being able flip the pen and use the digital eraser in the same way as you would use a regular pencil eraser. If you want to keep the paper feeling while you draw, you can always stick a piece of paper on your tablet!

The Toon Boom Storyboard Brush tool responds to the pen pressure you place on the pen tablet. In other words, the harder you press on the pen, the darker and thicker the line becomes. The lighter you press, the lighter and thinner the line becomes.

Use the Texture Pen to recreate that “sketch” look and feel. Toon Boom Storyboard has some default texture pens that you can use and adjust to suit your own taste. You can easily identify them by the “T” symbol marker alongside the pen size.

You can also load your own bitmap textures to create different pens. Just create a new pen and using the Pen editor, bring in any Targa (*.tga) or PSD (*.psd) file you want.

You can adjust the maximum and minimum size of any pen and change its colour by selecting a new one in the colour palette. The colour change will also work on the texture pens regardless of the texture file colour.

LEARN MORE =
http://www.toonboom.com/products/eLearning/articles/sb_digitalStoryboarding.php?WT.mc_id=e_tt_031607

© 2007 Toon Boom Animation Inc. All rights reserved.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Alterna Comics


Alterna Comics was founded by company president, Peter Simeti, in February 2006. They are a small press indie comic company that lets creators keep 100% ownership of their work. Creators are even allowed (if they choose to do so) to be published under the Alterna Comics name, while they pursue larger scale publishers.

A graphic novel prelude to an upcoming series, writer/artist Michael Bracco has created a world filled with passion, war, and revenge. Based on two alien worlds that depend upon one another for survival of their species, Birth tells the story of the conflict that becomes of both nations when joy and love turn into resentment and bloodshed.

Alterna Comics currently has 10 titles in their collection: Spectrum, The Chair, Morbid Myths, Birth, Diary of the Black Widow, Risers, Ruin, Novo, Mr. Puffinopolus, and an in-house anthology that will be published in the summer of 2007. Sunny Hills: Asylum for the Criminally Insane was one of their flagship titles but has since been discontinued by creator Travis Gore, citing creative differences. Only the first issue has seen production.

Alterna Comics publishes books with color covers and black and white interiors. Producing several hundred to a thousand copies of each book, depanding on demand. A print-on-demand production service is used to order the amount of copies needed.

Alterna Comics carries all kinds of books and is welcome to every genre, with the exception of SuperHero comics. Unless you feel your superhero comic puts a different twist on the genre, please do not submit your superhero works. While not to say that anyone at Alterna Comics does not love or like superhero comics, Marvel and DC (as well as a slew of others) do those styles much better.

Since formation in early 2006, Alterna Comics has grown in popularity and recognition. Receiving positive reviews for their works, they are often touted as having better than average work, especially for a small press company. They have also received support in the indie comics community and intend on always bringing different, creative, and intelligent work to readers everywhere.

2007 holds many great things for the indie company as they begin a convention tour. Being based on Long Island, NY - Alterna Comics plans on attending many New York conventions as well as others throughout the country.

Keep your eyes peeled for this up and coming small press company at a convention or comic shop near you!

LEARN MORE =
http://alternacomics.com/

the VENGER

I'm Matt Spatola, the creator/writer of the series The Venger: Dead Man Rising being self-published through Ronin Studios.

The first issue has already been released and issue 2, featuring the artwork of Tim Baskin, will be out shortly. I'm also developing several other properties such as The Pistoleer, Vigil, and Brigand: For Hire.

The first issue of The Venger: Dead Man Rising is available for sale from the Venger website, the Ronin Studios website and Comixpress. It is also being serialized weekly as a webcomic at DrunkDuck.com with updates every Sunday.

Click here for The Venger: Dead Man Rising webcomic
http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Venger_Dead_Man_Rising/

CHECK OUT THE VENGER PROMO...
http://www.comicspace.com/mattspatola/comics.php?action=read&file_id=55049&bl_type=2&bl_from=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.comicspace.com%2Fcomlist.php

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Girls Gone Wild & Crazy:

Female fighters take center stage in Gurumin, Izuna & Kim Possible

According to the Entertainment Software Association, 41 percent of video-game players are female. But consider your typical game hero: a gun-toting, muscle-bound lunk with all the personality of a side of beef. Where are the heroines?

There have been a few: Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider," Samus Aran in "Metroid," Jade in "Beyond Good & Evil." A handful of games - "Knights of the Old Republic" and "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" come to mind - let you choose your character's gender. But most of the women in video games serve merely as eye candy for the presumed audience of adolescent boys.

Younger heroines are even harder to find. Yes, there are familiar characters like Barbie and Nancy Drew who have their own computer-game franchises. But why isn't there a Super Mario Sister?

Let's look at a few potential role models for the girl gamer in your family.

LEARN MORE - By The Associated Press
Copyright The Associated Press 2006. All Rights Reserved
PHOTO: (c) 2005, Walt Disney. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Translating Frank Miller's graphic novel to IMAX.

THE STATE of COMPUTER ANIMATION & TECHNOLOGY in films

There is no question that Hollywood films are all breaking new ground as they seek to eliminate the small independent filmmakers. Their aim is to put something up on the big screen that no small filmmaker can duplicate and the magic ingredient is money.

PREVIEW: 300 Seconds Video Clip of 300 SEE IT HERE!
http://www.movieweb.com/news/50/18150.php

300 is an adaptation of Frank Miller's epic graphic novel. Using hyper-real renderings and digital state-of-the-art computerized enhancement similar to Miller's own graphically stylized illustrations, the film tells the true story of 300 elite Spartan warriors led by their fearless king Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who thwart the charge of Xerxes and his massive Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian foe, leading to the origins of democracy.

The film was shot in 60 days completely in Montreal, with the exception of two days of insert shooting in Los Angeles.

There are 1500 cuts in the film, and about 1300 involve some sort of visual effect and ten visual effects vendors contributed to the film, spread over three continents.

The filmmakers used bluescreen 90% of the time, and greenscreen for 10%. They chose blue because it better matched the lighting paradigm (green would have been too bright) and because red garments (a la spartan capes) look better when shot over blue.

There was one day of location shooting, which was for the horses that were shot for the 'approaching sparta' scene.

Post production took almost a year. The film was edited on an Avid, with an HD cut also maintained in Final Cut Pro The 3D was made using Maya, XSI, and Lightwave The 2D composites were made with Shake, Inferno, Fusion, and Combustion. The filmmakers prefer Macintosh, but large portions of the movie were made under Linux. Asset management was handled by custom software written in the Panorama development environment, made by Provue.

Color management was handled by Truelight software. The film was scanned on a northlight scanner and was recorded on the arrilaser. Most of the film was shot at high speed, between 50 and 150fps. Normal film is at 24fps. The film was transferred to HD SR tape and quicktime, and HD quicktimes were the basis for the HD preview cuts. The working resolution for the film was 2K, at a working aspect ratio of 2.11 and a projected aspect ratio of 2.35.

The script demanded that most of the male cast spend the majority of their screen time bare-chested, as per Frank Miller's original graphic novel. Therefore, in order to adequately present themselves as the most well-trained and marshalled fighting force of the time, the entire principal cast underwent a rigorous and varied training regime for 6 weeks prior to shooting.

According to an interview with IGN.com, Director Zack Snyder says that fighting styles and formations (particularly the Spartan's phalanx) were purposefully changed - making them historically inaccurate - so they'd "look cool" and work better for movie purposes.

The movie never claims to be historically correct. It is based somewhat loosely on Frank Miller's 1998 comic book mini-series. Changes from history were made by Miller and Snyder so as to appeal to a wider audience and create a more exciting and visually stunning action movie, rather than a typical historical epic.

Frank Miller was inspired by the original Battle of Thermopylae after viewing the 1962 film "The 300 Spartans" as a child. His perception of the 'hero' concept changed greatly after seeing the Spartans make their sacrifice.

READ MORE...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/trivia
Copyright © 1990-2007 Internet Movie Database Inc.