Charlie Harper

Yes, I had this huge plan ready for my blog. It was going to be AMAZING! Lots of pictures and stories about the Baltimore Comic-Con, new artwork, info about this weekend’s Charlotte Comic-Con etc etc.

I fire up the web browser head over to my site and BAM! all of my images are gone…Now this is no small problem considering I am an artist and I want to share my art via my blog, and cannot.

So…I will be working to figure out this problem for any of my friends, peers, etc that come by know that I will be up and running hopefully sooner than later. Avoidance of the full redo of the website would be best, but I don’t know. I did update WordPress and the Nexgen Gallery plugin that I use to show the images the other day. I am thinking that had something to do with it.

I hope everyone is doing well. Take care.

I have been burning my candles at every end for quite some time now to get ready for Baltimore, and low and behold the week is here and I still have plenty to accomplish before Friday. I thought I would take a break and give my blog some over due love by sharing the cover page of the comic project The Dreamers’ Daughter that I am working on with writer Jeremy Whitley.

In other news our studio website is now up and being updated, Firetower Studios. So stop by and check it out along with the other project Jason and Jeremy are working on The Order of Dagonet

Well more to come soon include more pages of the comic and my experiences at a new to me convention. These are the times of HIGH ADVENTURE!!!

Here is a small update on finished pages which you can also see on thedreamersdaughter.com. I am in the process of creating a header and making other changes on the comic’s website.

Page 1

Page 2

All that is left to do on this page is lettering and resize prep for print and web. I am excited about getting this page to 100% done tonight. It will be my first finished comic book page. I have many that are in various stages but seeing one finished really adds logs back onto the creative fire and inspires me to get the other pages done.

Well I guess it would have been better had I posted these updates for page 4 of “The Dreamers’ Daughter” before posting pages 5 and 6, oh well. Better late than never. I kind of experimented with this page. I like how it turned out and I think the dialogue will tie in the images more for the reader.

On a more personal and rare note for this blog, I found the following poem to be representative to how I am doing mentally these days. I think I have to many goals, aspirations, and ideas. I need to start setting limitations and get back on track with the “…less is more.” philosophy of life. I need more focus to help with the steep climb ahead of me.

The Albatross
Charles Baudelaire

A crew will often snare an albatross
Or two for sport, those indolent and free
Companions of the ship that glides across
The blue abysses of the bitter sea.

Scarce have they dumped them floundering on the floors
Before these captive kings are mortified
To feel great wings droop down like broken oars
And drag pathetically at either side.

How limp this winged traveler, how meek!
How droll and ugly he who graced the sky!
The crewmen jam a pipestem down his beak,
Then limp to mock this cripple who could fly!

The poet’s like that monarch of the clouds
Who haunted storms and sneered at human things;
Now, banished to an earth of hooting crowds,
His legs are fastened down by giant wings.

This was a pretty difficult page to pull out of my head based on what the writer Jeremy Whitley gave me in the script. I was pleased with how it turned out though.

I have started getting a little more bold with the inking stage with textures etc on this page. But not so much where I think it takes a different direction from the first couple of pages.

My social calendar was jam packed with good times this weekend, but good times always lead to future sacrifice when you are aiming for a deadline. I gave up tickets to see the college football season opener this upcoming Thursday with all of my good friends for the sake of making comics. I have also set a lofty goal for myself this week, and that is to digitally ink and flat color one page a night. Needless to say I will be burning that midnight oil. With each page I do I get more and more excited. I am looking forward to next weekend because of the holiday and time off from my Joe Job so I can put a MAJOR dent in the pages I need to get done. I am getting faster with each page I do. I am learning shortcuts and how to filter out certain tasks to become more efficient. I am ready to hold this comic in my hands PEOPLE!

I wish everyone reading this the very best in life and a great week ahead going into a holiday and long weekend.

A lot goes of time and creative energy goes into making a single comic page. I have a new found respect for comic book artists now. If you just think of the steps it takes to make the comic:

1. Reading the script
2. Collecting references
3. Collaborating with the writer
4. Thumbnailing the page
5. Scanning thumbnail in
6. Creating page layout with thumb nail to flesh out and rearrange element on the page.
7. Penciling the page
8. Inking the page
9. Putting in color flats
10. Rendering to add light, form, texture, FX,
11. Lettering, creating word baloons and creative sound fx text etc
12. Saving the file, other configuration and setup needs for it to be sent to printer.

All that for a single comic book page. No wonder a lot of these tasks are spread out over several artists to get an entire book done.

This may sound weird but I am kinda starting to feel like a comic book artist. Being almost 32 years old I never would have thought I would be creating comic books if you had asked me 2 years ago when I started drawing again. It has been 2 years of constant learning and putting myself through the Harper online art school that has gotten me to this point. I can’t tell you how excited I am going to be to actually hold even the preview book in my hand that Jeremy and I have cranked out.

The feeling of accomplishment when you complete anything worth while in your life is a better high than any drug could offer. This whole experience has been life changing not in only what I have learned, but in the people I have met because of it. It has even gotten me back into reading comics and graphic novels which is something I loved when I was younger. I guess in some ways I still acknowledge my youth and I am not ashamed to admit I still enjoy some things from it. It mixes nicely with my all grown up activities.

Right now I am in the process of inking and flatting all of the pages. When I am done I will come back through to render and add the lettering. Below are the finished flats for page 1 and 2, now on to page 3 which I am almost done with the inks on. I will be into flatting page 4 before bed bye time tonight! woot!

First let me start off by saying I admire those who can wield the traditional brush and ink like magic to make the comic projects they work on sing. One of my favorite artists is a master at this, Tommy Lee Edwards. He makes it look as if sometimes he just doesn’t care what is going to happen when the brush meets the page and yet it still comes out like eye candy and collard greens. I consider myself a tradigital artist so I too one day want to master traditional inking. Due to current deadlines however, I just cannot afford to invest the time. I have to go with what I know, and as they would say in G.I. Joe…”Knowing is half the battle!”.

Learning to use the tools is the same with digital art as it is with traditional. There is no substitute for doing. If you are new to digital art, and want to learn about Photoshop I can suggest three things I have done:

1. Search the web high and far for Photoshop tutorials related to what you want to do and actually do them. Don’t just read them, DO them.
2. Subscribe to ImagineFX Magazine. It is literally printed gold for the digital artist. The DVD that accompanies this magazine has a trial version of Photoshop if you don’t have it along with many other useful tools.
3. Take Bobby Chiu’s Digital Painting class like I did at Schoolism.com.

Don’t get caught up in the “Brushes Bullshit” of getting things done in Photoshop. There is not going to be this magic brush your favorite artist is using that will springboard you to their level. The point of inking a comics page is to transform the penciled page with clarity, form, weight, depth, and texture. You can do this with the out the box hard round brush in Photoshop with only a few setting changes. Here are a couple examples of how to configure your basic brush to be a inking machine:

• Texture Brushes for Inking Part I – Thank you Brad Guigar
• Texture Brushes for Inking Part II – Thank you Brad Guigar

I have been having some online discussions on making comics with a talented artist named Andrew Sides who is currently working on a project called “Border Crossings”. Drew brought up his approach to digital inking which I thought was interesting the other day in one of our exchanges, he said “I like the idea of using digital tools to mimic traditional as close as possible, and when I ink, I strictly think that I have a pretty binary system to work with — Either black or white.” I have to admit I agree with him 80%, but I swear there is this 20% inside of me that wants to go away from that way of thinking. Should I stick within the barriers of only what I could do with a traditional brush when digitally inking, or pull out the full arsenal of possibilities that go well beyond the traditional brush? For now I am staying within the bounds of mimicing traditional with digital inking. However the “Digital Devil” is talking that 20% itch in my other ear constantly. “BREAK THE RULES!” he screams in my ears. I don’t know the answer to that quite yet. Maybe I should take a spoon full of my own medicine and learn ther rules and possibilities of the traditional brush tool before I try to break them with the digital tool.

Digital Inking Examples of The Dreamers’ Daughter

Firetower Studios has set an ambitious yet doable goal to have 12 pages in a preview issue sent off to print by the middle of September. As mentioned earlier, I just don’t have the time to invest to learn the control required over the traditional tools. Who knows, maybe after the heat has been turned off in October I will do some traditional inking, but for now I have to go with what I know best, digital.

I am no Alex Toth by any stretch, but I am having a damn good time with the inking part of making comic pages.