I'm still alive!

GWABHGJJJHAKFNERMFLT!
Sorry, that was merely a personal scream of rage at the fact that I haven't posted in two months. And I thought I'd update this regularly :D
Well, anyway, quite a lot has happened in the last two months. We finally got the books back from Jake, and most unfortunately, the resolution was TERRIBLE. The cover and title page looked excellent, but everything else was all grainy, and fuzzy, and crap. Even though it was all scanned at 300 DPI, this happened anyway. I don't understand. Well, this time I asked Jake if I could design the layout of the book, and he said yes. I'm going to do my best to make sure something like this doesn't happen again!
Secondly, I started my project for the next book, a short comic story unlike most other things I've created so far. Let's hope it turns out well. Also, my friend Blane, my annoyingly talented little brother and I have begun work on a collaborative graphic novel. We're still in the planning stages, and hopefully this will turn out. I said I wasn't going to work on any big projects for a while, but the work will be split up and we're taking as much time as we need on it, so we should be fine.
Thirdly, my art teacher selected me as one of a mere 15 artists at the high school to be a delegate for the 2009 NWOC Art Show, where the most artistic students from about ten high schools in the area put their art on display, talk with other artists, take classes from the professionals, and exchange work. It sounds awesome, and it's also awesome that I was selected! Essentially it means I'm considered by the faculty to be more artistic than 98% of the student body, and I'm honored by the fact.
Finally, Jake generously lent me one of his graphics tablets--I've been wanting to get my hands on one for years. I finally have, and I've found they're harder to work with than a pen and paper. I've been practicing though, and my skill has much improved from the senseless doodles of last week. Here is the first sketch I did on the thing that wasn't a big wad of suck. I did it in Manga Studio, an extremely badass program also supplied by the ever-helpful Jake Richmond. It's still not as good as my pen-and-paper drawing, but I'm getting better.
Anyway, let's hope to see more frequent updates in the future! I always get pissed when other people don't update their blogs, and there's no reason to be a hypocrite!

Some more drawings

Here are a couple more drawings I've done recently. I want to color them in Photoshop, but I don't know the first thing about the sort of "digital painting" style I'm looking for, so for now, they're mainly colorless. I did the base coloring on the first one but didn't want to attempt shading just yet. Anyway, here you go!
Originally, instead of a hand, the head was just going to be wired onto her arm, but I decided that looked kind of weird, so I changed it.
An orc! Blizzard Entertainment has an ongoing art contest that features excellent artwork themed on their games, so I kind of drew it with this in mind. This guy is pretty Warcraft-like. I don't know, if I ever get it colored well I might submit it to said contest.

Oh yeah, it's Christmas. Happy Holidays.

Snowed in

Well, I'm here at home on a Monday, as it snowed yesterday, and though the snow is almost gone, the school's still shut down, and I'm really okay with that. Anyway, tomorrow is the day we get the finished version of our comic. I did much better work this year than I did last year in the book we put together then, but we've lost several other excellent artists who contributed to the book, so I'm still not sure if this year's book will be any good. Either way, we'll find out tomorrow.

Graphic Novel Update!

Well, I finished the chunk of pages I'm putting in the anthology that our good friend Jake Richmond has put together. However, upon doing so, I realized a major flaw in my graphic novel plan. I have this great setting, but a plot that utterly fails in every way to take advantage of what the setting has to offer or even work well with it at all, actually. So I'm happy with the pages I've done as a sort of first draft, but as a whole I want to rework it into something a bit more dynamic. My problem may be that I want to create something outstanding, original and epic, but don't have the skill or resources to do so just yet. Damn. So for a while, now that I've got my pages in, I'll focus on smaller projects while working to develop my plotline.
In the meantime, here's a self-portrait I threw together in 5 minutes!

First Page Colored.

Whoops, didn't write for two weeks! Anyway, here's the first page of my comic (title still undecided) with basic colors and text added in. The finished version will look less flat.

Another drawing! Yeah!

So, here's a second drawing that again, I drew back in June, but I just finished coloring it today. Enjoy. Oh, by the way, this was the first concept sketch of the main character in my comic. Again, it looks better at full size.
It's not very detailed, but it was intended only as a sketch, so I just spruced it up with a little color. The character himself looks slightly different now--and wears a better outfit. You'll see what he looks like when I finish coloring the first page of the comic. I'm working on that now!

And, of course, Obama won. The election is over, after 20 months. I'd like to leave this event behind with a picture I found. This was created by RubberNinja, a member of Newgrounds.
I'm not even going to say anything, just let that sink in. Go Obama!

Graphic Novel!

So, here's my first status update on my yet-unnamed graphic novel. I have the first three pages penciled and inked, and intend to color them as well. I hope to get at least ten pages done by the end of November.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but I will say it takes place 900 years in the future, on Earth. I tried to make the setting, for the most part, as realistic as possible, taking into account things like the absence of fossil fuels and how that would affect technological development. Everything is electric-powered in this world. I'm having fun redrawing the world map and thinking about what events might rearrange the borders of various nations in the next millennium.
It's an interesting project and I'm confident that I'll be able to finish it. I'll upload the draft of the first page soon.