and more

And here's the opening spread from Joe Fenton's tale.

more story art

Here are more samples of the work in Yarns. From left to right, we have the art of Randy Peña, Orysia Riesen and Mark Yeager.

Hey all-
Wanted to share with the back side of Digger's postcard.
The front image is of both Digger and Lucy swinging in the jungle (as seen from my previous post!)
Fun!

poster

Here's the lobby poster for the exhibit. It was designed by Sac State graphic design student Lisa Lam. Thanks Lisa!

cover art done

Minus a few details, here is the cover for volume 1 of Yarns.

almost final paint

All but a few flatted. And then the fun (and surprisingly quick) process of pulling up highlights begins. As you can see, I couldn't wait on a couple and just jumped in with the lighter paint to give depth. Almost there.

Yarns Exhibition, April 25–May 18

Yarns will be making its debut this month at Sacramento State University near the end of April. We're all excited to see this collaboration come to fruition. The reception for the show is on May 2nd, 6pm–8pm in the University Union Gallery. Come out and meet the artists, see the making of the book, and secure your very own limited edition of Yarns. For more info, go to  http://www.union.csus.edu/gallery/

Sneak Peak

Here's a little preview of my colorized story. On this page, the grandpa offers his version of why the horse and cow are no longer friends.

Poster Concept 1

Swinging into action!

Digger Jones: Adventurer!
(With nod to Amazing Fantasy #15.)

After this story, I am now dreaming of inking leaves and bushes in my sleep! Yikes!

This will be the cover art for front of the postcards and the poster.

I'm the Caboose

Okay, I'm bringing up the rear as we close in on our final deliverable. Here's a sample of my “pencils” (actually they're a mix of ink and a motley patchwork of tracing paper and scotch tape). I love the hands-on feel of “Frankensteining” the composition in analog. Right now I’m moving into the inking phase. That actually goes fast for me. I scan these sample pages in, convert them to light bluelines, output them on Clearprint vellum, then ink directly on them. Then I'll rescan them RGB and blast out the bluelines in P-shop (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation: Activate the blue and cyan channels and crank the Lightness slider to 100) and I'm ready to flat and paint. Colorizing will happen in bulk (and earnest) this week. I'm pretty excited about the story, though. It ended up being 18 pages. Phew!

Yaga Sample Shady

Just a quick post of one of my shaded pages. This page is one of the more dialogue-heavy pages, so the backgrounds are quite simple. Maybe a little too simple, but ah well.

Title Design

I didn't think I'd have time to do so, but since we had a little time extension I took the opportunity to use the put together a little logo title.

Spread Page

Here is pages 3 & 4, the only open spread page of the story.

Originally a 1- page sequence, (the director side of me) decided to push more of the travel panels by streching them across 2 pages in wide panels...and keeping the original amount of dialog.

Side note: These pages longer than planned due to locking down the logo design.

But worth it I think! ;)

-Mach

Masks of the Nameless: Page Three

A process post showing pencils, inks and colors for page three of six.

More WIP's

A peak at page two of Digger Jones:Adventurer!

Title Spread

First to pages... just the base coat of paint. The title is the only text in the 8 page "story". It's one of those artsty, no dialoge jobies that people may or may not get something out of... but there is implied meaning. I jumped ship on my original idea months ago.

url changes

I just updated our blog name from yarns2011.blogspot.com to yarnscomics.blogspot.com. It was looking dated. Please update any links you may have to our page. And thank you for your support!
~the management

Preliminaries

I'm straggling along, but making progress. Should have the last four prelim spreads up this weekend.

Second Color Iteration - Page One

The first version felt a bit too green to me, so I revised it. (Note: the transparent black border denotes the trim area.)

Page One Inks & Colors

Work in progress…
 

Revised opening splash page for Digger Jones.

(For proper comedic effect, please read the narration in your best James Mason or Sean Connery impression!)

A Pinup and then off to bed...

Since I have the attention span and focus of a gnat, this lovely little distraction popped into my head while I was trying to buckle down. Just a quickie of Yaga, pinup style.

Anyone else have major ADD?

Page 5 Ink

Here's one of my inked pages. After doing multiple variations with how to ink it, I for whatever reason settled on something minimalistic and analog (strangely enough). I am adding in a layer of shading "manga style" for the different gradations, but here's the base anyway.

On this page, Vassa and her brother Michail are trying to escape the burning apartment building when Vassa falls through the floor. Yaga (who has been observing the whole thing) is very pleased with the bad turn of events.

Page One Pencils

Six pages of pencils, check. Here's page one with my main character running to the point of exhaustion.

Going for a look a little different that the John Solo project. (just to see what happens.)
Here is a inking/digital zip-a-tone test panel. Got a pipeline process now in play with my Pshop build files.

Sketchbook drills prep for some of the pages.

Character Concept

Here is a character design for one of the antagonists. Chief of the "TigerMen of the BalliBalli Jungle!"

Yarns Exhibit

I'll post more information in the coming months, but the Yarns anthology will make its premiere at the University Union Gallery at Sac State this spring. The exhibit will run from April 23–May 18; reception May 2nd. More details to come. This will be a great launch for the work as all of the artists of the book are alumni of the Sac State graphic design program. Please look out for a flurry of posts as we make the big push to get our pub finished and ready for the show.

A few scrap floor pencils

Some pencils I did for a first run at my YARNS contribution around October-Novemberish. Unfortunately I had to draw these pages before I came to the conclusion that I didn't much care for the rest of the story, and decided to start over.

One of the challenges that I've set up for myself is that I want to continue this story into a mini-series, so this start to that story which will be in YARNS needs to do a few things for me.

• It needs to set up the story that I have in mind, but haven't necessarily fleshed out yet.
• Even though it will continue, it needs to have an end that makes sense in six pages.
• It needs to be, and set the stage for the story that I want to tell.

In any case, I thought I'd share these scrap floor pencils. And, no they aren't actually on the floor.

- Mike