Sketches, Doodles & Scribbles

A self-documentation blog to see my evolution ... or lack thereof and a few self-indulging resources to share.

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Little Shop of Horrors #20, back cover by Bruce Timm

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LOGLINES

This is an article from writer editor Tim Stout's WordPress blog.

If you have a difficult time writing loglines here are two logline templates I’ve slightly altered from Max Adams’ book The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide.

The first is for stories where the protagonist’s problem is an external force like a monster or evil men. The second is when a protagonist’s problem is an internal bad guy, like a poor attitude toward love or growing older.

1. (Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (tangible goal) or else (dire thing that will occur if protagonist fails — Ex: who must find the lost Ark of the Covenant and keep it safe or else the Nazis will use it to rule the world; Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark).

2. (Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who (inciting incident that creates the problematic circumstances, preferably ironic — Ex: who falls in love with her fiance’s brother; Moonstruck).

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Many moons ago when I was making comics live on Youtube I would use this as my screen message when I took breaks. This was done in MangaStudio.

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WEBCOMIC TEMPLATES

Every couple of months or so I scour the internet looking for new and innovative webcomic templates to use, since ComicPress has abandoned us and Webcomic is not very useful. Here are a few that I came across recently ... not that they are necessarily new, but I was not aware of their existence.

Rarebit is an HTML Webcomic Template written in simple and extensively commented code that even an HTML/JS beginner can figure it out, but modular enough that an HTML/JS pro can make it special. Everything is done in HTML and vanilla JavaScript, you don't need Bootstrap or JQuery or anything. Just download the template and plug your comics in. 

The second one is ...

A mobile-friendly, WordPress theme for publishing webcomics. Optimized for the webtoon(vertical scroll) format.

For those of you familiar with Square Space here is a template by Clay Yount.

This is probably the slickest most professional looking template I have seen but Clay stopped using it because of a a bug that fundamentally broke his comic archive template and no recieved no support from Square Space so he moved on.

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Not much time to draw this past year, due to a pandemic, you know COVID, but I finally found time to sit and doodle around and ended up with this 😂 What if Ripley had a bad ass daughter who just found out that Aliens killed her mother? Haha Just having fun in #CLIPSTUDIO #CLIPSTUDIOPAINT #makecomics #makingcomics

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How many of you wake up and say, "today will be a productive day of art" but #clipstudio is so much fun to draw in that you waste your day with doodles like this ...

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Love these behind the scenes pages on Brian Wood and Gary Brown’s book Black Road. I personally love this gritty style of art and it great to see the rough thumbnail state. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. 

About the book:

Black RoadMeet Magnus the Black, neither clean nor sober, neither Christian nor Pagan, but a man true to his word. When a ranking official under his care is brutally murdered, he's prepared to hunt the killers to the frozen tip of Norway, religious war be damned. Northlanders creator BRIAN WOOD returns to the Viking genre along with artist GARRY BROWN (The Massive, Catwoman) and DAVE McCAIG (Batman, American Vampire) in this all-new serie

Check out Black Road: The Holy North on @comixology

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Mangastudio / Clipstudio users check out this great Youtube channel by Kendys draws, in which he covers some cool tips and tricks for  Mangastudio / Clipstudio. 

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Jonathan Rector unleashes the ACTION PACK (Clips Studio / Manga Studio Actions)  and they are YUUUGE time savers. They are based on Freddie E Williams’ Photoshop actions which he talks about in his book The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics. 

Whether you are new to working digitally or have been using Clips Studio/Manga Studio for a while now, here is a set of 12 powerful time-saving auto actions for CSP/MS5! This pack contains the most often relied upon actions, GREAT for use on every comic book page!

Here is the list of the actions in this Action Pack for CSP/MS5: Make New Layer Make White Adjustment Layer Make Non-Photo Blue for Print Beef Up Lineweight * Thin Out Lineweight * Eliminate White Pixels** K/O Layer + Contour Line **** Convert Pixels to Wires / Seams Temp Layer Group "Done" Make "Inks" Layer Group & New Layer Expand Selection, Fill with Black Threshold (Controlled Bitmap)

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If you have not visited Strip Panel naked and you are an aspiring artist then do yourself a favor and check out this channel. The channel takes a look at why the best comic books work the way they do, by breaking them down and analyzing the work that's gone into them. see more on Twitter  @HassanOE 

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Many moons ago, when I was much younger I once referred to Mike Mignola’s work as “cheesy”. That is because back in the 90′s if you did not have at least 100000 lines and cross hatching it was considered garbage. However, now that I am older I have come to realize the genius that is Mike Mignola. Learning that he has embraced Sketchup and 3d software in his work flow is a news flash to me. 

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The Mighty Doug Hills has posted up theIsometric Ruler for Clip Studio Paint and it is awesome! Long overdue in my opinion. It is only $2.99. 

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I finally managed to acquire a poncho in the style of the ones my characters in my comic wear and these are the first in a series of studies of it I’m making. Ponchos are very unusual and it’s wonderful that I no longer have to guess how they look if I’m caught with a strange pose. 

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We may have to try this with our next model.

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I don’t care what anyone says, these types of photos are great reference.