PEN MONKEY

This blog is a place for me to share my inspirations and insights with fellow Pen Monkeys. My name is Chris Artiga-Oliver and I am a professional screenwriter who is very aware of the bullshit involved with this business. This is my attempt to throw some light into the dark places. If you have any questions ask, got something to say say it but if you are just here wasting time fuck off and go write something. Remember: Who Dares Wins, Writers ReWrite and Pen Monkeys Never Say Die!

[comicsworkbook]

thee SANTORO CORRESPONDENCE COURSE and 

thee Comics Workbook Rowhouse Residency presents

the COMICS WORKBOOK COMPOSITION COMPETITION 2016

————————————————-

1st place  - $500 cash prize to the winner

2nd place - $250 credit at Copacetic Comics

3rd place  - $100 credit at Copacetic Comics

plus four $50 honorable mention prizes from Big Planet Comics

————————————————-

Create a 16 page signature comic book narrative to the specifications below

—————————-

DEADLINE: August 30 2016 midnight new york city time

————————————————-

PAY ATTENTION!! THIS YEAR IS DIFFERENT! Here and Here and Here are last three years if you haven’t heard of the contest. This isn’t a scam, silly.

Here are the specs:

Original art page size: 5.5  x 8.5 inch originals with a 5 x 7.5 inch live area. Three equal “landscape” oriented panels. No exceptions. Each panel will be 5 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall. The “Tezuka Grid”. MEANING: YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE PANEL SIZES. 14 pages with 3 panels per page means you only have 42 panels to tell your story. And two covers. 

Work may be in color OR black and white - OR - a combination of both.

You may also cut paper to the standard panel size of 5 x 2.5 inches and arrange them on your 5.5 x 8.5 paper quarter inch margins east, north and west with a three quarter inch margin south.

These “specs” were derived from Osamu Tezuka’s proportions for his first manga, The Mysterious Underground  Men. It is a classic 2:3 proportion which is the same as traditional North American comic books. See above photos–I determined the live area and then scale’d up to a standard North American size which is affordable to print.  See my ideas about the two most used comic book proportions HERE.

International students must use the same specs. No complaining.

It is recommended that you use one 8.5 x 11 piece of paper to compose the “spread”. The point is to draw small. And to draw by hand. And to learn how to draw in a “1 to 1″ fashion, as this proportion is perfect for North American “mini-comics” and for makers worldwide to produce comics from office supplies. And can be reduced to make a traditional 100x150mm live area for manga. See thoughts on this subject HERE.

Thats 14 pages of story plus two covers. Meaning seven spreads and a front and back cover. A 16 page signature. Follow this example here.

THE STORY MUST BE COMPLETE. SERIAL INSTALLMENTS of a longer narrative ARE NOT ELIGIBLE. THE STORY MUST BE NEW. IF YOU REPURPOSE AN OLD STORY THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN PUBLISHED YOU WILL BE DISQUALIFIED. Consider this an exercise in short story writing. I think the 16 page signature is ideal to contain a short story. Adaptations of existing works are not eligible. Like, you can’t copy a sequence from a movie.

Photograph or scan your pages and post them on your tumblr AS SPREADS. If you don’t have a tumblr - make one just for this contest. No exceptions! No complaining! Also post the front cover as the lead image and the back cover as the final image. 

Email me - santoroschoolATgmailDOTcom - that you have posted your entry to your tumblr - complete with your name and title of the work in the text field and that it is for the composition competition 2016 - and I will reblog it on to the comicsworkbook site. I will be posting them - reblogging them - on comicsworkbook as they come in. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I will, however, only be posting stories that stick to the RULES. If you don’t follow the rules, I will not reblog the story and you won’t be eligible for the cash prize. Any questions about the competition - please email me.

The competition is open to all. You do not have to be a former student of mine. Former students of mine ARE eligible to compete.

Again, If you have any questions about the rules please ask. Better to ask and be safe than to be mad when I disqualify you over some missed detail. Seriously. Remember the page size: 5.5  x 8.5 inch originals with a 5 x 7.5 inch live area. Three equal “landscape” oriented panels. No exceptions. Each panel will be 5 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall. Work may be in color OR black and white - OR - a combination of both.

Remember! Email me - santoroschoolATgmailDOTcom - that you have posted your entry to your tumblr - I will reblog it.

You may enter as a writer/artist duo.

DEADLINE is August 30 2016 at 11:59 pm EST

Winners will be announced the following week.

please reblog this announcement

GOOD LUCK! signed Frank Santoro

COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Can I have gutters in between the panels and can I work digitally.

ANSWER: You can have gutters - and you can work digitally. However I still want you to draw it at 5.5 x 8.5 inch original page size with a 5 x 7.5 inch live area - don’t draw large and shrink it down - ideally you are drawing panels that are 5 x 2.5 inches. Thanks. FS

[pen-monkey]

Fantasy pinball backsplash art from the ‘70s and ‘80s

[pen-monkey]

in the early ‘80s the artist Roger Dean and his brother designed fiberglass cabinets of a giant space insect and a robot knight to fit over the cabinets of Taito’s Space Invaders arcade game (and 11 others). The last image is Dean’s concept of an arcade. I could live in there. He did a bunch of other fiberglass designs which were equally cool but this idea rocks. I may have found my calling. Get ready for a cool ass arcade near you! I will rule the world!! Anyway, these are cool.

[khiroptera]

people have asked me how i draw eyes so i made an extremely slap-dash eye tutorial! this is simply about how i draw a simple neutral eye, nothing to do with expressions (that’s a whole other thing).

start with the horizontal guide on the face, to help place the eyes. put circles where the eyes will go!

adjust the circles into diamond shapes– i got this idea from sinix design on youtube, it’s very helpful and easier to see where the lids should end than with a circle.

draw the top lid/lash lines, leaving a bit of space at the top of the diamond. keep each eye in time with each other– drawing one whole eye first makes it harder to match the other one.

then the bottom lids. i usually try to do all the lid shapes with a single curved stroke each. keep it simple pals!

irises & pupils. sometimes i’ll draw filled-in black circles for the irises, to help figure out where to place them naturally!

lid creases, use the leftover diamond at the top as a loose guide for where to place them. remember that the lid curves around the eyeball.

make adjustments! things don’t always come out perfect immediately. i usually have to thicken the lash line (i like mine quite thick), move the bottom lid up or down, and sometimes resize a whole eye (easier on computer than traditional, i know!). if you’re on a computer make sure to flip your canvas often so you can see these little things ❤

and to practice, just doodle a lot of small eyes! keeping them small makes them easier and faster to finish, so you can focus on your strokes and playing around with shapes, tilt, lid space, all that. don’t worry about making the irises perfect circles/ovals or any of that, just try to capture the character. have fun!

[turtle-brownie]

Short thread on how to do minimal work on shading and line art that makes your art 1000 times better

sorry if this is confusing, ask and I’ll try to clarify

[theillustratedarchives]

Sad news today, British comic book artist and illustrator John Watkiss passed away from cancer early this morning. He was 55 years old.

Watkiss began his career as a comic book artist working on Niel Gaiman’s The Sandman. Mostly recently he worked on DC’s Deadman and Human Target comics. Watkiss had a storied career as a visual development artist in the films industry working on Disney’s Tarzan, Treasure Planet, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire; as well as providing storyboards for Guy Richie’s Sherlock films and AMC’s The Walking Dead.

[ungoliantschilde]

“Hair”, by Barry Windsor-Smith.

*this was published in Opus 2*

[forgottenbones]

Dave Rapoza

[cy4ngel]

please for the love of god read the rest it’s hilarious

[coll-comics]

[coll-comics]

I frequently use photo reference to flesh out drawing ideas for Coll but I was playing around in the sketchbook and just drew over top of the reference photo. This is just very rough sketchbook noodling but don’t be surprised if something like this shows up in the next book.

[coll-comics]

Working on a redraw of an unpublished 4 pager. Fleshing the story out a bit and sizing up. It was originally drawn 11”x17” , redrawing it 18”x24”

[coll-comics]

Turning thumbnails into finished pages.

[coll-comics]

I’ve been working hard on Coll:Warchild pages. It’s getting there. I love it when a plan comes together.

[tockthewatchdog]

[pen-monkey]

[pen-monkey]

[pen-monkey]