SQUIDMANTIS Art and Stuff

Cool Art and Stuff from www.normocomics.com Woot!

[squidmantis]

I colored this pic of a little wizard fighting off a giant robot from a few weeks back. The drawing was done in my sketchbook and then I colored a photo of it using Procreate on iPad. . . . . #draw #drawing #drawings #sketch #sketches #sketchbook #wizard #spell #magic #robot #giant #battle #hero #villain #fire #art #procreate #ipad #digital #digitalart #process #wip #video #timelapse https://www.instagram.com/p/BtLwVxcBABV/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=9vscqzz04vei

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Amazing Scriptures is in stores tomorrow!

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Getting Through the Awkward Stage(s), Part 2

I’m sure there would be a specific group of people that would love my original concept. I thought it was cool but just how many other people would agree? Testing my concept on teens proved that it probably wouldn’t find a very large audience. If I wanted to sell my books in LDS book stores, I would need to change my core concept in order to broaden my audience - otherwise publishers wouldn’t be interested in it because retailers wouldn’t be able to sell it.

Pitching to Publishers

I pressed on, developing the concept, incorporating my test notes. I eventually arrived at something that felt good about and I felt ready to pitch it to publishers. 

Keep reading

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Getting Through the Awkward Stage(s), Part 1

I developed Amazing Scriptures for two years, and during that time the book evolved quite a lot. It was constantly in flux as I continually discovered ways to make it better. I wasn’t just writing a story, or drawing a comic, I was also designing a game and working out how the story and game would work together. The process was long and frustrating at times, because I was creating something that had never been done before.

The book went through a few awkward stages - awkward because the book needed time to find the perfect beautiful version of itself. It took a long time for its elements to intertwine together and reach their final form.

Proof of Concept

I knew I had a cool idea, but I wanted to make sure other people thought it was cool too. My goal was to create a Book of Mormon adventure for fans of fantasy role playing games. I knew that ultimately I wanted teens to read my book. Testing my concept with teens would be an important early step, to make sure my concept resinated with my target audience. Spoiler alert: It didn’t!

Keep reading

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Let’s ask Nephi because he knows everything about Game Books. -ns

[squidmantis]

More info about my new book coming July 10th. You can pre-order now. Links at www.normanshurtliff.com/preorder.html

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Influence and Inspiration, Part 2

Along with searching for artistic inspiration I also spent a great deal of effort researching how other artists were drawing the Book of Mormon and its stories.

The Golden Plates by Michael Allred remains the greatest comic adaptation of the Book of Mormon that I’ve ever seen. It’s also the most truthful to the subject material.

iPlates by Stephen Carter & Jett Atwood spin their storytelling in a more silly and exaggerated direction.

Of course then there’s the official Book of Mormon coloring book which came out when Amazing Scriptures was pretty much done, but I did check up on how they had depicted the characters.

Seek and Find Book of Mormon Stories by Jason Pruett helped me simplify my clothing designs. I submitted Amazing Scriptures to Cedar Fort largely because they had published this book and I felt mine lived in a similar category.

The confrontation between Laman and Laban from The Golden Plates vol 1 by Mike Allred. This conflict is a key part of the Amazing Scriptures. In my version it becomes a heated conversation with branching paths.

Sadly, the one thing Amazing Scriptures doesn’t have is a camel climbing a wall. (From Jason Pruett’s Seek and Find book).

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Influence and Inspiration, Part 1

The gameplay of Amazing Scriptures has always felt like dungeons from old-school Legend of Zelda games, where you find keys and unlock doors to enter new areas of the dungeon. Video games were definitely an inspiration of the book’s gameplay, but I often found myself wanting to incorporate the feel of tabletop role-playing games as well. To get that feel I gleaned inspiration from D&D and Dungeon Crawl Classics, as well as other classic game books such as Fighting Fantasy. 

Inspiration for the artwork came from a completely different place. I had three books sitting on my desk while I worked on Amazing Scriptures: Mouse Guard The Black Axe by David Petersen, The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo by Drew Weing, and Space Dumplins by Craig Thompson. I turned to these three books often to inform my coloring process. Space Dumplins has this beautiful flat color style with limited textures and Mouse Guard has interesting soft out-of-focus backgrounds. -ns

[squidmantis]

I’m going to try posting weekly on the Amazing Scriptures Development Blog leading up to the book’s launch. This week I talk about the many influences I drew from to create the Amazing Scriptures. Check it out. -ns

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Exciting News!

I know it’s been a while (like a year) since I made a development post, but I’m ready to deliver some exciting news.

I’m happy to announce that the Amazing Scriptures is being published by Cedar Fort!

Way back in September, I was contacted by Cedar Fort who was interested in publishing the Amazing Scriptures. At that point the book was mostly finished. In the months that followed, however, there were many changes they needed me to make- including an additional 16 pages and a new cover! All that work is finally over and the book will be out soon :D

I’m excited to be working with a publisher and I’m glad it’s Cedar Fort. They are among the largest LDS book publishers and their team has been amazing to work with. They also have great distributors, which will also make the book available in Canada! I’m super excited for everything Cedar Fort is doing for the success of my not-so-little-anymore maze adventure book.

The Amazing Scriptures will now be a full color 48 page softcover book, with one continuous maze that spans 22 pages!

Best of all: You don’t have to wait long. The book will be available on July 10th! That’s only a month away. The Amazing Scriptures is all ready available for pre-order on many online stores, including Amazon.com. I’m still compiling a list of places to pre-order but I’ll try to send out more details soon.

I know it’s been a long wait, but I hope you’ll continue to support the book and maybe even pick up a copy next month. There is an amazing adventure just around the corner. Tell all your friends. Especially if they like getting lost in mazes.

-Norman Shurtliff

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A book of short comics by returned Mormon missionaries about their missions in different parts of the world.

The Served comic anthology just reached its funding goal on Kickstarter!! If you haven’t yet, check it out. 

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An a-maze-ing start to a new year. Happy 2018!

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Making Corrections

Can you spot the tangent?

The coloring continues, but yesterday I took the time to make a few corrections to the line art. Sometimes you notice things when you see a page after a couple days. Coming back to color helps give me that fresh look.

There’s a couple more tangents I could point to but they aren’t as glaring as the one I changed. This one is particularly important to change because it’s with the word balloon. Since people have to read the balloon they are sure to be annoyed by the tangent. It was an easy fix too.

I’ve also included the finished coloring for the panel. Just like with tangents, I’ll probably come back and make a few adjustments to the colors… hmm. -ns

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The battle tutorial for the Amazing Scriptures Book 1: The Missing Map. -ns

[squidmantis]

An alien assassin to start the day.

[squidmantis]

MerMay the Fourth be with you!