discount airfares air travel finder bournemouth - Funny webcomics: Gatoons featuring Dan and Pete and Boys Will Be Boys

July 2010
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July 15th, 2010

└ Tags: Boys will be boy, webcomic, webcomics

Calamities of Nature pin-up

July 11th, 2010

This is a pin-up I did for the Calamities of Nature webcomic. It’s a great strip about topical science and social issues and is really funny. You might have also noticed the FRIENDS links on the sidebar. These are webcomics that I read and I think fans of this site might also like. So go ahead and check them out – it’s a great way to waste hours at work!

└ Tags: calamities of nature

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Comic review: Wednesday Comics

June 30th, 2010

rissomain

I’ve been waiting for this baby since DC Comics announced the project last year. I didn’t collect the individual newsprint issues because I knew there would be something like this being released: A glorious oversized hardback collection!

size

Wednesday Comics was an attempt to recapture the glory of newspaper adventure strips, back when there was breathtaking full-page colour sections devoted to them. In this collection, a bunch of the comic book industry’s top creators tackle a wide variety of DC’s characters, some paying homage to the adventure stories of the past while others opt for a more modern style.

The best thing about this book is of course, the artwork. Especially in this oversized edition printed on gloss paper, the art really shines. Each page is one part of a 12-part story, and thus each page is designed to be viewed on its own merit. This page from Dave Gibbons and artist, Ryan Sook’s Kamandi story is a great example of a simple yet beautifully designed page:

Besides the Kamandi story, I really liked the Green Lantern tale by Kurt Busiek (writer) and Joe Quinones (artist). I’d never heard of Quinones before, but I loved his artwork in this story. It’s cartoony and fun, but the draftmanship and realism in some areas is fantastic too. I’ll definitely be checking out his next project.

Another stand outs for me was the quirky and innovative Metamorpho story by Neil Gaiman and Michael Allred which featured a massive double page spread feauturing Metamorpho running across a giant periodic table of elements, with the dialogue featuring all the chemical symbols (it’s hard to explain, it has to be seen to be believed).

Paul Pope’s Adam Strange tale was pretty cool too. I’ve only recently gotten into Pope after reading his Batman: Year 100. He’s got a very unique style, very fluid and kinetic. Here’s one of his pages:

But definitely the best of the collection has to be the Flash story by Karl Kerschl, Brenden Fletcher, Rob Leigh and Dave McCraig. It really got into the spirit of the project by featuring two separate comics in each episode, one an adventure strip with the Flash, and one an old romance-style strip featuring the Flash’s wife, Iris West. The first few episodes are done this way, but they eventually merge into the same story, pushing the boundaries of page design and sequential story telling as it reaches the climax. It’s really cleaver and original. Plus I think the artwork by Kerschl is the best in the whole collection.

Since this is such an eclectic collection, there were a few stories that I didn’t like so much. Being a huge 100 Bullets fan, I was a bit disappointed by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s Batman comic. It was ok, but I was expecting more, especially from Risso. I couldn’t finish the Wonder Woman story as it was too difficult to read. Ben Caldwell is an amazing artist and he was trying something different, but I had to put so much effort to read the story that I just gave up. And the Teen Titans strip was also quite hard to get through.

Overall, though, this book is fantastic and totally worth the high price tag. It’s going to stay on my drawing table for a long time to provide inspiration and also act as masterclass on how to draw comics. Highly recommended!

└ Tags: Batman, dc comics, flash, green lantern, kamandi, Wednesday comics

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Spread the word

June 25th, 2010

Since I suck at self-promotion, I was hoping you, my faithful readers, could help share the Gatoons love around the web by using the nifty new share buttons I’ve added. You can share your favourite strip on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon etc. Apparently, this social media stuff is the bees knees when it comes to increasing a website’s traffic so I hope you don’t mind if I put you to work! Let’s get some new readers!

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Making changes

June 17th, 2010

HUNTteddy

This week’s Boys Will Be Boys was a peculiar strip in that I had it all done, coloured and everything – and thought it was fine. But after leaving it for a week or so and then looking at it again I realised I didn’t like it at all. This is the original:

And after my editor put me on notice about this earlier strip, I knew it would never be approved anyway, as it does portray women negatively, and I think Teddy’s punchline is overly mean and cruel.

So I rewrote it, still keeping the general idea without requiring me to redraw the whole strip. I made Teddy look more like an idiot rather than a jerk. So to make the changes, I had to write the new words (you can notice the slight change in the word thickness between the first panel and the rest), and redraw Teddy in the last panel. It’s a hell of a lot easier to make major changes these days thanks to photoshop.

Here’s the final strip. What do you think? Better or worse?

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Dan and Pete pin-up from 2005

June 14th, 2010

Continuing last week’s blog of posting old Dan and Pete art I have in my computer, this is a pin-up that was used on the cover of the kid’s section of the newspaper Dan and Pete runs in. I think it was published Christmas (hence the xmas theme) 2005. So it’s pretty old and it’s not really that good looking at it now. The foreshortening of Dan’s hand is weird and the perspective in general is wrong. I remember being pretty thrilled at the time though, getting the opportunity to have a full newspaper page devoted to my comic, and it brings back good memories.

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↓ Previous Entries

Gatoons

BB135 Lure of the pit

Calamities of Nature pin-up

Comic review: Wednesday Comics

Spread the word

Making changes

Dan and Pete pin-up from 2005

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