Luis’ Illustrated Blog

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Having fun drawing my scenes so far.  Nothing fancy or crazy to report.  Thing are back to normal at work.

ART

For Part 1, CLICK HERE.

For Part 2, CLICK HERE.

For Part 3, CLICK HERE.

…and that’s IT.  That’s all I wrote.  There isn’t anymore.  It took, off and on, about three years to do this much.  Mostly because I was trying to redesign the comic and recompose the pages.  As well as trying to adjust this first part of the story so that it really grabbed you.  This only caused me to burn out on it and I ended up abandoning the comic in the end.  Should I have?  I really didn’t want to redraw 22 pages again after all that time.

Biggest problem I had with the comic? I took it waaaaay to seriously.

Below I have included the original ending to comic I had written.  It’s actually a really bad ending, now that I look at it again.  I’m VERY glad I changed it.  The comic that followed that ending was actually going to begin with the three main characters sitting around a table, drinking tea as the Golem explained what was going on.  Very dull with a lot of exposition.  The new ending I ended up going with, in contrast, was going to lead the characters, in the next comic, right to the “meat” of the story and was going to push the character to make some difficult choices right off the bat.  That was going to be far more interesting:

See what I mean? Really bad ending. It’s also very unclear if Angie is sick and has something wrong with her, which was NOT my intent.

Well, anyway, what do you think?  Did you like it? Didn’t like it?  Are you disappointed  that there isn’t anymore?  Was it not that good to begin with?  Would you have payed money for it had I finished it?

I’m really curious.  If you really liked it please tell me. If you didn’t like it, please tell me that too.  It won’t hurt my feelings or anything.  I’m MUCH more critical about this story than I think you will ever be.  You may just confirm my suspicions by telling me what you didn’t like.  If you DID like it, please tell me why as well.  Especially since there are things I think are really working in the story.  In any case, depending on the reaction, I may or may not continue the story.  I mean, if no one likes it enough for me to continue, it’s not like I was going to anyway, but if suddenly, I get thousands of people wanting more…

For now, I’ve got tons of other ideas to attempt.

Next week, THE BLACK TERROR KID.

FAMILY

My Abuelita is not doing very well lately.  I would appreciate any prayers you can send her way and our families way.  Thanks.

WRITING

Because I’ve been trying to come up with a fun, SHORT, story or skit for my next project, I’ve been rereading my books on story theory lately.  I’ve decided that I was going to try to structure whatever story I ended up telling “properly”, or at the very least, as well as I can.

Part of the reason for this is that I’m having trouble putting the idea I have together into something, ANYTHING, remotely entertaining.  I have and idea and can’t seem to actually execute it so it’s kinda driving me nuts.

The first book I decided to reread was:

• STORY: SUBSTANCE, STRUCTURE STYLE, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF SCREENWRITING by Robert Mckee.

This book actually helped out a lot.  It’s a very popular book on the Three Act Structure Theory of writing.  It’s good, even if you’re not writing a screenplay.

I’m avoiding the “Heroes Journey” Theory of story right now, mainly because I find it annoying at the moment.  Nothing wrong with it or anything, it just reminds me of Joseph Campbell and I find him annoying right now so I kinda want to avoid the theory for that completely subjective reason.

The other book I re-familiarizing  myself with is:

• DRAMATICA: A NEW THEORY OF STORY by Melanie Anne Phillips & Chris Huntley.

I’ve never tried this theory out myself but it really makes a lot of sense to me.  It’s a very deep and intense theory that puts forth the proposition that all stories are grand arguments about a specific subject, that must include all sides of a given argument in order to feel complete.  Kinda like St. Thomas Aquina’s Summa Theologica  only in story form. I think it’s a very clever theory but overwhelmingly cumbersome.  That said, it’s VERY helpful if you’re in the place I’m at right now where you’re not sure which way to go. It gives you enough structure from the get go so you can start building a workable story that will hopefully trigger the inspiration to get you what you want.  It’s also a good theory to use to double check the integrity of a story you’ve written by checking if it’s well balanced.

You can Download the 4th edition of the DRAMATICA book online for free at the Dramatica site, you can read it directly at the site for free, or you can go to iTunes and download the 10th edition of the DRAMATICA book as a podcast. In many ways, listening to the book on audio is like listening to a university course in Socratic Logic (I should know, since that is how I learned Socratic Logic).  I don’t know if I can recommend this theory or not since I have just now begun to truly use it but I’ll keep you updated with what I discover.

BLOGS

I became aware, through a “retweet” Topher Davila sent on Twitter, of this article from the FIRST THINGS website:

SCIENCE FRICTION

by Robert R. Chase

It’s an article about Christianity in Science Fiction stories and it’s really great.  It opened my eyes to a LOT of really interesting Science Fiction stories that have very positive Catholic elements that I didn’t really know where out there.  I highly recommend reading the article.

ROLE PLAYING GAMES/VIDEO

In case you ever wondered what a game of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS looked like as it’s being played,  here’s a fun video of the writers of the animated show ROBOT CHICKEN, playing a game:

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Survived another deadline week.  We’ve moved on to yet another crew to help out for a week before moving on to my long term crew. Worked overtime last week so I’m looking forward to my paycheck.  I thinks it’s going to help us out quite a bit.

ART

Here’s my new Superhero Versus Superhero drawing (click on the numbers to see what I’m taking about: 1,2,3,4,5,6).  Well…not exactly superheroes but comic book archetypes never the less:

Betty and Veronica (Archie Comics) Versus Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy (Marvel Comics).  They fight because they’re the same archetype.  Betty and Veronica are rivals for Archie’s affections while Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy were once rivals for Peter Parker’s (a.k.a Spider-man) affections. 

This was a really fun drawing to do, but it was a difficult one to come up with.  I learned a lot about how badly I draw. I also learned a lot about how great Dan Decarlo’s early Archie drawings were.  It was tricky to draw Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy and have them “read” as Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy because they aren’t superheroes and they don’t have a “costumes”.  In the end, I chose the closest thing they have to an iconic look. I doubt anyone but comic book geeks will know who they are  just by looking at the picture.

The thing I learned the most from drawing this, by far, is that I need to do more figure drawing. That and drawing in the Archie style is really, really fun.

ART

The ANIMATION GETDOWN happened this weekend.  The  ANIMATION GETDOWN was an independent animation film festival created by fellow  Cartoonista, Jim Lujan. Both Raul Aguirre and Jim Lujan worked hard to put it all together.  It took place at Geeks, a comic books store in Whittier, California. It was an enormous success. Over a hundred people showed up to watch the indy cartoons that were presented there.

For the full story (or as close as you’re going to get to it) and a lot of pictures from the event (including some with me in them), go to Jim Lujan’s blog (Jan. 17 2010).  Also, if you want to listen to some audio interviews recorded live at the event, listen to the Ghettomation podcast episode #5 (I’m in that too).

Unfortunately while I was there, I felt like a zombie.  I had been working on my comic earlier that day and my head was still on the job (more on that below).  The fact that it all took place in a comic book store, didn’t help either. All I wanted to do was look through the comics for more inspiration.  I also wanted to buy a bunch of them since I saw a lot that I thought looked great.

Still, it was great to be there, even though I was not totally there.

MY WEB COMIC

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on my comic.  It’s going to be eleven pages long and I’m enjoying myself immensely.  It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn a comic.  In a way, it’s a very familiar process, on the other hand I’m doing things I’ve never truly done before.  Like putting in word balloons and sound effects. I’m also using 2 ply smooth Bristol paper to draw on, which is also new to me.  Because of this, I’ve had to reinvent my process. There is a few things I really wanted to do that is different than what I usually do.  Usually I plot out a page, then draw a tight rough on another piece of paper, then I get yet another piece of paper and clean it all up.

I will be showing this process perhaps next week.

This time around, I wanted to stream line the process so it all happens on ONE sheet of paper. Trying to figure out if I can do it is the hard part.

When I was growing up, I used to do my own comic strips. Beginning from when I was in 5th grade up until I graduated High School.  I had developed a method on how I approached doing them that worked well for me over all those years.  Later I started doing Simpsons comics and my method changed a bit since I didn’t have to “do it all” the way I had to in a comic strip.  That, and the fact that a comic page is a different “animal” than a comic strip. Now that I’m doing my OWN comic book story, I’ve found that I’ve got to marry what I used to do in my comic strips and what I learned to do when doing comic book pages.

For example, when doing a comic book page, I never truly worried as much about word balloons as I should have. Mainly because they were the last things put onto the page and it was done by someone else. While, when doing the comic strips, the word balloons where almost the most important thing for me.

Working on my personal comic, I tried to approach it in the same way as I did the Simpsons comic pages, only I’ve discovered, as I go along, that the word balloons almost need to come first in a similar way to how I used to do comic strips. Not exactly the same way, but similar.  Especially since I’ve made up my mind to NOT use digital word balloons.  I have chosen to make the word balloons, part of the original art; since they ARE. I’m making a comic book after all. I’m going to attempt to hand letter the words in the balloons, but I have awful writing, so if doesn’t look good, I’ll use digital letters.  That said, I still need to know how big the balloons should be to accommodate the words.  This means writing the dialogue out  so I can see how it will read.  It’s a time consuming part of the process I didn’t anticipate, and I’ve found myself, to my great surprise, enjoying it.

There is much more to think about, besides that and I’ve gotten lost in thought about the process for hours. Which means I become even LESS social than I usually am. I’m so absorbed in this stuff right now. It’s really fun, I can’t wait to finish. I might write about this some more, later.

VIDEO/WRITING

Chris Oatley linked to this on Twitter sometime last week (Follow me on Twitter). I thought it was great tips on writing stories so I thought I’d share it.

You gotta love someone who has to refute relativism in order to teach storytelling.

VIDEO

And now for some random silliness. Here is Hitler’s reactions to some bad news about what Marvel Comics up to. Warning: There is some bad language in this but it’s darn funny.

Hitler really takes his comic seriously:

…and from Hitler to Star Trek as the A-team:

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

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Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Not much to report really.  Deadline is slowly approaching and, as always, we don’t seem to be in good shape.  Still, we’ll make it.  Like we usually do.

FAMILY

July 3rd was my little brother’s birthday.  He’s now 30 something or other, I don’t remember.  Didn’t actually manage to celebrate his birthday until Sunday.  Didn’t really see him till then either.  Saturday the 4th was fun. Especially for Munchkin.  We spent the day at a big party at an uncle’s house and Munchkin played and had fun like a crazy girl.  Dante spent a lot of time with me, although there was a long time when he finally realized that being with me was the dullest thing he could be doing and he went off to have some fun with his sister. Dancing is one of Munchkin’s passions and near the end of the night, she spent hours doing it.  Then the fireworks started at a school down the block. We all watched the fireworks from the backyard.  Dante sat on my lap and was wowed by them.  It was great. Munchkin almost cried after it was over because she wanted them to keep going.

The highlight for me was playing a game of Magic: The Gathering with some friends at the end of the night.  It was a good time because I think we really let the flavor of the game’s theme push our imaginations.  It was neat to pretend we were casting spells.  It was fun also because it was the first time they had played the game and they liked it. After they go used to the rules, when they pulled out cards they understood, they go very excited. It was neat to see the game start clicking with them.

WRITING

In other news, Alesha spent the weekend obsessively researching and writing another novel manuscript. She couldn’t stop writing.

We had gotten into a conversation about novels, and the fantasy genre that’s hitting it big right now, namely, the “Vampire Romance” genre.  The genre has been around for years and the guys on the Dragon Page Podcast where predicting the genre was going to be dead by the end of the year, and that was a year ago.  It has only gotten bigger (and a bit tired).  Alesha was wondering what the next big thing would be.  Obviously, it’s impossible to predict. I just told her that it would be “Wizard Romance” novels.  I’m thinking that people will start getting tired of vampires eventually and might be looking for something similar but just different enough (whether or not I’m right is a different story).  I was thinking of something more in the lines of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books (Dresden isn’t a “Wizard Romance” book though). It’s an urban Fantasy wizard book. I told her an idea I had about something under that genre that I was thinking of running as a role playing game but was too lazy to do the research for.  She liked the idea and started the research on the spot. By mid morning the next day, she had done enough research that she could start writing. By the end of the day she had an outline. While still researching, she had written up to chapter 2 by the end of the 4th of July.  She ran the outline through me on the way home on the 4th. I gave her my two cents and she’s still going strong on it.  We’ll see how it goes. I’ve read the first three pages of the story and the prose in it is far superior than the other manuscript she’s written.  She’s getting so much better, it’s amazing. This will be her third novel manuscript.

Since she’s done all the work, I think I can take all that work and run the role playing game now.  Mwaa ha haa!

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.