ShamWow parody (page 28)

Yeah - here's the update for page 28 of Tomb of the Undead. Here you can see my little attempt at a Sham-Wow! parody. I hope you like it.

Ten Questions (sorta) with Gerimi Burleigh
Samuri Graphic Novel.blogspot.com
Karl Altstaetter

In two sentences what is your STGN about?

A little girl who finds a haunted samurai sword on a school field trip and unites with the noble warrior spirit to fight an ancient evil.

Where did your STGN story come from? What were your trying to achieve with the art?
I tend to write dark and unpleasant stories. I wanted to do something fun and offbeat. The story has a wacky twist that most people wouldn't expect from me. I'm trying to let my inner 80's animation lover go buck wild

What was your experience like working on Samurai The Graphic Novel. Was it a challenge?
It was some of the most fluid comic creation I've done in a long while. No artist is ever satisfied with their work, however, I do fill like I pushed my talents a little further. Each project is a baby step.

What was your process for creating your story for STGN? Describe it step by step.
I always start with an outline. In this case, I limited myself to one sentence per page, so I had a 24 page outline, ((3) 8 page sequences). I do thumbnails based on the outline, adding dialog as I go.

I do the lettering/panel layouts in Adobe Illustrator, print out the lettered panels 2-up on 8.5x11 inch paper, and draw layouts. This lets me work the lettering into the image composition and storytelling better. I try to avoid placing characters in places that make for awkward speech continuity.

I draw the layouts in red pencil so they are dark enough that I can see them through a lightbox, but not so dark that it will obscure any corrections I draw over them in regular pencil (HB). I flip the layouts on a lightbox to fix anatomical mistakes and tighten up composition/perspective. I scan in the corrected layouts, enlarge them in Photoshop and print them out in a low opacity 100% cyan on 8.5 x 14 inch bristol board. I stole that technique from mainstream comic inkers who frequently work from scanned pencils emailed or uploaded to an FTP server.

I choose to work on 8.5x14 inch board because that's the largest size my scanner will fit. I got tired of tiling pages when I scanned them in. For some reason, there's always one part that doesn't seem to line up right. I used to pencil on the cyan layouts, then ink over that, but I've recently started jumping straight to inks. My pencils aren't particularly tight anyway, so it saves me a step.

I scan the finished page, flat it, and color it in Photoshop. All done

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A reader and her library
Pradeep Sebastian
Deccan Herald

The Night Bookmobile, a new graphic novel by Audrey Niffenegger, is the year’s most exciting book about books. It's that rare, beautiful thing in the graphic genre: 40 full colour pen and ink illustrations that explore a bibliophile’s (dark) dream.

Richly evocative ‘The Night Bookmobile’ by Audrey Niffenegger is a cautionary fantasia for anyone who has loved books.In a long and wide book size of 8 x 11.5 inches, are illustrations of colourful bookshelves, a row of books showing titles on spines, a library-room of books, a reader hugging a book close to her, and a universal library right out of a Borges tale.

In an afterword to the book, its author and illustrator, Niffenegger, says, “When I began writing The Night Bookmobile, it was a story about a woman's secret life as a reader. As I worked, it also became a story about the claims that books place on their readers, the imbalance between our inner and outer selves, a cautionary tale of the seductions of the written word. It became a vision of the afterlife as a library."

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Simon Pegg’s Autobiography Turned Into Graphic Novel App for Android and iOS [IPhone Apps]
Kat Hannaford
BugBig.com

One of Gizmodo's favorite actors now has his very own app. Proving what a nerdlinger he is, Simon Pegg's graphic novel is available for iPhone, iPad and Android simultaneously in 68 eye-popping pages.

The graphics tell the tale of his life, as told in great detail in his newly-launched autobiography Nerd Do Well. Downloadable wallpapers and a free excerpt from the book are also included within the apps, which cost $3 for iOS and £1.79 for Android—the latter of which only seems to be available in the UK at the moment, but I'm sure that'll soon change.