mumblethief

shades of the past

 Two brief process-related snippets this week.  One is my continued attempt to train myself to flow more seamlessly between the more dimensional approach I am most used to, and the more flattened symbolic approach I have been enjoying so much lately.    The above header image was a doodle made during an online board game session, and does a decent job of capturing what I'm after, despite my having run into the previous half-drawing of that other vehicle-thing floating...

A request of the internet...

I know you all have seen this page already, but I made this sequence of slides to post on social media (I'll post this weeks patreon page once I'm done with this).  

I am already unbelievably grateful for all of your support (both here on Patreon, and in the non-digital world of flesh and bone!), so absolutely no pressure, but if any of you feel like sending in a question, comment, art etc, I'd love to see what you come up with!

2018-04-12 14:39:23 +0000 UTC View Post

The Turtle Library #23: Early Edition

Welp, I'm sick again.  I don't know about you all, but I've been losing faith in my immune system lately.  Being sick is such a pain!  Yesterday my head was too muddled to even approach doing any real work (I think I managed to ink one panel).  Today my mind is feeling clearer, even if my body feels just as bad.  That's something to be thankful for at least!  Fingers crossed this clear-headedness lasts long enough for me to get some penciling done on the next two pa...

The Turtle Library #22: Early Edition

The Japanese cartoonist Inio Asano is coming to TCAF this year, and in preparation, I am reading everything the library has of his work (about a dozen volumes).  

I've read a few of his stories before, and my experience then is echoed in reading them now.  This dude presents characters and situations that echo the darkest depths of the human soul.  Characters that chase feelings of meaninglessness and warped values as deep as they go.  

I often think about the f...

The Turtle Library #19: Early Edition

Posts are slow coming on this trip, but I will be back in Toronto and on a regular update schedule next week!  

I'm currently in New Jersey, visiting family, so there's not too much time for doing much drawing, but there has been plenty of travel time with lots of room for thought-work!  Though there's not much result to visually show,  I've been getting a lot of little bits and bytes figured out for both the main Turtle Library story, and for the various little features &...

The Turtle Library #15: Early Edition

It always amazes me how difficult it can feel to sit down and draw some days, all of the tricks i find myself going through to get myself into a drawing mode. Maybe I've said this here before, but it reminds me of my experience with Tae-kwon do class growing up. The idea of going to class was rarely ever appealing, but once I forced myself through the process of getting there, it was always a great time.  

The more experiences I have in life, the more I have the intellectual knowledg...

The Turtle Library #6: Early Edition

The book Cricket is reading is inspired by the BBC television show "Secrets of the Castle, with Ruth, Peter, and Tom" .  It's an amazing show about a castle that is currently being built in Guedelon, France.  Everyone working on or around the castle does so using only items and technology that would have been available in Medieval times.  This makes the whole project a sort of proof of conce...

The Turtle Library #3: Early Edition

Another tool has changed!  This week I made the big little decision to change my primary inking implement for this comic from a faber castel pitt pen to a Tombo marker like THIS.  I made this decision after making these warm up drawings before a Story Planet workshop:

2017-10-19 03:16:08 +0000 UTC View Post

animate animate

After a slow few days of re-learning how to make pictures move, I'm back up to speed working on this animation I started last year with my friend Nick Meurlott (aka Dangerlot). The goal is to have my part finished by this weekend, so i'm in for an intense week!

Its an interesting collaboration, in that we planned it out loosely together, then Nick did more or less all of the lettering, and I did/am doing most of the character animation, and then there are a couple of chunks where Nick...

Turtle Library webcomic #9

The King of Police (or K.O.P.) sure is a bag of contradictions.  Wisdom and foolishness in [approximately] equal measure.  I'm excited to see how this character and his gang evolve as the story  goes on!  

Looking through my photos to grab this week's pencils, I realized I had taken photo reference for the previous week's strip.  I don't usually take this much (usually I don't take any), but I've been thinking I should start.  I rarely use reference very directly ...

c-c-c-c-cookie

Here's the pencils for the cover of one of the class "graphic novels" from the Story Planet comics workshop from a few weeks ago. Inks, color, 4 interior pages, and one more cover to go, and the workshop will finally be complete! I've learned so much doing this project, and I think it will be satisfying to experience the improvements when we run a more tuned version next time (which probably won't be until next school year, since this one is almost over).

Marta and I will be away up in ...

Turtle Library webcomic #4

I just realized I forgot to post this on Patreon when I uploaded it to the main Turtle Library website!  My apologies!  To make up for it I'll make two back-to-back machine-gun-turbo posts right now!  

By the time I finish this week's strip, I will have worked through all of the pages I initially sat down and thumbnailed (which I'll give a peek of in the images below), which means I've been starting to drift back into the more writing-focused part of the process.  This is p...

About the Aliens

Just thought I'd take a break from pencilling this week's Turtle Library strip to show you the "about the authors"- type page from the "Official Investigators Logbook" Josh Rosen (joshdraws.com if you wanna see his stuff!) and I were up past three finishing a couple of nights ago. The workshop itself starts to tomorrow, so fingers crossed it all comes together!

testing a pen i thought didn't work. it worked.

'nother one

And here are the inks of the second shirt!  Plus, if you'll direct your attention downward, you will encounter evidence of the strange and circuitous process which lead to this illsutration.  You see, the pencil drawing below is a page of quick warm-up drawings I made while waiting for a Story Planet session to begin.  I usually do this (as recommended by Josh) in order get my hand and mind loosened up before diving into the wacky worlds and characters the kids come up with.
<...

pinball shirt!

Here's what became of that pinball shirt drawing I posted pencils for the other day. I've also "accidentally" drawn up most of another possible shirt design, which i'll be sure to post once it's finished. Theres still a long ways to go until I've got these colored though. Soooooo much coloring! I may start going in to Marta's work even more regularly to try and fight my way through all of this bult-up computer work (I've still got a five 4panel strips, and all of the Moon Full childrens book...

Story Planet!

A couple of "finally"s here:  finally found a way to post multiple images in one of these Patreon posts (though it is suuuper circuitous :0P) and I finally participated in a Story Planet workshop!   

The workshops were wonderful.  I was there "shadowing" my friend Josh Rosen, who has been working with Story Planet as an artist for a number of years now.  The two workshops I participated in took place in two different second grade class rooms.    

T...

Climb and Go Sneak

Here's a quick pic of the prototype of my new game Climb and Go Sneak! I'm still working away at the Riverboat game that I believe I've mentioned before, and am part of the way through making the first prototype of that as well (albeit in a much more rough-n-rumble form). Still fine-tuning the rules for both games, but getting closer every day!

Moon Full cover!

And here's the last piece of pen and ink for the book! front cover is on the right side, back is on the left. Next is all of the digital production work. Getting close!

MOON FULL :: process II

Back again with another update on kid's book #2!  In an attempt to make wrestling with our current not-so-good computer situation, I've uploaded this batch to google drive rather then go through the convoluted process that is now necessary to make a PDF.  Please let me know how this works for you!  

 https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0XqvQTdO-O7Uy0tQkR1...

tractorin!

mcdonalds as studio

Hello hello! Sorry I haven't been posting much this last week or so, my insufficient excuse is that I've been spending most of my time helping Marta with the grunt-labor aspects of her upcoming exhibition. Still, I have managed to complete the storyboards for kids book #2 (Moon Full), and I will try and get around to posting them soon. I was about to post the next page or two a couple of days ago actually, when I realized that I was going to need to do a little bit of minor re-writing. Hmm, ...

Moon Full thumbnails

here's the thumbnails for pages 8 through 15. The pages are drawn a bit out of order again, so make sure you check the page numbers when reading!

That bird from the Black Kids music video has been popping up everywhere. Here he is in a drawing I made for a Polish publisher's collection of bull drawings (the publisher is named Taurus Media: taurusmedia.pl).

A drawing for a friend

airport drawthings

yo, Turtle, yo yo!

Some friends in Massachusetts have an ongoing gigantic add-a-panel-in-any-order drawin game. Here's my contribution from this visit!