3 Days to ROADFROGS!!!!

In less than 72 hours, my new webcomic, ROADFROGS, will "Officially" launch!!!

roadfrogs.wordpress.com

ROADFROGS is a concept that my wife and I came up with more than 20 years ago. We wrote and I drew a 3 page introductory story back then, which has somehow over the years been lost (I've got artwork that dates back to my high school years, but I can't find those 3 sheets of Bristol Board). Over the last several weeks, I've been working on reconstructing (and improving) that same story - from memory. I've got strips ready for the entire month of January. This initial story, "Froggie Went a-Courtin'", will run weekly for about 4-5 months, at which time I plan to publish the complete story in comic book format.

In other news, here's a teaser for another webcomic I plan to launch later in 2013.

G.I. JEFF: A REALLY AVERAGE HERO is a comic that I created in the late 1980s with Jeff Roberts, who IS the title character. Jeff and I were co-workers at a sub shop in the West End of Richmond at the time. Our somewhat fictionalized adventures take place in and around a somewhat fictionalized version of the shop where we worked. And, yes, I am also a supporting character in this story, but this is Jeff's (highly fictionalized) story.


I've lost track of Jeff over the years, but I hope he sees this poster and the story, when it comes out. "Raw Meal" is really just a one-panel parody gag at this point; however, I am working on a revamp of the 3-page story Jeff and I wrote way back when, "Dead Men Don't Eat Quiche" and its never-completed sequel "Real Men Don't Wear Plaid". Hopefully, somebody out there will recognize the mash-up of the titles of a popular book from the 80s and an early Steve Martin movie.


Other titles Jeff and I had planned to do include "Raiders in a Dodge Dart", "Pus-heads", "Close Encounters of the Weird Kind" and "Raiders Lost in the Dark". If I get any positive response to the first two stories, my wife probably won't be able to talk me out of committing some of the other offenses doing some of the other stories.


And, as I think I mentioned last time, I've got several episodes of PAWNS drawn and inked. I think I'm going to re-letter and color the strips that are ready, then I'll start publishing those on the web also.

The address for G.I. JEFF is gijeff2013.wordpress.com. PAWNS will eventually be found at pawnsthewebcomic.wordpress.com.

Better late than never

Ever since I set up this blog earlier this year, I've been trying to post here at least once a month. Well, I blew that last month! November just slipped on passed me. I kept telling myself, "Robert, you need to put something new online." But now, more than half of December is gone, so I'm forcing myself to sit here and blog. So...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!

Here's a bizarre little Christmas party render I did today in DAZ 3D. Most of the figures I used here are freebies that I just got at 3D Universe (Google it, it'll probably be at the top of the listings). I wanted to try them out, so I played around with them, added Aiko, Genesis and a whacked-out looking Victoria 4. The blue guy on the right doesn't seem to realize that nobody is singing the Christmas carols he's leading. And there doesn't seem to be enough food to go around. Now that I think about it, this isn't such a bizarre party after all.

And, while I've got your attention (assuming that anybody is actually reading this), I have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!!!!

That's right! I've been working on my ROADFROGS comic at last. I have finally given up on finding the original comic book format story that I was drawing back in the early 90s. Aside from the splash page (an early version of which I've already posted), I am completely rewriting and redrawing the story (I spent part of the day yesterday recoloring the aforementioned splash page), this time in a strip format. This will be a continuing story, which offers me a new challenge in that I need to advance the story AND have a gag (or at least a point) every episode. And although this will be a weekly (if I can stay up-to-date) strip, I'm doing it something more akin to a daily styled format. That means a gag every panel or two.

I'll put another announcement on this blog when I actually publish the recolored splash page on the ROADFROGS site, which should be Jan.1.

Additionally, I've been looking at a small body of completed work that is slowly accumulating here in my studio. I've found a couple of rough-pencilled strips and sketches for IVY LEAGUE, some inked PAWNS strips (as well as several unfinished PAWNS strips and scripts) and the original three page introductory G.I.JEFF story (which sorely needs reworking). Add that to drawings and finished pages for a couple of other aborted projects, five unfinished novels and the six completed short stories I'm currently shopping around. And the 3D renders. Not to mention the forty-some odd songs that I have written but still have not recorded. Yeah, I've been kinda busy.

So, look for ROADFROGS to begin weekly publication in January, with PAWNS not far behind. In the mean time, I've got a G.I.JEFF movie poster parody that I've been itching to do for years. I'll probably post that on this blog very soon.

I'm looking forward to my church's Christmas Eve service next Monday night, followed by time with two of my daughters, their husbands and three of my grandsons. And then, on Christmas Day, we'll see my brother and sisters and my mom.

In closing, may your holidays be blessed. Here's a picture I did a couple of week's ago, which we used on our first batch of Christmas cards this year.

Happy All Saint's Eve!!!

This has been a busy month. I'm not quite sure where it's gone. I haven't done nearly as much writing or drawing as I would have liked. On the other hand, I've played a couple of gigs, was involved in a couple of events at church and I've spent some time trying to get my office/studio organized. So, like I said, I've been busy.

Anyway, in celebration of the holiday, I drew this in my sketch book this morning.

Looks like the three trick-or-treaters in the foreground probably shouldn't have bothered the old guy in the castle on the hill.

*     *     *

Below I've taken one of my recent renders in Bryce, used one of the the edge-detect features in Gimp, inverted the colors, then desaturated the colors to make it black-and-white. After adjusting the brightness and contrast a little, and filling in some of the white space, I've got what almost looks like a very intricate hand-drawn picture.

 This next picture is a detail from the same shot.

More stuff next month. Hopefully, by then I'll know how I did in the 3rd quarter of this year's Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future contests.

Roadfrogs website is live!

The main news I have to share this month is that I've set up a wordpress site for my comic strip Roadfrogs. So far, I've only put a splash page on the site, but I hope to start posting strips weekly beginning sometime next month. Roadfrogs is an anthropomorphic (otherwise known as "funny animal") strip featuring two rival motorcycle gangs, the Roadfrogs (Froggie, Sword and Pistol) and the Toad Warrriors (Toad and Wart). My wife Peggy and I came up with the concept over twenty years ago. At that time I penciled and inked three comic book pages for the first story in the series, entitled "Froggie Went A'Courtin'". Somehow, although I've managed to hold onto virtually every other piece of artwork I've done over the thirty-five to forty years, those three pages are missing.

Therefore, I've decided to rewrite, expand and redraw the entire story, this time in a comic strip format. Roadfrogs can be seen at roadfrogs.wordpress.com. In the meantime, here are a couple of pen and ink drawings I've done this year. Just to show that I can do something other than science fiction and fantasy art.

This panda above is based on a photo I found in an issue of National Geographic Kids. Children's magazines are a great resource for photo reference. The photo reference for the batter pictured below came from the back cover of an old Richmond Braves program magazine.

I'm still waiting to hear results for the 3rd quarter of this year's Writers of the Future and Illustrators of the Future contests. I think that both the writing and art that I have submitted have been stronger each quarter thus far. The more I write and draw (and 3d model), the better my work seems to get. I guess the old axiom of "practice makes proficient" is true.

Animation, finally

I still haven't gotten an animation worth showing to anyone using DAZ3D, but I've also been exploring the animation features in Bryce. The following is my first animation effort in Bryce. As a test, I rendered it at 15fps, so the motion is pretty jerky, but otherwise I'm basically pleased with the results. Unfortunately, I'm running into an error uploading the file, so it may have to wait until next time.

I hope to buy a new computer next week, so my productivity should increase dramatically as soon as I have the new PC set up to my satisfaction.

Finally, I was notified last week that I was a semifinalist in the Illustrators of the Future contest for the second quarter of this year. The pictures I entered for that quarter were some Bryce renders I had done very shortly after starting to work with the program earlier this year. I believe that the work I entered for both the 3rd and 4th quarters is stronger, so I'm hopeful that I'll do better for those quarters. Here are the pictures I submitted for Quarter 2.

Finally, as soon as I have the new computer set up, I plan to start posting to this blog weekly. My intent is to start uploading some of the comics strips I've written and drawn over the last few years, as well as new work. The three strips I plan to feature here are "Roadfrogs", "Ivy League" and "Pawns". And I may even put "G.I.Jeff - A Really Average Hero" on here too.

Just in time

I almost went the entire month of July without posting here. Until the last few days, I had not done much new artwork. I still don't have a new PC, but I've rigged up an old computer that works albeit very slowly. And it bogs down in the middle of saving work sometimes, which translates into lost work.

Arrrrrgggghhh (in my best pirate voice)!!!!!!!

Anyhow, here are a couple of new shots.

I was playing around with some mountain terrains in Bryce and, as I was adjusting the sky settings, I happened upon this sunrise.

The second shot is one of the standard scenes that comes with DAZ3D, slightly restaged and relit.

 

Finally, this is a little thing I did in DAZ, using some elements that I got from them for free.

Variations on a Theme

 After I got home Saturday from the Music Fest for MDA, where I played in the classic rock band MOZO, I was dead tired but needed to unwind for a while. So I spent a couple of hours editing some of my 3D-modeled pictures. I posted the original of this one a few days ago. Here are some new versions of the same shot.

There are things about each of these that I like. I find it interesting that merely changing the colors of various elements can evoke such different moods. I'll probably use all these (as well as other variations of the same pic) as backgrounds for some of my other 3D models.

The original picture (which I posted last time) was made in Bryce 7.1 Pro. All the editing - on that shot and these - was done in Gimp 2.6.

D-Day, Bradbury and Cloud City revisited

Well, the day is almost over, but it's worth mentioning anyhow: Happy D-Day! On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces launched the Normandy Invasion, which was a major turning point in the European theatre of World War II.

I heard the news today: Ray Bradbury passed away on Tuesday. One of my all-time favorite writers (of any genre), he will be sorely missed. Two of the earliest science fiction collections I read as a kid were R IS FOR ROCKET and S IS FOR SPACE. Later, I picked up THE ILLUSTRATED MAN and THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, which carried some of the same stories interspersed with some darker, more mature stories; nonetheless, those two juvenile collections that I borrowed several times from my elementary school library were, to me, the best Bradbury. All the stories were thrilling to a ten or eleven year old, and that all-important sense of wonder (which is missing in so much modern SF) prevailed throughout.

Okay, with that out of the way, I wanted to share a few pictures that I have scavenged off my nearly dead Toshiba notebook (the fan is going bad: it stops running at times and the computer overheats and shuts off). Hopefully, I'll have the computer fixed within the next week or two. In the meantime, here are a couple of new views of the Cloud City tutorial I worked when I was learning to use Bryce back in February.

 
Here is an earlier render. In the newer pictures, I played around with camera angles and lighting a lot more than I had at first.

I've been submitting artwork to the Illustrators of the Future Contest. They offer quarterly prizes as well as a grand prize and publication in the annual Writers of the Future anthology. So far, I haven't been among the winners(I've also been submitting stories to the Writers of the Future Contest). One of the pictures I submitted this quarter was produced by combining some elements of several CG renders I had done in DAZ3D and Bryce. The following is the shot I used as the background of said picture. I think it stands on its own pretty well.

As soon as I get the Toshiba running reliably again, I'll post some more stuff. Drawings and 3D renders. And maybe a story or a comic strip. Until then, keep both feet on the wheel!

A few drawings and some thoughts

OK. So it's been a little over a month since my last post. In that time, my computer I was using for 3D modeling broke down. After trying several methods to revive it, I'm about ready to give up. I'm writing this on an old Windows XP desktop (circa 2004) I had sitting around collecting dust. So, no new 3D stuff. But I am posting a couple of my drawings.

First up is a picture I just did tonight. You'll (hopefully) recognize the subject as the Lone Ranger. This is based on the cover art (by John Cassiday) from Dynamite Comics' 2007 Free Comic Book Day flipbook of The Lone Ranger and Battlestar Galactica. I highly recommend the story in this book, if you can find it anywhere. The cover is beautiful, and so is the interior art (by Sergio Cariello). Good western comics are rare these days. I don't know if this is an active title, but I hope so. I plan to look for trade paperback editions next time I go comic book shopping.

 This is a pencil sketch. I decided not to ink it because (a) the comic book cover art was very cleanly inked, and (b) I wanted to experiment with a few different styles of shading and see if I could capture the feel of the original. I chose not to draw the dust cloud that Cassiday did on the comic, and instead show L.R.'s right hand which he uses to balance himself as he bounds around a pile of rocks.

This next picture is one that I entered in a contest a few months ago. It's called "Think Big". As you might guess from some of the 3D modeling I've done, I have always enjoyed the impractical, but cool lines of the spaceships that SF artists like Jack Gaughan, Kelly Freas and Frank Frazetta did in the 60s and 70s, as well as Al Williamson's Flash Gordon work.

Speaking of Freas, I love the sense of humor that you find in much of his cover art for Analog. This next picture, while nowhere near the quality of a Freas piece, was a lot of fun. It's called "Robot Church".

Although this pen&ink drawing holds little in common with it, one of my inspirations for this piece is David Weber's "Safehold" novel series. I just finished the fifth volume, How Firm a Foundation, a few days ago. These are weighty tomes, and not just physically. While they are generally a pretty fast read, there's a lot of meaty food for thought. For those who haven't read them, I don't want to give too much away, but the ramifications of the idea of the last Christian in the universe being an android who holds the consciousness of his former, long-deceased owner are boggling. Weber, who has described himself in at least one interview as a Methodist lay minister, grapples with several tough theological issues over the course of the series. The man also writes sea battles that rank right up there with the likes of C.S. Forester. He also does a great job on land battles, politics, relationships and hard science fiction. And he develops characters that the reader (at least, this reader) cares about, both positively and negatively. All around good stuff! Some of my favorite SF ever.

While I'm talking about favorites, I have to say that I have a new favorite movie. Ever since the first issue of the Marvel comic came out in 1962, I've been waiting for somebody to make an Avengers movie. Well, it took 50 years, but it was worth the wait. Marvel's The Avengers is to my mind not only the best superhero movie ever, but also the best action movie and best science-fiction movie ever. I know the science is far-fetched. I know that some (much) of the dialog is hokey. I know that Joss Whedon threw in every cliche regarding these characters that he could fit it the allotted time. So what?!?! This movie is everything I have always wanted in a superhero movie. Every other superhero movie has fallen short. Batman Begins and Dark Knight were too darkly themed, the Spider-man series was flawed (especially the third film), as were Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger and Green Lantern. The X-Men films were too busy. And Wolverine was practically incomprehensible. The two Iron Man movies were surprisingly the closest I had seen to anyone getting it right. But in this film, they even got the Hulk right. Whedon obviously understands and LOVES comic books. He understood that this movie, in order to be a successful work (I'm talking more artistically than fiscally), HAD to be loaded with every comic book cliche revolving around these characters. It's, after all, an origin story for the team, if not the individual characters. There is little time for character development. What had to happen in this movie is the recounting of the MYTHOS of the Avengers. And Whedon actually cares about the Lee-Kirby (and Thomas-Adams and Thomas-Buscema) source material enough to set aside his own ego and do this story as it needed to be told. As for Avengers 2? Can Whedon do it again? That remains to be seen. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

No animation yet

I've been playing around with the animation functions in DAZ Studio, but I still haven't got it. I did make the swordswoman and the beast dance, and that was fun - but not what I was going for. And when she swung the sword harmlessly straight through her torso, I felt I had to abandon the project for a while. After I stopped laughing.

I've done another couple of series of pictures in DAZ. The first subject is a dragon hunter - in a futuristic metropolitan setting. Here are two versions.

And here's a picture from another series I've started. For the time being I'm calling this "With Her Familiars".

I also went back to the cruiser that I modeled in Bryce and played with camera angles and sky settings. Here are a couple of those.

 

There are still some things about all of these pictures that I'm not 100% satisfied with, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it. I may be my biggest fan (other than my wife), but I'm probably also my harshest critic. All in all, considering that I've only been using Bryce and DAZ for a couple of months, I'm pleasantly surprised that they are as good as they are.

Sometimes, using models that other people have built seems like cheating. Especially having grown up with "Don't trace, just draw freehand. Don't copy, just express yourself. Don't plagairize." being drummed into my thick skull. And sometimes it feels like building something out of LEGOs. But then I remind myself that it's more like putting together a model car kit where you have several options and decals and paint colors from which to chose. The end result can turn out to be something very unique and individualistic. Hopefully, some of that comes through in these pieces. And, hopefully, at some point maybe I will advance beyond this current plateau where I find myself and transcend even my own expectations.

Gotta start somewhere

Ok. This is where I will be posting my musings on comics, trading cards, fiction (mostly SF & fantasy, but other stuff too), animation, art, music and whatever else comes to mind. I'll also be posting some of my original artwork here. And maybe some of my own fiction, too. And from time to time, I'll try to talk up some of my ebay listings in hopes of generating a few sales.

CARYTOWN COMICS began as an idea for a comic book shop in the Carytown area of Richmond, VA around 1992. My wife and I were living just a couple of blocks away from Cary Street back then. Being broke at the time (and most of the time since), we never actually started a brick-and-mortar store. But in the mid-nineties, I started selling a few comics, books, games, trading cards and laserdiscs (remember those?) on ebay. My seller name there is carytowncomics-n-cards. I've got a few listings there now. Hopefully, I'll be adding more soon. Check them out here.

I've been drawing since I can remember. As a young child in the Richmond area during the early 1960s, I used to watch Sailor Bob on channel 12 almost every day. Sometimes he would show his viewers how to draw various cartoon characters or caricatures of real people. Aside from the Popeye or Looney Tunes cartoons, this was my favorite part of the show. I also used to try to copy (NOT trace) some of the pictures in my coloring books and comic books, or in the newspaper comics. One of my earliest ambitions was to be a cartoonist. I'm still trying. Of course, I also wanted to be an astronaut. That one didn't work out.

Here's a caricature I did of myself a few months ago:

This was drawn with a regular #2 pencil on construction paper. I colored it with colored pencils. Then I scanned it and, in GIMP, adjusted the contrast and the color saturation. I'm pretty happy with the results. And no, my head in not that large in proportion to my body. This is supposed to look like a bobble-head.

Lately, I've been playing with 3D modeling. I did the following picture in Bryce 7.1 and enhanced it in GIMP.

It's a little rough, but then I've only been working with Bryce for a little over a month.

Finally, I've been trying out some other 3D programs too. I did this next picture in DAZ Studio and tweaked it in GIMP.

My next endeavor with DAZ will be to attempt to animate this scene. Within the next couple of weeks, I hope to have a short clip on here of my barefoot swordswoman trying to take out this beast. If not, I'll at least have fun working on it. Like they tell the kids in school, "Learning is fun!"