The deep ocean

Today I bought part of the "Blue Planet" series off of Amazon.com. The part titled "The Deep" and "The open Ocean". Having seen these before, I'm looking forward to seeing them again. The deep ocean dvd is incredible and contains some of the strangest footage of the ocean iv'e seen, including fish which glow and pools of brins thousands of feet below on the ocean floor which feed colonies of mussels. This only scratches the surface. This dvd is worth a shot for anyone who likes the ocean. It;s absolutely incredible! luckily Amazon.com had it for only 8.50$ or some ridiculously low price...

Classes Almost Over

Another week and it's all over. I just have to finish up Figurative Sculpture and Watercolor Painting. Oh also, new mini comic. If anyone wants to purchase one, they are 3$ (2 plus 1$ for shipping :P)

Missing the Ocean and vacations

Now that most of my work is done, I've been missing my trip down to Florida. The beach was really lovely down there as was the weather. Really even a trip to the nasty Jersey Shore wouldn't be too bad, although our beaches are dumps, it's still nice to hang out there; especially if you have a house on the edge of the water. Last summer my family had the privilidge of renting a small beach house at Long Beach Island in the early summer, very late winter.
Although it was chilly and summer had not quite set in yet, it was a fascinating vacation. The weather stayed between 50-60 degrees which is not too bad; however the wind was the real killer. The wind just made it murderously cold and hard to enjoy the beach (especially with me since at the time I had long hair). In addition I had asthma attacks every day and was feeling terrible for the first few days. It seems like a horrible time but after working and adapting, things got a lot better. The asthma was caused by the hotel's crappy furnature, which obviously had not been cleaned in a LONG time, so I set up the air bed and slept on the floor. After that, I recovered pretty quickly. The first day I was there I woke up extra early, (proably from people making noise) and decided to stay up. I walked down the beach and picked up shells. The shore had just finished with high tide and gone into low, therefore bunches of shells had washed up. Before most people were awake is the best time to pick up shells, all of the good stuff is still freshly washed up. I never have collected so many shells in my life. I think that week I came home with a few hundred of them. We put them in jars, on shelves and other such things. That was the first most enjoyable thing I did there. I may have seemed crazy for picking up so many, but I don't care, it was fun.
The second most memorable thing was eating at a diner called "The Chicken or the Egg" which made the most amazing Hot Wings I've ever seen. I seriously hope I can go back to that place again, becasue it was superb. Overall a vacation I though I was going to dislike, was fun in the end. I actually hope we can go back to that place again some time. Good stuff.

What's new

Well i got into the Jr. show, tonight the reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. up on 26th and 11th Ave. in Manhatten. I hope it will be a good time, and things will go smoothly. Besides that my comic for Planet Lovecraft is coming along smoothly. I have the whole story pencilled and about half inked. I have about a month still so it should be no problem. Besides that regular homework has kept itself down. More to come soon, stay tuned.. :P

Junior show decisions tomorrow

Well tomorrow is the big day. Let's just hope all that work can stand up. I have 16 pages done and inked, all packed up nicely into the portfolio. I'm a bit worried but I guess that;s natural and all. Being totally honest with myself and you readers, I give the pages about a 65-70% perfection level. They are much more finished than a lot of the work I've done in the past. I truthfully don't know how Tom Woodruff will react, but I can say I don't think that suck. I'm going to say it's a hit or miss here. Today I got Osamu Tezuka's "Ode to Kirohito." One of his best works in my opinion. Osamu Tezuka started out studying medicine and decided to do comics on his own. As far as I know he didn't have any formal training either. I'm sure the guy had a lot of failures and disappointments in those early years, and he still came out doing what he loved. I say I wish I could be Osamu Tezuka here lol. Because if I don't get in I'm going to be upset a bit at least. Who knows let's see what happens tomorrow.

My experiences with the Jr. Thesis class.

Back in September the Junior thesis class "Pictoral Problems" began. The class is every Tuesday from 9 a.m. till 12 p.m. and is taught by cartooning coordinator Keith Mayerson. The purpose of the class, as stated by Keith, was to help us "create the best comic we have ever made." The project was a boigraphy of someone with the theme of "Kings and Queens" and was to be 21 pages, and complete by sometime in March, in hopes of getting us into the Junior Thesis show, where there will be a lot of editors and publishers attending. I think Keith's speeches at the beginning of the semester got to me. The first few weeks he talked a lot about how much this project depended on reference and how much we needed to make this thing absolutely, 100% perfect. The first few months of this project were really greuling. I have done projects that required tight deadlines, and a lot of work before. I think the thing that really killed me this time was the level of cleaness, perfection and extensive use of reference I needed to use to get some sort of good result. Now it's one week before the project is due and I will say that I think all that struggling helped me discover some new principals for my comics and a new way to work. At first I was so strict with the locations and actual look of everything, it kept getting in the way of things and made the comic even boring in spots. After working through the first seven pages something clicked in my head and I found a balance between good reference and making the comic attractive. In the last few weeks i have had time to go back and begin to repair many of the earlier pages. I am now quite proud of this book and the work put into it. It might not be perfect, but I believe it has helped me jump in my comic quality. My pencilling has become more exact, I have found the use of reference (especially photographing people) and I have found how to improve my layouts quite a bit without spending exorberant amounts of time doing it. I will say I safely have learned to draw building interiors and such very well. After 15 pages of mostly inside settings, I think I am confident in drawing this stuff :P My figures have improved as well, and I can understand the human body a bit easier (thank the photos for this). Now that i'm coming up on page 16, the project is ending, and i'm relieved. The rest of the semester will be any sort of assignment we want. Right now I have no idea what to do but we shall see what happens. I'm so glad this thing is almost done.

First Post and Planet Lovecraft

Hello everyone.
Well this is the first post. I figured this place might provide a nice alternative to Deviantart and it's un-needed drama and popularity contests. Plus the layouts here give a bit of personality to this site, not the usual gray on gray on gray DA layouts.

Planet Lovecraft Magazine has kindly allowed me to do a second story for them, to appear in their April issue. I decided to adapt a (very) short Lovecraft story titled "Memory" to comic form. Here is the first page from the 5 page story. I'm also working on an adaptation of another short story "The White Ship" for the July (maybe?) issue.