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Archive for the ‘The Black Carnival’ Category

Black Carnival #2, “Sick Days”

Posted in The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 21, 2014| 3 Comments »

BC 2.2 1280

Previously

Next

Deputy Gillian Akers meets Sheriff Meiter’s new secretary to discover a dark secret.

Black Carnival Overview Summary:

My name is Gillian Akers You see, 3 years ago most of my family was massacred in an attempt to seize the family’s prized possession, ownership of The Black Carnival.   I was one of the few survivors and the heavens literally sent help from above to keep me safe from those who want to take my right to one day own it.  The Black Carnival is a controlled ‘haven’ for all things dangerous, discarded, and devious.  Ownership provides you access to some of the most powerful and dangerous people and beings around.  But my whole life I never really cared about that, at least until my family paid the price for it.  To help me survive, my Uncle Flynt has trained me as a part of his protection initiative.  I intend to use my newfound skills to return to the Black Carnival to find the people who murdered my family.  My uncle and I now work as a part of the Black Carnival Sheriff’s Office, occasionally taking out the Carnival’s trash and simultaneously investigating those who tried to take everything away from me.  I will work day and night to find them and return the favor.

I’ve got plenty of panels already written, so it’s up to me to get off my lazy butt and draw them.  I’m really excited about the new direction and am very satisfied with the quality.  Satisfied.  Maybe satisfaction isn’t enough…Which means I can probably step up my game ;D.

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The Return of The Black Carnival: Black Carnival #1

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , on June 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Black Carnival Prologue Cover Page 0

Drew some more concept art of my flagship characters for my original series, The Black Carnival.  I’m edging towards another reboot/revamp given my newfound time during the summer.

For those interested, here’s a little summary of the starting monologue I plan on using for the series to introduce the premise.

My name is Gillian Akers and this is my Uncle Flynt.  Well he’s not really my uncle, he’s a supernatural ‘Guardian Angel’, charged with protecting me from those who intend to hurt me.  You see, 3 years ago most of my family was massacred in an attempt to seize the family’s prized possession, ownership of The Black Carnival.   I was one of the few survivors and the heavens literally sent help from above to keep me safe from those who want to take my right to one day own it.  The Black Carnival is a controlled ‘haven’ for all things dangerous, discarded, and devious.  Ownership provides you access to some of the most powerful and dangerous people and beings around.  But my whole life I never really cared about that, at least until my family paid the price for it.  To help me survive, my Uncle Flynt has trained me as a part of his protection initiative.  I intend to use my newfound skills to return to the Black Carnival to find the people who murdered my family.  My uncle and I now work as a part of the Black Carnival Sheriff’s Office, occasionally taking out the Carnival’s trash and simultaneously investigating those who tried to take everything away from me.  I will work day and night to find them and return the favor.

So how’s the reboot going to work?

We’ll dive into it below.  This will include two pieces of concept art about the two flagship characters, the first strip, and a summary of the structure of how the story will be told.

(more…)

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Karot, the Boss Clown

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival on March 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

karor 800 final

 

Even the phoned in drawings are getting better.  I probably did this in about 30 minutes to an hour.  It’s not the most detailed or deep piece, but it shows I can get some decent quality in a short time period.

 

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The Black Carnival Page 7

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2014| 1 Comment »

bc page 7 800

BOOM! Headshot.  I am digging the way this page is done and the style.  The past four pages have been a roller coaster of quality.  From fully colored to incredibly bland to over artistic to whatever this is.  Well, whatever THIS is is probably the style I’ll be sticking to for a while.  It’s not too time consuming, I think it looks really good, and it’s actually making progress!  Anyways guys, enjoy the page, looking forward to doing more.

Other Notes:

  • continuity is something I’m not really concerning myself with too much right now.  Yes the house looks different from two panel ago, yes the monster looks different from the cover, and yes Gillian’s hair length is changing from page to page.  I am only a man.
  • Stylistically, I’m getting more ambitious, which is a good thing, as long as I don’t abandon quantity too much.  That being said, ‘weekly’ pages are something I’ll try to keep but not promise.

 

 

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Zaspara, the Giant Lizard

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

zaspara take 2 800

 

A little something I spent a little bit more time and energy on after my stressful week.  I’m experimenting more with the shading and line variation and I think it’s paying off really well, especially in color.  Boy, Zaspara sure has come a long way from this:

Zaspara: https://bananascoop.com/2013/09/22/zaspara/

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Cilla

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , on February 21, 2014| Leave a Comment »

cilla final 800

 

Cilla is a character from my Black Carnival series.

A couple of notes about this piece

 

  • I’m experimenting with the shading technique I’ve been trying in the most recent page of the Black Carnival page.  I’m not so sure how I feel about it, it certainly does make the piece pop in a different way.
  • Some weird clothes or bodily disproportions aren’t hidden hints about her character, I’m just way to lazy to fix them and it’s getting late.
  • Cilla might be one of my favorite characters.
  • She likes pink.
  • She does not mess around.
  • She’s largely inspired by Mikasa from Attack on Titan
  • What does that yellow slip of paper say?  Lol I’m not into spoilers.  I definitely had to look it up.  I’ll give you a hint, it’s written in Japanese [I think…].
  • Expect the next few pieces to be drawn in a similar way.

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Black Carnival 6: Rain, Rain Go Away

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , on February 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

PAGE 6 PS

 

A couple of notes with this page

  • I’m experimenting with different shading now and all around a different approach to the admittingly dull page 5.
  • I’m starting to get faster and faster, seeing as how I’ve increased the number of panels while still being able to get this page done in time.  There is still a lot of experiment with, though I think I’m headed in a good direction!
  • I don’t think color is quite achievable yet, although I’m getting faster, I really want to nail basic drawing and repeated poses before I start adventuring into coloring and shading.
  • Let me know what you think!

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Meiter

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , on February 13, 2014| 1 Comment »

meiter final 800

Meiter is a satyr.  He’s a character in the Black Carnival series.

 

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Black Carnival Pages 4 & 5

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , on February 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »

CHAPTER 1 COVER 800

As promised Black Carnival pages 4 & 5.  Page 4 is the cover and page 5 is the next page in the chapter.

Your powers of observation are intact, page 4 is in color and page 5 is in black and white.  As stated before, I considered the idea of going black and white and I’ve decided to go forward with the idea as I continue to getting used to Manga Studio (MS).  MS is a complex program, used by professionals, with many tools that can cut the busy work I had to deal with in Photoshop, but still requires time to learn and effectively use them.  As exhibited from page 5, the quality is certainly not as high as some of my previous pages done in Photoshop, but I’ve learned a number of cool tips and tricks that will show improvement over time.

I’m not entirely abandoning color though, because I think it truly does bring pages to life and I enjoy experimenting with depth and the like.  The covers and future art profiles are being used to explore coloring and shading under Manga Studio.  As soon as I am more comfortable with coloring and full page writing, sketching, and drawing, I’ll move the pages into more color.

I’m going to use this opportunity to work on shading and perspectives while trying to portray the story as well.  Enjoy and feel free to add some input as to the direction I’m heading in.  More is on the way.

black carnival page 5 v2 800

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Maximillian

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , , , , on February 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Maximillian

 

 

Maximillian is a character from my Black Carnival Series

A couple of things worth noting about this post.

  • This is the first image I’ve done in my new program that I’m testing, Manga Studio.  It turns out you can do single ‘panel’ drawings that simply work as canvases.  I’ve decided to start a Black Carnival non-comic related project to begin getting used to the interface so that when I do begin using Manga Studio for comics, I’m not bogged down by not knowing how to color.
  • There is no Black Carnival page this week.  My week was a bit too rough to try to fit in another page.  As a result, I’ve done some rewriting that I think will fit the script much better than I had anticipated.  I hope I can make good on this promise that there will be two pages released next week: a cover page to the next chapter and the first page of the next chapter.
  • I will no longer be doing character descriptions for the art profiles I’m doing because I want to reserve room for changes I want to make and I don’t want to spoil any potential details  pertaining to the story.  As a result, these pictures will largely contain the image itself and the name of the character.
  • And for anyone else paying attention to the comic, there might be a deliverable promise that if I go to no coloring [black and white], I might be able to deliver more pages.  Is this something worth considering or should I continue to do full colored pages?  Let me know in the comments below!

 

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Onsolought the Shadow Shifter

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , on January 30, 2014| 3 Comments »

onsolought final

Onsolought is a character from The Black Carnival series.

Onsolought is a shapeshifting shadow.  He/She/It is head of The Eclipse, the most enigmatic section of The Black Carnival.  A normally shy and rarely seen figure, Onsolought only shows when absolutely necessary.  Onsolought takes the forms of animals, channeling and enhancing their natural shape and beauty with an array of pulsating white light.  The Eclipse would normally be an incredibly dangerous section of the Black Carnival but Onsolought has been able to maintain the excess of dark energy and magics that its employees and entertainers possess.   Carnival goers visit The Eclipse to test their brains and hearts against the dense atmosphere and visual & mental overstimulation.  Onsolought watches over this process carefully, ensuring the dangerous employees don’t get too ‘liberal’ with their magics.  This way, carnival goers enjoy the test of will while some of the carnival’s most dangerous figures are allowed to ‘release’ pent up magic.

Not much else is known about Onsolought.  As the most secluded head of the Black Carnival, he shares no friendship with any of the other heads.  He is often passive and holds no opinions on any and all matters.  Old Ben, the previous owner of the Black Carnival, has said that if there were disaster to strike the carnival, he wouldn’t know if Onsolought would help them or watch them all fall in lack of interest.

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The Black Carnival Page 3

Posted in Fig Art, The Black Carnival, tagged , , , on January 29, 2014| 2 Comments »

2014-01-02 21:16

A couple of notes about this page.  Admittingly this is not one of my best pages.  I was in a rush to get this done by today and I phoned in a lot of parts.  The biggest law defying part of nature [from aside of the typos and unreadable font] is definitely Gillian’s right boob, which I apologize for haha.  I had only noticed how off it looked as I begun shading and I admittingly said ‘fck that’ and kept it because I was on a deadline.  I’ve been mismanaging my time lately, what with getting accustomed to school and such [my senior design class is killin’ me].  However I’m currently more focused on quantity of quality at the moment because I’m training myself continuously to have a mindset of not letting things go under the rug.  I’m hoping it’ll teach me to manage my time better and the like.

All that being said, that concludes the prologue to the Black Carnival! Next week we’ll start the real show [or at least the cover page to the real show haha.]

At some point, I may transition from Photoshop to Manga Studio for my comic making.  I’m getting bogged down quite a bit with formatting and the like and I’ve heard Manga Studio can rapidly optimize what I’m aiming for.  Of course I have to learn Manga Studio, so it’ll take some time first to do so.  I’m telling you this because [while I hope it doesn’t happen] there might be a break sooner or later where I test do a page in Manga Studio.  Anywho, just some general news.

Thanks for reading everyone, feel free to point out all the continuity mistakes and typos below!  Or if you have any real questions or concerns, feel free to throw those in as well!

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