At last! Issue one of my latest project is complete. I present to you, El Gorgo! Issue #1!
El Gorgo! chronicles the adventures of a super-intelligent Luchador gorilla as he travels through space and time to save the universe!
One year in the making, El Gorgo is written by Mike McGee and drawn, lettered and colored by me. More to come soon, once I catch my breath.
The entire first issue is available now at elgorgo.com. Go read it!!!!!
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This is one that got away. Hell’s Own is a zombie-western novella by Russ Anderson that was slated to be published on Frontier, but didn’t make it up before the site folded. Russ is publishing the story this week on his site.
Cover art is by Patrick Stacy, with logo and heavy design liberties by me. I worked up the design over the long Thanksgiving weekend when not shuttling back and forth from Bazaar Bizarre. The cover is included with all my other Frontier work for completeness’ sake.
Think of this as the calm before the storm, as I dive headfirst into several large-scale projects that I can’t really discuss just yet (but include some graphic design, some fine art, a couple print covers, and a full-length graphic novel with Mike McGee). 2006 is going to be busy.
]]>This site will also be moving to WordPress when the re-design is completed. Movable Type is annoying me.
]]>As I redesign the site, I feel I need to re-focus its direction towards all things art that I do. So all the stuff that doesn’t fit that has moved to a new (kind of new) home, alt.rednever.blog.
So why Blogger?
I like the idea of using a space that’s just for pure writing, just taking somebody else’s hosting space and template and rolling with it. I tried briefly to set up such a thing on this very site, using one of the generic Movable Type 3.2. Sadly, I quickly discovered that the templates were poorly tested and the documentation non-existent. I also like Blogger’s generic templates better. So for the sake of getting up and running quickly, Blogger was the best choice. I considered WordPress for a moment, but I really hate the administrative interface.
But you hardly ever post anyway! So what?
I’ve actually censored myself on many occasions, just based on what I felt would and wouldn’t be appropriate for a blog about art. By giving myself a blog-for-blog’s-sake, I can pretty much write about anything I want. Which gives me more opportunities to write and rant and rant and write.
Whenever I post an entry on this site, it’ll probably be related to one of my projects, or an important announcement, like this one or the previous post. Or sometimes I’ll just post a picture.
So why keep Movable Type if it sucks?
The custom templates I use for this site work well, and I do still like MT’s admin interface. But I will be keeping an eye on systems like WordPress and TextPattern as they mature to see if it makes sense to switch.
But for now, I’ll just keep working on the re-design.
And hey, check it: two entries in one day(!).
]]>On October 1st, 2005, Frontier Publishing will cease operations.
The full official statement follows at the end of this entry. The very short version is that the editors want to move on to other projects and were burning out doing the site. The consensus was to end on a high note rather than let the quality suffer.
I was in in Maryland over the weekend for SPX in Bethesda, joined by Frontier folkss Russ Anderson, Mike McGee, Derrick Ferguson and Artifice editor Jason Kenney. A great time was had by all and Saturday night turned into a going-away party of sorts for Frontier. Lots of anecdotes, reminiscing and drinks going around.
Frontier has had a good four-year run, which nobody expected, and I'm going to miss it. Personally, I don't believe it's gone forever. Maybe I'm in denial, but it's just a gut feeling ...
Jason Kenney, Russ Anderson, Derrick Ferguson, Mike McGee, Tamas Jakab.
After October 1st, the site will stay online as an archive and point to the titles' new homes.
Oh, and SPX was a lot of fun. Heavy on indie comics, light on smelly fanboys and almost no superhero books in sight. And Cleveland's own Harvey Pekar as a guest of honor. I still believe there's hope for the comics industry.
Update: Derrick Ferguson shares his thoughts here.
Meanwhile, the good news (for me at least):
Two Frontier titles are moving to dead-tree format next year, and I've been asked to do new covers for them.
I've got two comic projects on the table right now (with a third on the back-burner). I can't really share too much information yet, except that Mike McGee is writing them, and both projects will likely be 96-page graphic novels.
And in other news, this site will have a facelift very soon. I'm moving some stuff around, considering splitting the entries into two different blogs (art and personal stuff) and just generally going through CSS Hell right now. I've got the design about 80% nailed right now. I'm shooting for a relaunch before November 1st. Blog entries will still be sporadic. Just the way I am.
The official Frontier announcement follows in the extended entry.
]]>]]>Important FRONTIER Announcement
Hey Everybody,
Man, this is a really hard thing to do. But instead of blabbering on for a few paragraphs before getting down to the nitty gritty, I'm just going to go ahead and bite the bullet right off the bat.
Frontier is closing her doors in October.
As a lot of you (if not all of you) know, Russ has decided to step- down as webmaster and editor for Frontier Publishing. Russ discussed his decision with Mike and I before making the announcement and mentioned that he would make a genuine effort to find a replacement. But Mike and I were both of the mind that while our interest and investment in Frontier was still very high, without Russ maintaining the website we were certain that eventually our interest would fade. And that lack would be to the detriment of the writers, the editors, and Frontier Publishing itself.
This really isn't fair to you, the writers, who have invested so much of your time and effort into making Frontier Publishing what it is today. That was the hardest part about making this decision, honestly, the fact that I would have to sit here and write something like this.
But I wouldn't even consider writing something of this nature if I thought that titles like Dillon and the Legend of the Golden Bell, Dreamer's Syndrome, Fermata, Exiles of the Dire Planet, Curtain Call, Tropes, Onyx Revolver, and all the rest didn't have the capability of finding a home elsewhere on the internet or on bookshelves.
We've had a great run of almost four years, and when I look back on everything we've accomplished: from Denbrook, to publishing Dillon and the Voice of Odin, to Frontier Publishing Presents #1, to the establishment of the branches and the additions of all the new writers and the old hands like Derrick and Franz who have come to us time and again with new ideas better than those that came before... well, all I can really say is that it fills me with pride, and a sense that I really accomplished something that had an impact.
So if you want, join me in a toast to Frontier Publishing and all of you. I've enjoyed working with you, and I think I can say the same for Russ and Mike. I think we've all established far more than a working relationship over three years, and though Frontier Publishing is no more, I'm glad I was able to call you all Frontiersmen (and Frontierwoman, Meg) and friends.
-Mike Exner III
Editor, Frontier Publishing
Frontier editor Mike Exner III initiated a Dillon draw-off last week on the Digital Webbing Message Boards.
From the post:
“Frontier Publishing Presents #1 has just released, and to keep the excitement over the project brewing, Mike Exner III has asked for a draw-off featuring Dillon, the main character from the story “Dillon and the Escape from Tosegio”. Dillon is a cross between Indiana Jones, Vin Diesel, and Doc Savage! Alex Kosakowski’s art is the standard for Dillon, and you can see the reference art below.” Any Media. Deadline, is May 15th Midnight Eastern.
Dillon was created by Derrick Ferguson and appears in Frontier Publishing Presents #1, the novel Dillon and the Voice of Odin (both available from the Frontier Store), and the online serialized novel, Dillon and the legend of the Golden Bell.
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Some stuff on the Pittsburgh Comicon:
First, here’s what some of the other Frontier guys have to say:
Russ Anderson, Frontier writer and editor extrordinaire, posted some of my photos from the Pittsburgh Comicon on the Frontier Message Board and shares his observations.
Derrick Ferguson’s observations and travel mishaps are here.
In a nutshell, we didn’t sell too many books, but it was a great learning experience. Right now we’ve sold more books through the Frontier web site. I still had a lot of fun. I took a lot of notes on things we can do better next time, and I’ve got a lot of ideas brewing, which will come to fruition later this year.
It was great to finally put some faces to names. After creating the comic, I thought of Russ and Derrick as old war buddies, but this was the first time I ever met them. Strange thing, this internet. We also had a chance to meet some other small-press folks and some great artists, and attend a really fun party.
So what’s next? Well, we’re doing at least a couple more conventions this year, logistics permitting. Tentative so far are SPX in September, and Mid-Ohio Con this November. We’re looking at other opportunities right now as well.
If you know of any comic books stores that are indie-friendly and carry small-press books, drop me a line in the comments of this entry, or email me using the address on the inside page. I’ve got a couple local places I’ll be contacting in Cleveland soon. Any indie-friendly shops in the Greater Cleveland and Akron area are also appreciated. I only know of a few right now.
Meanwhile, since the cat’s kind of out of the bag on the Frontier Message board, I can mention that we’ve started work on Frontier Publishing Presents #2. I can’t really say too much else about it yet, except that I’m drawing one of the three stories. I just read the first script this morning. Things are looking good so far. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting a call for artists for the book. Stay tuned …
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So imagine for a moment that you’re this guy named Evan. You manage a bookstore for a living and lead a fairly uneventful but sane life. It’s around 2 AM and you’re asleep in bed. The phone rings. It’s this girl you know, Kitty. If it were any other girl, she might be calling because her boyfriend just dumped her or she just feels like nobody understands her. Not so with Kitty. She needs you to help her pick up something from an abandoned warehouse. Two more things: you’re madly in love with her, and the thing that needs picking up is a dead body.
So begins “The Skiff,” a comic story by Mike McGee, Art & Lettering by Tamas Jakab (me).
As a quick sidenote, this is the first comic book story I’ve ever drawn. There comes a time when if you’re going to do something, you just have to get off your butt and do it. I had a few false starts in my 20s, but this time I had a real deadline and other people counting on me. Read on for more on how the story came together.
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“The Skiff” originally appeared as a short story in the 2002 collection Wicked by Mike McGee. The principal characters, Evan and Kitty, had previously appeared in the supporting cast of Mike’s novella, Chemical Burn (coming in paperback later this year). Since the first issue of Frontier Publishing Presents was intended to tie-in with Frontier’s print ventures, it was a no-brainer to adapt The Skiff to comics.
Now, usually a comics writer will write a script one of two ways. The traditional way is a full script, similar to a screenplay but with more detailed descriptions for the artist. That’s how most writers in the industry do it. The other way is known as the “Marvel Style,” since it was created by Stan Lee for Marvel Comics in the 1960s to speed up the comics writing process. In this style, the writer summarizes the story’s plot and then the artist draws the story from the summary, making sure it fits the assigned pages for the book. Then the writer (or a second writer) adds dialog and captions to the artwork.
Page 6 breakdown by Mike McGee
Then there’s Mike McGee’s approach for this story. Since the story was already written, rather adapt the whole thing to a comics script, Mike simply took a printout of the short story, and drew very rough thumbnails of the story, breaking it down into 10 pages of panels. Mike has had no artistic training at all, aside from a lifetime of comic book consumption. Nevertheless, he’s a very visual writer, and his thumbnails made a lot of sense.
Detail of page 5 breakdown by Mike McGee
It was then my job to turn these simple little stick-figure pictures into a proper comic book story. I dusted off the old drawing table, took some fresh sheets of bristol board and quickly got down to work. Facing a tight deadline and little free time to draw the story, somehow I managed to pencil all 10 pages over two weekends.
Detail of page 5 pencils
So it seemed that the hard part was over. Now I just had to ink the story…
Under normal circumstances, I would have just inked the story like everybody else does: using a brush or ink pen. I’d even considered doing so while pencilling the story. The night I finished the pencils, I should have done something sensible like go to bed. I instead scanned all the artwork (which I had to do anyway to show the other Frontier collaborators, since they’re scattered across the country) into my Mac and decided to try something different.
Detail of finished page 5
Grabbing my trusty Wacom tablet and pen, I inked the first page of the story directly in Photoshop. Using Photoshop I could ink the pages as quickly as if I had used ink, plus I had the added benefit of being able to fix mistakes quickly. I could also create a halftone effect on the art similar to Zip-A-Tone, a halftone film that was popular up until the late 80s (right around the time that digital coloring started up). Since we were creating a dark and moody tone, I wanted to use the black & white limitations to my advantage.
As I was inking the story, Mike was busy writing the dialogue, using scans of my pencils for reference. Then he sent me his script and I lettered the story in Adobe Illustrator. I ended up redrawing some stuff in the story, which at this point was all done in Photoshop.
So, all finished, right? Oh, no, dear reader. The fun was just beginning. My story contribution was finished, but at this point, the comic was still far from done. But that’s a story for another day.
I’m off to Pittsburgh to help promote the book this weekend. I’ll post photos after I return.
If I’ve piqued your interest in reading The Skiff, you can order a copy of Frontier Publishing Presents #1 or stop by our table if you happen to be at the Pittsburgh Comicon this weekend (April 22-24).
Once upon a time I wanted to draw comics for a living. Things didn’t end up that way. This year I got one step closer …
Frontier Publishing Presents is a 32-page comic published by us. It contains two 10-page comic stories, Dillon and the Escape from Tosegio and The Skiff, as well as two prose stories, Idyll and Death as a Pimp. Frontier Publishing Presents will be available starting next weekend for $2.50. I’ll post details as soon as Frontier’s ordering site is up.
Update: The Frontier Store is now up and running.
I’ll be at the Pittsburgh Comicon next weekend with Russ Anderson to promote the comic. If you’re going to the con, stop by our booth and say hello.
“Dillon and the Escape from Tosegio”
Story by Derrick Ferguson, script by Russ Anderson, pencils by Alex Kosakowski and inks by Andrew Mangum
“The Skiff”
Story by Mike McGee, art by Tamas Jakab
Alright, for the past year (right as I relaunched this very site), I’ve been working with Frontier Publishing creating cover art and more recently, a comic book.
Frontier publishes online fiction, mostly of the adventure and suspense variety. It’s not a paying gig yet, but it has still attracted some incredibly talented writers. People like Derrick Ferguson, Russ Anderson, Mike McGee and Joel Jenkins, to name a few. They’re in it for the love of the game, and their work shows it. They work hard, and they take their deadlines seriously. If you’re looking for a good read, check them out.
So anyway, I’ve been busy. More on that later. But for now, I give you the latest addition to my Art gallery, 13 Frontier Covers. More to come in the near future. And I’ll be covering details about the comic book soon.
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“Deconstruction by Numbers” is my most personal work to date. Inspired by a challenging period in my life, it reflects upon my experiences of the time and the lessons learned from them. The actual events are no longer significant; the ideas they left behind are.
This and other works can be found in the Art section of this site.
]]>I also redid the Amazon links on OutSIDE. The original links kept displaying generic Amazon banners, instead of the items I wanted linked. Thanks, Amazon.
I’ve still got a few tweaks to do to the site, but most everything should be working right on modern browsers.
If anybody is viewing this on Linux, please feel drop a comment to let me know how things are rendering. I’m mostly interested in how it shows up in Konquerer, though since Safari uses the same engine, things should render about the same.
Okay, enough techno-babble. Carry on.
]]>Okay, let’s try this again.
Welcome (or welcome back) to Red Never Art & Design.
Uh … yeah … um … why did I think having a blog on the site was a good idea?
Anyway, the site’s been redesigned with an eye for adhering to web standards, and it was actually just a bit more difficult that I first though. No more Flash content or nested tables or single-pixel gifs, just the stylesheet from Hell and a bunch of Movable Type templates.
So anyway, I hope you enjoy the art & photos. There are more on the way once I catch my breath here.
I’m also doing some covers for Frontier Publishing. Frontier Publishing is a site featuring up-and-coming writers, specializing in science fiction, crime fiction and other genres.
Things aren’t quite done yet. I’ve still got some things to implement on the site, so I apologize in advance if your browser stumbles on some awkward code. If you do find things not rendering properly, I’d greatly appreciate if you could drop me a line so I can correct it. I’ve tested the site in all the major Mac browsers (Safari, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Camino, FireFox and OmniWeb), as well as Internet Explorer 6, Opera and Mozilla on Windows XP. So if you’re using something not listed that was released in this century, I’d like to know if you’re experiencing any problems.
Meanwhile, enjoy the new site. Next time I’ll think of something to say.
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