Archive for August, 2009

Aug 25 2009

Odyssey Video #3: Watercolor

Published by under odyssey,process,tools & tech,video

Here’s the third video in my Odyssey process demo series. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, it’s all about coloring with watercolor.

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Aug 20 2009

“Letter to Beowulf”

Published by under beowulf,internet goodies

This poem (by Paul Willis on VerseDaily, found by Alison while looking for unusual poems to read at the wedding) is awesome.

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Aug 17 2009

Odyssey Video #2: Penciling

Published by under odyssey,process,tools & tech,video

Here’s the second installment in my Odyssey video series. This video shows the transition from my digital layout to a traditional finish drawn in pencil. I hope you find my lowbrow video production techniques charming. Maybe I can get sponsored for my next book. (Adobe, Canon, Wacom, Cretacolor, Alvin, Holbein, Winsor & Newton, Fabriano, and Listening Library, I’m talking to you — give me a call!)

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Aug 11 2009

Odyssey is Delivered! Time for a treat.

Yesterday I finally delivered The Odyssey, in all it’s glory — the files fill 3 DVDs! (and the stack of artwork I already delivered was about 4 inches high). For those who are curious, it was basically on time. I actually had the discs burned on Friday, but Candlewick closes early on Fridays all summer (nice!), so they told me to bring them Monday. Anyway, the contract actually said Sunday (not sure whose idea that was), so Monday counts as on time. Not bad for a 16-month, 250-page project, if I do say so myself.

Here’s something I’ve been chipping away at during the process of The Odyssey, and the first installment is ready. This video shows my process for digital layout of the Odyssey pages. Each week I’ll put up another video. There are six in all, and they’ll show pencilling, painting, and digital word balloons & panel borders. This is my first effort at screencasting/podcasting, and it’s entirely homebrew, so I apologize if the production quality is a bit amateur; but I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the making of an epic graphic novel!


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*A word of caution about this method: This is an unconventional way of using InDesign — a way for which it was not really intended. In the case of a long book (like, say, The Odyssey), filling up page after page with vector art can result in extremely large file sizes and degraded system performance. If you try this and your file starts getting above 500MB or your computer starts freaking out, try exporting to Interchange format (.inx) and then reimporting. Usually this makes the file smaller and happier. If it gets really broken, you can export the art to a static format such as TIF or JPG, delete the vector art and place the static art back in — but at that point you lose the ease of editing. As always, save often and keep multiple versions.

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