It Has Begun…

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Jul 292013
 

Okay, so last week I said I was thinking about going back to my Animus Funnies – Fun ‘n’ Fantasy crossover and I showed some reworked designs for the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy adventurers.  Well, just as a march of a million miles begins with a single step, I have taken the first step in this project and finished the first page.

Fun ‘n’ Fantasy is the story of a group of friends playing a roleplaying game. The time is split between the players sitting around the table and watching their characters interact in the fantasy world of Rollagag (original name changed for reasons). I reworked the player character (PC) designs, but not the player designs. Another quick sketch took care of that. This time, I didn’t bother with “finished” versions as I figured I’d just refine them as I was drawing the comic.

Tabletop-Gang

I had to play around a lot with the layout for the first page, because I wanted to overlap seven panels showing a headshot of each character over the main panel of the gang sitting around the table. Since I can’t figure out if this is even possible in Manga Studio, I settled for keeping the panels separate. It was probably for the best, since the overlap would have covered up too much of the main panel.

Anyway, here’s a preview of the first page. I blanked out the narrator’s dialogue. You’ll have to wait for the project to go live to read the narrator’s introduction.

Preview

That’s all for this week’s blog. Have a good week everybody!

Heroes Not Forgotten!

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Jul 222013
 

Back in December 2011, I bandied about the idea of doing a crossover between the Animus Funnies gang and the adventurers from my old comic, Fun ‘n’ Fantasy. I thought I’d be able to put something up in 2012. Well, it’s 2013 and as you may have noticed, there’s no crossover to be had on the site.

Believe it or not, I actually did start drawing the crossover. It was only a page, but it was enough for me to decide I wasn’t ready to tackle the project at that time. I moved on to other things, like doing mash-ups and my ill-advised Star Wars parody. But still, the crossover idea stayed in the back of my mind. Page-1

As I was thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the art style I used for Fun ‘n’ Fantasy was too different from the style I was using in the Animus Funnies. One set of characters or the other would need to be redesigned for the project to work. I’ve been working so much on getting the look down for the Animus Funnies cast, it would have made little sense to start over from scratch for a crossover. That meant that the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy adventurers would be getting a new look.

This wouldn’t be the first time I redesigned the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy adventurers. The characters got several facelifts back when I was still drawing the strip, the most notable being when I gave them a “manga” look (that being the style I was most influenced by at the time). But when would I get around to actually doing the redesign?

The answer, as it turns out, was yesterday. I drew a first quick sketch that couldn’t have taken more than half and hour. I included Barnaby to give an idea of how the characters would scale with the Animus Funnies cast. Barnaby will tower over the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy adventurers, which makes sense given that he’s a bear.

I have five distinct sizes when I draw Animus Funnies.

Huge        – Barnaby
Tall          – Sass, Tomaw, the Pickle Patch Bandits
Average – Deema, Nektara, Todrick, Red Rich
Short       – Cyran, Big Oonch, Crismus, Popkin
Tiny         – Zoë, Skitter, Mouser

It’s looking like the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy adventurers will be in the Tall category. I’d say Kevin and Mitch (renamed for reasons) will be about Sass’s height, which should put everybody else in context.

Anyway, after the sketch, I started drawing “for real”. I penciled and inked each character one after the other, but all in the same file, so I could keep the proportions right. I started with James, then Frank, then Kevin, then Fab, then Mitch and finally Kim. At first I coloured each as I went along as well, but I stopped after Kevin because I was getting a little tired and wanted to be sure I finished drawing them all before I finished for the night. (Ultimately I ended up colouring them all before I called it quits.) Finally, I used Photoshop to play around with positioning a little.

So now I have the new look, I have most of the plot in my head, I just need to finish the script and start drawing! I’m fixing to start putting pages up before the end of 2013, but I don’t want to rush things either, so they’ll go up when they go up. For now, just know that the crossover isn’t dead!

First-Sketch

Cast Sketch

Cast Ink

Cast Color

Cast

Crossover Picture Pieces

 Artwork  No Responses »
Dec 102011
 

One of the advantages to doing digital artwork is that when I draw big set pieces like the Fun ‘n’ Fantasy / Age of Animus crossover promo piece, I can “cheat” by breaking things down into smaller segments that I then cut and paste together. This makes everything much more manageable. Here then are the individual drawings that made up the whole:

Fab and Red Rich (I ended up going with Blue Rich over Red Rich because the black parts of Red Rich’s costume blended in with Fab’s hair)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frank and Barnaby:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James, Nektara and Cyran:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kim and Big Oonch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joss and Sass:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin and Todrick:

The Big Crossover

 Animus News  No Responses »
Dec 072011
 

I mentioned earlier this week that I used to draw a comic called Fun ‘n’ Fantasy (FnF). It was about a roleplaying group and their wacky misadventures in the world of Rengag. I posted several issues of the comic online back in 1999 (on geocities or some other defunct free website so you can’t find them anymore). I had fun drawing it but once I started working full-time I found I didn’t have the drive to continue the time-consuming process. Of course that was when I’d have to draw the panels, then scan them, then edit them, colour them, and finally add the text. With my drawing pad the process is a lot easier.

Fab told me not too long ago that he’d have liked to see more FnF. Nowadays I’m pretty busy with Age of Animus so a full return of Fun ‘n’ Fantasy doesn’t seem likely. The compromise was a crossover between FnF and AoA, and so the idea has been percolating in my brain. I drew this picture as a teaser for it, even though the actual crossover won’t happen until mid-to-late 2012. I’d been hanging on to it, waiting for the ideal time to announce the crossover and well, that time is NOW! I may look into putting a comic book compilation of the crossover story for sale on in the Age of Animus Cafepress store when it’s done, but that won’t be for some time obviously.