I was fortunate enough to be invited to chat with Raul Aguirre Jr., of the esteemed Man vs. Art podcast. I am a huge fan of Raul’s podcast. He’s a deeply passionate artist and animator with over 16 years of experience in the industry. He’s not afraid to share his opinions, and he ALWAYS tells it like it is.
Raul has had some amazing artists on his weekly podcast, including animation legends Don Bluth and Bill Plympton, so I consider myself very honored to be interviewed for his show. Give it a listen, and even better yet: subscribe to his show. You won’t be sorry!
I’m very excited to announce that I will be teaching 4 online workshops on Character Design over at Lean Into Art starting in November.
Starting November 1st, Lean Into Art is kicking off 30 Classes in 30 Days, a visual storytelling “unconference”, featuring a new hands-on workshop or class every day!
Each workshop I lead will be 1 – 1.5 hours long and will focus on the techniques, tricks and tools that I use to create crazy cartoon characters. We’ll explore the line of action, drawing with form, silhouettes and how to make your characters’ poses expressive and clear. Each session will build on the previous one. All you need are some drawing materials and an open-mind!
My workshops will target beginners and novices who are interested in taking their character drawing skills to the next level. It’s like kung-fu training, but with character design!
And that’s not all! There are a slew of other great workshops on visual storytelling that are also being offered (see below). Watch the Lean Into Art site for more details and announcements:
Jerzy Drozd: Comics Fundamentals
Rob Stenzinger: UI Design, Artist
Workflow Scripting/Coding
Kevin Cross: Color Theory
Brandon Dayton: Line Work Theory
Kim Holm: TBA/Expressionism/Digital Painting
Tyler James: Writing Characters
Jonathan Rector: TBA/Comic Visual
Process/Visual Perspective
Mark Rudolph: TBA
Kate Shields Stenzinger: TBA/Creative Families
…and here are some of the visual storytelling topics that will be covered:
Character design
Comics storytelling
Storytelling theory
Writing
Digital illustration (Photoshop, Manga Studio, Illustrator, Sketchbook Pro)
Optimizing creative workflow
Video game writing/design
Developing creative activities at home
The “30 Classes in 30 Days” early bird registration ends on Friday, September 23rd, so sign up today if you’re interested!
This year, I’m participating in The 30 Characters Challenge, an annual event that runs from November 1st through November 30th. “The 30 Characters Challenge” was organized by Tyler James as a way for artists to not only flex their creative muscles, but as a way for creators and spectators to discover new artists they may not already be familiar with.
Why get involved?
Because it sounds like a lot of fun – and who knows – I may wind up with a few new characters that I’ll use for upcoming projects. Anyone can participate, regardless of your skill level. As of this blog post there are 93 participants signed up for this year’s event. I’m getting a head start by creating all 30 of my new characters before November 1st – like this ultra-mega-exclusive teaser image you see below.
Marc Lapierre, the immensely talented creator behind Spooky Doofus, and the blazing hot artist behind SuperFogeys, shared this killer sketch of Bob Weiner as the Marvel hero Iron Fist. What an excellent birthday surprise! Thank you, Marc.
I dig it!
-Krishna
P.S. If you’re interested in creating PC Weenies fan art, please send it on over! I love seeing how other cartoonists interpret my characters!
Inkling, made by famous tablet maker Wacom, has been getting a lot of buzz on the Internet since its introductory video (shown above) appeared two days ago. Inkling is a tool that records your pen-on-paper sketch and transfers it to your computer. The tool will convert your designs to vector or raster formats, and even allows you to interactively work with layers as you draw on paper (quite a novel concept!).
The Inkling kit includes an ink pen, refills, a USB cable, and a receiver for recording and transmitting your work into the computer. It’s slated for a mid-September 2011 release.
My initial reaction after watching the video was “Wow! This is amazing!” but I wanted to take a few days to process the information before writing about it. Having some time to reflect, I still think Inkling is amazing for what it does, particularly at the $199 price point. It’s positioned as a tool designed for developing rough concepts and creative brainstorming, i.e. the front end of the design process.
Personally, I don’t see myself having the desire to own one. I’ve grown quite accustomed to an all digital workflow, using my erstwhile Wacom Intuos4 tablet. For those rare instances where I need to bring in traditional work into the digital realm, I have a scanner.
I really see Inkling as a tool meant for three types of artists:
those who prefer the tactile feel of pen-on-paper to digital drawing.
those who desire an interactive method to take their initial sketches into a digital format.
those who don’t want to deal with the added expense of purchasing a tablet / scanner / Cintiq.
That said, I feel like I’m not the target audience for the Inkling, but I am curious to see how this product grows and develops over the years. Will you be getting one? Why or why not? Sound off in the comments below.
I know a lot of people who were nerds in school, and they all tell the same story: there is a strong correlation between being smart and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you unpopular.
I saw the video above on Kickstarter – it’s a design project called PenMoto, spearheaded by Kelvin Geis. Simply put, PenMoto is a magnetic ring that quickly retrieves and stores a pen (or stylus) making it possible to easily switch between writing/drawing and typing. The project is a little over half-way funded, with 432 backers as of now – I hope to contribute to this project soon. Just wanted to give this project a push because I think it’s a solid idea that’s worth supporting.
I’m burning through copies of “Rebootus Maximus” – but there’s still a ways to go to reach my goal of 100 books sold before September 1st. So far, I’ve sold 30 out of 100 copies in July. Please note that once all the first printings of the book have sold out, they will never be printed again!
Here are a few images snapped from two recent orders.
First up, a book sketch:
And here’s a bristol inked piece for an Artist Edition order:
And here’s another one:
All Artist Edition orders receive a bristol sketch featuring two PCW characters of your choice! They also get a sketch in the book featuring your favorite PCW character AND a copy of the PCW / UNcubed Sampler #2 ($5 value).
I couldn’t believe the domain name was still available, so I decided to buy it and put it to good use. Incidentally, I highly recommend Hover for buying domain names. The whole process was smooth and easy as pie. They handle domain forwarding, email forwarding and custom URLs. Setting a redirect is ridiculously easy, too.
I’ll be on the excellent Comics Are Great podcast (streamed live on the web-o-trons) this Wednesday at 12:30PM EST. Join me, comics writer Paul Storrie and show host Jerzy Drozd as we discuss all things comics related. (I have no idea what we’ll be talking about – but I do know that since the show’s streamed, we’ll be taking YOUR questions. It will be fun, and you should seriously be there.)
