First Page Finished

The first page of Fauna completed

My Project: Fauna

     Fauna is my first real adventure into the comic style of character reoccurance and storylines. One aspect I've decided to focus on is unconventional framing for the pictures. While I have not decided between the images bleeding or having a border of some width, I feel like I can get away with unusual lines without confusing the reader as to which scene to read next. I also plan on using curving lines quite a bit, I feel like it adds to the organic feel of the strip. While in these initial sketches I've drawn to the edge of the page, Id like to have a narrow bordering encompassing each page. Hopefully I can do this without having to cut anythings out.
     Below are two roughed full pages and enlarged cuts

    

Comic Influences

     Sure, I've always liked the whole motif of excitement, action, and suspense used in the classic comic books. Brave and selfless superheroes, gruff crime-fighters and detectives, gods and creatures concieved by the wildest of imaginations and forced in to worlds of color and lushness. Who hasn't day dreamed about what their superpower would be, or how their own hero would look and act? I have, to be sure.  But in terms of my own work, which is more comic in nature, my major influences come not from gritty graphic novels but from the newspapers.

       Pogo Possum may be an unfamiliar character to many people my own age. I had the fortune of reading Walt Kelly's amazing strip due to a few anthology's of my dad. Before the days of mind numbing sameness ala Garfield and friends, Pogo Possum, Albert the Alligator, and all the others not only entertained but highlighted provocative issues about the environment and politics at the time. My love of the strip goes beyond the stories, however. Kelly's ability to render his characters in such a simple, yet elegant way makes me very jealous, and I can only hope that one day it is as effortless for me as his drawings seem.
    
     Calvin and Hobbes is my next real influence. Bill Waterson created a true world of imagination, and Calvin in a truly heroic protagonist. Again, he is an artist in every way, especially his ability to bring up social and philisophical issues in an unconventional medium. He is a natural visual artist, blending his sketches with watercolors to achieve amazing results. His choice to refuse any licensing of Calvin and Hobbes merchandise has kept the strip and its characters pure, an act that I wish more comic creators would emulate.

    Those are my two real influences, at least in terms of the work I've started in class. The foucs on animals and the natural world by these two artists is obvious, and both concepts are mirrored in my own work. If I can created pieces half as elegant and thoughtful it will be a success

Getting Started

Well, I've officially started my first blog ever, of all time. The cool things is, is that it's for all my art and the projects I'll be working on. The downside is that most of my work was on the home computer that my parents tossed out. So my blog is currently naked, as I scramble to wrap my head around how to make it work the way I want. I don't remember any of the html design I learned senior year, I blame you MC!

Until I can locate a scanner and some other tools, I'll try to work with what I have