Comics (Numbat, Music, Osama) and Maps (w00t?)
Right, new post. And it’ll have a whole crapload of random stuff, let me warn you now.
Are you ready?
Comic!
Drawn while watching the amazing Evan Dahm of Rice Boy make some art one night on Ustream. What to do when you’re watching someone draw? Draw, of course!
True story! I still have a ways to go with these “comic” things, but I think I’m getting there. I think I’m only hindered by my own laziness, which is more than evident in this comic. Still, I think it came out pretty well, considering I’ve never drawn an inside of a bus like that before.
Oh, and the song is “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads, if it’s not immediately apparent. I apologize if I got the lyrics messed up, it was hard trying to fit it all in there. Man, sometimes I love the Vancouver transit system, especially the antics of the #99.
Hit the cut for more; I’m going to spam you with some thumbnails, hope you don’t mind!
Right! And then a little while ago I got together with Osama, am awesome guy who works at my local craft store, for some epic drawin’ times. We drew some comics together. Here’s a mash of thumbnails for you.
He drew most of the panels on those; the majority of what I drew was in his sketchbook. It shouldn’t be too hard to tell whose is whose, since he has such awesome expressions in his drawings (and a darker pencil). The basic premise was that we’d draw a character in each other’s sketchbook, and then we had to make a comic around the character given us. We ended up switching back and forth a lot though, adding more and more frames. It was so much fun.
I’m going to spam you now with more (yes, I’m sorry) thumbnails. These are random maps/landforms I’ve started drawing at school waiting for classes to start. It’s a fun and relaxing sort of stream-of-consciousness thing, where I just let my pen go and see what happens.
Some of them turned out neat, so I thought I’d scan them in case anybody needed a random map for a story or a roleplaying game or something and didn’t feel like drawing one themselves. Anyway, I’m going to stop yackin’ and just post them already.
I dunno, what do you think? Think I should keep making these and uploading them as a random map-ish resource for GM’s or writers? I figure people can mix and match different land forms that they like, or alter them how they see fit. I’m a big fan of wiggly coastlines and random islands and inlets and some people might not be into that so much.
Anyway! Stuff. Let me know what you think of all the latest comic-y goodness. The maps, too, I’m interested to know what people think about those. I love doing them, and it would be nice if perhaps others could make use of them too.
June 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
I love the landforms. You have a great eye and hand for nice, organic coastlines. I definitely think you should do more.
You should think about how you want to let people use them. Maybe one of the Creative Commons licenses?
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:21 pm
I think I’ll be doing more whether people like them or not; they’re just too much fun to do between classes.
I was thinking of letting people use them for pretty much anything, as long as it wasn’t commercial or for any sort of profit, at least not without my permission. I’d let people use them for templates and inspiration, that they can alter however they like. I’ll think about it a little more, though a Creative Commons license is certainly the best bet. Also, how do I want to present them? Do I want to spend the time cleaning them up and tracing them digitally (vectorize them or otherwise) so they’re easier to work with? At what resolution should I offer them? What format? How would I organize them on the website? Would you have any ideas?
Thank you, by the way; I’m so glad you like them.
June 6th, 2010 at 10:27 am
That does sound like a CC-BY-NC license would work. And, you can always mention beside the license that a different license for a specific use can be worked out by contacting you, so people who want to use it commercially wouldn’t necessarily turn away without bothering to ask.
As for format, I’d say a clean scan is plenty. The less they’re altered, the more data is preserved. People can always vectorise them themselves, and if they’re high enough resolution (say 300 dpi scans so that they’re minimum-print-quality, maybe as high as 600 dpi; and let the resolution fall where it may) then they could be useful just as a layer to paint over/colour in. For file format, go with PNG for simplicity. Everything reads it and it doesn’t degrade like JPEGs do, and they can be easily converted to whatever format people like.
I’m not sure about presentation: just a gallery with a minimum of clutter, to best show off their lines? Maybe make the gallery have unusually large thumbnails so that the fine lines can be better seen.
Mostly make it easy on yourself so that you can enjoy making them without too much format and website futzing dragging you down!