Since I was fairly bored one afternoon and procrastinating heavily on studying for final exams, I had enough drive and motivation to create a new page and customized layout for my comics:

Allegro: Random comics by Rheall

I had a lot of fun working on the CSS and uploading my comics and such. It’s so satisfying to see them all laid out with “next” and “previous” buttons. Sometimes I am very easily pleased.

Like it says on the main page, this doesn’t mean I’m taking those comics seriously or anything. I’m not going to have a specific update schedule for them, and they aren’t meant to be any kind of serious foray into the webcomics world, not by a long shot. It’s just for fun. I draw comics now and again, and it’s fun to have someplace to show them off once in a while!

So yes, that’s that! As for art stuff, I haven’t really been drawing much this month, or even this summer. However, I did sit down and bang out a couple sketches tonight, so I’ll see about scanning those in the morning. I now have two weeks free of any sort of schedule or responsibility, so maybe I can make myself churn out some art. Or at least get sketching again!

Hope y’all have been having a wonderful summer!

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.

I’m not sure if I have to explain this one or not; but sure, why not. I’m not sure if it reads well enough, so I might as well spell it out. =)

In Pokémon, obviously the point is to catch as many pokémon as possible. You do this by going out, walking around in long grass for a while, until a wild pokémon attacks you. At this point, your job is to get its HP to as low as you can possibly get it without allowing it to faint. If it faints, the fight is over, you win, you go home. You have to get its HP as low as possible, chuck a pokéball at it, and hope that it’s now weak enough to not be able to break out.

The thing I’m wondering is; why can’t you catch a pokémon that has fainted? Is there some ethical, chivalrous rule saying that a fainted pokémon is now off limits, or something? You’d think that a fainted pokémon would be really damn easy to catch. All you really need is a sack or something.

Anyway, so that’s what I’m trying to make fun of here. And even though I make fun, I must say, I am one of those oldschool Pokétards. I was ten years old when Pokémon was released in North America; I was the target demographic, and hooooo boy, did they hook me good. I knew everything there was to know about pokémon and the games from Pokémon Red through to Crystal; when Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald came out I was in highschool, and trying desperately to pretend that I wasn’t that much of a geek anymore, and I couldn’t afford a GB Advance anyway, so I never played them. I did, however, replay Pokémon Red and Crystal dozens of times on my old GB Colour…

But now they’ve re-released my favourite games of the series; Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver for the DS (it’s so hard to believe those were released ten years ago!!). So now I’m reliving my childhood again, going on epic adventures with my Quilava and having a gay old time.

Anyway, yeah, that’s what inspired the comic. I needed to get my pokémon excitement out somehow, since none of my current friends are even remotely interested in it. So yeah! Hope this is still amusing for those who don’t give a damn about Pokémon stuff.

I do have a few other sketches, but it’s really hard to pluck up the energy to scan them at the moment. Maybe I’ll share them a bit later. Until then… I’m going to see if adding colour to this comic makes it any easier to read.

Yay, Shaintar! This was a (couple) scene(s) from our game session two nights ago. It was interesting to see how each of our different characters reacted to the news that four aggro’d Camonere soldiers were closing on our position thanks to an anonymous tip that some Pro-Light misfits were lurking around. But still, I think Nigel’s character sitting down the two remaining soldiers and managing to convert them to the Light while the other two of us were being chased up and down the city… so rad. He totally wins.

Who said being a Priest/Monk/Paladin/Holy Man was uncool?

And the bread/pastries thing… well, this whole mess started because we decided we wanted pastries. We went into a local Bakery (well, Lii didn’t… she has some issues with bakeries and baked goods in general) and Norwick thought he’d take that opportunity to ask the locals about the person we were trying to find. They’re the ones that tipped the local fuzz off. And after we paid them for their pastries, too! Bastards.

Right, this was a lot of fun to draw. I think I might have screwed up everyone’s likenesses a bit, but I’m still trying to get used to that. It would help if I had a simple comic style, but I think I’m stuck with this for now. Anyway, let me know what you think! Do you like my gaming comics? I know they’re rather obscure systems/characters/settings and things, but I still like them a lot. Let me know if you have any suggestions for how I can get better!

Drawn first with blue mechanical pencil, inked, scanned, and removed the blue lines in Photoshop CS. It took about 2 hours to finish; just under one hour to plan it and draw it, a bit of a break, then the rest of the time to ink.

This one was a lot harder to draw and figure out than the others, and even so, I’m still not sure it reads very well. Ah well, that’s what practice is for!

The first four panels are a true story. Dennis is a huge stickler for little things like pronunciation, which is rad and I love him for it. I learn a lot, and I don’t look like such a git the next time! Still, I thought this was a rather funny idea and thought I’d make something of it.

In the betta tank there’s supposed to be a small figurine of a Zerg Overlord from Starcraft II. Not sure if it translates, or whether it just looks like a bunch of weird scribbles. I suppose it would read better if it had colour or at least greyscale gradients to help make out the shapes.

Look! Something semi-topical! Go, me!

This happens every single time. Sometimes I wonder how I’m not a bald old lady by now.

Also; that first panel is entirely too sexy. And then the art degrades more and more until it gets to that utterly indecipherable last panel. This is why I wish I had a comic/cartoony style, so I can draw things simpler and less sexy, so it doesn’t look like I’m showing off and so I don’t get tired/bored by the last panel and end up drawing it like crap. (Also: Never draw tiles again.)

Practice!

Not sure I’ll upload this one to DeviantArt… I don’t know, what do you think? Too risqué?

Another comic! This time featuring my friends. From left to right: Me, Dennis, d7(the GM) and Nigel.

This is a scene that happened in our second game of Savage Worlds setting Shaintar. I play a Brinchie (aka. cat person, aka. Khajiit) named Lii who has an absolutely wicked high agility score, and edges to make it even better.  To illustrate: there were no D20’s involved. So a score of 27 is pretty damn wicked.

Also: I only needed a 4.

As a result, she chased down a guy from a ridiculous way away and when she caught him she pasted him into a tree. It was awesome. I tried to capture that awesomeness in this comic, but I’m afraid I might have failed. Any crits or advice would be appreciated!

So yes, I drew and inked this in two hours last night when I should have been sleeping. I’ve got to stop doing that…

Kids movies always do that to me. Especially “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”. It might not be the best movie ever, but it awakes inside of me everything that I used to dream when I was eight years old.

(Not that the movie was out when I was eight years old, or anything. But you know, makes me “feel” eight.)

Will this kind of thing become a habit? I don’t know. But it’ll be fun to experiment with for a while. =)

(My critique: Man, I really should have paid more attention to that second panel. Yuck.)

Thoughts?