Tag: Sketch Machine

Comic Konga 2: A Short Intermission

comic konga intermission monks
Due to unforseen developments, I’m going to have to put my contributions to this second Comic Konga! on hold for a couple of days. I won’t have computer access for the next two days, and instead of rushing and putting up some crap or the other, I request my readers to be patient with me for a little while.

The remaining two comics will be posted on Saturday and Sunday (12 & 13 July).

Meanwhile you can look at these monks. Ah, don’t they look serene? You would be too if you were dreaming of comics.

V

Comic Konga 2 #3: Mint Chocolate Marvels


Third day, third strip of the second Comic Konga!. Today’s strip is a two-pager, so click on the thumbnail above to bring up the first page, and then click next at the bottom to see the second. Alternately, you can click here to directly see the second page.

I can’t say I really hate mint chocolate — the ice-cream version is something I enjoy quite a bit — but most varieties of it are not very well made, and the experience is more negative than positive.

I have no idea what tomorrow’s strip will be. Oh noes!

V

Comic Konga 2 #2: A Dilemma


Here’s the second strip of the second Comic Konga!. Click on the image to see the full strip.

This was actually the first strip drawn but I wanted to post it after the single panel from yesterday. Tomorrow’s strip has been penciled; I only have to ink and scan it, perhaps shade it in like this one. Like I said yesterday I think I’m not going to do full colour versions (Today’s strip is done in shades of desaturated blue). For no other reason than, like most Indians, I have a bit of a lenient hand with colour and it always ends up gaudier than I would like (strangely this is only a problem with my illustration work; my colour sense works fine when I’m doing design).

V

Comic Konga 2 #1: Jewels


So begins the second Comic Konga! I think I’m starting to like doing the first one as a single panel gag; it’s a format I never otherwise use, and it’s a challenge to distill something down to one panel and one line only. Like most writers I have a tendency to ramble, and something like this could easily have been a three or six panel piece.

The anatomy and line-work is all over the place, and I did try to colour it but decided just to keep it to black and white (perhaps that can be a theme for this time’s CK). Hope your own comic endeavours are fruitful. Can’t wait to see what you lot have come up with.

V

Lots of Stuff Added to the Work Page!


The last time I updated the Work page was probably sometime in 2005. This was back when the site was still on free hosting and looked all grey and lime green.

Yeah, it’s been a long time. Quite a bit has happened since then, not least of which is this redesign. I’ve always wanted to redo the work page, make it richer and more than just a bunch of images, but then I realised that while I was putting that off for the right time (it would be a good deal of work), two years had gone by.

So, I bit the bullet, sorted through my work and came up with a bunch of stuff — some of which has been posted on the journal before — but much of which is new. So surf on over to the work page and have a look around. There’s about 30 new things in the Design and Illustration sections. I haven’t added anything to photos yet, and might do so in the coming weeks.

V

Comic Konga! #005: Things I Learnt From CK!

Well, Comic Konga's done.
Um, make that Comic Konga! (officially)
I've learnt a lot this past week...
Don't squander a whole week of prep time playing Gran Turismo
Don't attempt a comic event the same week you're supposed to deliver a project
Sex jokes are easy, but they aren't very funny
Computer copy and paste can be very useful...
but don't count on it
Also, I've learnt that I can tell stories okay, but not jokes. I'm not a stand-up comedian
I still can't really draw. Miles to go before I rest
Don't get me wrong; I don't conisder Comic Konga! a failure.
I've had more fun this past week than I've had in a long while.
I love making comics, and I'll continue making them for the rest of my life (or at least next Tue)
Hey! I never did a Super Monkey strip like I planned! Oh well...
next time, dude.
Super monkey says ook.

Notes

It’s been a heck of a week.

Comic Konga! didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned, but it was a lot of fun, and a real learning experience. I just hope you guys enjoyed the work I did here, and didn’t mind the posting schedule (or rather the lack of one).

There will be another Comic Konga! in the future. I don’t want to turn it into a monthly affair, but a few times a year seems like it would work. I guess I should spend the time between now and then getting better at drawing and comic making.

Oh, and it’s November, right? I think I mentioned something about writing a lot of fiction… hmm.

Onward!

V

Comic Konga! #003: Dracunerd Lands a Hottie

I know what you're thinking
This is new for me too
I'm not usually this impulsive.
You're beautiful.
You are a girl ...right?

Notes

Consider this a sequel, of sorts, to a sketch I did a while back. Another quickie; this time I even vectorised the sketch lines, and did it all in inkscape. Gives the blacks a nice rough, cheap old comic print look to them, which I like.

Argh, I have no idea what to do tomorrow, I have a whole calendar to illustrate in less than a week, and I just remembered that November starts tomorrow and I should start writing!

Happy Halloween, everybody.

V

Comic Konga! #002: Into the Wild

A Bird sits on a catapult
The bird flies off as two hands reach up to the grasp the lip of the bowl
a naked man wearing a swimming cap hoists himself up to the catapult bowl
He flops into the bowl
He gazes out into the distance, one hand on the catapult release
ZWANG! The catch is released and the catapult fires
Meanwhile an elephant lazily muches on some food
THWIP! Ooh baby...

Notes

Um, so this idea has been floating around my head for a few years (which, come to think of it, explains a lot about the last few years). Originally I thought I might do it as a short animation, but I never got around to it. This version for Comic Konga is just pencils on paper; if I hadn’t spent the evening watching Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking I probably would have had time to do a better version, or at least an inked and coloured one.

I think this gets things across okay (pun firmly intended).

V

Comic Konga! #001: Mister Savant Takes Xaria to the Furniture Store

Um, actually I can't think of an explanation that isn't...lewd.

Comic Konga has begun!

I figured I’d start out simple with a one-panel. My first idea was to have the same idea done over three or four panels but I think the joke doesn’t really need anything more than one.

This was done in pencil, coloured in inkscape and put together in the GIMP. Word balloons in Inkscape. It’s a bit of a fractured process, I know, but I prefer the quick flexibility of laying down colour shapes in a vector program but need the layer manipulations of a bitmap one like GIMP to keep it looking natural.

(Yes, I know it’s 4 am. Still technically Monday, though)

Comic Konga! Begins Tomorrow!!

Comic Konga LogoWell, folks, less than 24 hours to go before Comic Konga! begins! I hope you’re excited and if you’re participating, I hope you’ve got a bunch of ideas (or better yet, finished comics) already! Truth be told I haven’t begun work on my finished comics yet. I do have a few of the ideas chalked out and I know what tomorrow’s comic will be… now I just have to do it!

In case you feel so inclined to announce your Comic Konga! participation on your blogs, I’ve provided a couple of versions of the logo for you to use:

Comic Konga LogoComic Konga White Logo

The one on the left is a transparent background PNG, 240×240. On the right is a GIF of the same dimensions with a white background. Feel free to right click and ‘Save as…’ (or your browser’s equivalent) and put it up in your site’s sidebar or into your Comic Konga! posts. Feel free to resample or resize it to fit your blog (I kept it large so that it would shrink down well).

Comic Konga! Logo (Plain SVG version)

If you like, I’ve provided a plain SVG version of the logo. You can use Inkscape to view it, but I think even other programs like new versions of Adobe Illustrator support this vector file standard. With the vector version you can export the image at higher (or lower) resolutions, or even put the logo into the comics themselves.

In case there were any doubts, you can begin to post your comics whenever Monday is in your timezone. Just putup one every day until Friday. I’ll also be collecting links to all the participants’s daily entries the next day(so Monday’s comic will be collected on Tuesday afternoon GMT), and of course there will be a final list of links after Comic Konga concludes on Friday, 02 November.

I encourage all of you to check out the other entries; to comment on, link to and pick your favourites. Mostly, don’t be disheartedned if you haven’t begun… there’s still a while to go and a great comic doesn’t need to worked on forever.

Good luck!

Announcing Comic Konga!

Comic Konga LogoSo the other day, in the comments section of The Future of Human Transportation, Spyder challenged me (and others) to a ‘comic-off’ — a comics festival of sorts. We’d each do five comics over five days. I accepted of course, but work — o wonderfully banal, low paying work! — reared its head and I couldn’t jump right into it. I figure this is a blessing in disguise for us as well as you, dear reader(s).

Being the delusional brandsmith that I am, I figured an august venture such as this should have its own silly name and stupid logo, so I rechristened it Comic Konga!… um, that’s the second name I though of (Comic Orgy is something I’m reserving for another time, hehe). Read on for more astounding details!

The Basics

Comic Konga! is a little event where you and me and everyone we know posts five short comics over the course of five days. Think of it like a film festival or a jam session, only with people showing off their comics on their blogs or other online spaces. We’ll start on Monday, the 29th of October and so it will end on Friday, 02 November 2007.

There aren’t many rules — this isn’t one of those ultrahardcore endurance races where you have to finish every comic in twenty-seven seconds with one hand tied behind you — but I think a few guidelines should be stated here to keep things clear and running smoothly:

– There’s no easy definition for comic strips (just like pornography, we know it when we see it), but single-panel, multi-panel and even multi-page entries are fine (and good luck to you strong sir/madam/robot if you attempt the last type.

– Comics can be presented in the medium of the artist’s choice. This means everything from hand-drawn doodles to 3D models, photographs, origami, sculpture, collage etc. etc. can be used to create your comic.

– You may collaborate with others in the creation of your comics. Just make sure you do covers before somebody’s wife breaks you two up, ‘hear?

– Please don’t use anyone else’s copyrighted material unless you have permission or they’re free to use. This means photos and artwork and characters and anything else. It’s stupid and you can get into trouble. It’s only a comic, man.

– The comics you present may be worked on or even be completed before the 29th. I only ask that you post them — one per day — between next Monday and Friday. So you have a little under a week’s head start: get cracking!

– The comics should be self-contained. This means that if you’re doing, say, five strips that lead into one another, I’d appreciate it if the story concluded in #5. It doesn’t matter if you’re using characters from your existing strip or whatever, I just want some closure. Ooh, closure…

– And yes, you can do five completely unrelated comics. I plan to.

– We don’t have any fancy-schmancy registration forms, forums or mailing lists this time, so if you wish to participate in Comic Konga! please leave a comment in this post with your details, especially the address of the blog (or DeviantART or Flickr site or what have you) where you will be posting your work. I won’t be hosting any comics on this site except my own, but if you don’t have a blog it’s very easy to set one up.

– You are responsible for your own content and any kooky repurcussions. Don’t blame me if some kid sues you for telling people Santa isn’t real in your comic… oops.

Fees & Prizes

There are NO FEES and NO PRIZES, except my undying gratitude and eternal love.

*mwah*

Misc. Stuff

Let me just say that I’d love to see people who don’t or haven’t ever made comics participate in Comic Konga! It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to draw, go to YotoPhoto, get some royalty-free pictures and put word balloons on them. Or take pictures of yourself and miscellaneous friends and loved ones (I am not responsible for your friends and loved ones hating your guts as a result, mind you). Hey, it works for comics like A Softer World.

(btw, Wikipedia has an excellent list of public domain image resources)

Even if you want to doodle stuff on post-its or MSPaint, that’s okay too.

I’d love to see people try out new stuff. If you’ve had a funky comic idea sitting in your brain for a while but haven’t got around to it, do one for Comic Konga!. If you only use Photoshop or the GIMP but really like that clean vector look lately, try to make a comic in Inkscape — it’s FREE!

Entertain me. Entertain us.

Go on, then.

(If you have any more questions — or just want someone weird to bombard you with prolix 2,000 word emails about crap when you send a simple “What’s up?” message — drop me a line at allvishal (at) gmail (dot) com. I can’t wait til next monday!)

V

Of Girls and Pirates

Girls are neat-o
They're like men, only with boobies & irrational mood swings.
Girls like other girls because the can go shopping together
Boys don't like other boys because they're all poopyheads.
poopyhead
Except if they're pirates, in which case they're awesome.
awesome pirate
I would go shopping with a pirate even though he's a boy
First of all, he wouldn't call it 'shopping' -- he'd call it 'plundering'
We'd go to the mall in his bitchin' galleon
we wouldn't use the door
we'd buy t-shirts with ironic slogans on them
Then we'd totally plunder a slurpie
Sigh... I wish I knew a pirate...
Girl Pirate
Arr -- The End.

Notes

Good things usually come from comment threads on Dan’s blog. Usually these discussions include Elephant Porn and other high arts, but in a recent open thread the basic script of this came up as a comment (or three) by me. Almost instantly I thought it would make a good comic, and decided to attempt it the minute Spyder pointed out that today (the 19th) would be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. How could I resist?

Truth be told, this was actually going to be my rough sketch for the comic, and was done in my little notebook. I had intended to do it on a bigger sheet of paper, but by the time 4am rolled around I abandoned that idea. It was coloured, as usual, in the GIMP.

MY backside is aching from sitting in this chair all day wrestling with the graphics tablet, and I’m sure that over the next few days several aches and pains will show up, but all of those have been nullified in advance by the huge grin on my face. I hope you enjoy reading this comic as much as I did making it; it’s probably the first finished one I’ve done since, well, 1993, I think (it was called Super Monkey, of course).

Far too long to have stayed away from a medium I love so much. It won’t be another 14 year wait for the next one.

V