"The Evil Underground" Chapter One
Posted: November 6, 2010 Filed under: comics, project, publishing, Shaver 4 CommentsI’ve been interested in Richard S. Shaver, an artist, author and fascinating part of American popular culture for a while now (link to my blog entries on Shaver). Some time ago, I decided to attempt to draw a comic book about Richard Shaver’s life, his work, his art and his unusual ideas. I’ve presented the first three pages of this effort below; I’ve decided to try to tell the story out of chronological order, trying to touch on what I see as some of the important moments.
Until his death in 1975, Richard Shaver insisted that everything he described (which many would dismiss as paranoid delusion) were the absolute truth. The first chapter in the comic deals with the story of how a mysterious woman named ‘Nydia’ befriended Richard while he was in prison and, through mysterious methods, engineered his release. Subsequent chapters will deal with other events from Shaver’s life.
As author and artist, I don’t consider it my duty to tease fact from fiction or to try to debunk Shaver’s stories. There is no search for an objective truth here. I’m going to try to tell the majority of stories of Shaver’s life as he told them with occasional references to dates and places as needed. I am exploring my own fascination with the interesting body of work that Shaver left behind and the very compelling story of his own life (and the life of the planet and her people) that he told.
There is, of course, going to be a lot more that the three pages below (click on the images to see an enlargement). When I get further I will be interested in attempting to place the book with a publisher (although finding a publisher interested in publishing black and white comic book bios of outsider artists might be tricky).
Progress Report
Posted: October 22, 2010 Filed under: adventures, art, Mines of Khunmar, project, publishing 2 Comments
Work continues on several fronts. There is a floor mosaic in my front hall that needs more of my time (currently the tile ~75% done, then the grouting needs to be finsished).
The Mines of Khunmar project has maps about 50-60% redrawn (I have the originals, I just need to redraw them all, then take them into photoshop to add legible type and numbers). There are a number of errors in the maps that I am correcting as I go along. After that, I need to work on the text and then do the artwork and layout — a daunting task. The image at right will possibly be included — this is the famous ‘crapper of death’ where those who stop to make a deposit risk being bit in the tukas by giant centipedes. Right under the ‘crapper of death’ is the famous ‘cesspit of death’ which I think may have caused 2 TPKs back in those halcyon days of my gaming youth.
I’m currently working on a fistful of illustrations for GameDevOnline. I’m probably upside-down as far as effort I am putting in versus money that will come out on this one, but the illustrations were interesting ones and I was enjoying to buckle down and really work these ones; I think I’m learning something new here and perhaps making some aesthetic discoveries, so its all good.
I have a new (old) project from a while back on which it is too early to say much other than, a) hopefully will result in a published piece; b) represents a somewhat unique idea as far as I know and c) will hopefully earn me some money if I can figure out where to place it. Still in the early stages, though. My one hint is that it deals with The Shaver Mystery.
I’m also still job hunting (sigh) which cuts into everything else. Plus I just finished winterizing our house, applying for a position at a local institution that took up a lot of time (and appears to have not paid off) and doing all the little jobs that now fall to me as ‘house husband’ (including cleaning, home maintenance, shopping, yardwork, etc.), so I have been a fairly busy beaver. But I continue to give an hour here and an hour there as I can; hopefully I’ll be able to make an honest effort to see Khunmar in print early next year, the mosaic finished before Christmas and my other (currently secret) project done some time in the new year.
Summer Project: Octopus floor
Posted: May 24, 2010 Filed under: art, project 3 Comments
I’ve been working on a home project this spring / summer — replacing the tile in our front hall. The original tile was a dark brown ceramic that really soaked up the light and looked pretty vile in my opinion — plus they were stuck down with some kind of brown glue/grout that was crumbling and another couple tiles would pop out and have to be glued back in every couple of weeks…
The above design was inspired by some Roman floors in the ruins of Herculaneum… and is only about 1/2 of the way done. Most of the tile was salvaged — the yellow tile is a thick Italian clay tile and the off-white tile is a thick white/natural marble. Most of the off white marble tiles were just fragments, so I smashed them up into irregular bits with a hammer and then fit them together like a jig saw puzzle. The blue and brown squares are a cheap glass mosaic tile I bought at Home Depot — 9.99 a square foot. It’s only been mortared — I’m going to grout it when I finish the whole thing.
The octopus is going to be filled in with various shades of blue ceramic tile (I think — I am still working on the color scheme). The brown you see in the picture is actually a thin layer of masonite I had to affix to the floor. Cutting the ‘octopus’ shape out of masonite and fastening it down was the hardest part of the project so far. The rest was just work intensive — finding little irregular bits that would fit together and then cementing them into place. Because the tile I will be using for the octopus is half as thick as the marble and the yellow ceramic tile, I had to underlay the design in masonite so that the whole would be level when I am done.
Hopefully later this summer I’ll post a pic of the finished product.
More painting; V2 for Exquisite Corpses
Posted: March 26, 2010 Filed under: art, creativity, exquisite corpses, project, publishing 2 Comments
I decided to rework the proposed cover of Exquisite Corpses (I’m a one man band, so these things take time) but have been unable to spare much time to paint (job hunt, playing games, a re-tile project at home and other stuff), even though I am eager to get this thing going. I discovered that I enjoy seeing paintings “coming along”and have a vague idea that by periodically photographing stuff as I work on it, I can learn more from comparing previous versions with the current state of the illustration. Here is the same painting after around 2 or so hours of work and again after hours 3 or 4.
I’ve really been into 1930s-1950s ‘pulp crime’, horror and sci-fi mag covers for a while now. This is supposed to be a wrap around cover, so the left side will be the front cover and the right side will be the back (hence dead space at the top for title, etc.). The woman’s costume is intended to look equally at home in Flash Gordon’s universe or Hyboria… a snake man coils around her leg and various other beasties loom in the back, gathered around a fire. I intend to add more monsters back there. The pink fleshy cyclops slug with wings and a big tongue turned out pretty good I think.
I’m pretty fond of it thus far and think it promises to be much better than the first version (see earlier posts like this one). I like the pose of the woman much more and I think it will make more sense to the viewer what is going on.
I hope to be able to put in some time on it next week; between having guests over this weekend and 100 other things, I am pretty busy right now.
Proofing Exquisite Corpses Version #1
Posted: March 23, 2010 Filed under: exquisite corpses, project, publishing Leave a commentI finally got a ‘proof’ copy of my new book, Exquisite Corpses, from Lulu last Saturday. Recently I managed to prepare and proof the book and look at things I might change.
This is not final art, but I placed an image from my portfolio on the cover. The final will probably have color art (we are still working on that).
The book is a monster manual in the same vein as Raggi’s ‘Random Esoteric Monster Generator.’ Each page consists of an image that is divided into three tabs (head, torso and legs or tail). If you slit or cut each page along the dotted lines, you can mix and match the tabs to create weird and goofy ‘combination’ creatures. There are 26 basic creatures, so, by my math, that makes for ~17,000 possible combinations. In addition, there are some tables in the back that will allow you to add more qualities or flaws to your critters (bigger, smaller, laser beams, etc.). The ‘coil’ binding allows the tabs to move freely without falling out.
You can use a razor knife and straight edge to slip the pages into tabs. Note that I have placed a sheet of waste cardboard under the last page I want to slit so I don’t cut the pages behind it.
Here are the tabs being flipped to create a monster:
The first proof is about 95% successful (one of the monsters failed to line up properly with the rest of the pages; I haven’t been able to figure out if that is my problem or Lulu’s). Once I get these few details ironed out and a second proof, I hope to be able to offer it via Lulu to all interested buyers. The only catch is that you have to cut the pages yourself.
Proofing Exquisite Corpses Version #1
Posted: March 23, 2010 Filed under: art, exquisite corpses, project, publishing 4 CommentsI finally got a ‘proof’ copy of my new book, Exquisite Corpses, from Lulu last Saturday. Recently I managed to prepare and proof the book and look at things I might change.
This is not final art, but I placed an image from my portfolio on the cover. The final will probably have color art (we are still working on that).
The book is a monster manual in the same vein as Raggi’s ‘Random Esoteric Monster Generator.’ Each page consists of an image that is divided into three tabs (head, torso and legs or tail). If you slit or cut each page along the dotted lines, you can mix and match the tabs to create weird and goofy ‘combination’ creatures. There are 26 basic creatures, so, by my math, that makes for ~17,000 possible combinations. In addition, there are some tables in the back that will allow you to add more qualities or flaws to your critters (bigger, smaller, laser beams, etc.). The ‘coil’ binding allows the tabs to move freely without falling out.
You can use a razor knife and straight edge to slip the pages into tabs. Note that I have placed a sheet of waste cardboard under the last page I want to slit so I don’t cut the pages behind it.
Here are the tabs being flipped to create a monster:
The first proof is about 95% successful (one of the monsters failed to line up properly with the rest of the pages; I haven’t been able to figure out if that is my problem or Lulu’s). Once I get these few details ironed out and a second proof, I hope to be able to offer it via Lulu to all interested buyers. The only catch is that you have to cut the pages yourself.
Attack of the slugbats and snake-man
Posted: March 20, 2010 Filed under: art, creativity, exquisite corpses, inspiration, project, publishing, technique 1 Comment
OK; here is where I call this one ‘finished.’ I could keep working on it ad infinatum, but I think I made some mistakes early on (particularly in layout/positioning of the figures but also in rushing through the initial sketch — the figures look particularly wooden and stiff) so I’m going to move forward and see what lessons I can draw from this while forging ahead.I definitely need to work on my patience and try to find more ‘source material’ to use for the positions of hands, muscles, etc. Both of these figures look like scare-crows or robots and the slugbats look like flying green bananas. I think the blue snake-man looks wierd the way he is wrapped around the pillar (it does not look 3d to me) and I wish I had made his body skinnier.
I like the cave but need to work on making the rocks appear more textural. I also think the cave should be much darker and rougher-looking.
I look forward to trying this again!
Keep on keeping on…
Posted: March 19, 2010 Filed under: art, creativity, exquisite corpses, project, publishing Leave a comment
This is the current state of the painting. I feel a lot better about it but think it still needs a ‘layout’ revision (see yesterdays post). I’m enjoying seeing the progress from the series of snapshots I have been taking (even though the quality of my digital camera leaves a lot to be desired).
Other good news is that I got a ‘proof’ copy of Exquisite Corpses back from Lulu this morning and look forward to cutting the pages and trying it out. Stay tuned and thanks for all of the encouraging messages.
More work on Exquisite Corpses Cover
Posted: March 18, 2010 Filed under: art, exquisite corpses, inspiration, project, publishing Leave a comment
I did a little more work on the “slugbats” and the humans, some work on the snake man and added the underpaint for the flames that the slugbats can shoot out of their eyeball. Although I like the general layout, I worry that once I crop it (so the left side ends up on the back cover and the right side ends up on the front cover), the image may not make a lot of sense. I also don’t like how 90% of the slugbat that is blasting the man is hidden by the snake and the woman, or that 90% of the woman is wrapped up in the snake… so after I work on this some more (for the practice) I’ll take another crack at it.
Below is a ‘mockup’ of what the cover might look like; I think you can see my concerns a little more clearly this way:
I have a book with lots of ‘pulp era art’ — one image of which I think will work if I swipe the layout. The book is “Art of Imagination” that I bought at closeout a while back — the book is worth more than the ~25.00 that the used sellers are charging for it on Amazon (in my opinion). I’ve never read the text, I’ve just looked at the gorgeous reproductions on every page.
But I plan to do a lot more work on this one before I give up on it — even if I don’t use it for Exquisite Corpses, I need the practice!
Try to do something creative every day
Posted: March 16, 2010 Filed under: creativity, exquisite corpses, inspiration, philosophy, project 5 Comments
I’ve felt mentally and emotionally starved for the better part of the past several years. First the stress of losing my job, then getting a new job and all of the financial ups and down associated have really taken their toll. One of my goals, to help combat the malaise that all of these ups and downs bring, is to try to do something creative every day… whether that’s working on a painting (see in progress above) or doing some sketches or even just looking at other work that interests me.
The above is an ‘in progress’ shot of the final cover for Exquisite Corpses. I have some reservations about this artwork and may try a different version. The image is the entire cover (front and back) with the left half appearing on the back cover and the right half appearing on the front. It portrays 2 ‘pulp style’ warriors (male and female) in a tunnel fighting a blue snaky thing with a human head (the snake-guy is coiled around the woman) and a slug-bat eyeball monster fighting the man. On the back cover, two more of the slug-bats flap up to get in on the action.
