Remember folks, only two more weeks to get those fan art submissions in for the contest. We've got some great submissions in so far and quite a few have given me a chuckle, so be sure to give it your all and get 'em in on time.
Yarr! An if'n ye be wonderin' what I've been doin' wit me free time maties, then cast yer good eye towards Star Pirates. Myself and the crew of The Filthy Monkey have set the InkTank Navy asail in the black depths o' space. Join us in the crew's quarters or send an in-game message to "InkTank" and become a captain of yer own vessel. There be booty ta plunder, gamblin ta be done an' explorin' of the outer reaches.
Ayarrr!
...*ahem*
This weekend we took Mo to her first movie at the local drive-in. We saw Kung Fu Panda and she loved it. It is definitely Dreamworks' best movie to date and, I'm sure, a serious contender for a possible Oscar nod.
One thing in particular I noted was that Dreamworks reigned in thier usual "name dropping" of promoting the celebrity voice talent over the movie itself (which I made mention of in a blog post all so many years ago). In fact, I was hard pressed to find a Kung Fu Panda movie poster that had ANY names on it, and the one that did had a subdued "Jack Black" up at the top. Kudos to you, Dreamworks.
While still getting some "name" actors to do voices, it wasn't distracting and I actually had to look up a few of the voices afterwards. Now obviously Jack Black is Po, the panda. But the voice isn't distracting because Jack Black IS Po the panda. It's like looking at Jack Black in panda form. He just has that feel that it is a genuine performance, much more so that Jack Black the shark in Shark Tale.
So, I give Kung Fu Panda an enthusiastic two thumbs up and Mo gives it an enthusiastic running around the house yelling KUNGFUPANDAKUNGFUPANDAKUNGFUPANDA...etc.
Work place humor can be a bit dry, but this week has been important to establish InkTank's work environment for future stories. Not to mention introducing a few extra characters.
I was actually really nervous adding an Asian character to the strip. Aside from Spencer (the black fellow in the Sorry We're Open strip), I realized I tend not to draw a racially diverse crowd. Now, I know Spencer in real life (and he FINALLY grew dreads like I told him to, and he does look great, so there!) so I really didn't have too much of a problem. Hey, it's just Spencer. But I think me general trepidation about drawing women has somewhat transferred over to drawing people of other races.
I think my fear with women I don't make them beautiful and attractive, then it offends women in general. But I know that women come in all sorts of beautiful shapes and sizes. In the same vein, if I draw someone who isn't white, I fear that if I draw the racial characteristics ... too cartoony, then it becomes like one of those horrible racially derogatory cartoons you can find on hate sites and the like. Be it eyes that are too slanted, or a nose too wide (although pretty much everyone in my strips seems to have the "big nose" syndrome) I worried that someone of that race would see it and go "What the hell!?"
But knowing how many of my co-workers are Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Persian, German (uh, big and blond?) and everything in between, I felt it was important enough to at least make the effort to diversify my cartoon workplace and in doing so, challenge myself artistically.
I mean, it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but these are the inner demons I need to deal with if I hope to grow as an artist. Figuring out my artistic fears and facing them head on.
...and I'll shower you with gifts. Oh, and I'm running a fan art contest too, in case you were interested.
Yep, the newly formed InkTank Studios is having its first official contest with some prize support from one of my favorite affiliates, Sideshow Collectables. With just a simple flick of the pen, a click of the mouse, a slap of the clay, a ... sew of the ... thread, a ... uh ... ink of the ... needle ... tattoo ...
Just do some cool fan art in whatever medium you like and send it my way for inclusion in the Fan Art section and you just might win some swag. You can check out more details and the rules on this page.
Elsewhere on the web, I've bene spending far too much time at Hulu.com checking out tons of shows. In particular, I like to have a little Babylon 5 going on in the background while I make the strip. Lately though, I've found some nice reality shows in Carrier and The 808. both shows are in that documentary style of following people in their everyday lives. The 808 was a big surprise for me because I thought it was about gang life or something, but it's actually about surfers living on the North Face of Oahu and their day to day lives. It sort of reminds me of the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, with more of a focus on the surfing part. Carrier is a PBS series and is just all kinds of awesome.
I prefer the "real" reality shows as opposed to "reality shows" where you trap ten super models in a Manhattan loft and make them eat cat poop or get voted off the show. I hate that crap. The shows that is, not the actual crap. Although I do hate cat crap as well, just not as much.
And continuing the pantheon of celebrities who I looked up to and are now dead, George Carlin passed away on Sunday from heart failure. Man, it may not be people in my own social network, but this strip seems strangely ominous.
Oh, and many thanks to everyone who's been donating to the Around the World efforts posted in the previous blog. It is really appreciated and the gang wanted me to send along their heartfelt thanks. You're really making a difference.
On a side note, gas prices continue to escalate, with California here being hit particularly hard. And it's quickly becoming a worldwide problem. Buy hey, what can anyone do about it? Well, that's what I thought until one of my friends, Nick, decided to take a little trip. A trip with a purpose. Now Nick is a big Land Rover enthusiast. Always has been, ever since the day I met him. And he LOVES to fix them up and drive the little buggers all over the place. Now he's made a great business of his hobby (hey, that sounds familiar) and founded the Drive Around The World (DATW) organization.
DATW is a non-profit organization established to promote a sense of exploration and environmental awareness. In the past, the DATW team has driven around the world to raise awareness for Parkinson's disease and to deliver medical supplies to underdeveloped countries (and man, he can tell you customs horror stories about trying to drive over border checkpoints with supposed "drugs"). Their latest endeavor is "Zero North", to be followed closely by "Zero South" both scheduled for 2009.
What is "Zero North" and "Zero South"? Well, DATW is trying to prove the viability of alternative fuel vehicles by driving to the South Pole (one vehicle each of biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen and electric). Here are descriptions of both:
ZERO NORTH Expedition
In May 2009 climate scientists from Caltech, JPL and NASA, along with Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, will embark upon the ZERO NORTH Expedition-a 14-day, 1,200-mile traverse across Greenland, from the coast to Summit Station, driving four different types of alternative-fuel vehicles.
ZERO SOUTH Expedition
In December 2009 the same team and vehicles will ship to the coast of Antarctica to begin the ZERO SOUTH Expedition-a 10-day, 1024-mile traverse from McMurdo Station to the geographic South Pole. The expeditions will be filmed in stereoscopic 3D by Chris Paine, director of Who Killed the Electric Car? for theatrical release in association with National Geographic Films.
Drive Around The World is currently raising money to make this happen and is looking for individual contributors. I've donated $100 and would like to encourage any of my readers to do the same. If you feel compelled to make a difference please feel free to donate.
These guys always do such great work while actually making a difference. We CAN all make a difference and promote alternative fuels, education, science and environmentalism. It's time.
Recently, special effects guru Stan Winston passed away. He worked on so many of the films I loved, creating the creatures and animatronics and effects that could make or break a movie, that his absence will be sorely missed.
I grew up wanting to work in special effects and spent many, many hours reading Cinefex and Fangoria and making models and filming them blowing up and all manner of things that would prepare me for my future. But along with other legends such as Ray Harryhausen, Phil Tippet, Dennis Muren and more, Stan Winston held a special place in my heart.
Stan's special skill, beyond his amazing technical capabilities, was the heart and soul he brought to his creations. Character was always paramount in his work, and not in the design element, but in the emotional impact of the character. Whether it was the terrifying T-Rex in Jurassic Park or the nightmare horror of The Thing, to more heartwarming characters such as the mouse in Mousehunt or the robots in A.I.
Stan had said of movie characters "Special effects, by themselves, don't mean diddly squat in a movie. If the characters I created can't perform, can't act and aren't interesting, it just isn't going to work. It doesn't matter how good the technique is if you have not created interesting characters."
Most recently he had worked on Iron Man, and to the surprise of many people, actually built a functional, wearable Iron Man suit. Where as most directors would have just utilized CGI, Stan and his studio took it to the next level to make a wearable suit that would blend seamlessly with the CGI sequences.
Another great quote I found in an interview had Stan saying "I love digital, I'm one of the biggest supporters of it out there and I founded one of the biggest digital companies out there, but I'm a starch believer in that if you can do it live, you do it live."
This really strikes a chord with me since over the years I have come to the same conclusion and even wrote about this exact thing in two of my early blog posts.
Stan Winston was a personal hero of mine for his creativity and dedication to character and story. Even though I didn't become the special effects creator I wanted to when I was little, his work inspired my imagination and provided me with creative fodder to sustain me though life and in my other creative outlets.
To all of you out nerd breeders out there, may I offer a belated Happy Father's Day. Today's strip wasn't really intended to be a strip, but just something I had roughly doodled off to the side one evening. But when I thought about how the Inkling sat next to me while I watched the Enterprise boxed sets, I remember her asking if we could watch "Spaceships", singing the opening theme and pointing out the "Vulcan sips". My heart burst with nerd pride. Loving her truly is my "Prime Directive".
Speaking of sci-fi goodness, you may notice we have a new featured toon there on the right. This time around it is Jump Leads, a great long form comic written by Ben Paddon and drawn by JjAR. It follows the (mis)adventures of Meaney and Llewellyn as they join the Leeds Service and are almost immediately sent jumping from universe to universe looking for home. It has a decidedly British spin (blame Ben the Brit for that) and is chock full of great humor and great art.
And on the business end, for those who may be interested, I have set aside a section in the forums for me to publish my monthly site stats as well as a general write up of business decisions and general behind the scenes stuff. I post the info in hopes of allowing other webcomic creators to see what works and what doesn't in the development of InkTank as a business. And for general readers, it might be an interesting behind the scenes look at what goes on underneath the funny. It's a delicate experiment, and I am really hoping it is found useful to someone.
You are now looking at the bonafide, legal like homepage of InkTank Studios. That's right, I got myself an honest to God business license. And what better way to celebrate then to post myself in flagrante.
In case the strip reference eludes you, it's a Saturday Night Live sketch with Justin Timberlake called ... well, just take a look.
Hey, when you've got the house to yourself, you need to make it special. And all our boxes are in storage.
Seriously, is it that hard to make Rocket fly? It flies. Why are the crawling through the woods being stopped by wildlife? Why is a blue jet giving them so much trouble? I mean, that would be an excellent time to teach kids about super sonic flight.
Oh well. Kids will be kids.
In more interesting news, it seems folks are finding their way back to the site. Every day I keep getting more and more people welcoming me back and saying how well the new strip is going. As I always tell them, it's good to be cartooning again, and better yet to know I was missed.
I love making you guys laugh and entertaining you. It always makes a creative person feel good to know what they make strikes a chord with others. I guess there are more nerd parents out there than I anticipated. And Wii owners. And people sensitive about their comedy sci-fi cartoons. And Civil War buffs.
Well, welcome one and all!
As a fun side project, I created my first ever little video tutorial. It's a short video on making comic word balloons with Adobe Photoshop. You can find it posted here on youTube (in high resolution even).
As a little youTube tip, you can watch any video on youTube in high definition be adding &fmt=18 to the end of the URL (as you can see on the video I posted).
This is just a quick tutorial test, but I hope to do more that cover tools, tips, tricks and even an in depth "how I do the strip" series. But for now, it will be baby steps as I move towards a global multimedia empire! Muaahahahaahahaha! *ahem*
Oh, and in "Great Minds Think Alike" news ... as I was working on Monday's strip on Sunday evening, the folks int he InkTank forums started up a conversation covering exactly what I was drawing and writing about. Them not having seen the strip, and me not having visited the forums.
Boy, is it ever true. It seems that ever since I became a father I am SUPER sensitive now to kids in peril and parental shortcomings in movies, TV and books. Gee, what set me off now that didn't before?
The aforementioned things in the comic strip. The frozen baby in Titanic as they looked over the bodies for survivors. Happyness starring Will Smith. The Deep Space Nine episode called "The Visitor". (Jake as a grown up is about to see his father for the last time) The book The Road by Cormac McCarthy. My Life with Michael Keaton.
Of course, I've been enough of a bastard to get my wife hooked on Black Adder without telling her about the final episode (from the WWI timeline) and the cartoon Garfield: His 9 Lives, where aside from his other wacky lives, his sixth was poignant and very sad. Or as Garfield himself put it "Six must be my lucky number, because that was the life when I fell in love with music. I also fell in love with the girl who played the piano just for me."
I know just reading that line will make my wife tear up.
[edit] Oh! I almost forgot to mention. The Webcomic Coach (formerly Comic Coach) section of the site is up and running again. I've re-posted some of the older articles and need to revamp the "resources" section as well as post a new "behind the scenes" workflow. And with all this great new video technology, I hope to eventually post some tutorials.
Keep an eye on it!
[edit] Comic note: As I was reading the strip to my wife (over the phone) last night after I finished it, I got to the "Jurassic Bark" line in the second pannel she actually said "That didn't even deal with kids."
Between me dressing the little one up as a pirate for Halloween (her idea) and her penchant for the large twenty sided die on my desk, I think my poor wife is fighting a losing battle for my daughter's natural born nerd heart.
Even with powerful advances made in the areas of Disney princesses and hair adornments, she still proudly proclaims when we are going to "go get Daddy's comic books" and to get "Daddy boxes" (HeroClix boosters). Of course, it helps that I let her pick out the boxes for me.
Well, June is shaping up to be an interesting month in terms of advertising and promotion.
As you can see on the right hand side there, I've added the "Featured Toon" section back on the site. From discovering little gems like Wapsi Square, Spells and Whistles, Scary Go Round and other webcomics who are now held in high regard, to those stars who shone brightly but all too quickly faded away, I have always felt that featuring other webcomics was not only a great deal of fun but am important part of being in the webcomics community.
For my first feature on the new site I have picked a real treasure. Save Hiatus is a well written, well drawn strip about a subject that touches most geeks lives ... the cancellation of a favorite show. Whether it be Star Trek, Firefly, Enterprise, Earth 2, Space Above and Beyond, Profit or any myriad of other beloved shows cut down in their prime this strip with strike an all to painful chord with many a die hard fan.
Adam Levermore-Rich and C. A. Bridges are only a few strips in, but they have already developed a good sense of their character's world and have some excellent gags in the can already. Be sure to check it out, you won't be sorry.
And speaking of ads, you may have noticed that I am now accepting Project Wonderful ads at the top of the page. I think I'll give it a test run and hopefully send some decent traffic some lucky advertiser's way.
And if hearing my voice on the Chug a Freeze Podcast last week, there is a new Llama Report Podcast posted. This week we discuss what's we've been up to, bizarre news, and horror in game, movie and book form.
