Tag: fantasy

Concerning Aliens Wearing Flannel

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Byrd

I think I’m identifying a advantageous pattern. I post 1 page a week right now. This 1 page is focused on linearly progressing the Imbibe narrative forward. These blog posts are separate. They are meant to explore other areas of Imbibe, if only to provide some relief to the hyper focus necessary to carry the linear work. I should attempt to always have some new sketch or concept done for Sunday, as it will give me something to blog about.

This is a sketch for “Where the Highway Meets the Corridor”(WHMC), which is the next big project in Imbibe. You’ll recall Gray in “Enter Cedar” mentioned a brother cousin, who is responsible for crashing the saucer that left Gray stranded. Allen (above) is that brother cousin, playing the banjo. Allen has been on Earth for a long time, possibly 30 years. If we place “Enter Cedar” in the early 1980s, WHMC does not have smart phones, so it’s early 2000’s.

Allen has been on Earth long enough to develop affinities for Earth culture like playing banjo, wearing moccasins, sporting flannel, and obsessing over the collection of firewood (the cousin subspecies of Erueniks don’t like to be cold). David (the mustachioed fella on the right) has kept Allen a secret for a long time. WHMC is the story of attempting to get Allen to safety once that secret is revealed.

Allen’s personal style was actually a relic from when this project was intended to be a live action mockumentary. It would have been a low budget indie film. To cover up a potentially underfunded makeup job, our alien was going to wear bulky clothing, a hunters cap and cataract sunglasses. There’s even some footage on a hard drive of me holding a styrofoam head, painted gray, with 2 green Easter egg halves over the eyes. The eggs had motion tracking marks on them, I was going to create “alien eye goggles” the actor could wear, and then we’d add the eyes in post.

Concerning Happiness and Focus

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Byrd

I have a new friend. They do poster art professionally. They’re work shows a great deal of enthuesiasm. I visited them last week and they showed a bunch of their work to me. You really feel like they enjoy the process when you look at their stuff. It made me reflect on my own work, and how much I don’t enjoy it sometimes.

My own work makes me think of the quote “I hate writing, I love having written” by Dorothy Parker. I think of this phrase often, as a lot of my process is driven by the need to produce anything. It’s driven by hitting a quota, because the fear of becoming unfocused and moving on before the project is finished is paramount.

This led me to reflect on how much I miss animation, and I spent a whole day considering the idea of adding a 30 second animated teaser for each comic project. I’m not an animator, so these projects would be limited, probably involving a lot of “squigglevision” style (which I’m a big fan of). But still, it would require a lot. I’ve probably spent a good 6 months on this particular project, and it’s not done.

But I spent most of the day considering whether or not to purchase After Effects and a few plugins, as I have other animated teaser ideas for my other projects. I think a few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice, and would have impulse purchased After Effects. But this time, I wrote out my projects, and my wants, and came to the conclusion that with the labor and skill available, adding animation would be untenable.

But it really sucks to walk away from the ambition of that. Which brings me back to enthusiasm, but enthusiasm within the scope of what can be done. I would love to get to the point where my work reflects how much I think and adore the characters, places and ideas in my scripts and comics.

Like, “Enter Cedar”, I knew that these characters had names, but I never took the time to discover them until this week. I was drawing them uniquely, they’ve had personalities, but I was rushing through the illustration of pages and not taking the time to discover what those names were. Perhaps it’s these areas I should make more time for.

Concerning the In-between Comics

Posted on April 3, 2023 by Byrd

So, in the same vein that “Groph’s Green Wizardry” brought us from “Deep Circuitry” to “Enter Cedar”, what if we do that between “Enter Cedar” and the next project? Maybe some sort of story about the Knowledge Retention Bot (KRB)?

We first saw the Knowledge Retention Bot in my short film “The Antique Dealer”, played by my good friend Hazel Blue.

Like, I’ve got this idea of a short scene where Ian meets KRB when he’s an adult, while out on a jog. The KRB has just found information about Ian’s interactions with Squash and Gray, which is what “The Antique Dealer” was about. So then it’s a matter of going from “Enter Cedar” to “The Antique Dealer”, and then to the “Algorithm Interviews”, where the KRB is still trying to solve where the aliens are.

And then all of this leads into the next big project “Where the Highway Meets the Corridor”, which is a tangential story that involves the KRB helping a group of humans help the aliens escape from the United States government. Yeah, I think that works.

Concerning Music Selections for a Medium That Is Silent

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Byrd

I miss doing songs with the comics. Maybe not with every page, but every episode should have a recommended song. Because Tapas Comics had a feature where you could add a song, there’s an entire Original Soundtrack for “Deep Circuitry”.

I really enjoyed that, because most of my comic projects were meant to be either live action or animated. Overall, I really miss audio. I miss the music and working with voice actors. I miss the collaboration and the spontaneity that would come with working with others.

Groph didn’t get music accompany. When I started illustrating “Groph’s Green Wizardry”, I didn’t have any music in mind. In retrospect, I think the soundtrack for “Groph’s Green Wizardry” would just be lofi.

For “Enter Cedar”, here are my initial thoughts on a recommended song accompany.

Episode 01: Smog “In the Pines”
Episode 10: Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld “Hey Hey, My My”
Episode 11: Philip Glass “Tagore-Scene II”
Episode 12: Tom Waits “Come on Up to the House”

Concerning the Details

Posted on February 6, 2023 by Byrd

“Paying attention to things – it’s how we show love.” – The Last of Us

That quote from last week’s episode hit me hard. I’m not one for details, both in my art and my personal life. My fear of not getting things done before my focus deviates causes me to seek the fastest method to get what is in my head outside. That means skimping on the details and embracing messy.

These are lichen hounds and mushroom tripods. I’m transcribing a script that happens about 6 books after “Enter Cedar”. It’s the same sort of creatures that form the “black mold boy” and the “moldies”.