Backlog

Posted Jan 16th, 2009 at 8:02 pm by Ismir Quismik

Alright, ladies and gents, I know I haven't updated since October. Despicable, I know. Unfortunately I spent the better portion of the last two months between Itinera Obscura. By the end I was penciling around 3 pages a day, my hand was shot and I really wasn't in the mood to touch a pen again for a while. I turned in Itinera mostly uninked so let's take a look at what I've been up to:

1. Itinera Obscura

Drawn 14 pages. Inked Five. Photoshop/formatted 0.

2. Chaos Gate

Sketched 3 in photoshop. One is about half finished. Broke first story arc into a page by page outline. Produced final page template in photoshop file.

3. Reimaged computer to XP, backed up files. Hence slow down in Photoshop. Been without it for a few days while I got the vitals re-installed and got situated in class. Computer is much faster now. Can't play Left 4 Dead. Pretty upset about that.

4. Picked up some new drawing pads for Itinera, as well as a few non-photo blue pencils. I mean to do this right.

Where do I go from here?

I will be updating Itinera once per week while I work out some of the final wrinkles in Chaos Gate. IO is easy for me because it's based in a world I'm familiar with and I know the characters really well. Chaos Gate launched a little prematurely because every time I sat down to work on it I wound up having to answer important questions about the comic framework here on the site or draw for class. I'm going to polish the script to a shine before I try cranking out comics. This process worked really well for IO so I'm hoping CG will benefit from it as well.

Thanks for your patience.

Itinera Obscura

Posted Dec 5th, 2008 at 7:14 am by Ismir Quismik

I got www.uncagedmuse.com up and running and the splash page to Chaos Gate up and hunkered down to work!

On my Graphic Storytelling final.

The downside of having a class to teach me how to make better comics (I've also borrowed a book from will that I think will help) is that the final for the class is to actual MAKE a ten page comic which is both what I've been dying to do all term AND unfortunately a major deterent to you know, meeting deadlines ever.

So the bad news? No updates for Chaos Gate in the past month, but as my compatriots haven't got their next updates out yet either I'm not horribly worried. Expect an update after my first full week of vacation, which starts on the 12th.

The good news?

Itinera Obscura!

Can't take too much more time to write this cause my schedule is TIGHT but I drew the majority of the sketches for the comic in a single night using Stkifas figures to generate the poses for each character in every scene (I didn't use them for simple stuff, just some of the more complex poses). Towards the very end I gave up on sketching the contents of the panel in favor of just dropping a circle in for the head, throwing in some text bubbles and establishing some semblance of flow and design. We'll see if I end up drawing the figures anyway or if by then I'll be able to skip that part of the undersketch and go straight to roughing the outlines. I did it all in an 11 x 14 sketch pad with this nifty Dixon Tichonderoga mechanical pencil that auto advances the lead as you draw so I don't have to think about it. I wanted a real Ticonderoga but I couldn't find one and I figured what the hell. It's a loonnng story.

So all fine and dandy, two days later after play testing my twin's final project, a Text Adventure game called "Tinfoil Hats" (which is SO much fun we're turning it into a series and putting them online in a new section called "Digital Muse") I decided I owed it to my final to you know, actually work on it and I got some reference pics and started drawing the line art for the splash page.

I don't know what it is today but I am ON FIRE. This splash page is the BEST artwork I have ever done in my life. When it's finished it will look amazing. I regret only that the comic will probably be badly colored because the line art is coming out SO well.

That's it for me, I gotta sleep. I'm gonna continue to fight the good fight: Doing my best to produce quality comics and continuously learning and improving for YOU. Until next time it's THREEDOG OW OW OWWWWW *cough* I mean Paul DiPastina, take care of yourselves out there in the Wastes.

First Week

Posted Nov 9th, 2008 at 9:19 pm by Ismir Quismik

The first Sunday has come and gone and as you see, I haven't updated. I'm not gonna stick some lousy filler up there. I've got the next few pages sketched out but the lineart isn't finished yet because I had to draw a one-page comic for a class. I intend to update next Sunday and then update regularly from there out every week. I'm still in college and I've been taking some art classes (2, five classes in total) so a lot of my drawing time is taken up by those demands but I intend to put my best effort into my comic here. I'm going to use my upcoming vacations to build up a backlog so this doesn't happen anymore. Thanks for your patience, see you next week!