Manga Studio 4 is AWESOME (also Shannon's been here)

My girlfriend Shannon and I have been spending the last month or so together. We've had a really great time; taking drives, going out to eat, even spending a week in Disney World! It's been a blast!

During that time, we've also been drawing together. We've done a few jam comics and a couple little doodles back and forth. The other day, she asked me to draw a picture of my dodo, Randy, that she can use as a desktop background on her laptop. So I started roughing out a picture for her:

Earlier this month, she gave me her copy of Manga Studio 4. I've been fiddling around with it for the last few weeks and it's really grown on me. It's a REALLY fun program to draw and ink in. The brushes are really versatile. I'll be doing my comic with that program.

Then I moved on to inks:

I have to say, I usually don't like the inking process. But in Manga Studio, it's a lot of fun. I don't think I've ever had as much fun inking as I did with this. The uke and tree are a little wonky, but otherwise I'm really happy with how this came out.

Finally I sent it off to Shannon (all the way on the other side of the room) and she started coloring it in her program of choice: PaintTool SAI. I've heard nothing but good things from my friends and colleagues about that program. In fact, while I was at SVA, a lot of the underclassmen were using it to ink their films. And I don't blame 'em! The brushes in that program are godly-amazing. Sadly, it's a PC-only program, so I won't be able to use it anytime soon. Oh well, I'm content with Manga Studio.

Anyway, Shannon put in color, highlights and shading, cropped it a bit and the final product looks like this:

I really think Shannon and I make a good team. I can't color for jack, so I definitely need her help when it comes to coloring. She'll be coloring my comic, which HOPEFULLY will be starting up soon. I would've started sooner, but Shannon and I have been busy with other things.

Sadly, she's leaving in a few days to go back home to Washington. But I'm not too sad, because we'll definitely be seeing each other again real soon! Besides, we'll be talking and collaborating on stuff all the time, so we won't really be too far apart.

See you real soon!

What's in store for me this summer...

Well, besides that....

I just need to clean up and color those last couple of shots and it'll be all over. I want to start sending the film out to festivals and see if it has the legs for it. Sadly, I've been pretty preoccupied with stuff at home, so I haven't really had the time to put any more work into it. I just gotta bite the big bazooka and get it out of the way so I can move on to some of the new things I planned on doing.

While a lot of my friends have started working at some of the neat studios in the area, I decided to take a bit of a break. My body's been pretty wiped; I never really had a break since the summer of 2009. So I'm taking most of the summer off to relax and work on some stuff I've been putting off, like sculpture, kinetics and life drawing, which I never had time for over the past year.

Part of that time will be spent with my girlfriend Shannon, who's coming over to the East Coast for a month or so. I'll show her the sites, spend some quality time, and best of all, a trip to DISNEYWORLD!!! I'm really looking forward to it!

Another thing I've been planning for a while now, and now that I have a good chunk of time I can finally start working on it: my web comic! I've been writing out the story and will start drawing out some comics, which'll be posted on this new blog I started HERE. I'm gonna backlog a few comics so I have a bit of a head start, so I expect to start posting on a weekly basis starting in mid-late July. I'm really looking forward to it.

See you guys soon!

Preparing for Bed

Lately, I've been drawing more fleshed-out scenes rather than a page of random nonsensical doodles all over the place.

Here's one of my better ones:

And Shannon, being the gracious and loving helperton that she is, colored it all up for me. I really admire her dedication and patience when it comes to color. She's gonna be an awesome professional colorist someday!

The Dodo and the Darling

Here's the colored version, done by Shannon.

I can imagine hugging Randy would be like hugging an overstuffed pillow, or a bean bag chair filled with memory foam.

A Very Special Someone

I've had a great deal of inspiration lately, all thanks to my love Shannon. We began our relationship about 2 months ago, and it's been absolutely wonderful. She makes me feel so great each day, it's really given me a new lease on life. She's cute, and funny, and sweet... and to add icing on the cake, she's an artist too! And a very good one to boot! Go check out her stuff!

One thing we've really had fun doing is drawing each other. She's posted a lot of fun pictures of us together over on her blog, so make sure to take a gander at them. Here's just a few of my drawings to her.

(apologies to Bill Watterson)

Shannon's major strong suit is coloring. She's a real whizz at it! Just look on the job she did on these two drawings of mine!

Didn't I tell you she was amazing? I just wish I was as eloquent with words as she is. She sends me poems, and fun little texts on my phone and writes all kinds of wonderfully written messages to me. While I may not have a way with words like she does, I can still send her my love in visual form. Pictures speak louder than words.