Graphic Novel Creation

 This spring I took my first 3-week May term course, which was a class in graphic novel/comic-making that was taught by the two talented and awesome Pope Brothers, Rowan and Bly. It was set to start just after I wrapped up finals and set up my art gallery, and even though I knew it would be very intense and would mean I'd have to wait to begin unwinding from the many stresses of my spring semester, I just had to take it. The University of Minnesota doesn't offer any comic-making courses normally and therefore this was a rare opportunity, and also it would be taught by the two fabulous Pope bros and one of my fellow classmates would be my good friend Brooke.

The class was exactly what I expected in that it was both very fun and very difficult. Coming into the class as a comic-making newbie and having to come up with an idea for a comic, and write, draw, scan and color even a few pages of it within 3 weeks is incredibly challenging. However, it was a really good experience to not only rise to the occasion and try to make the best comic I could in that time frame, but also to work alongside other students as they made their own comics and see how differently everyone worked and how their comics turned out. Overall, I'm glad I did it because I was able to learn, have fun and prove to myself that I am capable of making a half-decent comic.

I'll be sharing the comic I created below, but if you'd like to check it out on the class website or see some of the work that the other students made (like Brooke's awesome mini story about a shape-changing lawyer), go check out the class website!


Okay, so because I'm a big fan of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I didn't really have an idea for a comic otherwise, I decided to make mine about it. Because there are no adaptations that I've seen that focus purely on the story of Edward Hyde and his perspective on the events that occur, I chose to do that. My comic covers the backstory of Hyde and his creation, initial birth and the events that shortly follow. It pretty much follows the original story exactly. It gets a bit--okay, a LOT--wordy, because I got into the spirit of the writing style of the original novella, but the whole point of this was to give Hyde's account of things and I thought the narration would be fitting. I apologize if the writing isn't fantastic, as I wrote everything all in one night, and I didn't have a lot of time or energy to put into editing it.

Although most of my classmates were drawing their comics on paper and the scanning them later to color them and touch them up, I felt like trying to set my comic apart by making it entirely on the computer. It was easier in some ways and much harder in others, but it was a very good challenge and forced me to learn how to use masks very well, which I hadn't had experience with before.

Everything was done using vector masks, because I'm insane that way. My colored pages especially involved so many layers of masks it wasn't even funny. Page one definitely had over 150 layers. I used photographic reference as much as possible, and a couple panels were actually modeled for by my brother, since I needed to capture certain poses at odd angles that couldn't be found in reference images online.

Okay, done with my prattling now. On to the comic itself! I hope you enjoy it.

Harry Potter Party Documentation

Once again, I have returned to my oft-neglected blog to share tales of my summer exploits! I'm doing them rather out of order, since this happened much more recently than the events that will be detailed in posts (hopefully soon) to come, but I thought I'd do both of my food-related posts first and then move on to the posts about art. So here's my account of the marvelous Harry Potter party that I assisted my friend Brooke (an amazing cook, artists and party planner) in preparing a short while ago.

As you can see from the photo above, we went all-out on the Harry Potter theme and prepared quite the extravagant spread of sweets. Brooke and I got together and worked on cooking, planning and decoration for it for between 6-10 hours each of the two days before the party. I'd definitely never done so much cooking within so little time before, but despite how much time and effort it took it was lots of fun, since it was also time spent with a friend.

I think I made a pretty good cooking assistant, and Brooke was definitely an excellent head chef. She was calm and level-headed the entire time, gave clear directions and was somehow able to cook 5 different things at once and shop and think of games and decorations and still stay sane. Now that's what I call a competent party planner! If you want someone to help you throw a great themed party you really should contact her. (Yes, I will be this shameless in promoting her - I have tasted her food, I can't not tell you to give yourself the chance to try it too.)

Anyways, let's start talking about the food! Below are more photos showing almost the whole selection of sweets we made. Brooke also cooked normal non-dessert food to eat - roast chicken, vegan mashed potatoes and cheesy non-vegan mashed potatoes, gravy and peas (selected because Brooke noticd that there are always platters with great mounds of peas on the tables whenever feasts happen in the Great Hall in the Harry Potter films). Those, however, were finished and added to the table just as the party began, and I didn't get any photos of them before they were gobbled up.

Now I'll be describing the snacks individually. First, the chocolate frogs! A must have at any Harry-Potter-themed event.

 

These were made using a chocolate mold that I'd gotten for Brooke as a Christmas gift a few years back. The mold sadly only had one frog in it so we had to make them one at a time, and combined with the amount of time it took to complete each frog - which involved filling the mold with an initial layer of chocolate shell, cooling it in the freezer, removing it to add the filling and second layer of chocolate shell, and then freezing it to solidity one final time - it meant that it took two and a half days of work to complete this tray of frogs. We'd pretty much do a step in making our latest frog and then wait and work on something else until we could perform the next step in the process, and repeated this ad nauseam.

For all the time it took to make them, they turned out really great and we were able to make a good amount of them. We had a few frogs filled with raspberries, and the rest either had some sliced almonds with of the green caramel inside them left over from the cauldron cakes, or some of the leftover peanut butter mixture that the mandrakes were made from.

Also featured on this tray were our lovely golden snitch truffles.

They were made of a truffle mixture using milk chocolate with hazelnut liqueur mixed in, and each also had a hazelnut in the center and were rolled around in edible gold dust to give them their snitch-like appearance.

We also made on large display snitch to clue the guests into what the truffles were supposed to be, if they couldn't already tell. Brooke made white chocolate wings painted with gold dust for this snitch, which looked fantastic.... until her dog (who's named Godric Gryffindor, so her was perfect for this event) ate one of them just before the party was going to the start. It was rather disheartening - a one-winged snitch simply doesn't look the same - but thankfully not dangerous to Godric.

Over the course of the party preparations, Godric (pictured above) also ate a bird and several books, and vomited on the carpet quite a lot. He's a troublemaker, but he was so dopey and cute everyone forgave him.

At least Godric didn't eat the entire snitch, for we would have been in quite a pickle if he did. You see, one of the big events of the party was a Horcrux Hunt, and just as it was in the original story, the ring horcrux was hidden in the center of the snitch!

You'll have to secure your earmuffs tightly before we talk about this next snack, because these mandrake roots are an earful as well as a mouthful!

These paralyzingly good snacks were made of a peanut-butter based mixture (I'm not quite sure what went into it, but it was tasty), which was shaped into the mandrake's  fat little bodies, arms and their screaming faces.

The dirt in the cups we planted them in was made of a mixture of pulverized Oreos and the chocolate cake scooped out of the center of our cauldron cakes. There was an extra layer of the peanut-butter mixture at the bottom of each cup because otherwise there would't have been enough dirt to cover as many mandrakes as we did. The leaves stuck into the top of each mandrake to complete the effect are basil leaves.

 I made sure to take pictures of as many as their cute little squalling faces as I could because they were so cute.

Next up, cauldron cakes!

These are comprised of chocolate cupcakes hollowed out in the center, so that they're like cauldrons, and filled with a potion consisting of caramel dyed green with food coloring, with a few bone-shaped sprinkles to complete the effect.

Avengers Truffles

I'm back, and I bring much news of the different happenings that kept me from updating this blog. I've got quite a few posts to make about the different events that occurred and the various things I created during that time, and this is the first of them.

This post is about some snacks that I assisted my lovely friend Brooke (who is an amazing artist, cook, decorator, hostess, themed party planner and all-around person in general, and whose Artsy-Tartsy blog has some examples of her amazing work) in making and bringing to the Graphic Novel Class we took in May, which was taught by the Pope brothers, Rowan and Bly, who are not only mind-blowingly talented artists but also incredibly nice people and great teachers.

Because the class was all about making comics, and the Avengers had come out recently and was quite popular, the two of us decided to use that as a theme for our goodies. We shopped and cooked (well, as much cooking as truffles and tarts require) for about 6-7 hours and ended up being two hours late to class that day, but it was a fun experience, in my case a very informative one, and in my eyes it was worth every minute of work.

Below is a photograph of everything we made, as well as details about each item.

Let's start our more in-depth descriptions of the food by looking at the leftmost platter.

Item one, the Superman Tart!

It consists of a delicious flaky tart pastry spread with a layer of sweet creamy stuff (don't remember exactly what it was, but it was tasty!), which is then covered with fresh pineapple and strawberries, cut and arranged to look like the Superman logo. It was very delicate, so much so I had to hold it in place on its tray with my hands as we drove our goodies to class, since it risked breaking apart if the motion of the car caused to slide around too much. It was very popular and was the first thing to be eaten up entirely once we brought it to class.

Beside it are the Thor truffles.

  

I like this truffle. ANOTHER!!

These truffles were cherry-flavored (we picked cherries to match he red of Thor's cloak) and used milk chocolate (because of Thor's amiable personality). Ideally we would've tried to shape them into little hammers, but we didn't have enough time to conceivably pull it off.

Next, we move on to the rest of the truffles on Tray Two.

The first one we'll start with  are the Captain America truffles.

They were the most unique truffles of the lot, since they were made using nothing but but white chocolate, along with a cheesecake-like concoction, and also contained a fresh raspberry in the center of each truffle.

We chose these ingredient to symbolize his kind and friendly personality and his pure and passionate adherence to his moral code and superheroism. As you can see, they're also star-spangled on the outside, and when you bit into them you could see all the patriotic colors of the truffle in its layers: the red raspberry center, white cheesecake filling and blue chocolate shell. These were definitely one of the most popular truffles of the day.

Next, we've got some simple SMASHing truffles:

The Hulk truffles are peppermint (because it's a really strong flavor!) and milk chocolate, to represent the calm personality of Bruce Banner. I would think it obvious why they're green. We melted down these chocolate mint candies instead of chocolate chips to make the truffles, which gave them an interesting texture.

Here are the coffee-flavored Black Widow truffles made with semi-sweet chocolate. They're covered with white chocolate because we planned on drawing spiders onto them in black, but we ended up not having enough time to do that. Probably should've made them black or orange-red instead, to be more easily visually linked to the character. Oh well, we'll just have to do that next time.

We ended up not making Clint truffles because of time constraints, and because we couldn't think of a good flavor to represent him. If anyone has any suggestions on flavors related to him, they'd be much appreciated!

Lastly, we have the truffles for Iron Man/Tony Stark! They've got red chocolate shells painted with edible gold something to resemble his helmet/suit. They had a unique inside consisting of more of a cookie dough-like substance, rather than pure chocolate and cream cheese like most of the others, and the insides were flavored with Malibu Coconut Rum, because he likes drinking and I think he's mentioned having a vacation home in Malibu in the movies, but I could be wrong

These were the least rich truffles of the bunch, and were actually a bit better for it. The other truffles were incredibly rich and filling and probably could've stood to have been made much smaller, so they wouldn't be so overwhelming. Anyways, these truffles were also very popular (so much so that out of the leftover Iron Man truffles I brought home with me to share with my family, the majority of them mysteriously disappeared all at once, most likely into one mouth), though not quiiite as much a the Cap truffles.

We ended up making 95 truffles total, and we had lots of leftovers after class. Next time, we probably wouldn't need to make so many, since nobody ate more than a few truffles before having reached their maximum intake of rich food.

Overall, these took a lot of materials, effort and time to make, but it was a fun experience and the results were incredibly tasty, and nerdy to boot. If I ever try to create Avengers truffles again in the future, I'd definitely want to complete the assembled team and make Clint truffles, dark chocolate Nick Fury truffles and maybe key-lime Loki truffles besides.

My submission for the Sketchbook Project 2012

Just this past Fall I learned about the Art-House Co-Op's annual Sketchbook Project from a good friend, and I decided to try it out and participate in the 2011-2012 round even though I wouldn't have a terribly large window of time to work on it. For the sketchbook project you pay to enter and have a sketchbook sent to you in the mail, and you choose a theme for the sketchbook which you can follow if you want to - my theme was Heroes and Villains.
Once you receive it you can do anything you like with the sketchbook, provided you don't make it too thick or have dangly bits hanging off it or such as that. Once you're done, you send the sketchbook back, and it is thereafter housed in The Brooklyn Art Library and can be checked out by people there. It's also brought on a tour with all the other sketchbooks submitted that year to cities around the world as an exhibit.

If you pay a little extra, you can also have your sketchbook scanned and shared on the Art House Co-Op website. I decided I definitely wanted to do that, since I live nowhere near Brooklyn and the tour isn't coming to the Midwest either. The scans of my sketchbook just went up on the AHCO website a week or so ago, but I'm making this post to share the images of it here instead of simply linking to the scans there because to view them on the AHCO website you have to make an account there. I don't want to force people to go to all that trouble just so they can take a quick peek at my derpy sketchbook doodles, so while you can go look at my profile on the AHCO website if you like, I wanted there to be an easier and more convenient viewing option.

So here's my sketchbook, with some commentary and description for each of the pages. It's mostly a big pile of silliness, derping about and experimentation because I didn't really know of any grand idea I wanted to do with it, so I just had did what came to mind and had fun. I hope you enjoy it! (or at least find it amusing)

 

Here's the front cover. I was planning to paint a whole bunch of different characters of villainous or heroic nature from pop culture on it to fill up the cover, but it was a very painstaking process and I had a time crunch and had to drop the full idea. But at least I got in Harry Potter, Voldemort and Nagini; the Last Unicorn, V from V for Vendetta, Toothless and Evil from Time Bandits. I consider that to be effort well spent.

Here's the inside cover of the sketchbook, which I spruced up with a short poem, and the first page, which I made into a sort of introduction.

The page on the left is of Ralph Bates as he appears in Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, which I had been watching and decided to draw from. The page on the right is observations about the sketchbook's characteristics (mostly how smeary pencil gets on its smooth paper) and testing out  drawing with different pens on the paper.

The leftmost page had some bleed-through of sharpie from the opposite side of it, and I couldn't think of anything to do with it so I just tried painting it over in a messy black chaotic way. The drawing on the right was created by scribbling on the page with pencils first, and then I found shapes in the scribbles and made the face. Actually, it ended up being upside down in the sketchbook, so I rotated it here for clearer viewing.

Odd little shape doodle characters on the left, a drawing of my foot on the right.

Lots and lots of gesture drawings here! I found some good websites for them with interesting models and set to work. On the left page I tried to convert the gesture drawings into characters to fit my Heroes and Villains theme, but it ended up not generating fantastic results, so I just loosened up on the page on the right. The gesture drawing dance party depicted there was almost completely drawn from 3D models on Posemaniacs, a site that I heartily recommend. There is also a sketch of one of my cats sleeping near the top.

Because I had a hard time of brainstorming ideas for what to put in this sketchbook, I decided to ask my younger brochacho Dante to draw me some interesting heroic, villainous or monstrous characters in his unique drawing style that I could redraw in my own style in the sketchbook. The above two sets of pages are his and my sketches of one Sgt. Bones, and below there are each of our sketches of a bat-like character called Draven.

These pages were just me whipping out my crayons and having some fun with color and swirly/swooshy lines, which has always been something I've enjoyed playing around with.

These two pages are experimentation and playing around with drawing using ballpoint pen. For these I started with scribbling all over with the pen, smearing the ink with my fingers and working my way up from there with layers of texture until I decided on what images to make them into.

A bunch of sketches! On the left are some drawings of the fabulous and renowned onnagata (man who performs female roles in kabuki theater) Bando Tamasaburo, who has the most gorgeous costumes. There are also more sketches there from a couple of movies I was watching at the time. On the right I did a bunch of studies of clothing and hands done in ballpoint pen.

For these I decided to go even more experimental with the ballpoint pen. I created these images by only ever touching the tip of the pen to my finger, and then either smearing it on the page (like on the right) or tapping it on (like on the left). The leftmost image is supposed to be a werewolf, and the one on the right is a girl dozing off.

The leftmost page is goofy drawings of hipsters, done because every good sketchbook needs hipsters. The page on the right is just some random person, looking serious and making some weird faces. Don't know who it could be. No idea at all.  Nosiree.

THE END

So yep, that's my derptastic sketchbook which is set to travel the world. Creating it was certainly an interesting experience, one which I might consider repeating in the future. Hopefully next time I'll have a clue about what I'm doing and have a cool idea for I want to put in the sketchbook.

This sketchbook was shared on the Art House Co-Op website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, and I think I've fulfilled the requirements of sharing this. I've attributed it to Art House Co-Op, I only changed the images marginally (overall cropping and brightness/contrast tweaking), so I hope I'm in the clear and AHCO will be fine with me sharing the images from my sketchbook here.