Th3rd World Studios Blog

Here’s an image of the print I did to help promote the book at the Baltimore Comic Convention in 2008. I wanted to show people what they would be seeing in the book without giving away too much.

Also, we were still in the early stages of making decisions on colors for our characters. Mike Devito and I had been going over possible color schemes for each character for a while and the only character who’s color choice was still up in the air was Harmony, the metallic ballerina. Below are several stages of the process of the print, and you’ll see she had been left without color until almost the very end while we were reviewing possible color choices.

Here is the clean pencil linework, done up in 2H lead and darkened up a bit in photoshop.

Here’s a photo I took with my phone to show Mike how our characters were coming out in color. I gave everyone simple base colors to start off with and gradually rendered them as I went. I knew red was going to be a dominant color in the whole piece, given the sky would be red, and I wanted to emphasize the violence with a color that would say it all, and I splotched red in areas of the characters to help unify them to the whole piece.

Here’s a bigger example of everyone’s color roughed in as well as continued rendering on our main characters. The medium I was using was mostly dyes, with acrylic white mixed with color to help steer the finishes where they had to go.

Here’s the image as I was approaching the finish.

The whole thing was a blast to work on. I’d never colored so many different things on one piece before, and it was a bit of a task figuring out how to tie the variety of colors together without letting anything get away from me. I used everything I knew about rendering tones in grayscale and applied it to color, and used anything I knew about color theory to make all of the color choices as visually interesting as I could.

The Stuff of Legend.

A while back Mike Devito approached me with a project he thought I might be interested in, something dreamed up by Mike Raicht and Brian Smith, and it turned out to be a project filled with things I’ve wanted to draw for a very long time… I just didn’t know it yet. It also had a pretty hefty title to live up to. How does one come up with the look of the “stuff of legend?” The premise was intriguing, especially to an illustrator such as myself, and my imagination took off as soon as I dived into the story outline and character descriptions. 

Here are the first concept illustrations with descriptions:

The story is about a group of toys who enter another realm through their owner’s closet, and once they enter they transform into more realistic versions of themselves. The duck pull-toy becomes a real duck, the teddy-bear becomes a real bear, etc. One of the first things that hit me was the reader was going to have to be able to connect the two, to really know that the duck was the same duck pull-toy, that the bear was the same teddy-bear, and while I knew color would definitely link them together, I thought I’d try to take a step further and implement patterns into their character designs (like stripes!). I also had to figure out how some things might translate from the toy version to the real version, such as the spring in the jack-in-the-box (Jester). For the jester’s spring, I gave him stripes on his legs.  

The Boogeyman was a bit tough. He’s always been the spook in the closet, under the bed, any area of a darkened room not illuminated by the night-light, so I thought his look should be something made of the dark. A lot of black. I thought I’d give him a bit of texture to his appearance, and after a while I came up with the black, tar-like fire that drips upwards and away from him.  Since we see him in a world of his own creation, I added bits of the goopy fire coming out of the ground around him to help emphasize his connection to the place, as if it’s visibly made of him in some respect, maybe so much that he can pour himself up and out of the ground everywhere and anywhere. Since he would be mostly cloaked I figured a good area of contrast would be his hands and his face, two areas I would be trying to sell his gestures. For his skin’s texture I tried for something porcelain - something that could possible be interpreted as cold and lifeless, and as his face transformed the veinish cracks could pull into wrinkles.

Here’s more of the Boogeyman with Hammy, who is a piggy bank in the real world, and the Princess, who is a wooden figurine.

Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction into the creative process behind a project I’ve been fortunate enough to work on!

For those of your note familiar we have been working on a new book called “The Stuff of Legend” for the better part of 8 months. Our plan is to start using this blog to record our production on what exactly goes into the creative decisions and day to day stuff for an independent book. Feel free to ask any questions you have. We will be as transparent about everything as humanly possible.

2009 also marks our first inclusion into Free Comic Book Day. We will be offering the first 20+ page of “The Stuff of Legend” for retailer and fans to check out. We’re going to need all the help we can get so please be sure to let your local retailers to know about this book, or if you’re a retailer please ORDER THIS BOOK.

We will be trying a number of different strategies to get the word out. We will be offering not only a weekly blog, but bi-weekly art updates, sketches, forum posts, online web comic formatted reading, and hopefully conducting interviews with various news organizations. In the past advertising and marketing for our books has been a mixed bag. We have tried many different strategies and on the whole we have been only what I would classify as mildly successful in converting those numbers. We are hoping or a strong entry for “The Stuff of Legend” (which I will often time refer to as SoL, yes I’m aware of the connotation)

Below I have listed the solicit for the free comic book day entry, let the blogging BEGIN!

SOLICIT:
“The year is 1944. An allied force advances along a war-torn beach in a strange land, outnumbered and far from home. Together, they fight the greatest evil they have ever known. Never ending waves of exotic enemies come crashing down on them, but they will not rest. Thousands of miles away, the world is on the brink of destruction. But here in a child’s bedroom in Brooklyn, our heroes, a small group of toys loyal to their human master, fight an unseen war to save him from every child’s worst nightmare.

Led by the toy soldier known as the Colonel and the boy’s faithful teddy-bear named Max, the toys enter the realm known as The Dark. There they will face off against the Boogeyman and his army– a legion of the boy’s forgotten, bitter toys. Fighting to survive insurmountable odds, the toys will discover this is a battle not only for the soul of a child, but for their own as well…”

Click here to get the goods. Featuring the tale “Sympathizers” by Justin Robinson and Nye Wright in its entirety.

Go here and read then run like lightning to your closest LCS and buy buy buy. The time to invest in the future is now!

TH3RD WORLD STUDIOS
TO COLLECT SCI-FI SERIES SPACE DOUBLES INTO TRADE PAPERBACK

Ain’t it Cool News called Th3rd World Studios’ retro sci-fi series”Space Doubles”, “…a treat to read and a must-see for sci-fi/horrorfans.”

Comixtreme dubbed it, “…a good looking, fast reading comic
that’s just a whole lot of fun, and makes me wonder why more people aren’t doing comics like this.”

Comics And…Other Imaginary Tales
hailed it as, “…unique genre that has been missing too long from the comic racks.”

Now collected into one 140 page trade paperback and presented in flip book format just like the original miniseries, “Space Doubles” asks the great sci-fi question–WHAT IS TO COME? With thrilling tales featuring everything from moon landings to zombies in space to existential bug infestations, the answer will shock you.

“The feedback from fans and reviewers has been overwhelming. When Closter brought this project to us I had a feeling the series would have a solid following among the sci-fi faithful, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it break into the top 300 in overall comic sales for the month”, said Jon Conkling, co-publisher of Th3rd World Studios.

“I’ve always been a Science Fiction fan at heart, and at the time I started Space Doubles there wasn’t much presentation of the genre beyond the licensed product. … I wanted to see something out there that could give someone the same sort of feeling that one would get reading a collection of old SF short stories from PKD, Bradbury and the like”, series creator Scott Closter.

Collecting all of the stories from the 3 issue limited series; the “Space Doubles” trade paperback features a host of established writers from the original series including Mike Raicht (”/Exiles/: Days of Then and Now”), Leah Moore and John Reppion (”Witchblade – Shades of Gray”), Jason Hall (/”Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures” and “Hellboy Animated”/), Justin Robinson (”Heavy Metal’s Fluorescent Black”), Mark Andrew Smith (”Amazing Joy Buzzards”) and Scott Closter (”Eskimo Dave”). This collection also features 4 never before seen tales by Mike Baron (”Nexus”), Dwight L. Macpherson (”Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo”), Ben Raab and Deric Hughs (”Living in Infamy”) and Andrew Dabb (”Atomika”).

Also included are 2 brand new stories of the very popular “Pickles from Pluto” by Brian Smith.
*Space Doubles Collection 1: Set the Controls* hits stands in October. You can pre-order it in the August preview catalog. (Diamond Order #/AUG084292/)

HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT!!

Debuting today: TALL TALE FEATURES!

I’ve joined what I’m referring to as a “cartoonist collective” called Tall Tale Features. Today is opening day (which makes me a charter member, natch) and I hope you’ll all head on over and check it out.

Tall Tale Features is a group of professionally minded cartoonists who have banded together to say “Hey, quality webcomics found here!” (Look, I’m gonna level with your guys here. I’m the novice of the group. I don’t know how I got an invite. Everyone else at Tall Tale is either syndicated or making actual money at this thing. Shh! Don’t tell them I slipped by.)

So who’s a part of this illustrious group? Role Call!

• Lucas Turnbloom of Imagine This
• Brian Anderson of Dog Eat Doug
• Dave Reddick of Legend of Bill
• Mike Witmer of Pinkerton
• Scott Metzger of Stewart
• Brock Heasley of The SuperFogeys

Yeah, that’s some serious talent up there. Head on over to TALL TALE FEATURES to find links to each one and check ‘em out. Quality stuff!

What else can Tall Tale offer you? Glad you asked. On the main page you’re going to find a frequently updated blog filled with news about your favorite comics, pop culture musings and whatever else we feel like talking about. It’s also your source for the latest news on all the Tall Tale comics.

Getting into the site a bit more, you’ll find a bios of each of the creators on Tall Tale and a link to “TTF Radio” a podcast that will be starting up shortly, hosted by Tom Racine and featuring the Tall Tale crew on a rotational basis.

But the heart and soul of Tall Tale Features has got the be the FORUM. There you’ll find separate forums for all your favorite Tall Tale webcomics, along with other forums for discussing nonsense, movies, etc….and a place to plug your work.

Like I said, Tall Tale officially kicks off today so now’s a great time to get in there, register on the forums and start being a part of things. We expect big things ahead and hope you’ll be there.

-Brock

Blip bleep blorp blorp boodle oot.

That’s R2D2 talk for “peddle yo’ butt down to you LCS and pick up the latest issue of Space Doubles.” In case you missed it before, here’s a preview:

http://www.th3rdworld.com/previews/space_doubles/issue03/

Lots to say about this page, so let’s dive into the pool:

The first thing you might notice about this page are the credits, and the 10,000 colorists we used for this issue. Alright, 10,000 is hyperbole, but at the time it sure felt like we were using that many colorists. Here’s what happened: at the time coloring on this issue needed to get under way, Julio and I were under a tight deadline. Back then, we were attached to a different publisher, and this publisher told us he needed issues #1 & #2 completed by a specific date. By the time Julio finished inking issue #2, it was obvious to both of us that we needed to find several colorists to finish this issue on time. [For various reasons, the issue #1 colorists weren’t available to tackle issue #2.] So Julio placed a “Help Wanted” ad on Digitalwebbing and we received A LOT of interest. We ended up chosing the four colorists you see listed in the credits. We tried as much as possible to get these colorists to produce a uniform style, but we also realized that was a fool’s errand since all four colorists were working on different parts of this 2nd issue simultaneously. Inevitably, there are going to be noticeable stylistic differences. In the end, coloring on issue #2 was finished ahead of schedule, but I’m interested to see if readers can recognize when the issue shifts to a different colorist. Again, each colorist worked on a specific section of the issue, and the credits list them in the order of the pages they worked on. So like Julio already wrote, Massimo Capizzi colored page 1. Do you think he also colored page 2? Or has John Hunt taken over? What do you think?

If you look at panel 3, you’ll see it’s shaped like a heart, emphasizing the affection Mack and Beth secretly have for each other. That heart panel wasn’t in the script. It’s yet another example of the creativity Julio brought to Omega Chase’s panel layout and design.

Mack asks for a hand grenade in panel 4. Of course, he’s in 1881 Texas, and his deputy has no idea what the hell a hand grenade is. In actuality, hand grenades had been in use since the 15th century… but not extensively and not in the United States. It really wasn’t until World War I that hand grenades became common warfare ordnance. So someone living in the American frontier in the late 19th century would not comprehend the term “hand grenade” (especially not someone as intellectually dense as Ted).

Finally, a few readers elsewhere have commented that in the final panel of the page there is NO WAY that Mack should be able to break that chain link in that manner. No matter how strong the man, he can’t break a chain link in half just by yanking it. All I have to say is what one person may perceive as a physical impossibility, I perceive as a clue.

I’ll say no more.

Hey all,

Been busy, busy, busy lately. Well, pretty much always now. You know how it is.

The newest SuperFogeys book, “Collected Works #2 - The Techno Shuffle” is done and at the printers. Those who have ordered a copy will get it soon!

In the print version, I have an exclusive 6-page story entitled “Captain Spectacular and Star Maiden in the Inevitable Dimension” that fills in some blanks on some story points in book 2. You can check out a one-page preview of the story here.

***

FREE BOOK!

Now then, there is another version of book 2 out there, but this one is a digital version you can get for FREE.

And while you can’t get the Captain Spectacular/Star Maiden story in the free book, you CAN get an exclusive-to-digital short story entitled “The Secret Origin of the Space Pig.” And I’ll just go ahead and preview that one right here:

So, where can you get the rest of the story, along with the rest of “The Techno Shuffle” collected?

Go on over to The SuperFogeys Collected Works #2 on Wowio to download your copy right now.

And hey, go ahead and grab The SuperFogeys Collected Works #1 on Wowio while you’re at it! Doesn’t hurt to have the whole story! It’s all free!

If you’re don’t already have a Wowio account, don’t worry. It only takes a minute or so. Wowio is a free ebook site, so it’s not going to ask for any credit card info and you won’t be paying a dime.

What WILL happen though is that for every person who downloads a copy of the book, I’ll get 50 cents. It’s a great, small way to support the SuperFogeys.

(Unfortunately, at this time, Wowio is not available to anyone outside of the U.S. I hear they’re working on it though.)

Thanks again for everyone’s terrific support! Much more to come!

Brock