Now In Sound…Well…Words.

Fonts.

Been enjoying my slightly less work intense week, this week. Spent the last couple of days just playing around with Fonts on the computer. I never really felt that great about my own lettering and it’s only now that it starting to come together a lot more. I also had a break through this week in figuring out how to add new Fonts in Phototshop. A few years ago I download some funky Fonts I wanted to play around with in Photoshop. Fonts based on the type from movies like Evil Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Shaun Of The Dead as well as other. So at some point in 2005 I downloaded a whole folder full but when I got them on my Mac I couldn’t get them to work through Photoshop. I tried for ages and then just gave up. It only now towards the end of 2009 as I come to start lettering my latest work that I remembered this unused file on my laptop. (I should mention at this point my latest story is a horror story. I keep forgetting to mention that whenever I do a post.) So to cut a long story short I just played around for ages and ages trying to get them working and it paid off. Most of the Fonts worked. The only down side now is I’ve uploaded so many into Photoshop the list now ends at ‘P’. My next big challenge on the computer now is to found out what happened to the rest of the alphabet and my new Fonts.

Apart from now being able to have a good crack at doing a decent title page with some new funky fonts it also means I can now move away from the dreaded Comic Sans. I don’t think Comic Sans is as bad as some would have you believe. It kind of like Skoda cars in the 80’s. Sure, when it blown up it looks like shit and doesn’t really work for anything outside of Comics. When I see it on a leaflet or ad blown up and maybe in colour or something you really see how ugly it is. But when it only 3mm tall in a word balloon it not that bad. I’ve tried loads of different Fonts over the years but they were all sadly from a select group I’ve got to work through my copy of Photoshop. Many of them were a hell of a lot more fancy looking then Comic Sans but maybe didn’t read as well on the page. You could write pages on what makes a good comic book Font. To me, the type shouldn’t be fighting the image for attention. Your eye should go to the image then the text. I’m not talking about big flashy action sound effects here, as I tend not to use them much and that’s a whole different debate. Just the basic word balloon. When your reading a web comic or sometimes an actual comic and more thoughts gone into the Font then the artwork itself, it kind of pisses me off. I still think the best lettering for comics is hand lettering but sadly I have to fall back on computer fonts as I was born with the handwriting of a retarded chimp.

Another downside to computer fonts is the price. I don’t really know a lot of other comic book artist but does anyone actually buy fonts? Since I’ve got new fonts working in Photoshop I’ve been checking out some different Font websites and damn they’re pricey. The whole rules about when you and can’t use Fonts is a little lost on me.

I’ve only started lettering my artwork today so it a little to early to post anything from it. I’m hoping to finish them off over the weekend, so maybe next week I can. Until then I’ll post this latest shot. I’ve got to remember to use silhouettes more in my comics. They look good and are a lot quicker to draw.

FALSE!

As a rule I’m not a big fan of drawing vehicles. I try not to avoid doing them and when It’s time to draw one I try and make the shots a little better every time. I think the above mini bus shot is the best I’ve done to date. If more of my vehicle shots come out like this then I’d be a lot happier doing them. Maybe throw in the odd car chase once in a while.

It’s going to be nice to relax a bit this week as I’ve been drawing like a mad man these last several weeks trying to get the start of B.O.B. done. I plan to chill out a bit this week. This week it going to be all scanning, cleaning up artwork in Photoshop and lettering the pages I’ve done so far. I’m not going near a pencil this week and I’m not staying up half the night drawing till the wee hours.

Talking of the wee hours (which is sadly when the best TV is on) been watching some more of the American version of The Office recently. I remember watching the first couple of episodes when it first started and finding it really bad. I gave up on it after a couple of shows. I think it was on BBC 2 and I think they even took it off after a few shows (I could very well be remembering that wrong... oh wait, looking on Wike it says Season 1 was only six shows long…anyway) Never has a sitcom gone from so bad to so good so quickly. Plus the theme tune really catchy. The thing with sitcoms is they usually need a couple of seasons to get going. It worth watching The American Office just for Dwight Schrute alone. I’m becoming a big fan.

The Late Night Note Game.

My memory is bad. It’s as simple as that. If I’m trying to remember something and that something doesn’t keep popping it head around the corner to remind me it exists regularly I’m more often then not going to forget it. So when something important like an idea or something comes along I really need to note it down quick before it goes again. Problem is most of my ideas or the only time I remember something I’ve forgotten to do is usually late at night when I’m trying to get some sleep. So I tend to leave myself lots of little notes I’ve scribbled for myself while half asleep late at night. When I get up the next day I found these notes and half the time I’ve can’t make out what I’ve written (There’s a good early Seinfeld episode with this same theme.)

So here the game. I woke up today and found I’d left myself a couple of notes last night. One note was a reminder of a TV show I wanted to look up on the net to see if the boxset had gone down in price or gone on sale recently. It simply the title of the show which I wrote down while half asleep to remind myself to do this today. When I found it again earlier it was almost unreadable to me. It took me a second to remember what I had written and if I wasn’t the one who had wrote the note I doubt I’d know what the hell it said. So I’ll post this one word TV show below and you can try your luck to guess it.

Answer HERE.

How’d you do? I know pretty unreadable right? Now you see why I never hand letter my own comics. My wide awake handwriting is only a little bit better then my half asleep scribble.

B-Movie\Exploitation Movie Posters (Part 4.)

OK. End of the month, which seems like a good point to wrap up these movie poster posts. Hope you’ve been enjoying them.Probably one of the best posters I’ve come across lately. In fact if I were to do a top ten posters of all time this would very likely be in it. I love the fact it black and white but the plasters are the only things in colour. Or the fact that under the title of the film it got “Obviously” in brackets. Or just that it got classic Hammer Horror cleavage in it as well. Also it kind of goes well with a previous post I’ve made about Dracula and sticky plasters.This poster is worth a look if only for the top tagline aloneFirst saw this poster on the back cover of the collected edition of Vol 2 of Cinema Sewer that FAB Press have been putting out lately. Again not to sound like a broken record but it all about the design in this montage scene. As the viewer looking at this poster you’re about to get a kick to the face, clubbed with a gun and a quick panty shot all at once.

Blink And Your Miss It.

My latest effort from B.O.B.

I’d say more about this panel but it the end of the week and my brain is running on low. I do like this though. It a very basic but in some ways it works better then some of the more complex shots. Which is a shame, as the complex shots probably take a lot longer to draw. Sods law I guess.

I have noticed in these early pages there’s a lot of gesturing going on. Everyone looks like they’re on a game show showing off the star prize or something. I guess it because as the whole set up is being introduced to the characters it’s also being introduce to the reader. Still I’m looking forward to getting to a point when I can move the body languages on a bit in this story. I should have written a mud fighting scene or something to kick this story off.

You know what new Who is missing these days? Vomiting Cybermen. You really have to look out for it in this clip at the end but that Cyberman blows metallic chunks. I never noticed it while watching the Five Doctors before. It’s very sly.

The full, classic Raston Warrior scene HERE. If there a better massacre in Dr Who history I haven't seen it.

B-Movie\Exploitation Movie Posters (Part 3.)

Going back to good montage images. Above is another poster I think works well. You can’t beat a good Kung Fu montage. Probably a pain in the arse to draw with all the figure work and foreshortening you’d have to do. But great end result.I watched this film the other day again. I think it got a lot going for it. I’ve previously posted a poster for Mudhoney (which they change the title too) but I guess this must be an earlier poster as it called Rope Of Flesh here. Not a bad poster but it does suffer from the very basic problem that it gives away the ending of the film. It like if the poster for Jaws was a shot of the shark exploding as Brody shoots the gas tank in it mouth.Looks like a bit of a Star Wars rip off to me but I still really want to see this film. Reminds me of another Star Wars type movie I saw a few months ago called Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone. Staring a young Molly Ringwald. I can’t find anything on this movie and it doesn’t look like it out on DVD (not region 2 anyway) but it wasn’t a bad movie at all. Not great. But not bad. Worth a watch.