Where have all the Bastards Gone?

Drawing pin-ups, apparently.  And working on the comic: An Arrow in the Moon, you need to read it; it's quite good and more fun than a punch from Gregor Clegane.

But yeah, I've been trying to get into pin-up girl style lately, with varying success.  Here's two of what I feel like are my better ones.

Hanna the Barbarian

Get it?  Like Hanna Barbara, what made all them moving
picture shows.

Across the Sky

Yes, I did in fact take a screenshot of Gadget from
Rescue Rangers and use it to color parts of this drawing.

Meanwhile, Across the Sea...

So I came short of 50,000 words in this year's nanowrimo, somehow managing to come in about 1,900 words under.  First time in the last three years I didn't clear the 50k mark.  I ain't even mad.  My main problem this year might have been too much research, too much getting caught up in the world-building and not concentrating on pushing through and not looking back.   I suppose I probably could have finished if I hadn't spent a bunch of time putting stuff like this map together:

Then again, that's part of the fun for me.  Coming up with a semi-believable world to explore and hopefully have the readers or audience or whatever explore it too.  This isn't even a final map.  There are rivers to carve, some mountains need to be moved, and a massive forest to cultivate at the foot of those Northern peaks.  Also, Starshadow Bay is a little bit too far north, so some tectonic shifting may be necessary...

See what I mean?  I blame the folks over at the Cartographer's Guild for this sudden fictional geography fixation, even though they don't know who I am, because I only lurk those forums.

NaNoWriRe? (National Novel Writing Research)

Add a copy of the documentary series "Going Medieval" and I'll be ready to rock this November.  I've been working through the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, and George R.R. Martin's fanatical attention to detail has inspired me to be a little less carefree with the anachronisms and actually make a trip to the library to pick up these weird paper rectangles with words written in them.   Most likely won't be as detailed with the food though.  I don't intend to reach the 50k word count on meal description alone.

Since I've already done a ludicrous amount of world-building for my webcomic "An ArrowIn the Moon", this year's novel is going to be set in that same world.  Drawing a full color comic, it turns out, takes a bit of time and there's a whole (fictional) world out there, ripe for exploration but I won't ever get to share with anyone if I want to keep the comic story moving at a reasonable pace.

The books in the picture are: 

Daily Life in the Middle Ages

Life in a Medieval Castle

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders

Medieval Underpants is probably the best for writers.  Life in a medieval castle feels a little dry, but it's got good info.  Daily life in the Middle Ages is a good quick reference.

Game of Thrones isn't back until 2014. You need your epic fantasy fix.

An Arrow in the Moon launches on Tuesday, 08/20/2013.  The intention is for a normal update schedule of Tuesday and Thursday.  It's brightly colored Disneyesque characters in horrible situations.  Maybe not quite George R.R. Martin horrible, but pretty violent.  The opening sequence is a pretty brutal (well, as brutal as my drawing skills are capable of portraying) fight scene, just to make sure people know off the bat that despite my somewhat cartoony style, I'm not shooting for kid's stuff.  Well maybe if your kids were like me and like violent medieval fighting...  But chances are they're not.  You decide, I'm not raising your damn kids, take some responsibility for once.

Sorry, about that.  Come back, I've changed.  Anyway, doing this comic has made me remember how time consuming the whole full-color, draw-ink-color process is, even though I'm doing almost all of the art for this thing on computer.  If I want to even remotely remain on target with this thing, I might be changing the art style after the opening sequence to something more streamlined.

On that note, I think Smith-Micro's Manga Studio 5 is my software of choice now.  I've worked with Autodesk Sketchbook 6 and Art Rage 4 in the past year and this might finally be the full package as far as comic artist software goes.  I'll probably be dedicating my next blog to the annoying journey of frustration that is drawing/painting software.  (I almost tried to install my copy of Photoshop 7, but though better of it.)

The Forest is Watching

More symbol design for my upcoming webcomic.

Within the ancient forest of the Aermyn, you are never alone.

Molorhan Swordbill

This is the emblem of the Molorhan Army.  Never heard of the Molorhan Army?  That's because the webcomic which features them, (written and drawn by myself) hasn't started it's run yet.