Paper Pusher

And I know the one I’m looking forward too the most is the new Wide Awake Press book Pildown. The WAP book last year was easily my favorite of the bunch (and I’m not saying that just because I was in it!) It was like 40 pages long and had a bunch of seriously good stuff in it. Actually you can still download for free here

But this year’s book is Shrouded in mystery. All I’ve found is this info:

Free comic download: PILTDOWN
Wide Awake Press follows up last year’s successful download comic EATS with an anthology of prehistoric tales. Go to wideawakepress.com on May 3 and download the FREE comic PILTDOWN. Join us on our journey back in time and see what stories surface when artists draw upon their inner cro-magnon. Dinosaurs, Cavemen and all types of prehistoric beasts gather together for you to discover.

DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE ON MAY 3RD FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!

J Chris is keeping tight lipped about who’s going to be in it this year, so he must have some sort of super secret super star up his sleeve or something.

I think I like FCBD more and more each year!

So I’ve been nosing around Flickr a bit lately, due to some pretty choice cartoonists posting their stuff there ( Dustin Harbin for example ) and I stumbled across Paul Pope’s page, and man was I impressed. I’ve kept tabs on his blog for a while now, but his flickr page has even more impressive work than his blog! Check it out!

Boy howdy do I dig people who can draw neat! Wait wasn’t there a point to this post? Oh yeah..

I went out and bought his Batman year 100 the next day, and really enjoyed it. It was the kinda book that makes me sit down and draw pages and pages of embarrassing superheroes in my sketchbook. Which actually doesn’t happen that often, I think the last time that happened was when I got my copy of Rob Venditti’s book the surrogates which prompted me to draw pages and pages of his character Steeplejack.

Paul Pope came up with a really nice design for his Batman, which included A cool split cape, swim trunks, big ass kicking boots, and finally some crazy ass fake teeth.

So yeah, I drew this picture of Batman and used it to practice coloring on my new Wacom (don’t like it yet). The picture turned out fine is guess; I really didn’t spend a lot of time on the coloring or anything. I kinda wished that I didn’t add the fake teeth when I was inking it (they just look sorta jacked up) and I think that orange building I scribbled into the background is caving in like a year old pumpkin, but whatever. Batman just looks cool as shit when he’s beating up a bunch of dudes, regardless of who’s drawing him.

Hey man! What’s going on? Just chillin’? Well that’s cool… what me? Ahh not much, I’ve just been super balls to wall busy working on that Tub Flub cartoon. What’s that? Yeah it’s looking pretty good, I’m getting close to finishing it. I’ve got some screen shots here if you really wanna see ‘em.

Thanks man! Yeah, I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming out. I still have a few more scenes to do, but it’s moving along pretty fast. I mean there’s just no easy way to do make an entire cartoon you know? Ha yeah, a little bit. SO where are you headin’ man? What?! what the hell are you going there for? Ohhh yeah I guess they do sell it by the case there. Well I hope that stuff clears up man. Give me a call and maybe we can get together this weekend, my boss is throwing some kind of meat party thing at his friends house. Let me know if you wanna check it out. Yeah, okay man. Well maybe I’ll see you then.

This post is a little late since I’ve been out sick, but it’s not to late to go grab a copy of Students of the Unusual Giant-sized Music Special #1 It hit stores on April 9th and is the first issue to feature my work on the Recalcitrant Jones and the Dead Beats! And if that weren’t enough reason to rush out and demand a copy, this issue also comes with a CD of all original music designed by the awesome J Chris Campbell ! Here’s the press release with all the juicy details:

The new Students of the Unusual Giant-sized Music Special #1 will be hitting the comic book stands April 9th! This is the first comic to come with its very own CD music album and we are calling it a comic for your eyes and ears!! The inserted music CD includes 14 tracks from a fabulous musical collection by some of the most talented independent recording artists who entered our music contest. We are certainly appreciative of the good folks at Abyssmal Studios in Orlando, Florida for mastering this incredible CD package and lending their professional seal of approval to this project. This issue’s incredible cover is by Caleb Prochnow who won inclusion in CMYK magazine for his work. The 48-page comic book features the great storytelling and the great art that you have come to expect from our award-winning horror adventure team! Unbelievable Tiki stories by Dove McHargue, Pat Martin, & Rob Granito. The return of Recalcitrant Jones and the Dead Beats with art by Brad McGinty. The Flame of Faith continues with fabulous art by Julia Lichty aka ghostfire and “The Water of Life” features the funeral of Uncle Pat illustrated by the master Jorge Calamato and colored by Gary Scott Beatty! There really is so much more (Like a pin-up of the Zombie Biker by the legendary Chad Hunt!) and still priced at only $2.95! You can’t beat it! So please spread the word!

This is quite an awesome little package for only $2.95 So get out there and show some support people!

P.S. If you live in the Atlanta area Just swing by Criminal Records and pick up a copy.

P.P.S. If you are in or around Athens Ga, I’ll be hanging out at FLUKE on Saturday so stop by and check out tons of awesome comics by tons of awesome people!

(Plus I’ll have a few copies of the Giant Sized Music Special too)

Okay, okay, Enough already…

I recently borrowed my pal Jeanette’s digital camera to take some much needed pictures of artwork for the blog (I really hate scanning, and I hate buying cameras even more) so I can finally post some non digital stuff on here. So to kick off the non digital artwork posts off right, here are some pictures of my work “zone”. That’s right; I have an entire zone to myself, so try not to be too jealous. I’ll also show you the process I’m using on this cartoon.

Alright let’s start off simple. This is my desk. That circle thing on top of my desk is my animator’s desk. And if I had an even smaller desk (for what I’m not sure) then I would put it on top of that one. I like to keep my “zone” pretty dark. It makes feel like I’m up to no good.

This is the wall to my left, and it’s where I keep all my background comps. Why do I print out all my background comps you ask?

It’s so I can rough out my “animation” directly on top of it. I like to draw out all the movements right on top of one another at first. I should say that it helps me figure out all the arcs of the motion, but I just don’t feel like it.

Here it is off the animator’s desk. So after I get done with a couple of scenes like this, I will ink these drawing on another piece of paper breaking all the bits apart even further then they are. So do you wanna know what I ink the drawing with? C’mon just play along…

… Ink and a Brush! Now that I look at this pic I realize that It’s not a very good picture of my brush or the ink, but it is a very good picture of my 3 favorite co workers, Coffee, Beer and water. I ink with a Raphael #2 water color brush. They are by far and away my most favorite brush. I know most cartoonists use the Windsor Newton 7 series, but I hate those things. They cost to much and don’t last nearly as long. Plus they’re too fat.

After I get done inking a few pages worth of disjointed arms, legs, eyelids, and little tail balls. I go ahead and scan them into illustrator and spend quite a while coloring and grouping the individual pieces. This is the longest and most boring part of the entire process. Holy crap I wish there was a faster way to do this, but I also wish I could just video tape my thoughts and then I wouldn’t have to mess with any of this crap, but I guess we all have wishes huh?

So after all that Illustrator noise, I start importing all the objects into flash and making symbols out of them. This part is also pretty tedious, but very important. If you don’t organize these things carefully then you will never find them again. I learned this after spending a few hours looking for a missing beard in my bee gees cartoon. After that I just sit in a chair and stare at something like the picture above for about a million hours. Then at some point all those drawings, sounds, and hours of computer work turn into a cartoon! How it happens I have no idea. All I know is you can’t even enjoy it until weeks later, because every time you watch it all you see are all the things you screwed up. 

Don’t worry though, it’s totally worth it. 

-B 

One of the benefits of working at a small animation company is getting to do most things yourself. Sometimes that works in your favor, sometimes it makes you feel incompetent. Sound makes me feel incompetent. I hate it. I hate listening to myself in my headphones for hours on end, I hate having to pick the best takes, and I hate being limited by my own voice. So right about now you might be asking yourself “Jeez, why the hell is Brad being such a little bitch about all this?” (This is a good question) A lot of it has to with the fact that I realize how important sound is, and how the most well written and best looking cartoon around will just be a total mess with bad sound. So I’m always super nervous. The other thing is that I don’t know anything about sound. Add that to the fact that I have pretty horrible hearing and it’s pretty easy to see why I hate sound. The real kicker is that I have plenty of people who are willing to help me with the sound, who totally know their stuff, and let me ask them an insane amount of questions. So why don’t I let them do it for me? Why don’t I have the best of the best rockin’ the mike for me? Because I want to be the best, well, not the real best, but more like fake best. So I really don’t mind kicking my own ass extra hard, and getting less than perfect results, because I’ll figure it out soon enough, and then I’ll be unstoppable times a thousand.

So how did the Tub Flub recording session go? And how can you recreate the experience at home? Well read on Bradophiles and find out!

This me standing around talking to John about the mike or something, I don’t remember exactly, but a lot of time in the studio is spent like this, so it’s important to document it.

This is John. He did all the sound engineering for me. A lot of people think that sound engineering is just pushing the record button, but there it actually much more to it than that (Like pushing the stop button for example).

This is why it’s good to have a friend do the sound engineering. Can you imagine having to make this face in front of a stranger for like four hours? If you can then maybe voice over work is for you. Another good tip to know is that the worse you look, the better you sound. It’s just the facts. That’s why people always say “You have a face for radio” Now this doesn’t necessary mean you’re ugly, It just means that if you want to sound good you better make your face as ugly and jacked up as possible.

Here’s John again. He’s probably going back and erasing about 300 awful takes. Finding the right amount of takes is something that takes some practice. I found that the third take usually sounds the best. Anything over that just sounds like a crappy version of the third take and anything before the third take sounds like you’re trying too hard. I think you have to try and get that balance of freshness and annoyance in your voice in order for it to sound good. And what happens if we still don’t get it in three takes? We move on and go back and do three more takes later on. I wish there was a way around this rule, but there isn’t. Three really is the magic number. Oh yeah, See those cords on the wall back there? Those help make our basement look more like a real recording studio. Those are super important.

And this is my dog Bailey. He sits in this chair and looks out that window a lot. He had to stay upstairs during the recording session because his whining kept getting picked up by the mike. Thanks Bailey, I owe you one.

Welp, That’s all I know about recording! I hope you picked up some awesome pointers and crap. So until next time…

…Try and be the fakest best you can be!

-B