Who Wants To Be A Webcomic…Person?

I am someone with a lot of ideas. Creative ideas, things that I want to make and write and draw that tell a story or express something about who I am or just make people laugh. I have more ideas than I will ever use. I originally started this blog who knows how long ago to give myself [force myself] an avenue to actually put my creative stuff out there. One of the hardest things for a creative, beyond starring at the blank page, is the anxiety of putting your work out there and allowing others to comment and critique and perhaps criticize your artwork that comes out of the depths of who you are.

Maybe it’s that anxiety, maybe it’s just that I have horrible discipline in actually getting stuff DONE, but I haven’t put anything creative up. I have made stuff, although not as much as I probably should or could have. So here I am putting my stuff up and putting myself out there.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way…

I would love to have an ongoing webcomic, a way to put out content on a regular basis that makes people laugh and think; and maybe art that people just generally like to look at. I love to draw, though I’ve had trouble developing my own style. I’m very good at copying other people’s styles, but it’s difficult for me to find my own identity in the things I draw. I also have trouble converting over to digital. I’m working on that put the process is slow going. I just can’t seem to get my head around drawing on one surface and looking at another and I don’t have the money to get better tech that eliminates that barrier. I guess it’s the same hurdle that I faced when I started typing, crossing over from the hunt-and-peck to the touch typing days.

So, for now, I have some drawings I have done by hand. These are concept sketches for a comic strip I’m calling “The UnderGround”. It’s based off of the community and podcast over at SpiritBlade.com and ChristianGeekCentral.com. I hope you like what you see.

UGWC Concept – Paeter, my original concept sketch for the main character. Ended up looking too much like the PIP boy from Fallout.

UGWC Concept – Holli, Short for Hologram, this concept has changed very little from the original sketches. Her form is simple and expressive and honestly the easiest and most enjoyable to draw. I would love to put some digital holographic effects on her.

UGWC Concept – Various, ideas for various other characters that might appear in the world of the strip. Only a couple of them actually got developed into fuller characters.

UGWC Concept – Cast Lineup, edited the main character a bit, added another character (the Prophet) for him to bounce off of and combined the cast of characters together into one team shot.

UGWC Concept – Comic cast, this was just me trying to vary my style and see if the cast would work in a simpler cartoony style. All the characters BESIDES the human characters dont really change much and I was trying to get the human characters to that same simplicity. Ultimately, I ended up not liking it all that much.

UGWC Concept – Final Cast (Sketch and Ink), I finally found the simple style i wanted with the human characters while not having to make them into children. This is pretty much what I want to go with moving forward.

So, there. That wasn’t so bad. Hope it’s at least interesting to look at. Maybe you can get some insight into my process. If you want to know more about this project or anything else, let me know in the comments.

Thanks!

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Welcome to the Post-Apocalypse Now!

Cross posted from here, by permission. [’cause it’s me! It’s from another blog I have that I hope gets going one day along with a my good friend and writing partner, Alee.]

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This is the Introductory Entry of The Post-Apocalypse Now Blog. I want to welcome everyone who shares an interest and sees the beauty and the sadness in the Abandoned, Derelict, and Desolate. I have been enamored with the idea of Urban Ruins since childhood. I remember listening to my friends in school giving book reports on The Boxcar Children and thinking how wonderful it would be to have an old boxcar as a club house. I remember walking through the woods with friends finding an old shack or some kid’s long forgotten treehouse. I remember reading about Ghost Towns in the old west and cities buried in the sand in Egypt. I’ve always loved the mystery and dream-like quality of these things and how it stirs the imagination.

Recently, I have seen a rise in our culture’s interest in the Distopic or Post-Apocalyptic future with movies like Mad Max, Book of Eli, I Am Legend, or even the whole Zombie sub-genre like Zombieland, 28 Days Later, or Dawn of the Dead. Plenty of fiction whether in books, tv shows, video games, or comic books, are devoted to this idea of humanity on the fringe of existance. Tv Shows like Life After People or The Colony examine what happens to human constructs and human society respectively once we are either all gone or our comforts have been taken away.

I watched The Road with Viggo Mortensen on DVD recently which further confirmed our cultures fascination with this dystopic and desolate future. I think we wonder about what we will do without our conveniences or the people we will become when society breaks down. We worry about our survival in a harsh environment.

I hope this place will gather together every thing relevant to the Post-Apocalypse Now theme. From Movies and TV shows that have been discussed above to Video games like The Gears of War games, the Left for Dead games, or the Fallout games.

From time to time, I may review something of this nature, but hopefully most of it will be spent showing pictures and video of these places. This second aspect of the P-AN blog may take longer for us to get going. But the good thing is we are based in New Orleans, LA so we have plenty of these types of places around.

Speaking of which, at the beginning of March, I saw this video on Youtube and was so awestruck that I decided to create this blog in the first place. Enjoy…

Expect more posts from our other Urban Archeologists.

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Back-up

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Be Bold

ForgeWerks is…

 

  This Post will hopefully tell you what th’ForgeWerks is…

  Maybe it will even tell ME what ForgeWerks is, because right now I have no clue. I’m basically looking for a catch-all hopper for everything I do and enjoy. I’ve tried blogs before and I never really kept up with them. I want someplace where-if I want to talk about Video Games-I can talk about Video Games, or if I want to talk about the movie I just saw or the book I just read-I can do that too. I want a place I can do all that and talk about my writing, my day, my work, my church activities…I want to be able to have a place I can express my creativity in everything that stirs my imagination and everything that comes out as a result of being stirred.

  I always liked the idea of a Forge. Seemed to me it had all the elements at work at once. I tend to think of my mind as a forge, like raw creativity heated my imagination pounded out by sheer will and tempered by discipline and getting the work out on paper [either physically or digitally].

  I have so many ideas for worlds and stories, webcomics, podcasts, games, and even fabrication/carving/sculpting projects. I’d love to be able to work on them, get feedback, and release finished products on here.

  In a way, I am tired of dreaming and keeping all this stuff locked away in my head. I want to start doing and have something to show for all of my day dreams. Maybe then I can stop the way I see things. Maybe if I got all of this out of my head and onto paper then I wouldn’t see so much strangeness and oddities and fantasy in the world…or maybe I would still see it but know I wasn’t going crazy. Either way, my imagination won’t be denied. If I won’t release it onto the world through my hands and fingers then it will bore through my eye sockets.

  So, that’s a little peek into what’s going on in my head. Hopefully you’ll see more, and hopefully it won’t cause you to run away screaming.

Back-up

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Be Bold

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“The greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.” 

-William Booth

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‎”Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.” 

-C.S. Lewis from The World’s Last Night