Comic-Con Portfolio Reviews

I had these written down on my cellphone back when Comic-Con International was held at the end of July, but never got around to posting these. I probably have somewhere ............. pfft!

Part of my time spent in Comic-Con that weekend was at Portfolio review sessions. I'll be quite honest, not only have I had no idea what I actually want to do with my art, I didn't get around much to improving my art to more professional standards nor teach myself 3D as I had wanted to this past year, mostly for lack of time and concentration which lead to lack of motivation. So my portfolio had... whatever I could dig up from from my pile of concepts and blatant fangirling, which is kinda shameful coming exactly one year after I sent another of my portfolios to get reviewed by a game company just to see if I had a chance at becoming an artist in that industry.

One piece of advice is to have an idea of where you're going. If you don't, let the reviewer know so you two can discuss options. If you don't know where to go, the reviewer won't know what to suggest and you'll just sit there in front of thousands of other applicants just derping around like.... what?

Also, if you're more of a cartoony artist, don't go to a company that dishes out the complete opposite or vice versa. It's wierd!

I did learn through the reviews that I'm into storyboarding. I just need to come up with material to practice my storyboarding on and I'll be more prepared for reviews next Comic-Con. I'm no writer, so this is kind of hard! c:

But anyway, the reviews:

First one I went to was a company called "Secret Level" which is a part of Sega. I didnt know until the actual review that these people did fantasy fairy painty stuff, hence my advice as to carefully choose who to review you.

According to my notes:
So... my first portfolio review at Sega's Secret Level booth. My style is very fun and very manga-influenced. The guy told me that I either have to be more varied in style to be able to work at a game company, or find a company that my style would fall into. He also told me... To get a book called "Scripts to Screens" And to take up on webcomics. He also told me twice my style was perfect for something like Gaia. But he said to keep having fun what I'm doing.


I'm still lolling at the Gaia part. I know he meant well, but it still felt a bit insulting! Seriously.... GAIA ONLINE!


My second stop was good old Cartoon Network. I seriously have NOT drooled with this much anticipation since I sent my stuff to Rare last year, and I wasn't the only one with the rediculous line I had to sit through.

Notes:

Cn's feedback: I have lots of potential. My stuff is fantastic for someone mostly self-taught. Keep at it. "Your stuff is not quite what we're looking for." Read books And I was handed a portfolio advice pamplet and a doodle sheet to draw some of their characters. The guy wrote down a phone number to someone who he told me to call once I refine my portfolio for another review.

That went well! And no gaia directs!

The major downside of that review was that Chowder creator Carl Greenblatt was the one doing the reviews on Friday, but then two turns before mine came out, he switched out for someone else and my portfolio was reviewed by an artist for Ben10 Alien Force. Not to say he wasn't a nice guy because we had a really nice review session going, but he told me more than once that Mr. Greenblatt was better-suited to reviewing my art.

I saw Greenblatt again at the booth the next day, but I was sure CN was still backlogged with reviewers until next doomsday.

On a side note, I got to meet Greenblatt twice on Sunday- during his autograph-signing and outside the con when he was on his way home. I was happy, needless to say!

But more Comic-Con Fangirlery will come in another post!

I had also signed up for Nickelodeon on Friday, but they were so backlogged that my turn didn't come until Saturday afternoon.

Notes:
"I see you draw anime!"
And he spent most of our time obsessing over my use of prismacolors and how I used them to make a comic.
Took my business card and resume print, scribbled notes all over and kept it.

Overall, we had a nice discussion of stuff.


But it had me thinking...
... Sega told me to read books on Storyboarding (and I would be good for Gaia)
... Cartoon Network told me to be cleaner with my comic inking
... Nickelodeon suggested nothing to me. The guy just spazzed over my marker usage.

Part of me feels that was too easy for comfort.

I wish I could do one more review tomarrow after the Chowder panel, but everyone is still backlogged from Friday/Saturday. I checked out the indies at the exhibit hall but it didn't look like anyone else was accepting portfolios.

So I still have all my CDs. I'll probably trash them in favor of making a better, NOT-RUSHED portfolio over the next while. I did learn a lot. Not so much as to how to improve my art, but how to set my direction when I decide what specifically I want to do in the industry.

That's about it. In the end, I'm glad I did this no matter how much I complain.

And that ends my portfolio reviewing adventures. Photos and stuff will come in the future. For now, here's some of my portfolio entries. Like I said, I didn't know my direction, so a good friend of mine told me to cover as many corners as possible with what I had since I didn't have a lot of time on my hands to draw fresh material.

Big Fat Sketch Post December 2007

Kirby Anime scribbles- drawn the morning after Dedede was announced for Brawl! Ahahaha!



Trying out some new eyes for the Evo gang. I dunno what to think!



That face is just awesome!


A very old character of mine gets a makeover. He made a background appearance near the end of Lost Resort, but who is he?


Deres head sketches and ANYONE can look good in Kamina's gAR glasses! Even Bottles and Mario!


Unfinished group sketch. I'm really likin Maurey's new glasses!

What you're looking at here is a panel sketch to my Chowder fancomic idea: "Roffle House". I'll keep this a mystery for now, too, but I plan to have a two-page trailer up on DeviantArse around Christmastime and the actual comic will come around Summer 2008 depending on how busy I am with other things.

Oh Grim! How i miss you!

Oh yes, "Billy Goes Shopping/Nergal Gets a Job" will be unhaitused around January 2008!

Drawing genova in different glasses has been fun this week!


Random square glasses, Truffles' glasses... Scoutmaster Lumpus' glasses are my favorites to try out! Maybe I should actually draw Scoutmaster Lumpus sometime! I've already drawn Truffles a few times!


"I'm onto you!"

Chowder and Fred Fredburger are awesome!



Oh wow!


More HiEx sketches. Mainly the hairstyles and a few things were tweaked around a bit. Bodie's not in here, though. He and Katrina have never needed appearance work (which is why Kat was barely worked on here)! how amazing is that?

Are those pills? Am I watching too much House to the point where it's influencing ideas into my stories?


Well. That's that! good night, everybody!

Five years and still in Circly Circles!

Or close to it, anyway. I came across an old written document that described all the characters, towns, and ideas to my Evo project, and it dates back to December 2002 while the oldest artwork i could find dated to March of 2003. No worries on Chronological Details, but the project is close to five years in the making (while no progress has been completed to launch another comic). That's pretty awesome, though somewhat sad at the same time, since all I have is the pilot comic up for show.

But that's okay in the end. I hope to complete something amazing. At least amazing to me!

Anihoo, since tons of changes have been made to the stories of this series, I'm re-writing the outline document right now, under the advice of my pal Frankie/Chicobo329. I'm not reading the old one because I want to compare the two and I think some of my old ideas are stupid, anyway! All I know is that the 2002 premise of the story was FIRST about Azu being followed by a magician prince (Deres) reincarnated into a small boy, and the 2003 premise was about Azu and Prince Deres (as a teenager) being caught up in a war of magicks and the evolution of such powers. From the summer of 2005 onward, It was simplified to just follow the odd couple as Deres was sent on a scavenger hunt for spellcasting equipment (under the direction of an ex-pirate) and Azu follows him to leave the simplistic tribal life for something more. I was stumped from there for years. That's about it.

There were some ideas from the earliest incarnation that included a normal inn that attracted many NOT-NORMAL customers, a hero-wannabee that visited there, and a pie-delivery girl

Anihoo, here's some of that old 2003 artwork.



That in the lower left is the kid Deres I mentioned. People did like him a lot, so in later adaptations of my progress, I decided to throw in some childhood/flashback stories! I still plan to!

For early versions of Azu in this story, she actually WASN'T a tribal. There's actually a bit of an explanation for that which'll happen soon!
Some of you remember this guy, right? Early Maurey sketch (formally "Mauriku" but it sounds too Japanese). Unlike Azu and Deres who underwent many changes, He today is still the same guy. A normal guy with no supernatural abilities who tinkers with small electronics. Back in the day, though, he had a tiny flying turtle mech that always followed him and done his work for him. This was based on a random scientist character I created back in 2001.

Maurey works at an inn that attracts wierdos and he delivers pies. More on him personally will come soon!

Oh boy! Azu!



The comic was started at LEAST four times before the true pilot got officialized. None of the previous story attempts made it past page 4.


Here's an attempt that had more of a major focus on the ex-pirate and his sister-assistant-who's-not-really-a-pirate in a flashback. He still has major importance to the story, and he has quite a background. In present day, he's a sorceror's apprentice. How and why, it'll come soon.




One of the last few pages I've made public. I really love the coloring style and the texture, but I could only pull it off in Painter 5 and with their lack of layers and inability to use the color picker on wet watercolors, it became too much work for me to fork out more pages all by myself.

Also, this next chapter of the comic has to bridge my old ideas from the pilot (which originally wasn't intended for the series in the first place but became a local hit) into the ideas I have for the rest of the series- and new designs.

And that's where I've been since summer. :)

Azu changed a lot over the years. But she was around before the EvoRelution project was even thought of- as an anthro bird-type thing for a Kirby Fancomic.

Her very first drawing was at an oekaki. My skills were very sad on the Oekaki. Still are.

The Azu in the old comic was much different. She was a lot more intelligent on everything there is to know- except food!

Oh Snap!

Well, my site didn't get much of an update, but I DID spend some part of this day shuffling some files around and added six more favorites to my portfolio gallery, which was now bumped up to being W42's new main page since W42 is now here on blogspot and everything I own aside this, the portfolio, and the Rarebox is now consierably useless! Yay!

Much cleanup still has to be done, but I'll get to it. Eventually.

Did I mention how awesome that new Chowder show is? Well, yeah, I suck at drawing fat kids, but that's beside the point!

A long way goes a New Direction

Hopefully I'll stick to my word this time. After talking with Dustin of Nancy Bombs fame about our ideas last night, I gave it a lot of thought and decided I want to restart my Evo comics from scratch, therefore leaving Lost Resort as just a scrapped pilot. That thing has really left me with nowhere to expand from there.

I don't know where to start it anymore, but once i get cracking on it (I aim to start on December but no promises), it should be around 20 pages per issue and will be in black and white. This should make production less aggrivating and the final product will be a lot cheaper to print. Also, I could always color the pages in the future should I want to do a special edition- or hire someone to color the pages for me when I have money to pay them.

I'm still doubting these plans, but I'm also doubting the series as it stands now. I like it, but it's really not going anywhere and every attempt I've made at bridging it to what I want out of the series has been very unmotivating.

Thanks for your support, everybody!

And thank you, Dustin!

Explanations will come later. You can check out my latest fan-artting shinannigans at my DeviantArt Gallery.

Where the heck to begin, man?

So it's obviously noticable that the Evo comic died after two pages. Okay, one if you don't count the intro. Four weeks of the haitus was due to yours truly happily slaving over a miniportfolio and employment application to Rareware and the rest was due to lack of interest and more motivation to work on my other stories as well as picking up on 3D-modelling.

And of course, when the comic began some years back, it was an ameteur college project. Sure, all it's readers are going to wanna see it continue, but I personally don't.

This summer will feature a brand new From-Scratch EvoRelution series.

Or maybe I WILL continue the current comic.

Ugh. I don't know. I tried to but the choices have been plaguing me for several months now.

For the meanwhile, here's some title cards to what was going to be the first three tales of the old comic series.



I really love Painter5's textured watercoloring abilities, but I swear ya, it's totally NOT something for comics. The program's lack of layers is horrible and you can't use the color-picker unless the canvas is dry.

But photoshop coloring is too bland.

Perhaps I should go back to prismacolors...

Two of my webcomics are now functioning on a regular basis again.

EvoRelution (just call it "evo" if you can't pronounce it!) just relaunched right now with a new chapter to the saga which will be updated every TUESDAY.

"Chronicles of Living Amongst the Stupid", an improperly-named comic of The Rarebox, has also continued now out of haitus and will be updated every FRIDAY until completion.


Will there finally be a Highly Experimental comic spanning longer than 2 pages? We'll see!