Concept Art!

by on July 16, 2014 at 3:16 pm

Ugh…check that post up there out. Yeesh.

I mean it’s always good to see how far you’ve come but there are so many things wrong with that face on the left that I’m embarrassed. For me it’s the best illustration of right idea wrong wrong execution. This is also just about the only early image of the samurai I have. Because of some bad previous partnerships, I got into the bad habit of viewing everything I draw as inherently disposable. Like it was never going to go anywhere except the trash. This also developed a tendency to immediately conceptualize things in my head, I then move to Photoshop where I can just erase and reiterate until we have exactly what we want. This is a bad mindset to be in especially if you’re a comic artist and people may one day want to buy those original sketches, so I’m trying my very hardest to draw on paper more and to keep character design sketches like this. Case in point, The Merchant.

At the bottom of the post you’re going to see some of the only concept art for The Merchant. Most of it I drew in anticipation of having to “sell” the character to Jimmy who was, until this point, very opposed to any sort of supernatural element to the story. We both were, really. We didn’t want it to become a stereotypical “Samurai fights demons in feudal Japan” story because there are hundreds of those. But this character, his design, and the purpose we’ve determined for him are very supernatural in nature. But, as you’ve seen with how we use color, this kind of content is very purposeful. So don’t expect to see him fight a dragon or anything anytime soon.

Remember to come back next week for part 2 of our Merchant arc and to ask us anything all July!

<3

Tyler

First ever drawing of Merchant

First ever drawing of Merchant

Merchant body rules

Merchant body rules

Merchant mask concepts

Merchant mask concepts

The Merchant (and other tales)

by on July 9, 2014 at 8:54 am

I have been busy, and Tyler has been asking me to write something here for a really long time. I graduated from my university, got married, went to Denmark and the Netherlands for a few weeks, and then came back here to a new apartment. Hectic, mostly awesome.

This dude. This is my favorite example of a creative team. We call him the merchant, for reasons that will be more clear next week, but here’s how he came to be:

Tyler: I drew this thing.

James: I’ll write a story for him.

END

So, this fellow is the merchant, and if you’ve been reading our comic so far, you’re aware that there are some things that are colorful, but it’s a black and white world. What if there was a character that could exist between these worlds? Maybe the better question is what the difference is between the color world and our protagonist’s world? You’ll find out more as the story goes on (the merchant tale is only a two parter) but you should know when we started this comic, I wanted nothing supernatural or magical at all.

I definitely changed my mind.

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Ask Us ANYTHING!

by on June 25, 2014 at 9:00 am

So, this is the last page of the month, the last page of the arc and the last page of the story of our Samurai and his Bunny until August!

But don’t worry! We’ve got some cool content for you for July. We’re introducing a new character, we’re going to have some behind the scenes stuff, and we’re going to show you guys what the first arc looked like before I learned how to draw!

But we also want to engage with you guys. We know we’ve got people who read us pretty frequently and while there’s a good chance they’re our friends and family (Hi Mom!) there’s also a good chance that they’re complete strangers so, we want to open the floor to everybody! Ask. Us. Anything!

If you’ve got questions, we want to answer them! Whether you’re someone who just started reading this week or you know Jimmy and I personally, if you’ve got a question we want to answer it for you. Doesn’t have to do with the comic? I don’t care, I’ll still try to answer it for you. Just because we’re taking a break from our main story next month doesn’t mean I don’t want to be busy drawing and talking to you guys. There’s a bunch of ways you can ask us stuff too!

  • email us at IntheYearoftheRabbit [at] gmail [dot] com — Jimmy and I will both see it and probably both try to answer it at the same time*
  • leave a post on our Facebook wall — You’ve gotta “Like” us first, but it’s cool. We want to be your friend!
  • Tweet us! You can tweet the comic @ITYOTR_Comic or you can tweet me directly @InstantEvil and use the hashtag #ITYOTRAMA — The comic twitter account is managed by me and James and sometimes James’ wife, Kate. so someone will see it.
  • Finally, you can just leave a comment right here on this blog. You’ve gotta sign up with WordPress, but we’ll see it!

The volume of questions that come in will determine how we respond. If there’s a solid turn out we’ll probably hold onto them and post answers on the blog once or twice a week. If we get like…a TON of questions (I’m not really anticipating that, but you never know) we’ll probably be more likely to answer them in a video once a week instead, because why not?

The point of this is that we know you’re out there and we want to talk to you! We want to know what’s on your mind.

I’m really looking forward to this, so let’s see what you’ve got!

<3

Tyler

*If you opt to email us, we super duper promise that we’ll never ever email you unwanted spammy crap. We’ll probably respond to you via email, but that’s the extent of what your email address would be used for. Promise!

 

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Death of the Hat!

by on June 11, 2014 at 12:00 am

Ugh. God I hate that freaking hat. FINALLY! I’m so glad that it’s done! For a lot of reasons.

1) I’m constantly drawing it off model. I mean, I like having sort of a free flowing design for characters. For the most part, no 2 faces are going to look EXACTLY the same, but if I’ve done my job, they’ll feel the same and you’ll still be able to tell who anyone is in any given panel. Despite the fact that I do almost all the work in Photoshop, I still draw every panel freehand. I don’t copy/paste that often unless I’m crunched for time or its 5 am and I’m sleepy. Because of that the hat was never the same shape. It drove me nuts. I know it seems silly because it’s just a triangle with a slightly curved base and a few swoopy lines, but it drove me crazy that it never looked “right”. It was too wide sometimes, too narrow others. How’d it stay on his head? Why didn’t it fall off more? Ugh. I’m glad it’s gone.

2) It was a crutch. I don’t remember off hand how much I’ve written about how this all started but the first pages, that first 8, I had no idea what he looked like. So I ran with the stereotypical, overdone “Hat obstructs their face” trope that’s common for the mysterious hero. I didn’t have to worry about drawing a face because there was hat. As long as I could draw a lower jaw I was fine. In reality I just had absolutely no clue what he was going to look like.Did I want characters to be more realistic/detailed or did I want to go with the more cartoony style that seems to be more common with webcomics (can you guess what I ran with?) And ultimately I had no idea about things like head shape, eyes, eyebrows, hair, build, etc. So instead I just ran with it and eventually we went from this

Broody McNoFace

Broody McNoFace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to this:

Expressions! Personality!

Expressions! Personality!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If for some stupid reason we decided he NEEDED the hat, I would even have drawn it differently and given it visible fastening to his head. How did it stay on his head without a tie? I don’t know! I’m assuming impeccable balance. Mostly I’m just glad that stupid hat is gone. Good riddance.

RIP-hat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In other, less ranty, way cooler news, I’ve got a surprise! I learned yesterday that one can create animations in Photoshop. Sure it’s just a .gif, and this puts me somewhere behind your average reddit or imgur user, but progress is progress and I’m supremely happy with the outcome. I went back through the previous pages and animated a page from a few months back. Partially because this page has always moved in my head and partially because if I animated a page I’m working on now you wouldn’t see it for months and that’s not fair to you guys. I dunno if this means we’ll start putting animated bits into our pages, I don’t see why not if it adds something to the page and isn’t distracting though.

So, in order to keep it a surprise and to not have a constantly looping, full-page sized gif sitting on our homepage until James or I write a new blog, check it out after the cut!

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Showdown!

by on June 4, 2014 at 2:03 pm

I’m really excited for the rest of this month, comic-wise. Our first choreographed fight scene happens this month and I’m really proud of these last few pages of Vultures (if you haven’t been paying attention, that’s what this chapter was called…) Plus we’ve introduced these two thug characters who might be recurring at some time in the future.

But I’m even prouder of what’s coming up next…

As it stands I just started work on the last two pages of an arc that will end in November. It’s weird to think that I’ve actually been able to kind of keep up page production to a point where we STILL have about 6 months of buffer. *Pats self on the back*

There’s a ton of cool stuff coming. Next month we’ve got a little 2 page arc that’ll open up some new possibilities for the comic, I think. Those pages will update on July 9th and July 23rd but for the 3 other weeks in July we’re going to do some behind the scenes stuff including early character designs, the original first chapter of the comic (before I got anal retentive and re-drew everything) and whatever else we can think of.

In the mean time, I hope you like how this month goes!

<3

Tyler

p.s. we’ve fiiiiiiiinally gotten the site up and running on iPads. It’s not perfect, as it’s through a wordpress plugin, but I’m going to start work on a mobile site soon. So while it’s just a bandaid, I’m glad our iPad readers can finally read the comic on their device of choice.