oh! and….

Chris will work LIVE on some of the final colors at this awesome event on January 22nd. We’ll have him hooked up to a projector so the whole crowd can watch!

reposted from ArtLoveMagic’s blog:
Comicpalooza – a live art benefit

ArtLoveMagic has some good roots in comics. Founders Michael Lagocki and David Rodriguez have both been fans and active participants in the Dallas comics scene for many years prior to artlove. So it’s with no small amount of enthusiasm that we approach this new event on January 22nd that will raise money for veterans of the comics industry facing serious needs.

Samax Amen – creating live

Comicpalooza, a very cool Houston based show, reached out to artlovemagic because of our ties to the local art community and asked us to be involved. They are coordinating a multi-city live art event to raise funds for the Hero Initiative, an organization that protects veteran comic book creators in medical or financial crisis. This is a wide spread problem among golden and silver age comic creators who worked before fair contracts and royalties came to comics.

I know… I know…

I feel like Han Solo, “It’s not my fault!”

Although some of it probably is. Amelia has slowed down in the final stages. Careers, family, holidays, life, and death have all called. It’s very close to completion and yes, we will see it in 2011.

New art and info soon.
-ML

a milestone for the project- a big one

Josh Boulet finished the line art last night. Every drawing of the comic (except one that Mike will be drawing in Adobe Illustrator) is now complete. That’s LINEWORK- meaning each drawing has been penciled and inked. There’s still plenty to do in terms of coloring it, lettering it, and putting it all into a production document, etc etc.

But it’s a huge milestone and the first part of the project that can be labeled “complete” since the completion of the script.

Of course Chris still has about half a book to color while we wait for him:

all-nighter

It’s almost 1am as I type this. The Amelia team got together tonight for an all-nighter-ish work session. It was time to gather and knock out a bunch of art.

Progress is good. Josh is only a handful of panels away from being finished with all the drawings for the entire book, which I think is scaring Chris.

Chris’ coloring takes time, but we really don’t want to rush that part. The colors have been getting a real reaction from everyone we’ve showed them to. There’s a lot of detail that goes into them, especially when he’s working on those fractal patters in the aliens.

Fortunately we’ve taken some time tonight to just enjoy hanging out together too. Hallie and Deb made dinner and then followed it up with brownies and ice-cream!

Plus we found time to watch Eternal Sunshine, and even get a little hackey sack in.

You can’t rush quality.

“This is called Composition for Lonely Aliens Who’ve Been Traveling in Space So Long They Forgot How Beautiful Music Is“. – Amelia Chang

More soon.

where did it all come from?

Today the Amelia team is back together after a short break. Over the last few weeks, Josh went to Canada to do a show, Mike went to Florida to visit the fam, and Chris colored a bunch of comics for the big M.

But now we’re back. While they (Josh and Chris) are in the other room drawing and coloring, I thought I’d (Mike) take a moment to blog about Amelia’s origins.

And away we go…

One of the first sketches of Amelia by Josh. Her look has evolved a lot since then.

Amelia was written in a burst. The inspiration, best I can recall, came while lying in bed. The title “Amelia Chang Alters the Course of the Universe” came all at once, and I knew it was about a little girl playing piano.

It wrote pretty fast (over a few days). The story ended up typing out at 50 panels exactly, which for some reason I found amusing. So much so that later, during the editing process, I would struggle for hours trying to keep it at exactly 50 panels.  This is known as writer’s insanity.

Originally, I think I was planning on drawing it myself, but pretty quickly Joshua Boulet became a serious candidate because of how busy I am, and how easy he is to work with. If I drew it, it would languish for a year and probably die halfway through getting drawn, but with Josh, it had a much better chance of getting done in a reasonable time frame. And it’s always more fun to work with your friends anyway. Chris came on to the project later, as explained in this post.

Josh read the script on the way to Austin on night and loved it. The two of us are always down to work together anyway, but he remembers really wanting to draw this script on first read. The story also got great feedback from the handful of people I passed it around to. Deborah Driscoll, who read it first, was particularly helpful with feedback.

These sketches are from our first few meetings, and you can see that the character design was still in it’s infancy. At this point we sketched a bit and talked about Amelia once in a while, but weren’t really committed to doing anything about it yet.

It was actually a few months later before we got serious. For some reason on May 14th 2010, we got together and started working on it for real. That’s the day I started this blog.

My hope was that the blog would lend some stability, because it would document our progress and be a constant reminder that we were moving forward. An added benefit would be that we could use it to take people along with us on the journey and the book would begin to build an audience before it was even completed.  I think it’s worked out pretty good.

If you want to know what happened after that first day, just got down to the first post on this blog and read it in chronological order thereafter. You can walk every step of the way with us. I think I’ve posted pretty much everyday that we’ve worked together since then.

Michael Lagocki - photo by Dee Hill

That’s the story. It’s still going. As I type this, the book is nearing completion on the drawings, and Chris is only about 10-15 panels behind that on the coloring. The progress has been amazing.

And the feedback from people who’ve read this blog has been WONDERFUL. You don’t know how helpful it is to know you’re not creating in a vacuum.

We’ll keep you updated on progress. The plan is still to complete and release the book in time for you to buy it for someone as a holiday present.

Stay tuned!

-ML

strong progress

As promised, when we showed up to Chris’, a number of newly colored images awaited us.

His work continues to inspire. I love the overall tone in the above image. Everything just works together in a intelligent mixture of grays and blues. That glass effect on the Dad in the window in the background, as well as the reflective shadows under everyone’s feet are more examples of what Chris is bringing to the project.

Boulet has done gorgeous drawings and Chris has taken them a step farther. All this attention to detail is what’s giving us that “High-Disney” look we we’re shooting for.

Here’s a good shot of the work he’s doing on the Alien Leader. Check out those organic images in her cheek flaps. Chris used fractal images to give them a transparent “jellyfish-ish” look. Wild.

There are more than a half dozen new images of this quality. (Sorry, can’t show you all of them…yet) Further proof of how smoothly this is all going was in how few changes Josh and I requested in the new colors. Almost everything was spot on in the first go.

With this batch of color, we now have several pages of the book complete (meaning art- colors- letters). It’s definitely starting to become a finished book now and not just a collection of drawings.

There’s still a lot to do even when all the production is done, but it was amazing to put 5 or 6 finished pages together and look at how they all worked in unison.

It’s on.

-ML

game on

The plan continues smoothly. Josh comes over a few days a week to crash and work on Amelia. The best work gets done when we’re all together.

So now I’m (Mike) working on lettering, and on this blog, and Josh is touching up a few pencils here and there. I made a list of all the things I need to art assist with (like some illustrator inking, making new music notes, and some Photoshop editing). We looked over the next few panels and what we need to do, and again it was a benefit that we get together a lot because there were changes I suggested to a few panels he was just starting to pencil. One panel felt kind of somber when I was hoping it would feel more comedic. We caught it early enough in the process that Josh was able to keep like 90% of what he had on the paper and still make the change.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading to Chris’, where we’ll see several new images that he colored this week, so we’re jazzed about that. Always a buzz when you know you’re gonna get to see these panels we’ve been looking at forever in a new way.

We’re well over the halfway point on the production now. Even the lettering is pretty far along. In the coming weeks, we’re going to have to start getting a bit more intentional about the publishing plan. Both Josh and I are out of town a bit in July, (plus I’m working on girlShow), so we’ll have a few weeks off and then hit it hard in August. I love how fast this is all moving.

Fortunately, Osiris the cat approves all progress. Without his support, we’d still be nobodies. Thank you.

-ML

like a symphony of light

oh man… our girl looks so beautiful in full color!

The trio (Mike, Josh, and Chris) got back together tonight to eat spring rolls, listen to They Might Be Giants, and make a comic book.

Chris’ colors on this project continue to wow us. Just look at the image above, the glow effects coming out of the piano, or those bands of music notes flying from the stage.

It’s fun to watch him work too. He’s faster with his photoshop lasso than a rodeo cowboy is with a real one. Both Josh and I are picking up tips from him.

Here’s a great example of how much his work is affecting the book. The image to the right was colored by Mike, as an early color test, just to see what the art might start to look like as we dropped in color. Chris used this as a starting point and took the colors here:

Chris' wife Hallie watches him color

…Yeah, that’s what I said too.

Anyway, it’s really coming together. Again, because our book is a short story, this work we’re putting in has brought us to place where we can see the end coming on the horizon. It feels great to be making such progress.

Thanks to everyone who’s been checking out this blog and thanks to those of you who have left comments as well. Those act as fuel for us. Pretty much everytime someone says something nice, it’s passed between us and helps build all our enthusiasm.

It’s working! Look for Amelia Chang Alters the Course of the Universe soon.

-ML

a whole lotta Amelia

To be honest, I (Mike) was kind of out of it today. About the most I accomplished was watching Total Recall. Josh however was rocking and rolling on the pages. At this point he has over 40 panel complete. Given that our short story is only 50 panels, that means the line art is getting close to complete.

We still have the coloring left, some lettering, and I suspect we’ll find one or two changes we want to make when it’s all put together. After that it’s on to printing and publishing and getting the buzz going.

the first printed copy of Amelia Chang

well… kind of. We went to the copy store and made a mockup of the first 14 pages. It has each of Josh’s drawings, laid out with all the lettering and panel borders, on pages printed just like the book will be, front and back.

My feeling is it was time to start holding it and feeling a bit of what the reader might. I wanted to read it in sequence and see the multiple images face each other on each page.

This project has real momentum. Wonderful feeling. This mockup has already started to help us fill in the gaps. A few panels will be rearranged now that we’ve seen the flow.

inspiration

The inspirations for Amelia include a mix of Looney Toons, Star Wars, Close Encounters, and the wonderful Lilo and Stitch. Josh had never seen it until today.

It’s a great movie. Very funny and creative, the animated Disney flick for the weird kids. Tell me another Disney main character besides Lilo that punches girls, does voodoo, fights all the time, and rocks Elvis.

One of the things I love about the movie is that they really nailed Lilo’s age in her design and movements. I want this to come across with Amelia as well. In most of the story Amelia is four, not 2, not 7. Keeping that age correct in her body and “acting” is key.

Mike: “Josh, what’s your review of Lilo & Stitich?”

Josh: “Me? I liked it. I really liked it.”

Diversion

We’ve been hanging together for a few days, Josh crashing on my couch, but yesterday we took a day off from working to just chill. The day before was a great, intense workday (shown in photos from the last post). So we took a day off.

We’ve been checking out some flicks, including Apocalypto (awesome), Wolverine (eh), and some Hulk VS. cartoons (pretty intense). We’ve been reading a bunch of comics.

I spend some time here and there on artlovemagic (the art collective myself and two friends started in 2007). And Josh is getting some work done on his Green Reffer strip for NUG magazine.

I’m glad we took a day off yesterday. Felt good to just hang. We’re about to head to the comic shop now, and plan on getting back to work on Amelia when we return.

-ML

Josh draws an upcomming episode of the Green Reefer

Battle

a progression of color

I asked our colorist, Chris Garcia, to show us what coloring an image looks like in several stages. This will be panel 3 in our story:

Chris starts with the image above. Josh’s line art has been scanned and cleaned up. Chris gets an email with a perfectly black and white image.

And we begin. Here, Chris has blocked out the figures with colors and dropped the first few effects down (like the shine on the piano).

Chris uses Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom tablet to color. It’s more than just choosing what colors go where. He has to be an artist too. Most of the decisions on shading, like the tones on the baby’s skin and clothes, are “drawn” in by Chris. This gives the figures depth. I’ve watched him do this by hand. He’s very fast and intuitive on where those shaded areas should be.

So Chris went to town with the background above. We’ve tried to find a few places where Chris could get some drawing in too, like creating a background. We had no idea he was going to do it this cool.

I asked him to make it look like a wealthy home. That definitely comes across with the beautiful work in the drapes and on that shiny floor.

We flipped out when we saw it.

And here’s the finished panel with music effects and colored line work. Music effects will be a BIG part of this story. Compare this image to the version directly above it and notice how the lines that make up the two characters’ bodies have been changed. What used to be the black of Josh’s ink is now a smoother, skin-tone color. This gives our project an animation look, something I’m very much in favor of. I want the book to feel like your reading the greatest animation short you ever saw.

More colors posted soon. Keep on checking back.

-ML

“this face sucks”

Whenever we first get together, Josh spends about the first hour doing drawings he hates, complaining about his inability to draw Amelia right, and suspecting he has in fact lost ALL his artistic talent since we last got together.

Once he gets rolling, he of course starts  knocking out great drawings at a really fast clip.

new lineart from Josh

Here’s some new images from Josh on the project. You can click on any of these images to see them larger.

Our huge Alien Leader leans in to talk to Amelia. I asked Josh over and over to keep Amelia looking pretty stoic. Even though she’s only 4, she rarely displays a lot of emotion. I think he nailed her face perfectly here.

early color test on the Leader

I love his design on the Alien Leader. When writing the script, I always saw her as tall and thin, inspired from a few sources, including Taun We, a character from the movie Attack of the Clones. Taun We happens to be played by actress Rena Owen – a dear friend of mine, so it’s a bit of a tip of the hat to her.

Josh ran with the inspiration and made this design his own with those huge butterfly flaps that hang down from the her cheeks. They give our Alien a very distinct look, and will offer us an opportunity to do some cool visual stuff later. For instance, when Amelia actually starts playing her music for the Aliens, those flaps will vibrate, raise and glow with all kinds of cool colors – (see color test to the left).

The above drawing is one of my favorite panels so far. Great use of the piano itself to crop and frame the image. I think I can safely say that by the time this project’s over, Josh will have a good handle on drawing pianos.

That’s it for now. Keep checking back. I’ll keep posting as new work rolls in.

-ML

the trio gathers

For the first time tonight Mike, Josh, and Chris all got together to work in the same room on Amelia.

Chris worked on colors for the early panels (amazing!!), while Josh and Mike figured out the breakdowns for the last half of the story. We listened to tunes by Radiohead and Playdough.

Now almost all 50 panels are laid out, we’re about halfway through the drawings, and we have a good start on the colors and letters. Good stuff.

first colors from Chris… and they look gorgeous

version 1 - see v2 below

It didn’t take Chris long to start turning colors around. Earlier this afternoon he sent us a first proof of panel one. That version needed just a bit of tweaking, a little less harsh on the lighting, a little less separation between foreground and background.

An hour later Chris sent us version 2 and we’re both bouncing off the walls. Much more natural, a warm loving moment. Everyone’s more defined, and everything that was great about version 1 is still there. Check out the soft watercolor effects on the back walls and the warm lighting over Mom.
*you can click on the panel below to see it much larger

To compliment that softness in Chris’ colors we’re thinking about using color-toned narration boxes and line borders (rather than the standard black and white).

Loving it. Everything on this project is going in the right direction.

big news for us

Amelia took a quantum leap forward tonight with the addition of a new member to our team.

Chris Garcia is a professional colorist who has worked for several big league comic book companies including Wildstorm, CrossGen, and Marvel- where he currently colors books like Marvel Adventures and XMen Forever.

We first met Chris at an artlovemagic event, about a month ago. A fast friendship led to talking about collaboration, which led to talking about Amelia.

Tonight Chris officially joined the team and took the first handful of files to begin working on Amelia. This will help us move faster, get gorgeous colors, and it adds another professional to our team with industry experience.

Things are looking great!

a helping hand

Because I’ve drawn a lot of comics myself, there’s a lot I can do to assist Josh in getting the linework done.

- like sketching in the elaborate buildings that will be in a long, overhead shot (one that Josh wasn’t looking forward to drawing).

I see my role right now to help Josh barrel through the pages, because the best work is coming when he’s moving fast. Being in the same room to answer questions, bounce ideas off, and help with gathering references or doing some art assists really cuts down on any wasted time. I hang out. Talk comics with him, play music.  I blog, I work on the lettering, we talk about the upcoming pages. Whatever’s useful.

When it moves fast and pages are turning, the whole thing’s just energizing.

-ML

Mike sketches while Don reads Umbrella Academy in the background.

the first note

Amelia begins to play piano for her visitors.

“This is called Composition for Lonely Aliens Who Have Been Traveling in Space So Long They Forgot How Beautiful Music Is“
-Amelia Chang

back to work

Josh came over tonight to get a few more days in on the project. We started by looking at what we had and what the script called for next, after Amelia first encounters the aliens.

Josh jumped into penciling the next two panels in sequence. One of which was giving us a little grief and had to be drawn quite a few times.

our first coverage

Our good buddy Samax Randolph authors a fantastic blog: ghettomanga.com, where Amelia got her first bit of coverage this week.

You can read his post about our comic here.

inking in Illustrator

Josh is doing most of the inking with a brush, but for things as technical and precise as the alien ship, I suggested we take a shot at inking them in Adobe Illustrator. It will allow us to get “perfect” lines, curves, and angles; something that’s very hard to do with an actual brush.

I “inked” this image of the Alien ship tonight using my Mac and a Wacom tablet.

-ML

dogs. ink. music. comics. basketball. computer. and lots of pages.

…that’s the recipe for getting work done.

more coloring tests

Again, this is just a test. Might not look much like the finished colors at all.

But it will be a good guide.

putting the pieces together

This mockup put together by Mike tonight shows what pages might start to look like when everything comes together. THIS IS A VERY EARLY VERSION- The images were photographed on my phone (not scanned) and then I put a quick color scheme down in photoshop.

When I do the actual colors, I’ll have this to look at to decide what choices I want to make.

The letters, which were done in Adobe Illustrator, is the actual lettering that we’ll keep all the way through to the end.

-Mike

from inking comics to inking skin

Josh took a break from inking Amelia to finish a tattoo for our friend Josh Dryk. The brush goes down, the tattoo gun gets picked up, paper is exchanged for skin, and the inking goes on.

back to it

Josh came over again to get another day or so in working on Amelia.

I’m becomming more and more convinced that this really is the best way to work- together in the same room even if we’re working on different aspects of the project. It’s fun, keeps everyone on task, and little questions that come up can be answered easily.

It seems like common sense, but it’s not how most comics are made.

Moving forward

Josh came to Mike’s place and crashed a few days. In between doing art events, we found plenty of time to work on Amelia.

Now we’re about 1/4th of the way through the pencil work, and about half of those panels are inked as well. It’s good progress. If we stay on it and get together like this a few more times, we’ll be looking at the end in a few months.

Here’s some pencils and inks from the new batch of the work.

How late were you up, bro?

This is what happens when you stay up drawing all night… progress.

Musical Notes

Music is a big part of this story and we want that represented visually too. While Boulet worked on more pencils, I began the process of creating some music notes in illustrator that I’d be able to use over and over again.

Eventually, these will be incorporated into sweeping visual “sound waves” that are formed out of light and will weave throughout the environments Amelia plays piano in.

…at least that’s the idea.

-ML

Pencils for panels 3 and 6

Boulet’s blue pencils for panel 3 (where Amelia first begins to love music) and panel 6 (where the world’s leaders of military, science, and philosophy try to recruit Amelia).

New concept sketches – 5/17

We got together again on 5/17 to work more on the project and ensure last week’s momentum continues. First we tackled designing the alien ship and Amelia’s parents (all prevalent in the next series of panels).

The alien ship is coming along like a big egg design. Its engine will be on the outside of the ship, floating alonside, hovering in beams of energy.

These drawings are all from Josh’s sketchbook.

A great workday

We got a lot done today (including pretty much everything on this blog except the script) and vowed to be back at it soon.

First Drawings

Josh knocked out the first two pages of drawing pretty quickly. These still have some unfinished areas that will need to be completed before the images are scanned, cleaned, colored, and lettered.

But this level is enough for us to move on. As the entire story is only 50 panels, we may be able to breakdown all of it into drawings of this level… then look at it as an entire “rough cut” book and decide if we want to make subtle changes.

First Color Test: Alien Leader

While Josh drew the first pages Michael did a color test on his Josh’s concept sketch of the Alien Leader.

Concept Sketches

Michael and Josh met May 13th and 14th of 2010 to begin formal the actual drawing of the project (we’ve met 2 or 3 times before to discuss and do some breakdowns).

Josh worked through some concept sketches, doing particularly good work designing the Alien Leader.

The Script

The script Amelia Chang Alters the Course of the Universe was written by Michael Anthony Lagocki in 2009.

Here’s a Sample:

Panel 1

Baby (Amelia)- is just born. Wrapped in a hospital blanket and still covered in birth fluid, she is held lovingly in her Mother’s arms. Behind we can see her Father, wearing a suit, and holding a stuffed rabbit for her (a nod to test subject A).

Narrator:
Amelia was a genius at birth. She was born to a loving family.

Panel 2

1 year old Amelia sits on the floor in a room for her learning. She holds her stuffed rabbit. In fact it is with her for every scene from now until the end of the book. Her Father watches as multiple teachers attend to her. There are blackboards and learning instruments about.

Narrator:
Unlike many gifted children, Amelia’s every developmental need was provided for. Her Father’s wealth insured that she would have the total attention of the best instructors for any endeavor she chose.

Panel 3

Toddler Amelia sits at a piano next to her mother who plays. Mom’s eyes are closed and her head sways as she strikes the keys (Mom is a concert pianist), Notes fly into the air from her playing. Amelia holds her rabbit and watches. She is almost 2.

Narrator:

But it was her Mother’s love for piano which first captured her impressive mind.

Panel 4

Amelia (now almost 4 years old, the age she will stay for the rest of the story) sits at a piano in a concert hall. Thousands watch. Her piano alone on a large wood stage, the audience dampened in dark red lights. A swirl of complicated music notes fill the air (these are much more in number and complexity to those in the previous panel). Her rabbit sits on the piano with her.

Narrator:
It was a little over a year before she was playing to thousands at Albert Hall. Bored with memorizing even the best works of the great composers, she would play only originals, which she composed live as she performed.

Panel 5

Zoom in on her parents in the audience, enraptured by the music, tears streaming down their faces. If we can see any of the audience members around them, they are in tears as well.

Narrator:
Amelia’s music, said critics, touched your very soul and stirred emotions that no form of art were ever able to touch. Audiences wept regularly as she played.

Panel 6

The Chang’s living room- filled with scientists, and suits, and military representatives all there to see Amelia. Mr. Chang talks to one, while Mrs. Chang nervously tries to serve everyone tea. Amelia, oblivious, sits in the middle of the floor and holds her rabbit.

Narrators:
The heads of departments from the best facilities and universities all over the world came to try and enlist Amelia into their particular professions and institutions. Each knew the great strides that would be made in their respective fields should they succeed.

Panel 7

Space- A giant spaceship descends toward earth. Note- It’s important not to make this look generic. Those inside are the most advanced species in the galaxy, so we need some inspiration for their ship design. They would fly on technologies we wouldn’t understand. Organics and metal harmonized together into the universe’s most advanced vehicle.

Narrator:
So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when those from beyond this world came to enlist her as well.

The Project

The goal is to create an outstanding short story in comic form. It will be released to the world in full color both digitally and in print of the finest quality.