Did somebody say "Drunken Monkey"?
Since the artwork is finished and approved, and since it is Halloween, I'd like to announce my very first published comics work: a backup strip in Furious Fist of the Drunken Monkey #2. On comic racks everywhere in January '05. A couple of preview panels:
Uh thankyuh.
A few friends, family and creepy camera stalkers might remember that, exactly two years ago at Halloween, I managed to pull out an undeserved victory in an art contest with a faithless rendition of the now-famed Drunken Monkey (in fact, second place went to the very astonishing Ryan Ottley, who's become the new Golden Boy of the comics industry in the last year or so, pencilling one of the hottest comics currently running - hoofah!). Two years and several emails with Monkey creator Rich Stahnke later, I'm lending my pen to his script for a piece of the actual comic.
Rich is a really cool cat, by the way, who's managed to forgive my hemming and hawing about art help with the first issue of DM. I bumped into him earlier this year at San Diego Comic-Con and the guy even comped me a copy of the comic. He's hinted around at teaming up on other projects, so who knows?
...
We have an elevator in our condo's building, which Carey and I make terrific use of, being that we live on the top floor. Every so often, I can't help myself, I look down at the little gap between the elevator door and the floor and think, "gee, it would really suck to drop your keys down there."
And yesterday, on the way home, I got The Phone Call.
"Jer, how close are you to home? I just did something really stupid."
Fortunately, Carey was able to wait with our neighbor for me to get home. But, yup, she'd dropped her keys down the elevator shaft. When I arrived, she'd already talked to Linda, the president of our HOA. We need to call to get the Elevator People to get down in the shaft and dig out the keys. Also, we have to pay for this particular service.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $140.
Gah!
...
So last night I was prepping some final changes on the Drunken Monkey artwork. Beg pardon if this gets a little design-technical, but it's important to the story:
I decided early on to do all the comic art in the vector-based realm. I'm not sure I've ever seen a completely vector-based printed comic in my life, so I thought it would be cool to do something that stands out from the crowd. Adobe Illustrator is my weapon of choice for producing the actual art and, as you can imagine, it takes about 3 times longer than drawing it by hand, as producing vectors is a very exact science.
Um, also. Er. My copy of Illustrator is... er... pirated.
Oh, not the original version. That I paid a pretty penny for back in '98. But for subsequent upgrades, I didn't feel I could justify the expense, so I sort of did a little winky-winky, clicky-clicky, downloady-loady so I've been slightly less than legal for the past couple of years.
Anyhow, I went to save the changes and I got an disk-writing error. Weird, so I decided to reboot and try again. After the reboot, I clicked to open the file and... urk. "File corrupt."
To reiterate: I was doing the art in vector. To translate: There was no "hand-drawn original". Everything was in that file.
To clarify: I was f****d.
As I tried frantically to un-corrupt my file, recalling the days and hours that had gone into producing the art, I made a deal with God: "please help me get this file back. I don't have the time to redo it all. If You do me this favor, I mean it, I'll buy a bona-fide copy of Adobe Illustrator."
And, magically, with no rational explanation at all, I was suddenly able to open my file. Everything was there, good as new.
Yow.
Carey knew I was mid-crisis, so she was wisely staying out of my way. I walked out into the living room in a daze. She asked me, tentatively, "how's it going in there...?"
I told her what had happened. She was very happy for me.
"But wait. So now you're going to buy a real upgrade of Adobe Illustrator?"
"Yeah, that was the deal."
"How much does that cost?"
"A lot."
"How much exactly?"
"It's about as expensive as dropping your keys down the elevator shaft."
Uh thankyuh.
A few friends, family and creepy camera stalkers might remember that, exactly two years ago at Halloween, I managed to pull out an undeserved victory in an art contest with a faithless rendition of the now-famed Drunken Monkey (in fact, second place went to the very astonishing Ryan Ottley, who's become the new Golden Boy of the comics industry in the last year or so, pencilling one of the hottest comics currently running - hoofah!). Two years and several emails with Monkey creator Rich Stahnke later, I'm lending my pen to his script for a piece of the actual comic.
Rich is a really cool cat, by the way, who's managed to forgive my hemming and hawing about art help with the first issue of DM. I bumped into him earlier this year at San Diego Comic-Con and the guy even comped me a copy of the comic. He's hinted around at teaming up on other projects, so who knows?
...
We have an elevator in our condo's building, which Carey and I make terrific use of, being that we live on the top floor. Every so often, I can't help myself, I look down at the little gap between the elevator door and the floor and think, "gee, it would really suck to drop your keys down there."
And yesterday, on the way home, I got The Phone Call.
"Jer, how close are you to home? I just did something really stupid."
Fortunately, Carey was able to wait with our neighbor for me to get home. But, yup, she'd dropped her keys down the elevator shaft. When I arrived, she'd already talked to Linda, the president of our HOA. We need to call to get the Elevator People to get down in the shaft and dig out the keys. Also, we have to pay for this particular service.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $140.
Gah!
...
So last night I was prepping some final changes on the Drunken Monkey artwork. Beg pardon if this gets a little design-technical, but it's important to the story:
I decided early on to do all the comic art in the vector-based realm. I'm not sure I've ever seen a completely vector-based printed comic in my life, so I thought it would be cool to do something that stands out from the crowd. Adobe Illustrator is my weapon of choice for producing the actual art and, as you can imagine, it takes about 3 times longer than drawing it by hand, as producing vectors is a very exact science.
Um, also. Er. My copy of Illustrator is... er... pirated.
Oh, not the original version. That I paid a pretty penny for back in '98. But for subsequent upgrades, I didn't feel I could justify the expense, so I sort of did a little winky-winky, clicky-clicky, downloady-loady so I've been slightly less than legal for the past couple of years.
Anyhow, I went to save the changes and I got an disk-writing error. Weird, so I decided to reboot and try again. After the reboot, I clicked to open the file and... urk. "File corrupt."
To reiterate: I was doing the art in vector. To translate: There was no "hand-drawn original". Everything was in that file.
To clarify: I was f****d.
As I tried frantically to un-corrupt my file, recalling the days and hours that had gone into producing the art, I made a deal with God: "please help me get this file back. I don't have the time to redo it all. If You do me this favor, I mean it, I'll buy a bona-fide copy of Adobe Illustrator."
And, magically, with no rational explanation at all, I was suddenly able to open my file. Everything was there, good as new.
Yow.
Carey knew I was mid-crisis, so she was wisely staying out of my way. I walked out into the living room in a daze. She asked me, tentatively, "how's it going in there...?"
I told her what had happened. She was very happy for me.
"But wait. So now you're going to buy a real upgrade of Adobe Illustrator?"
"Yeah, that was the deal."
"How much does that cost?"
"A lot."
"How much exactly?"
"It's about as expensive as dropping your keys down the elevator shaft."
posted by Jeremy Bear at
1:26 PM
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