Bonus sketch of one of my protagonists!

I'm working on creating my protagonists, which is both tougher and more fun than I expected.  I'm discovering that creating how a new race looks is a lot more complicated than I expected.  I'll get a post on that posted in the next couple of days.

Until then, I've been practicing, here's a bunch of guys with beards!

Inspired by pictures from this awesome Blog.

Trying to write, draw and publish your own comic book turns out to be a rather complicated little project (Who would'a thought?!)... so each time I try to take a step, I discover that there were 3 steps before it that I didn't know I needed to take... 

And I'm learning to draw, which isn't easy either.

Anyway, I do have some stuff to document my process that I think is kind of interesting, so here goes:

Here's my first attempt at drawing my protagonist.  

My comic is set in a very-alternate universe America, and for the first story arc the main character is wandering around the Old West, so she's kind of in cowboy mode.

There are some thing I like about it... the basic costuming is coming along, and I like the overall build, but I'm not nearly satisfied with my drawing skills.  I'm sure I'll look back at this soon and laugh at it.

And here's a second picture of the protagonist... I like this one a little better, but I still hate it. 

And here's the first page of the comic... that I decide that I hate and have completely thrown out and rewritten.. there's no real spoilers here, and again I hate the art.

I actually like this, well, at least it highly amuses me, and I'm not completely offended by the art... My little comic is set in the 1850s and I plan on it rolling into the American Civil War (Cassandra up there is supposed to be wearing a civil war admiral's jacket), so I wanted to study up on the uniforms and styles of the period... so courtesy of google images and my pencil, here's a random assortment of civil war generals. 

Some things I've learned about writing and drawing a comic book.

1)  It takes about 10,000 times more research than I expected.  Everything from "What did civil war generals wear?" to "Er, what the hell does a 9 year old girl look like anyway?"

2)  Photo references are your friend, and enemy.  I have about a zillion of these too, now.  They're super handy in figuring out what things look like from different perspectives, but the danger is that it can become reproduction rather than a fresh creation.  Also, comic book art needs to be a little exaggerated to look and feel alive, so if you draw strictly from reference things look stiff and boring.

 

I've always wanted to write and draw a comic book.

It's the one thing that's remained consistent as long as I can remember. I went through the astronaut, policeman, fireman, and even the preacher stages, and passed through them... and in "real life" I've bounced around through a number of different "real jobs," but all through it I've been doodling away, dipping occasionally into the comic book world, but always walking away, because drawing comic books for Marvel or DC isn't realistic...

But now it's 2011, we have the interwebs, self-publishing is all the rage, and thanks to our wonderful economy, I've got some free time, so what better to do between frustrating job searches than pursue a life long dream?

And to keep myself moving, and to amuse myself along the way, I'm going to blog about the process... because, hey, who isn't blogging about everything these days?  And who knows, some one out there may find it amusing... and if nothing else, when I'm old and grey, I'll be to read this and amuse myself.

Oh, and by the way, I can barely draw or write, so this should be entertaining.