Making Comics Division
Why do I keep coming back to this character after all these years?? I don’t know. Just when I think we’ve moved on from each other we get back to hanging out, going on adventures, fighting bad guys.
I guess there’s a lesson in here on never giving up on your OC, or nurturing creativity in teens, or maybe dragging something on for way too long.
Hope you got something out of it.
-Jake
P.S. Let me know in the comments about any OCs you made as a kid. Would love to hear your stories!
I got the proofs back from the printer and the book is looking great!
I'll admit that when I delivered the files to the printer I was SO DONE. I didn't want to think about SkyHeart. But now, seeing these pages, leafing through them with my fingers, it's making me want to drop everything and start book 2.
With SkyHeart at the printers I've been thinking about doing a couple smaller comic stories before I start the second chapter of SkyHeart. One idea I had was to pair these two up. What do you think?
My intern did an incredible job updating my website the last few weeks. There's a few pages he made devoted just to these guys:
I really think I should do something with Missile Mouse. I've got two more great graphic novel ideas. I just need a couple of free years to draw them. haha.
I'm wrapping up the loose ends with my SkyHeart project before I send it off to the printers. This week I finished the cover!
I had already designed and illustrated a cover for the book. However, I did it BEFORE I ever drew the book. I created it for the Kickstarter to show people what the finished book might look like. I had just barely figured out the designs for most of my characters, and I hadn't finished the story yet.
After I had finished the book, I revisited the cover and realized the character designs were off, and there were elements on the cover that never ended upr in the book. I felt like the cover could do a better job at reflecting what was in the books pages.
The original cover design was more of a mood piece than anything. It was meant to capture the feeling of what I wanted the book to be, and to try and sell that idea to potential backers. Now that the book was finished I realized I needed to redesign it. I really liked the vibe of the first cover so I pretty much stuck with the same composition and color palette.
Here's a comparison of the two:
I think it definitely gets the designs for Wake and Mal Threck right. And I like what's going on with the tengru better in the background. Yahna's character pose better reflects her attitude in the book. And the ship at the bottom is the right color. There's some color stuff that I couldn't quite repolicate with the second one. Sometimes illustration is just alchemy and I have no idea how I get a certain effect. All in all, I'm pretty happy with the revised cover.
I'm launching a pre-order for the book on May 21. So if you want to get in on this print run be sure to pre-order then.
If you'd like to be notified when that pre-order launches, just click here to sign up for the list.
-Jake
Hello!
Hope you've had a great week.
Last week I took a trip down to Arizona to visited my mother, who isn't feeling very well. We got to catch up, and I took some time to clean up her shed. In it, I found a bunch of old artwork I had done in high school that I haven't seen since I packed up the box back in 2002.
I thought I'd share them with you and talk a little about what I was trying to learn with each piece.
This was one of many attempts to start a comic strip. There's a lot going on here. I was trying on a new style, and tried to learn what I could from the successful comic strips I followed in the 90's. I was figuring out how to do inking, panel structure, and storytelling.
I remember seeing an amazing ink drawing of Predator in a comic book I had. I wanted to ink like that so I came up with my own pose, but tried to copy the inking style. Not content enough to just draw a predator I had to mash it with Star Wars, so I gave him a light saber and some Mandalorian inspired armor.
One of my final projects senior art class was this inked Boba Fett with colored pencils. I felt like I had inking down at this point, but my coloring skills weren't there yet. I didn't know how to use Photoshop yet, otherwise I would've colored this digitally. Basically colored pencils were the best coloring option I had at the time.
Another senior project was a cut out 3D paper assignment. I did Missile Mouse battling a space hydra over a barren moon. This monster was based on a bunch of Bill Watterson aliens. I remember I copied the pose of Missile Mouse from an X-Men comic drawn by Jim Lee. This was me putting a bunch of influences together to try and make something new. Skills that would become very valuable later on in my career.
My friend came up with a character called Jet-Dog and this was my fan art of him. I was big into Appleseed and Superpatriot so I learned a lot about mechanics from those comics.
I don't remember what this was for, but Hellboy had just came out and I was learning how to draw tentacles from those first few issues.
Here's some Star Wars letterhead I made when I was about 20 years old. This was in the late nineties when there wasn't as much Star Wars stuff all over the place. I saw a cool Spider-man letterhead that all these characters on it and I wanted something like that for Star Wars. So I drew my own! I made copies of this and wrote letters to people on them. (Also before email!) I learned a lot about graphic design and how to put a bunch of elements together. This would be soooo much easier with Photoshop now.
And lastly, here's a Batman drawing I did when I was about 5. I was a BIG fan of the Adam West Batman series. I remember drawing this from a batmobile toy I had. What's cool is to see how my 5 year old brain simplified the shapes and only drew what was necessary to get the point across.
It's been fun to go through these, I haven't looked at this art in 16 years!
There's THREE take-aways from all of this:
1) Learning happens from experimentation. I did a lot of experimentation in my early years. I experimented with style, tools, subject matter, techniques, etc. This is how you find out how you make your own work. You take pieces of all of these and find what works for you.
2) Learning also happens from just A LOT of copying. I found pieces that really spoke to me and copied what I could from them to make my own pieces. Copying helps you close the gap between idea and execution.
3) Use each piece you do to focus on one skill. Even though your piece might be pushing you abilities in a bunch of different skill sets, have the main thrust of the piece be about learning one particular skill.
Alright, that's it for this blogpost. Thanks for reading!
-Jake
If you like the kind of stuff I talk about here showing up in your inbox, maybe join my mailing list?
Right on! Thanks for subscribing. Now check your email to confirm your subscription. See you, Jake
Hello! In keeping with the spirit of this blog as a place to post more longer form content and stuff I'm thinking about, I thought I'd also share some production updates for whatever it is I'm working on. In this case it's my all-ages graphic novel SkyHeart.
Right now I'm neck deep in coloring SkyHeart.
I only have 36 pages left to finish coloring out of 126! Wanted to share a few of my favorite pages with you:
Inside Mal Threck's skyship.
The back alley ways of Bridgeport are the perfect place for a stick fight.
Wake's mom has had to take on extra work since he went off to war.
Mal Threck rides to find the Star Seed!
I've also updated the SkyHeart webpage with a ton of info, PLUS a preview of the first 10 pages of the book. So head over there to check it out.
I had to pause production while I went to Emerald City Comic Con. This week and next has me tied up with accounting, taxes, and a bunch of loose ends on various projects. I'm hoping to get back to coloring by the end of the month.
Lastly, a huge shout out to Ryan Nimtz, Rachel Everett, Cam Kendell, Dado, and Tanner Garlick for all their help in assisting me on this book so far. These guys are incredible to work with!
-Jake
Receive SkyHeart updates in your Inbox:
Right on! Thanks for subscribing. Now check your email to confirm your subscription. See you, Jake
As I get close to wrapping up this first volume of SkyHeart I thought I'd share the development history for this project.
It all started here:
My idea Journal, started in 2001
I remember having tons of story ideas and I'd keep forgetting them, so I decided to write them down as they came to mind so I'd never lose them.
One of the first entries was for an idea about a planet that had been hollowed out and was now crumbling. I had no idea what to call it so "hollow planet" seemed to work for the time being.
These first few entries were just about world building, not thinking of characters or stories just yet. I wanted to figure out what the parameters of this world was before delving into who my characters were.
First entry for SkyHeart, then titled "Hollow Planet"
Not long after my initial journal entries I started sketching out ideas for the characters and the world they lived in.
I believe this is the first drawing I ever did of Airth. It's not dated, but it was in a stack of drawings from 2001 so it's from that year.
I knew I wanted it to be about animals in flying machines. But what animals? What kind of flying machines? Here was one of my very first explorations:
One of my first drawings for what would become SkyHeart. A group of crazy animals flying around in a gunship.
As I thought more about the idea and the world I wondered what would a typical day be like for an explorer of this planet. A scene came to mind, not of perilous adventure, but of the mundane act of refueling and stocking up on supplies:
It's been a lot of fun looking at these OLD drawings now. I wish the Jake that drew these 14 years ago could see what became of this little idea.
The idea simmered in my imagination for a year or so, until I was asked to be a part of an anthology book called FLIGHT. I thought this would be a great time to dig in to this world I was building, figure out some characters, and start crafting a story.
One of the first things I drew was this:
Sometimes an idea just hits you and you go with it. In this case it was a boy riding a flying whale with a winged pig at his side. The idea grew on me and a developed the character designs even more:
As I was drawing these characters I started asking myself questions: What are their personalities? Why are they together? What were they riding in the sky for?
The answers started coming and soon I had a story. It was epic, and had many moving parts. I had no idea how I would ever draw this story, and besides it wouldn't fit in an anthology where I only had 14 pages I was allowed to fill. So I wrote a little vignette about a day in the life of these guys. It was called Hugo Earhart and here's a couple pages from that:
I loved putting together this little story. It was only 14 pages, but it alluded to the much bigger world I was developing. I started fleshing out the world even more.
Here's some more sketches I found:
And here's a few development designs for a side character in the story; a sky-elf. She would evolve to become a main character in SkyHeart, but I had no idea she would become that when I was designing her for this story.
After writing more ideas about the story I decided I wasn't up to the task. It would be too hard for me to draw it and write it. I just wasn't good enough.
I decided to shelve it for a few years as I focused on my Missile Mouse Graphic novels.
A couple years after MM, I launched a Kickstarter for a book that would collect all my short comic stories that I had drawn. It was called The Antler Boy and Other Stories. One of the stretch goals was for me to add a new Hugo Earhart story to it.
Here's a few pages from that story:
Crafting this story rekindled my love for this world and I started to think about it a lot. I thought about how I had grown as a storyteller and as an artist. I thought about what I could do with this story and where I could take it. But I still didn't feel like I was ready to tackle an entire graphic novel.
So I did what I do best: world build!
I decided to mix some more fantasy elements into it and began figuring out the mythology of this universe. Here's some concept sketches of the new direction:
It was this mix of fantasy and diesel-punk tech that made me feel like I was really onto something.
But then again, the world and story overwhelmed me and I decided to shelve it again when I thought I'd be ready.
For three years distracted myself with Lord Balderben, SkullChaser, Rocket Raccoon, and Little Bot. In those years I felt like I got much better at my craft, but I knew I would need a real kick in the pants to motivate me to overcome my fears and doubts with drawing SkyHeart.
That kick in the pants came in the form of Kickstarter. That Kickstarter got me to finally put me in a place where I HAD to do SkyHeart whether I was ready or not. I talk all about how doing the book helped me overcome fear and doubt here.
This post is already way too long, so I'll stop. The SkyHeart Kickstarter had it's own development that I'll share in another post. Like, how Hugo went from being a boy to becoming a fox-like character named Wake.
Thanks for reading this far. See you next week.
-Jake
Sign up here to be notified when the pre-orders launch so you can get a copy. You'll also get production updates loaded with art, and info on where the story is going in the future.
Receive SkyHeart updates in your Inbox:
Right on! Thanks for subscribing. Now check your email to confirm your subscription. See you, Jake
In that time I've had a lot of serious doubts about the story, my strengths as a character artist, and my ability to write good dialogue. It's been nearly debilitating at times. I've read so many amazing graphic novels that I sometimes wonder, "who am I to contribute anything to this medium?" A few times I've had to pause production, take a step back, and think about it before cautiously resuming work on it again.
For years my main hang-up with drawing SkyHeart was that I wasn't a good enough artist to draw human characters, I wasn't good enough to tell the story, and my dialogue writing was stiff. So I kept putting off this dream project until I got better at my craft. I think that's a fair approach: get good at something by practicing on a smaller scale before taking on something BIG.
But when is a creator ever good enough? When you compare yourself to your influences and idols, you always come up short. At some point you just have to start your big project, realizing that if your idol waited until they felt like they were good enough, they would've never started either.
But starting a project and finishing a project are two different things. Just because I made the resolve to start didn't mean I had overcome my self doubt.
Self doubt can wreak havoc on a project. Concerns about one's abilities are legitimate, but it shouldn't stop a project from happening. What's amazing to me is that as I flip through my SkyHeart pages I see a rad story unfolding, I see an artist gaining confidence in his character drawings, and I see dialogue flowing more naturally.
All of that came about because I pushed through and kept working on it. I'm a firm believer that you learn more from doing X than from studying X. However, when you're lost in the weeds of a project it's hard to remember that. I clearly forgot about that during the duration of this graphic novel.
I'm posting this here to remind me that regardless of how I feel about the quality of the my work on a project, halting it until I get better at the craft is not the answer.
Roman Emperor and part-time philosopher, Marcus Aurelius wrote on this. He said:
In my case, my abilities were my impediment to finishing SkyHeart. They were a roadblock standing in my way of finishing this book. Ironically, finishing the book was the only way to remove that roadblock.
In short, getting better at the craft happens only by working on and finishing things.
That's the outlook that sees me through the next 126 pages.
-Jake
