largento

(loud applause!) Congratulations, guys!

Not holding out. The Adventures of Elliot Wangley was something I worked on while I was laid off back in 2002. When the first one went up, I emailed all of my friends to check it out and by that afternoon I had a job offer! If only that would have happened with The Wannabe Pirates! Suddenly, I was too busy to continue it, so once the buffer ran out, it just fizzled out. If I'd continued it, I'd be almost 10 years into it!

There's some appeal to all of the ideas. I think the "Rear Window" one would provide a very neat (albeit more difficult) transition between shots as you back up and go up and into another window. (It could be night and you can see looped bits in all of the lighted windows.) The "Who-Dunnit" could be "Who Killed Thom?" and be a series of shots of Thom "apparently" being killed in different ways only to have him appear in the end, bandaged on crutches but still alive ...until a gun and hand appear from the camera's POV and shoots and it turns out the viewer is the one who killed Thom. "It was YOU! YOU killed Thom!"

Thanks! I'm thinking it can't hurt. :-)

Thanks, guys! (I think Rodney has fallen in love with the Lizardmin.) :-) Al put the images up on his website along with some nice words.

Very cool! I was taken by surprise, too. Nice one!

Haven't done one of these in a loooong time! This one is a small strip that I really dig. It's a sci-fi strip with all of these lizard people who look exactly alike. (Well, the girl lizard people have curly fins, but they mostly still all look alike.) It's called "Lair of the Lizardmin" and it's by a guy named Al Moore. Because the strip is in black and white and I liked that it made it look like it was an old 1950s TV show, I did this one in black and white. And as always, I did a stereo anaglyph version:

Awesome job, Gene! The speakers/drum/microphone combination entity is a very cool idea!

Terrific job! I remember when that Super Mario Film thread was super active. A shame that it fizzled out.

Just think how many hits I'd get if I put Justin Bieber in the strip!

Hey, wow! The Wannabe Pirates gets a mention in an article on MTV.com!

Thanks, everyone! Rodney, I so wish I'd checked that out. All my attention was focused on not getting Nancy's name wrong... :-)

I don't think they'd mind me sharing the Animation:Master ad I put together for the inside front cover of the Curse of Greyhawk Island:

And the order is placed! The print version should be available some time next month! Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that it comes out great! I've read from some folks that they print a little dark, so I've slightly lightened the art. This is gonna' be a long month of waiting. :-)

Everything looks incredible! I'm going to have to save up my pennies. :-)

Just a note. The PDF versions of the graphic novel are going to be taken down from The Illustrated Section. I haven't sold a single one and now they want to charge me to have them listed on the site. Doesn't make sense for me to do that. Book is almost ready to be uploaded to the printer. Just checking with an old co-worker about the color in the files. Want them to print as well as possible.

It's really not very complicated. I've only used it for NTSC DVDs. DVDs store images at 720x480 pixels. This is neither a 4:3 or a 16:9 aspect ratio. Here's a quick graphic I put together. It's 720x480 pixels. The black bar is 16:9 and the red box is 4:3, as you can see, an adjustment is necessary for both types of video. In order to get your image to appear in the correct aspect ratio (i.e. not squished or stretched), you need to adjust the aspect ratio to account for the pixels. Widescreen has wider pixels (1.21 aspect ratio) and standard has thinner pixels (.91 aspect ratio.) If you are creating something for the web or a Blu-Ray, you don't have to bother with this, because they use square pixels.

Thanks, Homes!

Very impressive, Mark! Your sets have gone from great to fantastic!

Thanks, Nancy/Mark/David! I am very excited about this! To have a printed graphic novel with art created by me is a dream I've had for a looong time! For some reason, the cover was the big hold-up for me, but I think I'm finally satisfied and ready to go! I had to update the first page to add credits (There's a special thanks for your rigging expertise, Mark!) and I managed to find only one typo in the 206 pages of story. There's a few word balloons that need fixing and then all will be ready! I've got the inside front cover free for a full-page color ad (the printer takes the inside back cover.) Does anyone know who I should contact at Hash to see if they'd like to buy it? I can't think of a better company to have the ad space considering all of the art for the book was created in their software!

Anxiously awaiting this one, as always, Gene! Thom never complains about being sent into harm's way ...that may be because he doesn't have a mouth. :-)

Bee-yooo-tee-full, Nancy! It looks like a painting!

Holy moly! This is post #1000! I am very close to finishing everything for the print version of The Curse of Greyhawk Island. I'm going to be doing it print-on-demand, so it will be a bit pricey, but there's just too few readers at this point to justify plopping down $1K+ to do a print run. Here's a mockup of the cover (back cover, spine and front cover.) It's going to be comic book size (6.75" x10.25" and .47" thick.) I'll post again here when copies are available for sale!

Thanks, David and Gene!

Not that it's likely to generate any money, but to answer readers' requests, I've set up a Cafe Press store with Wannabe Pirates and Starbucklers designs for T-shirts, mugs, etc. You can check them out here! I'll admit that if I weren't broke, I might buy a couple of these for myself. :-)