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The Wannabe Pirates


largento

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  • 3 weeks later...

Wow, where did the time go?

 

The Wannabe Pirates strips start going up on the site today! I've just started to get back into doing them again. It's been hard to get started back up. I was in such a zone before, but I'm sure I'll get back there.

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Thanks, Andy! I agree about the background. I had something else in mind, but couldn't get it to work.

 

It's a wait and see on whether or not this brings in more readers. It's only been two days and I did some advertising yesterday. Our numbers did improve when we went to five days a week. Now it's going to be six days a week. Hopefully, it'll pick up.

 

I'm going to do a small convention on the 14th and hope to get the word out to a bunch of people there.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Whew! I just spent the whole day at the Dallas Webcomics Expo.

 

It was a lot of fun and I was able to give out a bunch of the postcards I'd had printed. Mentioned Animation:Master to all who asked the question of what program I was using and a few of them had heard of it! (I think that's partly due to Hash's presence at comic conventions!)

 

It was great fun seeing how much the kids liked it. There weren't many there, but it was gratifying to see!

 

One of the other webcomickers told me that she prints out several of the Wannabe Pirates strips and puts them in her kids lunchboxes! Hearing that was worth the whole effort of attending!

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Thanks, Ken! Hopefully I'll get some new eyes on the website.

 

I'm just finding this out today, but I had a sort of long conversation with an older gentleman who asked me a lot of questions about the 3D and if it would look good in black and white and how I was making money off of it (I told him that I wasn't) :-)

 

Long story short, it's only today that I'm finding out that was Bill Hinds who draws the syndicated strip Tank McNamara!

 

I feel like a complete moron for not knowing who he was... I did ask him about his comics, but he didn't mention the one I would recognize.

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Thanks, guys!

 

Ken, there weren't any other webcomics at the show using 3D that I saw. I've encountered a few just looking around, but the majority of them seem to be "poser" deals that I find bland and uninteresting. Of course, there's Scott Sava's Dreamland Chronicles which uses his own character designs, but he's spent thousands of dollars of his own money producing it. (As an aside, he just recently reached his 1,000th page!) I found a video showing the process that one of the 3D webcomics used and thought it was interesting that the majority of the characters' clothes were added after the fact in Photoshop, painted on.

 

I'm struggling to get back into the swing of things. I'm about to have to make a move because most of my freelance work has dried up. I'm holding off until the first of December to make the decision, but I've already given 60 days notice on my apartment. Hopefully the economy will pick up next year!

 

I'm going to keep going with The Wannabe Pirates, though! Maybe in a couple of years, it'll grow big enough to be self-sustaining. That's the hope anyway. :-)

 

Dallas Art News is doing a deal where webcomic artists are recreating famous pieces of art with their characters and style. I've signed up to do one. I'm going to do the classic Howard Pyle illustration, "Walking the Plank."

 

pyle_plank.jpg

 

I'm just in the beginning stages:

 

rough0.jpg

 

I am going to give Flemm the blindfold, but instead of being tied up, he's going to have a kid's inflatable float ring around him. :-)

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Thanks, everybody!

 

LOL, Nancy. I don't think I know that song, but it makes me think of "Young at Heart" ...and if the need ever arises for a chicken serenade, you'll be the first person I go to. :-)

 

Never is too strong a word, Robert. I am committed to doing this webcomic for at least 3 years to see if I can grow an audience. This does mean that I can't make an animated film during that time, but I can work towards one. I think it's actually good for me in the sense that I'm getting a lot of practice at posing, building sets, lighting, etc. My goals for the animation were too lofty. I was feeling too overwhelmed by them, but as challenging as the webcomic is, I feel like I can accomplish it.

 

And with the webcomic, I feel like I'm accomplishing something every time I finish a strip!

 

I do have in mind doing a "commercial" for the printed book when the first story is done ...and I'll have all the assets I'll need for it once the story is finished! Heck, it might even be something I can do mid story to advertise the comic... but the primary objective has to be the comic.

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Great Chickens! Don't ba-a-alk at using them to set up a good yolk!

 

(sooner or later SOMEONE had to say SOMETHING!) :lol:

 

Seriously, Mark, all of your modeling is so clean, concise, and inspiring!

 

The stuff you show always serves to egg me on. (I can resist anything but temptation :D )

 

Myron

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I ended up having to rush this, but I think it came out okay. Thankfully, the reason I had to rush was that I picked up some freelance work, which I really needed. The majority of the work was home-based, but I started today doing three days of work back at my old work. I'd forgotten what it was like to do that. :-)

 

wbp_plank.jpg

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  • Hash Fellow

there really needs to be a horsey head on that flotation device.

 

 

 

I do have in mind doing a "commercial" for the printed book when the first story is done ...and I'll have all the assets I'll need for it once the story is finished! Heck, it might even be something I can do mid story to advertise the comic... but the primary objective has to be the comic.

 

Have you written this commercial yet? If it's short I might be able to animate it for you.

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there really needs to be a horsey head on that flotation device.

 

 

 

I do have in mind doing a "commercial" for the printed book when the first story is done ...and I'll have all the assets I'll need for it once the story is finished! Heck, it might even be something I can do mid story to advertise the comic... but the primary objective has to be the comic.

 

Have you written this commercial yet? If it's short I might be able to animate it for you.

 

Some kind of head was definitely the original plan, but I was literally down to one hour to finish it.

 

That's a generous offer, Robert! I haven't done anything yet for the commercial, but my thinking was always that it would just be short cuts of different characters and things from the story with a narration of some sort, but that's about as far as I've gotten with it. Most of the "cool" assets that I would need haven't even been started yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just an update...

 

Things are pretty hectic right now. I've gotten some freelance work (thankfully), but not enough to change the fact that I'm going to need to move out of my apartment. So in between work, I'm now trying to pack up all of my stuff to prepare to put it in storage before the end of the month.

 

The Wannabe Pirates is having to take a back burner for a little while, which is quickly bleeding away the surplus I'd built up.

 

Oh well. :-)

 

I'll just have to work twice as hard when all of this settles down to rebuild it.

 

After this coming week, all of the strips that I've posted here will have appeared on the site. So starting a week from Monday, there'll be new strips to read on the site!

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Heh heh. That is a great Santa, Mark! :D

Sorry to hear of your hardship. Going solo in such dangerous waters was always going to be precarious. Hoping that your ship sails into Paradise Bay real soon. (Paradise on Earth that is! We don't want you going too far for a long, long time. At least until the Wannabes have found and enjoyed that hidden treasure.) :)

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Thanks, Paul!

 

Santa is a redress of the Barney model. :-)

 

You are totally right about the risks. Part of my decision was that I felt like I'd never really tried hard enough before. I sort of see all of this as being tested on how committed I really am to doing this.

 

Thanks for the moral support!

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Thanks, Mark!

 

Nothing too fancy.

 

For the red, I used a dark red for the diffuse color and a normal red for the specular color. I set the specularity to 800% and the specular intensity to 20%. Then I set the roughness to 80% and the roughness size to 2%.

 

The fur was done with hair. I messed around until I came up with these settings:

 

hair.gif

 

Worked well enough for my purposes. :-)

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Nooooo! Santa has black gloves and a hat! I just don't believe it's him without them. But great model otherwise!

 

Black gloves? I remember him having green mittens but definitely the hat would add to it. In any case Mark, that IS a GREAT Santa makeover hehe.

 

George

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Well, moving day is tomorrow and I'm doing the last of the packing. About to dismantle the computer, so I'm going to be offline for a few days.

 

I'm really looking forward to having this all done with. There are a bunch of new models I need to create that I've been putting off because of all this upheaval. Hopefully 2010 is going to be a great year for The Wannabe Pirates!

 

Happy New Year, everybody!

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Thanks, Gerry! Gonna' stay positive that it will all work out in the end!

 

The good news is I'm back to work on The Wannabe Pirates and was able to finish next weeks' strips today! I've got a lot of work on my plate and my buffer is now very small, but I'm sure I'll get it back up there eventually.

 

Here's a render from next Friday's strip that I liked...

 

049_01_panel0.png

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