The Odyssey Comic

Hey guys! I wanted to share a "small job" I am doing at St. Anthony's where I work. (not that I don't have enough to do) But one of my colleagues, Nick, an english teacher at St. Anthony's, is teaching his kids the odyssey and he asked me to do a sketch for him during one of my hall duties about the scene where Odysseus goes to the edge of hades' land to speak to the prophet Teiresias. Apparently he was worried the students would have trouble visualizing the scene because their text leaves out a lot of the details. Anywho..... I was bored on Thursday night and couldn't really sleep so I decided to take it one step further and make him a quick comic of the scene. Needless to say I really got into it! Let me know what you think. I still have to ink the first page but you get the idea. 

Side note: It was a huge hit with the students and Nick and I are going to try to meet with the Eng. dept. chair to discuss doing comics of other books the students have to read. Hopefully this will help them get more involved and actually read the material they are assigned.

City Hall Subway for Theresa

 For Theresa's underground adventure story.  IF you ever decide to set it in Manhattan instead of Queens, you could use this abandoned subway stop as a little backdrop/setting.  Or I guess if they travel far enough they could end up there too!  It's the City Hall stop, which was closed in 1945 and then everyone seemed to forget about it.  Now you can see it on one of the trains as you ride by. I just thought it was really cool.

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/the-hidden-abandoned-city_n_781669.html#s179138

There are more pictures at the link above too :)

Beard Info-Graphic for Diamond

 Here's a fun little info graphic about beards (mostly present day statistics), but I thought maybe it would be useful for how you wanted to focus on body hair on certain characters.  There some links at the bottom if you want to investigate it further. 

http://www.damnlol.com/phd-in-facial-hair-17697.html

Also, if you've ever watched Game of Thrones on HBO, there's a certain group of people called the Dothraki (who are also very persian/middle eastern influenced) where the men grow out their hair really long.  They only cut it off when they lose in battle to show their shame, so the man with the longest hair is the leader.  Just some other ways you could distinguish characters by how "macho" they are.
Just note, I'm not saying you should copy the long hair thing, it's just another example of how power/respect was symbolized with respect to hair.

Chris' Comic

Hey guys! I am sorry I missed the meeting today guys, its been a very rough week. I will talk to Zach to get filled in and I will deff see you at the next meeting. In the mean time I did think about what we discussed about doing my comic as large images without words. There still is some thinking to be done about it, however I do believe that the less talking the better. With this in mind I re-drew the next page that would need to be carved so that it has larger images and uses no words. I think it would be wise to let the imagery control the story rather than the words. This being said I think to accomplish a decent story without words, or very few of them, the panels, rather than large full size images, would be even more important to create a sequencal story.

Anywho.... I attached the new sketch as well as the original just to get your guys opinion.

(The top one is the original)

The Cartoonist's Goal

This appeared in today's NY Times. I thought some may get a lot from this brief look into the creative life of a graphic novelist.

Infinite Comics

Hi All, I read this article at GIZMODO on Marvel's Infinite Comics. Read through this--it's interesting and useful.
 The video says it all:
http://gizmodo.com/5898782/infinite-comics-marvels-new-format-changes-how-comics-are-created

A pro shows how it is done these days:
 http://gizmodo.com/5898788/avengers-vs-x+men-infinite-comic-gallery/gallery/5

Thought this TED talk by Scott McCloud was interesting...Enjoy!

Latest Stylistic Iteration

Hi Guys,

As you know, Rather than focusing on the what would seemingly be the normal concerns of Graphic noveldom, I'm busying myself attempting to forge "a look" that could suffice for the whole effort. In this one, I've opted for more brush work, It really isn't a panel that will appear in the final version (some ideas might). What do you think?