Magellan

The guest story for Shaenon Garrity’s webcomic Narbonic is now online – Just Think. It was written by T. Campbell with art by myself and 3D art by Joe Zabel. Here’s the first panel – a close up of Dave…

For some reason, it’s one of my favorite pieces from the material I contributed. It’s a bit daunting doing guest art at the best of times, but when it’s for a webcomic with the degree of popularity and acclaim as Narbonic it sort of raises the stakes somewhat. I feel happy with what I contributed to the effort, although in retrospect maybe would have changed some of it. But then, don’t I always feel that way about pretty much everything I do!? At any rate, I had fun drawing it and it is a bit of a superhero romp in the Narbonic universe.

From the outset the intention was to do a simple B&W art-style and that really helps to heighten the difference between the real world action which I drew and the surreal sensory deprived experience Helen Narbon has in the ‘White Room’ courtesy of Joe Zabel’s sublime 3D art.

Reader response via the Narbonic forums seems generally positive – some people found Helen’s crazier moments a little dark for their tastes although other seem to think T nailed her psychological state quite well.

The concept of the ‘Magellan ++’ project is that I can hopefully find some other talented cartoonists who aren’t too busy doing their own work to help me produce some extra Magellan stories – and there are a lot of extra stories in the Magellan universe! I do hope to pay them too – although since I’m not rolling in $$ it won’t be very much. Anyway, I’ll sort that out once I have something for someone to start work on – oh wait, I do! At least, half of something. Half of a Gifford Foss story in fact. Gifford is the little green goblin guy who is a cadet at the Magellan Academy – we saw him briefly as Nadine’s partner in Chapter 2, but this story – Little Hero – is set in his home world.

The last day or so has been spent banging the story and script into shape and I’m very very happy with how it’s turned out. I drew some character guides which I have passed on to the artist and I’m eager to post them here but I don’t want to steal the artist’s thunder. I imagine having a writer who is also a cartoon artist might be akin to having a patient who is also a doctor – they always want to interfere in the process, so I must resist the urge to get too ahead of myself. In fact I’m not going to say anything more on it for a while, besides I still have to write the other half of the script! Suffice to say, I’m excited and the artist is excited. To my surprise, I’ve actually managed to get a start on the Magellan ++ project!

The rest of my time the last day or so has been spent doing some guest art for a cartoonist in need (more on that next week), finalising the other guest art project I’ve been working on with writer T Campbell (more on that on Sunday), and also wrapping up the current Magellan storyline. I’ve been busy, but having fun fun FUN! The problem is that I have to return to my full-time day job next week so that’s going to put a major spanner in the works. A shame, since I’ve been having a blast for the last two weeks, especially this last week with all the festivities out of the way. The good news though is that I’ll be taking all of February 2006 off from work… and unlike most sensible people, won’t be going on any long vacation but will probably be spending most of that time in front of my drawing board and computer. Can’t wait!

While I’ll mostly blab about stuff I’m doing, if I see something webcomicky (or otherwise) that I particularly like I might stick in a link to it…
Nothing Better by Tyler Page – the first two chapters plus current page are free, and then it shifts into subscription mode. Even if you’re not the subscribing type (and sadly, it seems most aren’t) at least check out the free chapters. Although at first it seemed like yet another American college comic it was still fresh and interesting. I liked the art and characterisation… yet more good stuff on Webcomicsnation.