"Invasion of The Malice Circus!" 3/6

What's this? More new characters? You betcha. And -- not to give anything away -- we've now revealed the full extent of the Marauders team at this point. There were two other characters we originally designed to be involved but they would make the story needlessly busy. Divinus is my favourite member of the team. He's the spiritual powers guy, coming onto the scene this time as the "Ghostbuster." I think La Spectra (as she is called) turned out nice and creepy, and I'm strangely proud of how well the whooshing bottle came out in the top right.

Once again the strip printed a bit darker on the newsprint than I meant it to... but I think it at least works this time around seeing as it's supposed to take place in the dark, and Divinus is supposed to be ethnic. You'll notice I've also tried playing around with some SPECIAL EFFECTS-ECTS-ECts-ects-cts-cs dealing with light sources (ie. flashlight and glowing hands). Exciting stuff.

Fun Fact: Twelve-Eighty is the on-campus restaurant and bar, formerly called Quarters. Alot of people didn't like the changes made, but it seems to be winning others over.

"Invasion of The Malice Circus!" 2/6

New characters introduced! Lady Maroon and Maroon Mind, or "The Mystic Twins," were some of my favourite characters to develop and it was fun to finally get to draw them. Captain Marauder is the most iconic, but also the most bland to illustrate. Branching out into female form is also a welcome challenge for me.

I tried to ease back on the intense inks this week. I think I might have got it right this time, firstly reducing the contrast of the overall strip (since it always prints darker on newsprint), and using less shadow in general. It seems to make for a less stifling appearance. I'm also really happy with my paneling at this point. I'm getting very used to working with the format so it's coming much more naturally now, I can start experimenting here and there whilst keeping it nice and tight. I made a couple of revisions to some of the drawings, particularly to Maroon Mind's face and legs in the last panel, which I've shown here. A bit too late though, since it had already gone to print by the time I tweaked it. But there are myriad alterations I want to make on all 5 previous strips so far as well... so I can't complain.

"Invasion of The Malice Circus!" 1/6

Well, it's been about a month since the last issue of The Magnificent Marauders in the paper due to the Christmas break. But we're back up and running with a new storyline (building on "MechEng Online!"). I had to stay up till 9am last night/this morning in order to make the deadline, but I'm still quite happy with the final product, despite my sore drawing hand and delirium.

With the advent of some new drawing pens, I've noticed my inks seem to be getting progressively darker compared to my earlier drawings when I had to hatch everything with a fine pen. I'm not sure which one is more effective. Perhaps I'll meet somewhere in between. I've also started lettering using a typeface called Lafayette Comic Pro instead of doing it by hand. This saves time, space, makes it more tidy and professional. I've gone back and re-lettered strips 1-4, which I might put up sometime in the future.

Fun Fact: La Piazza is cafeteria in the Student Center. The food prices in there give me about the same reaction as in panel 4-6.

The Magnificent Marauders!

If you want to check out the student comic that I illustrate, check out the facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&gid=180796256339

Or we just got our own backslash on The Silhouette website, so you can look at our blog there:

thesil.ca/marauders

I'd love to hear what you think. Even though nobody is reading this anyway, so "you" is really "I." Oh well, talking to myself makes for good conversation. Like right now. I've spent 3 sentences on the matter, and now a 4th. Boy, what self-reflexive writing this is. Meta-blogging.

That's enough of that.

Some Comissions

I've done a couple of projects for other people over the past few years. Most of those requests are the ever-vexing tattoo designs for friends. I came across these three on my computer recently so I thought I'd slap 'em up on here.

I did this crest design for my graduating year at I.E.Weldon Secondary School. We were the wonderfully cliched "Wildcats."

Last year I founded a comic society at the University of Leeds on my year abroad ("The Leeds of Extraordinary Gentlemen" as we called ourselves). These were some logo concepts I concocted. We went in another direction in the end, but I recycled the LEG Man in some Magnificent Marauders promos for the paper this year.

I've done a few designs for the Outdoors Society at my university, this poster I never ended up seeing actually posted anywhere, however.