Starting a Fight

I have begun production on the first of several fight scenes in the first episode of Cosmic Rage. The first fight is made up of over 30 images that are going to be animated. One of the initial issues I had when drawing some of the first shots and layering it out was the fact that the drawings got a little hard to ink and also started to get a little messy. At this stage I knew that this was not a sustainable workflow when I would get to this stage of the animation. I had to come up with a solution to this.

After thinking about various solutions for a few days, I finally decided that the best solution would be to simply use tracing paper to layer my shots, then I could focus on each character or asset while drawing and when I needed to see how the characters interacted I could simply place them them on top of each other and see.

One of the problems in some of the other ideas I had, wasn’t so much about the drawing, but more about the scanning and inking process. I was concerned that my layered art would still be hard to ink, and if I used to separate images I wanted a way to make sure that they were placed in the proper spots.

To solve this with the tracing paper method, I had an idea inspired by camera tracking in After Effects. I would draw two crosses on the underlying image and then trace them to the paper. That way I would have both images layered for easier inking but I would also have a good method of being able to overlay the 2 images in Photoshop or Manga Studio and then rotate and reposition the images if needed so the sets of crosses lined up.

So far this method is working great and I hope to get some of the images up to show you a sample of the procedure.

Reaching Some Milestones

Hey everyone,
The first fight sequence has officially been completed in terms of drawing. Next week I will move into inking and coloring it. At the same time I will also find out if my layering technique is going to work for in terms of clearer drawings for inking. I will for sure post up a couple entries on that process as well as some images. I really look forward to starting this process and sharing more work with everyone.

*Also make sure to check out the character gallery for a new face in the CosmicRage Universe. 

New Production Art & New Character & More

Take a look in the Production Art section there will be a new image. Included in that new image is a new a character in the Cosmic Rage Universe as well. Over the next few days more will be revealed on this new character and his background.

Also, a Facebook page has been created that will share some of the same content as the blog, such as some news, artwork and updates. Feel free to check that out as well.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/CosmicRage/239506839440751

In the near future I will break down the new hallway production art piece and how it was created, and also have some more production art and such up as well. Thanks for checking in! Stay tuned!

Creator’s Take #1

I had an interesting question asked to me the other day and I felt that it should be something that I share for everyone. The question that was asked was along the lines if I was looking for help or offering any commissions on this project. This question lead to a larger discussion on the topic of anime/ manga. For those of you familiar with the way manga is produced, the creators generally will have a couple of assistants and their weekly work schedule is rather ambitious, working 7 days a week with little or no time to sleep depending on where a deadline may lay.

As much as I wish I could devote that kind of time to this work, since it isn’t bringing in any kind of capital (yet 😉 ) I also have work outside of Cosmic Rage. It was an interesting discussion on progress and determination. A couple other artists chimed in on their progress of their own projects as well, and it was great to hear them not getting discouraged b/c they couldn’t create work at the level of a chapter a week or maybe not even a page a day. The point is, as long as your moving forward on your work its going the right direction. As I posted earlier, I have had these characters since high school and I finally had a story to tell that was my own with them.

As for the help, just keep checking out the blog. Knowing that people check out the work and my progress is enough to keep me going. There’s another story there for sure, but that will have to wait for another day.

*Make sure to check out the character gallery today, evil now has a face.

Upcoming Details/ Insights

Hello again, it’s been a little while since I have posted an update. My apologies for the delay, I have been pretty busy working on some really exciting things and hopefully I can share some good news with everyone in due time. In this quick entry I just want to give you a little bit of an idea to some things that I will be posting up next week and also what the hold up is for more production art, which I am sure everyone wants to see more of. 🙂

Next week, there will be more information about the mystery character that has surfaced on the site. That will include a character model sheet and also a brief bio of the character as well. This might be one of my favorite things about the comic, creating a cast of very unique characters and I look forward to sharing them all.

Secondly, the lack of production art on the site. This is caused by my workflow. The opening sequence introduces Zeth and a little bit of the environment. I haven’t posted any other images outside of the locker room, because it is mostly animated and right now there are subtle refinements. As stated in a previous post, I refine things in segments to prevent a ton of work later. This process is really winding down on the first sequence, which will free me up to start another sequence.

The reason there hasn’t been any production sketches posted, is also due to the same reason. I am working on the first fight sequence which is several pages of storyboarded content. Once I am finished with drawing these, the batch will get scanned in, inked and colored.

So once these sequences get completed more artwork will make it up to the site. I am really looking forward to discussing the animation of the fight sequence and all of the layering of artwork that will be involved as well. Look forward to more teasers coming next week! Thanks for checking out Cosmic Rage!