March 18, 2013 in Art
Mark McKenna has been turning in inks like crazy. Mark is bringing something special to Ben’s pencils. It’s fun to watch the pages roll in.
Colors are in progress. The Steamworld Chronicles is getting closer and closer to print form. It’s all very exciting and we can’t wait! How about you?
January 20, 2013 in Announcements, Art
The pencils for the Steamworld Chronicles: The Constantine Quest: Part 1 are finished!
September 11, 2012 in Production & Design
Hi, anybody who watches our site! I posted a cropped version of this image on our Facebook page. This is the final inks for page 11. I’ve been pretty busy for the past few weeks, but have finally sort of hit a groove in the inking process and will soon be all caught up with Ben.
This page is the first page after the intro sequence and double-page title spread. It features the first look at our hero, Dr. Quentin Bowlsby, hard at work in his very cluttered office/laboratory, then being summoned up to his boss’s office.
As we all are, Ben is a big nerd and has littered Q’s space with all sorts of fun stuff. Take a look and see what you can recognize.
August 16, 2012 in Art
Another quick inking update. Here is the bottom half of page 01. I will post the whole thing once it’s finished.
Now, the way I go about inking, especially when I don’t have a schedule or am being pressed for time is this; I go through all the pages I have to ink and do all the panel borders, or in this case, the gutters. From there I work my way through the pages bit by bit jumping around from panel to panel, page to page, finishing bits and pieces depending on my mood, how much time I have, etc. I continue to jump around pages until I start to get a page that’s awfully close to being finished and then I just sit down and finish it. That’s my process.
This helps me to keep from getting to tired of one particular panel or job. It also helps me to get past the impending doom I feel about inking.
Inking is in my mind, is the hardest part of the graphic storytelling process. You are taking the sometimes soft and loosely defined shapes of the artist you’re working with and laying down a hard, defined line. Sternly telling the reader that THIS is the image you will look at, NOT that soft beautiful image you may or may have not seen prior to the inking process. (depending on the artist and the project)
As an inker, I try and keep the artist’s wishes in mind as I finish it. Staying as true to their line as I can. Sometimes, things don’t always work out that way, though. Sometimes, the artist was tired, or just decided they didn’t want to draw, whatever it may be, in that panel. So they leave it. Sketchy at best, sometimes completely open to interpretation. It’s always something different.
The interpretation game is why inkers have to be artists in their own right. It helps to know how to draw something, that your penciler decided they didn’t want to draw. Sometimes, your penciler draws something that just can’t be inked. That’s when your artist just has to trust you to be able to finish it. The perfect example? Ever see Gene Colan’s pencils? Look them up sometime and then go look at Tom Palmer’s finishes on them. Sheer brilliance. Another good one is Walter Simonson. He inks almost all his own stuff, so his pencils are often just mildly more than fancy layouts as he redraws the art as he inks. Try inking someone like that. That’s how I started, inking over copies of Walter’s pencils. After all , I didn’t know better, I just picked up a pen and started doing this one day. I didn’t know any better. I’ve been doing this for almost 5 years, and while some people tell me different, I still feel I’m only marginally better than when I started. I’ve got a long way to go. But I do think that I have within me the capacity to be better, and I’ll keep doing this until I can ink one of Walter’s pages and be truly happy with it.
If there’s a goal as an inker, I’d say that’s a good one to shoot for.
SH
August 13, 2012 in Announcements
Just a quick update to start the week. I don’t know how many people are actually looking at the site in a regular basis, or if they only happen to stop and look when they stumble upon a link from the Facebook or Twitter accts. So I’ll continue to update the site with images and such and link back and forth across the accts. so no matter where you’re following, us you’ll know about other places to see more stuff.
I spent most of last week inking and working on some other projects. We have now in our hands, the first 10 pages complete from Ben. I have most of them started and several only a few details from finishing. As I finish up pages and get some scans, I’ll be posting some panels I really like.
When we got the first couple penciled pages done, I sent them off to our colorist, Adam to give them a shot to see some color samples and also to see about maybe coloring straight from pencils. (Saving me the time of inking and would give us back a little schedule time) Adam colored two pages this way, and now we will ask him to color a couple inked pages to see what way we want to go. Adam is on vacation this week, so by the time he gets back, I will have all these pages inked and ready for him. That way if it turns out we will go this direction, I’ll be all caught up with Ben’s pencils.
IN the meantime we are getting the details down for our KickStarter campaign which we hope to kickoff in mid-September. Details forthcoming, don’t worry once we start that, we’re gonna be shouting it from every rooftop we can get to.
I guess that’s it for now, I want to try and get the other guys to post here occasionally as well.
August 7, 2012 in Art
I would like to introduce Dr. Quentin Bowlsby, or as we’ve been referring to him for the past year, Q. This is a cropped version of the full image that’s available at the FB page here. This is Ben’s first shot at a character sketch for Q. He’s a little younger here that he will be in the book, but he really got pretty close to nailing it first time out.
August 6, 2012 in Production & Design
So, Ben delivered this logo this morning. Thing of beauty, innit? We’ve updated the FB page with it and have decided that it will be the logo of choice for any promotional needs, titles, etc.
The actual titles for the dress for the comic books will be derived from this image. So, we’ll develop and reveal what those logos will be when we’re ready.
Until then, revel in this beauty, and tell Ben Risbeck how much you like it!
–SH
August 3, 2012 in Art
Page 01 pencils by Ben Risbeck
This is how we hopefully start to grab you. Your first full look at the artwork.
So, our first teaser, or inside look or whatever you want to call it. the image to my left is the opening page of our story. This is the first page that was delivered to us by Ben. We had both seen plenty of Ben’s work in the past, and knew of his range, but we hadn’t done much design work ahead of time as we were trying to get a good jump on the book at the time to have something to show around at SDCC (Comic-Con International for purists).
So we had thrown Ben into a brand new world. A world which has required him to track down a lot of reference.
World-building can be tricky. Especially when you are using a world that, in another fashion, already exists. Ben can dig up all he needs on the internet for the most part, but another good portion of this will require him to invent these things himself. Drawing superheroes in a real-world environment is difficult enough, but in a complex version of an alternate Earth with a look and feel of a hundred or so years ago? Another story.
I am a carpenter by trade, and for years, building homes and apartment buildings, I used to complain about architects and how they were always screwing us onsite because it’s a hell of a lot easier to draw something on a blueprint than it is to build it physically.
I oddly find myself in the architect’s position now. I write whatever idea I have down and now Ben has to build it fr.om scratch. Now, Ben has a lot of of wiggle room, much more than I did building something to an architect’s plans, but you get my drift.
Anyways, we hope you like the page and it makes you want to see more. If you dig it, do us a favor and leave a comment. Ben loves to read about himself.
–SH
August 2, 2012 in Marketing
So, we knew immediately what we had to do as soon as we got up and running with the book. We had to start getting the word out to the social media outlets ASAP. Develop our basic looks and get them out there. We have a few months until the book will be fit to really see or pitch to companies for that matter, so we need to use that time to get our project into the social media worldmind, so that when we actually have the book ready, and we start shouting about it, people will be like, “Oh yeah, I remember that. That looked cool, I wanna read that.” Just getting the project into the social awareness of people is half the battle. After that, the project will sell itself on either it’s look, it’s subject matter or popularity of it’s creators.
Oh…shit.
Who the hell are these guys? That’s what people will ask when they look at the first issue of our book. Well, that’s why we’re out here now. We want you to know who we are and that we want you following along so that when the book is done and you see it in a comic shop or online, you say to yourself, “Cool, I’ve been looking forward to checking this out.”
I mean, if you read the first issue and you think it’s total crap, well, okay then, but at least we’ve all done the best we can to see to it this project succeeds. The first and most important step is getting the thing into your hands, as our potential readers and fans. Once, and if, we’re successful at THAT, then well, it’s up to us to win you over with our creation.
So we (and I mean me, I can’t control these other guys) will be posting stuff here at the website and on our Facebook page here and cross link with our Twitter feed here. (There are little buttons on the upper right on our page as well) We would appreciate if you become a fan or follow our feed or bookmark this page so you can come back occasionally and see how we’re doing.
As an example, that image in the scrolling story area at the top of our page that ties to this post, you can go to the Facebook page via the link above and see the entire image. (see how that works? 
Also, if you have a friend that you think might think this is gonna be cool, or at the very least, informative because maybe you or they have an idea for a project and don’t know where to go with it, or how to proceed and maybe this blog will give you (or them) some ideas about that. If so, pass the link along to a friend.
Maybe, you just clicked a random link you thought would take you to website about books on steam power.
If so, sorry about that.
–SH
