HOW
ONEMATRIX* WAS
CREATED
When
I first heard of the Onezumi.com contest, I
thought it was interesting, cool even, and I was enjoying the webcomic.
But as a old-time pro, I felt the contest wasnt for me, but intended
for the young struggling up-and-coming artists. But a Live
Journal post by Onezumi raised My eyebrow.
"We've
gotten flooded with almost a hundred emails from people who say
that their art sucks and they are not going to enter because
someone better than them likely entered. This really kills us,
you know? The theme seems to be that almost everyone thinks that
they suck before we ever see their work. Can we just cut the
fuckin' shit out? People really need to stop saying that they
suck. Really. IS THERE ANYONE WHO CAN SHOW US SOME WORK WITHOUT
SAYING SOMETHING BAD ABOUT IT WHILE THEY HAND IT TO US? IS THERE??
I think maybe one person EVAR has NOT said something bad about
their work while we looked at it." more...
Well,
Damn. Somewhere out there I DEFINITELY heard the sound of a chain
mail glove hit the floor.
So I
decided to give it a tilt. Having some evil flashbacks to the early
years of My career where I heard a lot of "You suck". Shit, I KNOW
I can draw. And I hadn't done a comix project in a while.
Just
needed a goofy Idea...
Onezumi's
kick-ass attitude made Me think of Trinity from the Matrix films,
and decided to cast Harknell as The Smiths. I had to leave Munky
out, I would have had to cast him as Neo, and that is SOOOOO horrifyingly
WRONG.
Top
image is the first scribbles, and with three days to Katsucon,
better crunch
that
epic down to one
page.
I mentally
re-scripted it untill all the excess was trimmed away and the
gag worked in a single page.
Pulled
out actual pencil and artpad and got down to it. The pencil sketch
that emerged is at right. I set the piece to be 8" x 10-1/2" so
the final art would fit neatly on a letter size sheet.
This
sketch was scanned and brought into PhotoShop. The Panels were
set onto a layer, And the line art drawn, each panel on its own
layer. The captions were set in text layers. As were each word
ballon and sound FX.
Photoshop is
an awesome and essential designer and artists tool, allowing me
to do overnight what would have taken three days using traditional
materials. Also would just DIE from carpal tunnel without my Graphics
Tablet. Using a Wacom Graphire, and hope to afford an Intuos again
one of these days... REALLY must harrass some deadbeat clients.
Brought
in background photos from stock photo collections. Then painted
in the character color in their own layers. To keep track, I grouped
each panel's art in set. And the captions in another, and the FX
in another. The Photoshop document lands at about 4.5 Megs - and
that's at 72 dpi! For print you would need 300 dpi, over 40 megs.
So an extra Hard Drive would NOT be wasted here!
Photoshop
os a marvelous tool for adding effexts and I did. And the type
manipulation has become first class. Put in the text and FX for
the "fight
Panel"
Exported
the image to a JPEG file compressed to JUST above image breakup. So
it would load fast and still look good. Built the little animation
for the entry page in ImageReady.
The
first version didnt quite feel right. So I downloaded a couple of Onezumi
comics for reference. Her hair is HARD, but wanted to
get it righter, and get her eyes and expression for the gag, and brush
up Harknells dialogue.
So went
back in and reworked her and altered some of the captions to get
the gag right.
As I
mentioned before, one overnight and a half shift the next day to
finish it up. Then build the HTML pages in DreamWeaver and loaded
it up to the FRS server.
The
results were on the last page...
If you
want to know more about Me, Climb up to the main part of the site.
Fantastic-Realities.com.
But the short version is that I am a career creative professional.
Art Director, Graphic and Web Designer, Illustrator, and Consultant.
My hertiage is just this siide of MUTT, and I'm also about Martial
Arts, Science Fiction, Paganisn and Native Spirituality and raising
my Family.
I also
have a Live Journal Site.
And
THAT'S how the old timers play! I had a lot of fun.
I can't wait
to see some of the other entries!
Enjoy!
Kurt
E. Griffith
Fantastic Realities Studio
19 February 2005
*P.S.
Yes, that's "Oh-NEH-may-trix",
like "Oh-NEH-zu-mi"!
Ya'all got that?
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