Fiends in Arms

Just giving a shout to my fellow creepy webcartoonists, John Hageman (Social Vermyn) and Nicolas Caesar (The Stupid Misadventures of Mosquito and Spider).

Check them out, then pray for your soul.

CROSSING OVER?

A quick gift I did for a fellow creep, Nicolas Caesar.
Check out his twisted, depraved, cuddly works of art at http://www.scary-art.com

A FIEND IS TRULY WORTH HAVING

A quick shout-out for a friend/fan/devious-little-critter, Lindsey LaMont. Despite her tendency for silliness, LaMont is an extremely talented artist and destined to be a serious butt-kicker in the illustration biz.

(I think her husband is the guy who drew the previously posted "Scap in the fridge" artwork...I'll double-check that).

Check out her work at her Deviant Art account, and here's hoping we see more from this truly-silly artistic genius.

FAN ART!

A very awesome piece of artwork, done by Chris Montemayor. I am so stoked over this.

B&W vs COLOR: The Nagging Goes On...

I've never really known where I stand with color; for that matter, I've never really have been sure if I'm any good with it (a true artist always works him/herself into a paranoid frenzy over the most pointless matters). Color is something I had avoided for the longest time simply because I wasn't sure if I was using it right (as some San Jose teacher once said to a class, "You guys think you're ready for color?! Ha! Ha, to you all, puny mortals!".

I grew pretty comfortable with black-and-white, with the occasional foray into gradients when I was feeling especially gutsy; I then pooh-poohed color comics for "trying to hard to impress people" (I need a Clove cigarette when I say that). Eventually, when I had finally mastered the miracle of Photoshop, I gave colors another try.

The truth is that color is a wonderful thing to use...if it's used right. When it's used wrong you want to cry. Seriously. Why do you think Brian Bolland went through all of the trouble to recolor The Killing Joke? Because he wanted it to look right for once! Some artists stay awake at nights, fearing what's going to be done when their work leaves their hands (me, I just stay up in fear of my dog staining the rug YET AGAIN).

Desaturation in colors is essential, because there are few things that degrade comics like bright, fruity painfully-saturated colors. One of the reasons I've loved Marvel's Essentials collections from the very beginning was the omission of color; granted, this was probably more of a cost-saving decision than anything else, but for the first time all of those gorgeous masterpieces of pencilling-and-inking could finally be appreciated without all the garish primary colors crapping up the whole thing.

Of course, I'm sure you all have a different say on the matter, so please say your piece in the comments section and we'll all have a good chortle.

ZUDA Comics Competition

Check out my entry into the Zuda comics competition!

No, it's not Scapula.

Scapula gets FLASHED!

I've recently been in the process of turning SCAPULA into an animated Flash cartoon; the inspiration came not from the assorted webtoons on-line but from the UPA Dick Tracy cartoon series (which you can probably still find on youtube). I'm a big Dick Tracy fan, and while the animated series didn't keep any of the original Chester Gould comic's dark mood or excitement it was still a fun show (and, yes, somewhat unP.C. by today's standards...if you think the physically-deformed villains were bad, wait 'til you see the racist caricatures who are playing the good guys!).

More to come. See you in the movies!

From Bad to Worse!

This is a sample of a SCAPULA comic from the rough-drawn version to the computer-cleaned and colored final (I removed the word balloons for a better view). This particular strip is the first part of 'A Crappy Crime Caper'.

A few people ask me why these comics are drawn so small (if you can't tell from the sample, it's just drawn on 8.5"x11"). I come from a largely comic-strip background and have gotten pretty used to drawing in a smaller size. The results aren't exactly big-size comic book material (drawing small has its setbacks, namely difficulty in perspective and anatomy), but I think it works for the sake of a cartoony strip. A lot of the expressions are straight out of the funny pages and that's the feel I'm looking for.

Eventually I may move SCAPULA to a larger format for longer stories, but for here and now this is how I've done it.

Enter the FREAKO

Welcome, my friends and fiends, to the official blog companion of the webcomic that everyone loves to hate (and hates to read), SCAPULA!

This blog is intended to show everything that goes into the comics: the rough lay-outs, character designs, concept art, some stuff I found underneath my drawing table, and so on.

Also expect a lot of completely unrelated art that appears because...well...I feel like it.

Hope you all enjoy!

SCAPULA can be seen at:

http://aidancasserly.com/SCAPULA