Dr Floyd I presume / On the Racks

Lets start of with this week On the racks!

For the first time ever, on 17th January 2012 – material that I have produced in print form has been put on sale in a proper comic book shop!

Orbital Comics have very generously agreed to stock copies of Images Degrading Forever Collected Volume 1, which are currently on the small press spinner rack just outside the entrance to the West Wing :-

So if you happen to be in London, why not pop in and pick up a copy!

While your there have a look at the front counter at orbital, there you will find the FREE print copies of IDFW there as well, which continue to do very well!

I am very happy to make this next step and I am now (I suppose officially by definition) am a (very) small press publisher, I can only hope with good material and interest from people willing to buy it that I can sell a few copies to offset the cost of printing

I am hoping to ensure that each title I will be printing on a monthly basis will be available in a comic book shop for sale as well as eBay- this is a another new years resolution

So far I have the material ready for new titles that will be printed and sold for each month this year up to June, so keep your eyes peeled...

I will be announcing February’s title 1st of February – of course in the meantime…

January

 …is Images Degrading Forever Collected Edition Volume 1 Month - this item is on sale here at £3 a go and The "Feedback competition" is on, full details are here  ...

Images Degrading Forever Weekly
This week we have issue 19 which concludes the all new essay "making the creative risk" in which I examine the fear that all creative people have to deal with to some degree - as well as the ongoing run of Frank Miller Klaus Janson Daredevil "Breaking the forth wall / jive talking" in which Turks use of street language is somewhat debatable, but not as debatable as his suddenly increased musculature when wearing the stilt man costume…

As ever this is completely free digital publication, just email me at robin.barnard@ymail.com and I will email you back the issue, it couldn't be any easier

Next week in IDFW- The extra special page drawn by Alexander Hunt Finally makes it to print and digital, get your orders in now for a chance to see a much better artist than me turn his hand to a page of DareDevil

Now --- without any further ado - onto the main event

Dr Floyd I presume?

So here we are- half-way through the adaptation of 2001 and as has become traditional for my projects, this week I will be taking a drawing (or a part of one) from the project and seeing where I can go with it and how far…

For new readers this is third time I have done this

Firstly during my attempt during adapting Steranko’s Outland (painted by Matt Seneca)

Then mid-way through Daredevil, I came up with the rather different “Matt? Is Something Wrong?” (based on a real life experience of Matt Seneca)

So what can I do for Jack Kirby’s 2001?

Well there was one drawing from Kirby’s actual movie adaptation I was really looking forward to as it was a single page massive drawing, complete with a far out background, representing the moment Dr Haywood Floyd encounters the monolith for the first time:-

So I thought I would try this drawing but with a completely different background and I was hoping that maybe one of you would like to have a try as well, so for the first time I will list out the process used in a “how to” fashion, you can skip almost all the stages apart from the Stage three if you prefer, its entirely your choice

If you do have a go at this, please email me the results, they will of course be featured here!

As well of offering any item from the various prizes I have on offer for feedback I will also give away my finished drawing (below) to the best entry so it’s worth having a try

Finally this drawing marks the first time I have attempted to use a brush, Thanks to Ryan Cecil Smith for the suggestion!

Stage one: - Pencils

You Will Need: - 1 pencil, 1 sheet of white craft card, light box, blue tack, Computer with internet access and printer

Download the image below (yes these are Kirby's original pencils) and print out onto standard copier paper – try and make the image take up as much of the paper size you can manage (the bigger the image the easier it is to trace).

Take the printed sheet and tack print side facing up onto the underside of the craft card using blue tack

Take the combined printed sheet and craft card and place on top of the light box, craft card upwards

Trace what you can see onto the craft card using the pencil

These are my pencils below, note I have already decided which bits of the drawing I want to keep and which I didn’t

Stage two: - Ink

You will need: - 1 Brush ink pen or a fine line technical pen, your choice

If you did do stage one take off the printed paper sheet and the blue tack from the pencilled drawing

If you did not do stage 1 print out the pencils above onto thin white card using a Computer with internet access and printer

Use the brush pen to line all the pencils. If you find using a brush a bit daunting use a fine line black Technical ink pen (.01 will do)

This is my brush work on top of my pencils below, not looking too bad considering

Stage three: - background

This is the part where the experimentation comes in; you can do whatever you like for the background, the wilder the better – as to what I did…

To my eye the shape of the Dr Floyds space helmet suggested that something should encircle him in the background, kind of halo like, but obviously a bit off kilter so it wasn’t an actual halo

As it was a circle I was thinking about I instantly also thought about what is referred to as” Kirby Krackle” as that is endless circles of all sizes within each other, forming like a pool of bubbles - there was plenty of Krackle in the comic so it made a lot of sense

But I wanted to take that concept in a different direction (otherwise it would be just as if I put in the background Kirby actually drew to a degree), so I decided to do a series of circles surrounding Dr Floyd increasing in size to the edge of the frame and around each circle to draw a set of full circles  proportionally spaced along the edge of the surrounding circles, increasing size of these circles as I worked outwards, so the smallest complete circles would be closest to Floyd and the biggest the furthest away

I used a compass and a pencil to do the big surrounding circles and a plastic circle set (which had increasing circle sizes) to pencil the complete circles

To give this another dimension, contrast and even depth I wanted to introduce colour to each big surrounding circle, for this I actually used a packet of day glo highlighters, traditionally used in the office. I cycled through each colour once per surrounding circle in order and continued cycling until the edge of the paper was reached

I purposely left Dr Floyd himself black and white to emphasise the contrast between copied art and new drawing

I then used the brush pen to brush the pencilled surrounding and complete circles ending up with this piece below, which I have decided to call “it’s full of stars”

I was pretty happy with the finished result I would like to know what you think!

Thanks to Douglas Noble for inadvertently naming this (before it was even drawn)

Why not have a go, I would love to see what concept you can come up with, or even your attempt at inking, colouring, painting or doing anything creative, there is only one rule – have fun whatever you’re doing!

It is one of my hopes that I can not only get people interested in comics and let them see what a vital and impressive medium comic is but also to hopefully inspire other people to have a go at doing their own creative thing as well as that make the whole process so much more enriching for everyone!

Next week its back to 2001 proper and we will see a jump cut of several million years…