Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts

Monday, October 25, 2010

Two Halloween Minis

I'm happy to announce that we have not one but two small minicomics ready to celebrate the Halloween season.

The first, "Make Me a Bat," has already been the subject of a few posts while it was in progress. Here are a few photos of the finished product, which will also give you a hint or two about the plot of the little comic:





Of course, this simple desire on the part of the little boy is thwarted through a variety of misunderstandings (possibly deliberate misprisions) about what he wants. Eventually, the wrong costumes get both ridiculous and frustrating.



... But the book does have a happy (and cute) ending.



This isn't actually the last panel; there's also an appropriate denouement, not pictured here.

And "Make Me a Bat" isn't the only new little book that we've got this autumn. My colleague Allegra Bishop also worked up a little book—as much an illustrated poem as a comic—about the peculiar headwear of the actress Sarah Bernhardt.



You can click these images to enlarge them and get a sense of both the cartooning and the doggerel in "A Hat, a Bat, Manhattan."




And here's the back cover, featuring the Divine Ms. Bernhardt in all her chiroptero-sartorial glory.



I'm still folding and stapling to fill Halloween bulk pre-orders, so I can't promise to get large orders to anyone else in time for Halloween. But if you just want one copy of each book, I can pop them in the mail (first-class) on the same day you order, so you might still be able to read both micro-minicomics on All Hallow's Eve (or on Dia de Los Muertos, at least).

$1.50 will cover my publishing costs, the postage, and Paypal's fees. Here's a button to make the transaction easy:



Of course, you could also get these books by ordering a three-for-five bargain deal. They'd count together as a single book, for those purposes.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

"Make Me a Bat": Pre-Orders

I'm pleased to announce that all the drawing for my Halloween micro-minicomic is finished.

Here's a glimpse of the cover of the "dummy" I printed here at home. The color is not final.



The comic features a little boy who wants to dress up as a bat for Halloween. Unfortunately, his parent (who is only ever an off-panel voice) seems to have a perverse sense of hearing:



Most of the comic consists of the boy finding himself in costumes that almost sound like "bat" costumes. I think the results are pretty cute.



And I don't think I'm spoiling much by telling you that the comic has a happy ending: the little boy gets a great bat costume on the last page, and a fold-out inside back cover lets him go out trick-or-treating in it.



The idea is that I'll hand these out to trick-or-treaters along with candy this year.

I'm planning to go down to Kinko's to print a bunch of these this weekend, so I can send them to the Trees & Hills Halloween Comic Swap with plenty of time to spare. UPDATE: I have taken the book to Kinko's, so I'm closing up the pre-orders for the time being. I'll make a new post when I get copies back.

The book has sixteen interior pages, and the vocabulary in it is deliberately pitched at kids who are still learning to read.

Monday, October 4, 2010

"Make Me a Bat": Teaser



This image does not appear in the comic I am making for Halloween.

Well, maybe on the back cover.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

"Make Me a Bat": Outtakes

I'm almost done with the little comic that I'm making for the Trees & Hills Halloween Comic Swap. I ought to be able to take it to Kinko's on Tuesday.

While I work on the layout, here are a few outtakes — not exactly a "deleted scene," but some versions of a costume that I didn't wind up using.







I think this is going to be a fun little comic.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

New Halloween Comic, Early Stages

You probably won't hear much more about this until it's finished, but I'm planning a little micro-minicomic for Halloween. Probably it'll take a little more time than carving a pumpkin in some crazy way, but I can't seem to stop myself.

Here are some early doodles toward a character design. I worked out a script last night. One hint about that is all you get.





When the comic's done, it should be a good size to hand out to kids on Halloween along with (or in lieu of) candy. If you get trick-or-treaters, and want the comic, I'll figure out a good price for a "bulk bundle" that I can mail in time for distribution. When I have a few done, I'll put the word out here on the blog.

What motivated me to do this, when I've got essays write and papers to grade? My own foolishness, obviously, but also a really fun-sounding project that Colin Tedford announced yesterday on the Trees & Hills blog.

And what is "Trees & Hills," you might ask? Colin's doodle from my robot sketchbook will answer that question:



Thanks, Colin. I'm looking forward to this.

More SPX minicomic reviews tomorrow!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Another Halloween Envelope Doodle

Inexplicably—or at least unexplainedly—I got another order for the Satisfactory Comics "Full Run" (now only $20*) a day or two after I posted that little thing about lagniappes last week.

(*That's not a sale price: this month's orders have actually run me out of stock on one of our comics, so I dropped the price.)

Since I'd essentially promised to load in a few bonus treats, I put some more postcards into that envelope (along with every comic I still had in stock), and since I love Halloween almost as much as the next blogger, I adorned the envelope our little werewolf guy from "The Graveyard of Forking Paths."



Hooray for a growing readership, hooray for lagniappes, and hooray for Halloween!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

I Like Lagniappes

Some kind soul just ordered the Satisfactory Comics "Everything" combo—one copy of every minicomic Mike and I have made (except for the Mapjam, which is out of stock)—and I felt like I needed to do a little something extra for the envelope.

Onto the envelope, I doodled this little guy, whom I'd never see again if I hadn't scanned him.



I also tossed a few random postcards into the envelope, since they weren't going to affect the shipping costs. Hopefully, when the envelope arrives, it'll seem like a treasure trove of goodies, chock full of dorky fun. I know that when I get a package in the mail, I'm always psyched to get a little random bonus, even if it's something I'd never have paid for. I like the little lagniappes, so I try to put them into (or onto) every package I send.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halloween Fun Punkin!



BOO!

I know I should be grading papers tonight—and I'm about to get back to work—but I just couldn't let the season go by without doing something to mark the arrival of Halloween, which is my favorite holiday. Last year, as a special treat for our blog readers, I posted some Halloween Fun Comics, a choose-your-own-adventure story that is included in Satisfactory Comics #7.

This year, because we're likely to get trick-or-treaters here in Burlington, I decided to do something people could enjoy without being on the internet.

It started with one of the best demons from our Demonstration book, the Dark Abbess.



(Well, actually, it started with a bunch of sketches and doodles. I was originally thinking that I might make a punkin with the werewolf from "The Graveyard of Forking Paths.")



But once I'd settled on the Dark Abbess, I had to figure out how to make the shading work. I couldn't put her pupils in the middle of her eyes and also carve out the eyes for light to come through...



... but it looked like this was going to work. (I did have to upgrade to a bigger pumpkin.) And so, with a little handheld pumpkin jigsaw knife and a regular old craft knife, I started carving, and about an hour and a half later, I had this:



Let's turn off the lights and enjoy that the way it's intended to be seen. You can click this picture to enlarge it.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Halloween Fun Comics!

Happy Halloween!

I was reminded this morning by Bully's super-fun post about Ben Grimm's reading habits that a nice little holiday post might help to scare away all the witches and werewolves.*

Here, then, with a little bit of October color and a little larger than you'd see it in our Satisfactory Comics #7, is "The Graveyard of Forking Paths," one of our branching-comic homages to Jason Shiga, master of the mathematical comic. (Seriously, Shiga is one of the real genuises of the new generation of cartoonists; I heartily recommend his Meanwhile..., Hello World, and Knock Knock, as well as Fleep and Bookhunter, if you can get your hands on them. You can get some of his books at Global Hobo.)

You can, of course, click to enlarge this thumbnail; I hope you will. To read the comic, start in the upper left corner as usual, and follow any orange arrow you'd care to follow. (It's basically a sort of maze.)


Isn't that spooky? Why, even the "happy" ending is a little macabre!

Here's hoping you get plenty of candy in your plastic pumpkin tonight, and that the litlte rubber band on the back of your mask doesn't come unstapled while you're blocks away from home.

EXTRA BONUS: Here's a great costume idea:



RARR!

*(More Halloweeny fun from the blogroll: Chris Sims has posted about a NSFW--and in fact NSFYCS**--story about witches, and Blockade Boy has shown us a bit of a Batman-vs.-werewolf fight.)

(** Not Safe For Your Continued Sanity, that is. Seriously, you may not wish to follow that link.)