Chandra, Page 3: WOW!

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Hey, he's really excited.  I would be too, it's too bad we don't go back to the moon.  Like all kids, when I was six, I thought we'd be living on the moon by the time I reached the age of 30.  Flying cars too.  Well, I guess we have cellphones and computers instead, baby steps, baby steps.

But, imagine for a moment that colonies had been established on the moon.  The moon would be the next great Wild West, everyone out for themselves.  All those people that have bought real estate on the moon would be fighting over their scrappy plots of moon dust.

It's a simple composition, meant to bring us into the story and the next page...

Chandra, Page 2: It Looks Like A Rabbit

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It's true, I can't NOT see a rabbit when I look at the moon.  It's always been that way.

I have to say that these first five pages came out a little more purple than I would have liked.  I sort of envisioned them as a bit more tangerine when I was conceiving this.  The thing is, an artist's effectiveness is dictated by his ability with the tools he chooses.  So, when hindered by the challenges of a new material/medium one can find it difficult to get right at that idea that's hovering in their mind.  You can see it, but it's a matter of getting your hands to do the mind's bidding.  It's tough, and frustrating and it leaves a lot of people weeping in the corner, including me.

By the by, who are this guy and this kid?  They don't have names, hmmm...

Chandra, Page 1: Double The Worm Over

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Finally page one!  So here it is, the very first comic book page I've ever drawn that I didn't copy from somewhere else back when I was thirteen years old.  Actually that's totally a lie.  I did make a graphic novel with a friend when I was twelve (hardbound and everything, though only one copy existed).  It was called Lancelot and it had nothing to do with the handsome knight.  It was about a group of mutants hunting down some material called Hydrosilverton, yeah.  Anyway, total X-Men rip off, illustrated in pencil and filled in with colored pencil. 

Anyway Chandra.  This page has gone through so many changes and really here's the earliest example of me trying to figure out how to digitally color things.  Can't say I'm entirely proud of the result but it's...something.

Onward!

Chandra, Page 0: The Moon Quote

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Why am I bothering with a weird quote?  Because that's what everyone does right?  It lends literary credibility to the work before you even get to the meat right?  Well, yes and no.  Really I just felt that this thing by Lawrence just summed things up nicely, but perhaps it's pretentious.  What do you think?

Chandra, Note: Apology

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I figured that if anyone runs across the ISSUU version of Chandra they may be wondering what it is.  This page serves as simply a small description and note about the project.  Really, I want to cover my butt and show everyone that this thing is just a work-in-progress, my sandbox where I learned a lot about what works and a whole lot more about what doesn't work when attempting to make a Graphic Novel.

I know: There's stiffness in the figures, there's a certain simplicity to the faces and lack of emotion sometimes.  There's a lack of detail in the surroundings.  Some of the coloring and shadows are a bit funky.  The dialogue needs to be beat with a lead-lined edition of Strunk and White.  What else?  Despite all this, I still like the work and that's why it's being posted.

Chandra, Simple Cover: Too Simple

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Remember you can always read Chandra in ISSUU format HERE, or go on up to the 'Projects' tab at the top of site.

So here is the ad hoc cover for Chandra. This thing is really just thrown together for placeholder purposes. The design of the jumping antelope is a motif that crops up again later in the story as the symbol for the Chandra base.  The antelope comes directly from the attributions of the Chandra deity in Hinduism.  Chandra is the beautiful man who rides his chariot across the sky at night, a chariot pulled by an antelope.

So, were I to ever tackle Chandra seriously again my original idea would have been to do a painted cover.  My thoughts about that have changed over the past year though.  I really appreciate seeing the same work on the inside and outside of a comic.  Realizing that I'm in control of the project I shouldn't change styles from cover to interior, so the cover would probably end up reflecting whatever I ended up doing inside.

That Old Adage...

They say: "If you want something done right, do it yourself."  It seems today that if you want something done AT ALL you have to do it yourself.  After months and months of wrangling a developer to build a site it turns out he finally crapped out on me.  Has this ever happened to you?  You hire someone to do a job and they get 90% done and then they just stop returning emails and calls.  Maybe he died.

So, being that I'm code-illiterate we have a blogger site.  And you know what?  I'm happy with that.  Not only does it have all the functionality I want, but the back-end stats side of it has really grown over the past few years since I started my first blogger site in 2007.

I might be pilloried for this but I just have to admit that I'm a Google man, I like their products.  Yeah, I like Apple too, so there.  And to my taste buds Coke tastes better than Pepsi (especially with lime).

Anyway, that brings us around to the whole point of everything: Artagem.com.  Right now this is a nothing site made by a unknown guy trying to jump into the comic book field.  BUT my friends, we're going to try to overcome that.  This is an exciting time, lots of cool work is popping off all over the place and we're seeing unprecedented creativity happening right here, in this very medium/expanse, the internet.

Look at this as an indication:  The long-running Xeric Grant is shutting down.  For years this has been a great resource for burgeoning creatives to get a leg up financially and it's shuttering its doors, citing the fact that people no longer need that specific kind of help in getting work to larger audiences.  Makes you think.  We live in an age where a comic can conceivably have no end.  The pages can just keep going ad infinitum.

So, take my hand and join me as we whisk off to a new land.  It'll be bumpy at first, there's a bit of kinks and turbulence to make it through but then we'll be smooth sailing into bright adventure.  Promises, promises.