Scriptify!

Hello! I've been doing stuff.

What stuff you ask?

Voila:

1. I've been reading.A great read on writing - I guess I'd say it's been inspiring. I'm not sure that the progress of the writing was 100% a result of this book, however, it has given me much to think about. I'm still reading it.
2. I've completed the 32 page script for the book. That came together over the course of 2 evenings sitting in a hot bath typing away on my little 3Gs, iPhone. I've had this book on my mind for sooooo long that this process seemed to flow quite freely. Good? Bad? time will tell.
3. I've begun revisiting the style of the book. This came as a result of over a year of extra experience illustrating. In the past year I've coloured a full length comic book, created illustrations for an 11 minute motion graphic animation, built graphics and illustrations for 2 online games, had 2 illustrations featured in Applied Arts magazine. The bottom line is that in that bulk of work, I've grown. The book needs to reflect this.
4. I've now completed 5 pages of roughs for the book. The current goal is to rough the entire book and iron out any wrinkles in the story through this process. Then the work of illustrating finished pages will begin.

The wheels are back on the wagon. I'm pushing while the fire is burning. Stay tuned. In the meantime enjoy these (not so strong photographs) sneak peaks at what I've been up to.

This is a rough sketch of some stylistic exploration and costuming for the protagonists.

Here is a sneak peak at the page roughs.

Blessings

Delusions of Grandeur

Esteemed friends. It is in moments of frustration that I sometimes find so much clarity. As I worked late last night, wrestling with a challenging illustration for a very large project I'm working on, I decided it's time to get back on the Our 1984 wagon. It's been my experience that my personality type leans toward going through cycles of motivation. Especially in regards to self-initiated projects such as Our 1984. I usually start big and get a lot of ground work established. It's in this stage of my work that I fall into what I consider a bit of trap. If things are coming together well with the project I start to fantasize about all the praise and accolades that will come my way, as well as great financial reward and fame. It's much like a bad movie montage where I'm surrounded by adoring fans and doting promoters, all filmed with soft focus, warm lighting and an inspirational sound track. I seem to develop this false sense of success pretty quickly. It's great for a time and the motivation seems to flow so easily during that delusional state. Unfortunately the delusion fades pretty quickly and then slowly I fall away from my goals.

Granted, my life is far from unsaturated with work and responsibility. It's easy to see how a side project gets shelved. I sense the motivation coming back around. I'm not talking about the pie in the sky motivation though. That ship has sailed. Now I see the massive undertaking before me and feel the desire to pick up the torch and press on into the unknown. My business partner has done some reading in the area of writing for comics, film and popular media. He's a constant source of suggestions for good books and valuable information to help the creative process. The next steps for me will be to gradually reintroduce myself to my project. Take a long objective look at it and make sure I am on the right path with it. Part of this process will include doing some more reading. I'm going to familiarize myself with the books I started reading in the beginning of this process and also begin reading some more in depth books on writing.

I'm not sure there will be a lot of visual development during this stage beyond sketches and thumbnails. I'll be sure to post those as they come to fruition.

It's time to get this ball rolling again.

In other news - Pulp Studios is featured right now on the Applied Arts Website. http://www.appliedartsmag.com/profiles.php?id=26 Go read the article! It's pretty great.

Blessings everyone.
Corey

Progress?

I sit here trying to work, as my 6 year old daughter, who ails with the stomach flu, asks me questions and shows me her drawings of bleeding dinosaurs. As I turn back to my monitor the 'new email' chime sounds and I go to my inbox. My work isn't flowing right now any way so I may as well check my email. It's a newsletter from goodreads. Here is what I read as I open the email.

How discouraging. It's been more than a year since I began my mission of writing and illustrating Our 1984. I haven't done it. I have barely even scratched the surface. Where do I go from here? Where is the line where I say to my self, "you're crazy, you need to let it go." My business is getting more and more busy and family life is also increasing in demand. Perhaps it's all a naive vision that is not attainable in my present life situation. I am in the process of whittling away at my work load, re-evaluating my work flow and trying to attain balance in my life and work. If I can somehow achieve this I can perhaps refocus and apply 1 or 2 hours here and there to the project. I'm currently illustrating a small children's book for an old friend. Once that is done my extracurricular art plate will be empty and may be begging for content. Perhaps then I'll dive back in. It's hard to realize I've seen so much time go by with so little progress on something I want to do.

Anyway. Reality hurts and pisses me off.

Here's to the hope that I get my ducks in a row.

Limited Edition Prints for Sale

Hey everyone. It's been sooo long since I posted here. I come to you now with news of a special sort. On October first we opened our online store at www.pulpstudios.ca. The store is our portal for selling limited edition prints. The first print we are selling is Victory March, which won the Applied Arts Illustration Award this year.

The prints are $45 CAD and can be shipped to you or, if you live in the Edmonton area, you can order them with special instructions for pickup to save yourself the shipping costs.

I truly hope we will sell out of this limited edition run of 228 prints and would like to ask you to look at the site, consider a purchase and if not, pass the site on to someone you think would like the print. This is the first of many Pulp Studios Limited Edition prints to come and as such, I believe, it will one day be a collector item.

So visit the site and pass on the site. Thank you for your time.

Things to Read

Hey everybody,
It's been over a month since my last post. It's been a busy month! I haven't had opportunity to work on Our 1984 but have instead been tremendously busy getting Pulp Studios off the ground with Kelly while managing client work for my other business Live Pixel Design. I've also had the opportunity over the past month to do some painting in live venues. Once for a local musicians cd release party and once for a fund raising function at a local church. The work for Live Pixel Design has included a very fun animation project. Three animated shorts designed to help students in grade 2 learn some Math concepts. I thought it would be fun to share some of the concept work for that here.

I've been setting the characters up in Flash and created a few test animations to see how the process will work. I thought it'd be fun to share those with you here as well.





In the next month I will be making time for Our 1984, I've neglected this passion project far too much and haven't created dedicated time for it. I am again inspired to move forward with the project by the very person who initially inspired me to take it on.

Nate Simpson, the illustrator and author behind the awesome looking comic book he's been working on this past year. Instead of being disappointed by my lack of commitment I want to encourage you to check out his blog. He is one of the most fan appreciative people I've ever seen and has a great knack for writing. His blog posts on the process of writing, illustrating and pimping his comic book are absolutely entertaining. Check out his blog. You won't be disappointed!

http://projectwaldo.blogspot.com/

Peace.
I'll be in touch soon.
Corey

TROLL!!!

He's so cute! Behold the mighty Troll. As you may know already, a few months back my hard drive was wiped clean during an attempted install of windows xp on my mac. In that tragedy was lost two concept paintings of a troll. Well here, back from the dead or re-illustrated I guess you could say, is the mighty troll. Below are a few concept sketches and notes about the design both esthetically and conceptually.


The silhouettes on the page above were instrumental in coming to the final design seen in the painting of the troll.

Esthetically, the troll lends from a few contemporary sources. The trolls of the Lord of the Rings films and the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I find the designs in the Zelda games to always very successfully walk the line between cute and scary. I'm trying to achieve that balance and found looking back at The Wind Waker in particular very helpful.

Below you can see the real strength in the concept of the troll. I'm excited because the troll will be used in the story to carry the idea that sometimes life's challenges can seem larger and more potent than they truly are. Trolls are actually little potato shaped creatures who drive an exo-skeleton. By nature trolls are fearful and cowardly, they drive these large bodies to give themselves strength and to intimidate those who would threaten them. This design feature will be used as a vehicle to convey concepts around courage, fear, bullying and anxiety. It has become increasingly important to me, as I think about Our 1984, to understand how creating this story is allowing me to reflect on my own life experiences, and how the story could be used to encourage children facing similar experiences.

I'm very pleased with the design of the troll, both esthetically and conceptually. It occurs to me that finding new ways to explore classic mythological creatures is both challenging and rewarding. Next up, Goblins. I've got a few ideas for them sketched out already. Until next time then!

Temporal Flux

Hey everyone. No, I haven't abandoned ship. I've just been rowing in a different direction for over a month. Unfortunately, I have nothing new to share with you regarding Our 1984. In light of that fact I thought I'd welcome you back on board with me by sharing with you what has caused this recent temporal anomaly that has eaten the last 2 months without even a thank you.

We'll start with the most recent events and work our way backwards. Today, no more than a mere 5 minutes ago in fact, well maybe 15, my son was howling in his room (inappropriate for 12 am on a Monday morning, but then...he's 2 so what does he know, as far as he's concerned he is the world around which we all orbit.) Anyway, I digress. No more than a mere 20 minutes ago I posted a blog entry on Pulp Studios blog regarding the process I used to create my first ad for our new company. "Whoah, whoah wait a minute ... company? Pulp Studios? ad?" you may be saying. Ok, I've been blessed with a great opportunity to connect with a good friend of mine from high school who is an outstanding, incredible illustrator and artist. For the past 2 years we have worked on contract together at Alberta Education and decided in recent months to form an illustration studio together - yes, Pulp Studios. We are placing ads in Applied Arts in 2010, one in July and one in October.

It fell on me to create the first ad. Well, I'm done... early... the deadline for submission isn't until April. At any rate, you can read that blog post here if you wish. In the interim, below is said illustration. It will be printed at 3.5" by 5.25" or so, but I've built it at 300dpi at a size of 15" x 19" because we've discussed the possibility of creating prints of our self promo illustrations. This piece was largely inspired, stylistically speaking by the work of Jon Foster, whom I've touted the praises of often in this blog. The great thing about this is that I will no doubt bring techniques that I have learned during this process into my work for Our 1984 as well. Please feel free to comment on the piece. I love feedback, constructive or otherwise.


Moving on, Kelly and I recently finished a large project for Alberta Education. It set us back some in our timelines, I blame this beast for the scourging of my time, the previously displayed work was like a cooing dove perched in a cage of gold plated metal. Below are a few images from this piece so you can see a little of what went into it. The finished product won't be live online for a few more months.



My business partner Kelly did a majority of the work on the GUI... all the buttons and stuff. The shots here contain still frames from a 2.5 minute long orientation animation that I built for it.
That was fun, challenging and took a very long time.

Well, there you have it. I do hope to get back to Our 1984 soon. First there is the small matter of finding work for the next few months. I'm not worried, consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, they always have what they need, God loves us so much more than they... why shouldn't I believe He will keep providing for us.

Blessings. Forge ahead. Keep looking up ... unless you're driving ... or walking for that matter.

Corey