That About Covers It

Cover, "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl", No. 01
Digital mixed media
3,975 x 6150 pix
March 2010

Matthew Crouch designed this second logo after I decided that the book title needed a modifier and his first "Tuff-GIrl" logo with its stepped outline proved to be too much of a pain to simply stack the long and by nature very horizontal "unstoppable". He kept the typeface of the first and explored different envelope shapes and different treatments for "unstoppable".

Merrill Hagan "captioned" the illustration with dialogue after the art was done.

The illustration was hand-inked and colored digitally. For the most part, the colors are mixes of cyan, magenta and yellow of the standard CMYK printing process with only a gradient of black behind the masthead. Last year I thought that I might use a colored version of the art I made for "Tuff-Girl" sketchbook No. 2 for at least the main image if not the whole thing.

The Wichita logo is a temporary (so I say) design I put together loosely based on the kilted lettering of Mickey Mouse title cards.

The Tuf Gurlz logo is just Cooper typeface mashed together similarly to the "Beach Boys Pet Sounds" album title.

Is it "fantastic", really? Yes. Yes it is.

Gary Albright

In typical fashion, the time I planned to devote towards the completion of my "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" comic book, got diverted by another project, a going away card for Gary Albright, Sr. V.P. Trade Creative Services, Cartoon Network.


2010
in the style of Al Hirschfeld
* * * * *

More or less I had the idea of a Hirschfeld caricature of Gary for several years, ever before I had done one of my boss, Ed Murrieta, but I needed the right occasion. Two weeks ago, he announced that his position at Cartoon Network was going to be eliminated, and his group, Trade Creative (TCS) of which I'm part, would be merged with the On-Air creative group.


c 2002
in the style of Hanna-Barbera's "The Flintstones"
* * - - -

Part and parcel of the Hirschfeld caricature was for it to be comprised of the names of past and present TCS staffers. If you're familiar with Hirschfeld's work, then you probably know that he would often hide his daughter's name, "Nina", in his work. Infusing the Gary drawing with the names of 92 staffers, temps and interns plus 58 Cartoon Network characters isn't exactly hiding things, but mixing in there 11 "Gary"s is.


c2006
in the style of Jim Davis' "Garfield."
* - - - -

Gary plays the harmonica, whose rows of little square holes are the perfect motif to be replace with the network's logo. It was especially fortunate, because being undecided about what to do with Gary's hands, the design cycled through black berries, whiskey bottles and other property.


2003
* * * - -

On Gary's last day, he received a gift from the company, a memento commemorating his 15th year with the company.

Cover Girl

Cover, Unstoppable Tuff-Girl, No. 01
Carmine Red Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
25.1206 x 38.862 cm (9.89 in. x 15.30 in.)

Now this is starting to feel like progress.

I'll follow this up later with a montage of the thumbnail drawings done leading up to this composition, and at that point it will make sense of my thought process.

Here you can get a sense of the pleasure I get from the DC Comics covers from the late sixties and early seventies that, unlike the mini movie posters on modern comics, had tantalizing outrageous imagery like more playful pulp novel covers. It may be especially evident that the multiple panels motif is borrowed from their 100 Page Specials which contained multiple stories in a "something for everyone" sort of way.

This first issue promises adventures of this new hero against a bounding man-lizard, a befuddled pup impossibly fitted in a magician's top hat, and a little pig-tailed girl enjoying the California waves.

Sound like fun?

I can hardly wait until I can fill the top with the official logo. Oh, but I must.

Blink and Paint

Maybe you'd like to see more of the inked pages on this recent "Tuff-Girl" adventure, or at a higher resolution. Here's a taste.


UTG #20001, page 7, panel 6
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
14.60 x 12.70 cm (5.75" x 5.00")


UTG #20001, page 7, panel 6
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
14.60 x 12.70 cm (5.75" x 5.00")

Writer Merrill Hagan and I had a discussion regarding how much flirtation should occur between T.G. and Eagle One. By this panel, Eagle One has definitely encroached too far into T.G's personal space.

Eagle One's costume design in greatly influenced by Elvis' style, it's the details that amuse me. I imagine that he has designed it himself and had someone else do the sewing, a moll perhaps? With Herculean strength, he chose white and gold, colors appropriate for a Greek God. In love with his code name, he's got an ill-fitting eagle on the front holding a numeral "1" in each talon (based in the quarter design), a bird on the back (based off a Pontiac Firebird hood design); a winged numeral "1" on his belt buckle and his name written both across the back of his shoulders and the back part of his belt. Conceptually, he should have more bird motifs on the clasps on his cape and in the embroidery on his pant cuffs.


UTG #20001, page 8, panel 4
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
13.02 x 12.70 cm (5.12" x 5.00")


UTG #20001, page 8, panel 4
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
13.02 x 12.70 cm (5.12" x 5.00")

I like lettering - playing with letter forms. In comics, it can add another layer to set or reinforce the feeling of the visuals. To that end, I prefer to draw those sound effects - or maybe I'm to cheap to buy a bunch of fonts.


UTG #20001, page 9, panel 3
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
11.75 x 12.70 cm (4.62" x 5.00")


UTG #20001, page 9, panel 3
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
11.75 x 12.70 cm (4.62" x 5.00")

This is an example where working painterly with the inks over loose pencil art had less that excellent results. The perspective, both in the indeterminate vanishing point(s) and the unconvincing scale reduction of black jack tables and other property is wonky.

The figure work, too have little problems.

Also by this page, I had lost the point on my inking brush. However, liking the added dry brush effect I continued with the same brush throughout the adventure.


UTG #20001, page 12, panel 2
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
13.65 x 13.02 cm (5.38" x 5.12")


UTG #20001, page 12, panel 2
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
13.65 x 13.02 cm (5.38" x 5.12")

I'm focusing on this panel because of my Disney geekiness. Hemlocke's penthouse meeting room located atop the central tower of the Golden Cactus Casino & Hotel is based on doubling the size of the design of Slue Foot Sue's Golden Horseshoe Saloon in Frontierland, Disneyland.

Hemlocke's desk with its bank of monitors is where the band pit would be. There's a bar to the right. Plainly, there is a stage with a huge wall of windows instead of a painted backdrop. Off in the wings of the stage would be various private rooms. Vertically the entire room is 4-stories tall.

Inker's Dozen

Galley of the 12-page story, final inks.

I finished inking the last of 12 pages of this "Unstoppable Tuff-Girl" episode. Along the way, I've been lettering each page in Adobe Illustrator, and now I'm doing duo-tone style coloring.

It's just doesn't seem to end.

Happy Valentines Day

Digital color over scan of India ink and brush.
17.78 cm x 15.24 cm (7.00 inch x 6.00 inch)

Tuf-n-Stuff

"Little Tuffy and the Tuf Gurlz"
character design concept sketches.
Red pencil on paper.
21.59 cm x 27.94 cm (8.50 inches x 11.00 inches)

I can't say that I have so many ideas that I don't know what I should do with them. I have, however, had minor ideas that I wanted some to just steal, out of curiosity of how they might turn out.

This isn't one of those ideas. Part of the Tuff-Girl mythology is that the seed of Debby's idea of her becoming the adventure hero comes from a cartoon character she created and printed on tee-shirts. My initial plan was for that character to be a little like "The Powerpuff Girls" crossed with "Emily the Strange" - simple and graphic and really just one drawing with slight alterations to the hair, clothes and random raspberries or bandages.


"Little Tuffy and the Tuf Gurlz"
character design concept sketches.
Red pencil and black India Ink on paper.
21.59 cm x 27.94 cm (8.50 inches x 11.00 inches)

As I've progress on my comic book, the notion of placing that cartoon character in a minor feature percolated in the back of my mind. Here is the most developed realization of that idea: Little Tuffy, Monica, Barb, Malibu, Catalina and the Shar Pei dog, Wilson.

Yes, the design is a lot more complex than it began, but that's what happened when I started mixing in the influences of Walt Kelly's "Pogo" and Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes."

Mmmm

The Atlanta Cartoon Network office received an unexpected treat this holiday: hand made caramels. These soft and chewy morsels were a gift from Meredith, our intern of two year's back, and they were good.

Having been exposed to pre-packaged, manufactured candies all my life, I never gave much thought that there must be actual caramel recipes and that it doesn't just ooze out of some "caramel tree" in Canada.

Did I tell you that they were good?

TAGS January 10 & 11, 1994

01/10: Drawing a crowd.

01/11: Prelude to disaster... or something mildly humorous.

What Have I Gotten Myself into This Time?
These two strips, as I recall, were created especially for the first and as of yet only published collection of "TAGS" comics, and were not printed in my newsletter publication "monotony." All TAGS strips that will follow here in "monotonae" have yet to be republished in collected form. This I should do. This I want to do. This I haven't had time to do. Which is too bad, because volume two would have been markedly better in content than volume one, entitled "What Have I Gotten Myself into This Time?"


January 10: Monster engaged in the unusual, curious, but not necessarily complexly interesting act of drawing. Drawing can be a specialized skill and talent, but as an action, it's not all that entertaining to watch happen, because it's conceptually such as simple thing - making marks to look like things.

In the first panel, Craig (bald eagle) makes his first appearance. Panel 2, Tanya (otter) makes her first appearance. Panel 4, Jill (reindeer) joins the group in her first appearance.

Amongst the scratching, drawing sound effects is the word "squibbill" which has been the mark for my self-published greeting cards.


January 11: In the first panel, Shirley (seal) makes her first appearance. I had erroneously reported that Shirley was a doe (blog entry Sept. 2, 2008). The doe/deer is Suzie. Entering in panel three is Brenda (mongoose), also making her first appearance. Five first appearances in two strips, My motives were/are pretty plain, to have the whole TAGS cast actually appear in strips collected in the volume.

Shirley's inquiry in panel one is as artificial a lead in as I've ever heard in a sit-com. The gag of the strip parallels my experience of putting the first collected volume of TAGS strips. In fact, a lot of my projects begin with me not have a very good idea of what I'm in for.

Costume Design:
As previously mentioned, the locale of TAGS is lifted from my situation in my first job working at Disneyland, CA - which was bussing tables in a themed restaurant in an amusement park. So as is done at Disneyland, TAGS characters wear costumes at work. I felt no reason not to simply copy the costume designs from the location where I had worked, The French Market Restaurant in New Orleans Square. In fact, I didn't even question it.

The hosts wore bright cerulean vests with black trimmed pockets over a short sleeve shirt and black bow tie. The outfit was completed with black slacks and black shoes, but most of the TAGS characters are pant-less.

The hostesses wore dresses in the same blue with short puffy sleeves and high collar to which they affixed their oval name tags. Over the dress they wore an apron that was white with a crisscross of multi-colored stripes.

In the kitchen, hosts and hostesses wore "kitchen whites" (white coat, white pants, white apron) a scarf in restaurant unifying blue and all topped with a white paper hat.

Although all of the costumes for the New Orleans Square restaurants have since been re-designed, Monster and company will forever be swathed in bright cerulean blue.

If I were to further define the TAGS world and actually give a name and by association a theme to the restaurant that Monster and gang work in Happiland, I will have to retro them to the costume designs which I think are a generic 1890's design and not turn of the century New Orleans specific.

Inks and Outs

I am now in, as it turns out, the long, laborious process of inking the twelve pages of the next Unstoppable Tuff-Girl episode. I'm averaging one page a day, or less than one panel an hour. It's a little slower going in these colder winter days and nights, with the drier air seeming to make the India ink evaporate quicker.


UTG #20001, page 3, panel 5
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 3, panel 5
India Ink and color pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")

I'm inking the borders and word balloons with a round nib quill pen. I figure that I need to know how large the balloons need be and design them into each panel layout. The balloons drawn into the panels at these stages comes with the additional benefit little areas that I need not draw and ink.

All other art is inked with a round lettering brush and black India ink. For good or bad, I avoid inking lines of the art with a ruler.

Also for good or bad, I hand letter anything that's not dialogue and narrative. I do realize that now days it's more common than not to do all this, the balloons and lettering, utilizing the power of the computer and versatility of the dozens of available typefaces. I can only answer back, "That's not what I'm doing."


UTG #20001, page 5, panel 1
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 5, panel 1
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
14.0 x 12.7 cm (5.5" x 5.0")

The pencil art I drew rather loosely and sans many details, knowing that I would also be inking the pages myself, rather than handing them off in assembly-line manner to another artist. This was mostly a time saving plan, which, in that respect, worked well - at least at the pencil stage. Perhaps the inks are going slower than ideal due to the addition of details like backgrounds and environmental property.

Still, the inking from page to page seems to grow subtly more confident. There is also more dry-brush and rough quality to the later pages due to the ink evaporating quicker and my brush getting stiffer quicker in the dry winter days.


UTG #20001, page 6, panel 4
light blue and blue Col-Erase pencil on Bristol board
13.7 x 12.7 cm (5.4" x 5.0")


UTG #20001, page 6, panel 4
India ink and color pencil on Bristol board
13.7 x 12.7 cm (5.4" x 5.0")

As I go through the pages mostly in series (page two was inked first, then page one, followed by the rest in proper order), I've made running changes in some of the character's designs. Tuff-Girl's mask now has downward points over her cheeks, and she has black go-go boots rather than more rugged motorcycle boots. Rip's henchmen have distinguishing color schemes for their Luchador masks. Eagle One's sleeves were corrected to extend past his wrists in all panels until he rolls them up in the last panel of page six.

The backgrounds, particularly the interiors of the Golden Cactus Casino, are an example of what I describe as nonsense-space. I picked this up poring over and studying Milt Caniff's Terry and the Pirates comic strip where he would always position the camera (the reader's point of view) in different places in the environment from panel to panel. Some times he would simply switch between wide, medium and close up shots. Other times, it would be as if the "camera" would be re-positioned and turned 90-degrees, so that in say four successive panels, he'd show the four different walls in a room. Of course this makes the visual read as interesting as the artist can conceive, but simultaneously, the artist is not restricted to keeping track of property, windows, etc. their relative positions and number. It's a slight of hand that suggests that with the same characters from panel to panel, so too is the location depicted behind them the same, but not necessarily anything architecturally accurate.