Modern Moonlight
Fitz on March 4, 2008
It's past my well-deserved bed-time already, but it's not that long after midnight, so I thought what the hell, Author's Comment time :)
I let you wait quite a while, didn't I? ;) I actually thought of slacking some more - but I just couldn't do it. So, instead, I sat down to do a classic A Bit Cheesy page. The idea for this chapter was among the first that I came up with, even before I started drawing the first episode. So I'm really excited about this one! I'm especially happy about the dialogues here - there's lots of talking and I actually took quite some time making it coherent. As for the color theme, I was aiming for a tomb-like feel. It's kinda playful, tongue-in-cheek - and kinda to make it contrast with one of the main subjects of this chapter. Technology… “Modern moonlight”… For those who can't make anything of this strange title - that's a song by the amazing Dresden Dolls, one of my favorite bands ever. I've loved them ever since I first heard them, four years ago. The song itself is about how communication (and other aspects of life) is affected by technology in a negative way. Another song from the same album, called “Necessary Evil” goes on about how people never talk face to face any more, they resort to more and more impersonal ways of communication.
So now you know. Now go listen to the Dresden Dolls!
No, wait, read on, then go listen :)
Hm… Anyone happy to see the spider back? Two spiders, actually. The bigger one is the female - as it usually is with spiders. The male and female of Achearanea Tepidariorum actually look quite different from one another - the male being mostly red and translucent. Quite the view! And the cobweb was pretty easy to do, because achearanea's net is usually chaotic and messy. No beautiful geometry, no patterns, just mess :) And the other little bug is a dust mite - as viewed through an electron microscope. Hence the “book bug”. The more common term would be “book worm” - but it doesn't look like a worm, now does it? The book with the magnifying glass on it is Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary. This is the only non-web based dictionary I could find (someone stole my beloved Swan dictionary!). Being the masochists that I am, though, I didn't simply scan the thing. Nope. I typed it all myself, then shaded and colored it. What else…? Oh the things that look like pillars are actually tables at the library's reading room. The library in question is a New York Public Library.
In other news:
I promised you some big news last time. So here it is, then: A Bit Cheesy's Polish version now appears every week in the biggest and most popular Polish online mag! :D www.esensja.pl was the place where I made my debut first as a poet (which I never considered myself to be) and a writer (which I still consider myself to be, even though I haven't written anything in MONTHS!) And now, they publish my comic - on a regular basis. It's kinda like syndication - even if I don't get paid. Everyone there is doing this as a hobby and all the money they get from ads are spent on servers. Either way, it's still amazing! :) HUGE thanks to everyone involved, especially Daniel, who noticed my comic and helped to get it published, and Wojtek, the one man army, dealing with layouts, coding and all that black magic called programming. Oh and my ego ;)
If you're interested in seeing Mick and Ryan talk in this strange gibberish that is my first language, see here:
http://esensja.pl/komiks/paski/tekst.html?id=5001
Ok that's all for today. And now it's WAAAAY past my bedtime!
harryq at 5:44PM, May 22, 2008
Catching up...
nibbi at 12:17PM, March 17, 2008
Another beautifully composed page.
Fitz at 8:58AM, March 14, 2008
ABitDark: Thanks! Abt: I tend to polish (pun not intended!) each panel till I'm happy with it - which in some cases can take a whiiiile. Not to mention at any random moment I can develop unstoppable hatred towards a panel I was pretty happy with and redo it ad infinitum ;) Hence the long update schedule. The other reason being that when I'm not hyperactive, I'm hyper-lazy ;) The book bug creeps me out. It's scary how those little buggers are everywhere and there's more of them every second. Sometimes I'm afraid to lay my head on the pillow, because I envision them marching onto my face and under my eye-lids :| Bleh! But these pictures are beautiful from the artistic point of view. I used to have this book full of electron microscope images. Beautiful stuff! For the next page, I'm going to type up a page from Gutenberg's Bible ;) I know there's one in NYPL but the image is too blurry for me to make out anything on it, so I need to find another source. Either way, yeah I'm a masochist... RoyceMarie: Thanks! Nepath: No problem :) Busy as I am, I'm still yet to catch up with some of my favorites, myself. As for the page itself, I really like the dialogue, too, I think this has been the most conscious effort in a while. The dinosaur line was a silly, spontaneous idea - something I really missed and was happy to use in the comic :) Pinkerton: Thanks :) If one day I'm sick and tired of drawing the characters, I'll ask you to fill in for me - I noticed your style looks a liiittle like mine (although you're infinitely more pro)
pinkertonpark at 4:30AM, March 14, 2008
Beautiful! Specially that last frame.
Nepath at 6:50AM, March 13, 2008
This page is my favourite you have done so far in terms of narrative. I love the 'Thesaurus' line. Great work! Oh and sorry it took so long for me to get around to commenting. I have been off the duck for the last week or so and im playing catch up!
Abt_Nihil at 4:08AM, March 11, 2008
I keep thinking, every single panel is a masterpiece. But the scary thing is, I keep thinking that on every single page. My favorite here's probably the magnified book bug. Those magnifications have always managed to creep me out - they're beautiful glimpses into an alien world, really. And to think all that is going on beneath our feet... within the fabric of our clothes... in our linen! Oh yeah, and you're insane... imitating the dictionary look and not scanning it! lol - I'd have scanned it, lazy as I am. Congrats on getting your comic published in Poland, hope you'll get it syndicated internationally... or at least in old Europe :-)
abitdark at 4:32PM, March 10, 2008
nice
Fitz at 8:40AM, March 8, 2008
Vickie: On the one hand, You're right. On the other, in the pre-web era writing wasn't so wide-spread as a means of communication among the general population. GhostRunner: Thanks! Tantz: The last panel gave me quite the headache, I almost decided to ditch the coloring on the spiders and just leave black silhouettes. But as I kept clicking, it all started to look better :) And the cobwebs were fun to do. Simple, but fun. Amy: Thanks! I actually spent quite some time working on the script and dialogues to make each page centered around one idea or event, so I'm glad You think I made it :) Midge: It's pleasantly different after all the reds and blues, isn't it? I missed the sepia-esque hues from the first chapter, but I wanted to make this one a bit darker. Dawn: What can I say? :) I'm a writer, so I talk a lot. Even when I'm too tired to. That night I was like "Sleeeeeep... Sleeeeeep..." but I couldn't just go to bed without saying a few words to my readers. And somehow, it ended up being a few HUNDRED words, as it usually does ;) And I'm totally creeped out by dust mites, now that I did some background research for this episode! Trevor: As I said in the author's comments, I referrenced an actual dictionary, but typed all the stuff in myself. Somehow, I refuse to go the easy way. Only three times throughout the whole comic did I use scanned documents - the dollar, the parking ticket and the quarter. Walrus: Thanks! LBA: It's more fun for me that way, too :) And NYC seems to be such a wonderful resource of industrial and artistic design. Never been there, and would probably hate it there - but hey, the pictures look nice! ;) And it'd be awesome if you passed the link along :) Btw, does your screen name, LBA, come from the pc game Little Big Adventure, by any chance? Bocaj: Yeah I think the dictionary looks the most photorealistic of all I drew so far. Like a sepia photo :) Loud G: Hmm... How do I do it? There's a lot of thinking, even more clicking and EVEN MORE cursing and frustrated growling ;) Pleasure is born of pain ;) LOL! But in the end, I love this comic and I can't wait to do another page! And then another :) And I figured you'd enjoy the big lizard gag more than anyone here ;) JMT: I think I'll try and make some statement about tv, too, in honor of TNA :) Jeff: Good to see you back, too! What is Mick going to write? You have to wait and see ;) But you can probably guess it's going to be something very sappy and - even more so - silly :)
Coyotejeff at 3:50AM, March 6, 2008
Welcome back. Love the start of the new chapter. What is our little mousy friend going to write?
jmt at 6:07PM, March 5, 2008
the web turned the world upside down. Very neat.
Loud_G at 3:19PM, March 5, 2008
I really liked this page, Fitz! Beautiful images, I just don't know how you do it. Never fails to please. I also enjoyed the dialog quite a bit, I was chuckling for a while with the dinosaur gag. :) It's the simple things in life. :)
Bocaj at 1:58PM, March 5, 2008
The dust mite looks so cool! Also, I love the dictionary, that extra work paid off. I was surprised by how great that looked.
lba at 1:35PM, March 5, 2008
I always love how you can create a story with pages where the characters are only on the page once or twice. I'll have to pass along the url to a couple folks I know in Poland.
trevoramueller at 12:11PM, March 5, 2008
Awesome, new pages! I love the colors, and the shading. The dictionary looks particularly awesome. How do you do panels like that? Do you reference an actual dictionary and recreate it, or do you scan in a page?
dgriff13 at 11:40AM, March 5, 2008
man.. you and your author's comments, I mean novels. I'm so tired by the time I'm finally, frantically posting the update that more than a couple sentences is a strain. Congrats on getting published, how exciting! Great page once again, love the dust mite and the spideys... creepy lil' guys!
TheMidge28 at 9:33AM, March 5, 2008
lovely color choice and fun dialogue as always! the last panel with the spiders is gorgeous!
antcomics at 7:28AM, March 5, 2008
The pacing here is just fab. And the spiders are beauts!
Tantz_Aerine at 4:15AM, March 5, 2008
Excellent page. I love the last panel with the spiders, and I really enjoyed the pun with the thesaurus :) Congratulations for your publication, too!
ghostrunner at 12:12AM, March 5, 2008
nice!
usedbooks at 10:11PM, March 4, 2008
Silly mice! Grammar and spelling counted for more in the old days because typewriters lacked spellcheckers and backspace. ;-)