The Uniques Issue #3 Now Available!
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The Uniques #3 Now Available! in Printed or Digital PDF or CBZ formats! Bowling for Gators The team has come together, but can they succeed in their first true test? A monster is unleashed in Madison City, and it's up to our kids to stop him... if they can! Also-- BOWLING! |
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The Uniques news and more from Comfort and Adam's Blog #
Uniques: Page Previews and Convention Updates
Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:26:37 GMTWell, things have been tight here at Uniques central. A deadline looms and things have come up in production that cut away all of our safety net. Basically, that means we're working hard, long days to try and get this issue done on time when we thought we were going to be able to sail in relatively stress-free.
The good news is that Uniques #4 is looking great. We feel really confident about this one, and are enjoying the continuing trend of topping ourselves with each release. Issue #4 was always looked on as the golden moment in the first volume of our story. Even from the script phase, it was the first issue that all our proofreaders and editors got genuinely excited about. The excitement has carried through for us, and the pages are looking as nice as we'd hoped.
The bad news is that we won't be able to have copies of Uniques #4 on-hand for any convention before possibly the Baltimore Comic Con. We're crossing our fingers and busting our butts to make that happen, but we'll see. We don't want to give the lovely people at Ka-Blam a collective coronary'
Understand that this won't affect the release schedule of the book! Repeat: This will not affect the release of Uniques #4. It'll only affect which conventions we'll be able to have copies on-hand for. Still a shame, but we're doing all we can, friends. And speaking of conventions...
Understand that this won't affect the release schedule of the book! Repeat: This will not affect the release of Uniques #4. It'll only affect which conventions we'll be able to have copies on-hand for. Still a shame, but we're doing all we can, friends. And speaking of conventions...
-- Convention Stuff --
Next weekend we'll be in Toronto for the Canada Fan Expo. We're quite excited about it, as it's a packed show with a lot of great talent, and also because it'll be our first time leaving the country in a decade. It also counts as our first trip across national borders as a couple, so that's fun in the 'Awww' idn' that sweeeet'' kind of way.
So we're really looking forward to seeing Toronto in specific and Canada in general - we've always been fans of our Northern Neighbor. And a couple weeks after that trip, we have another con to go to-- this time it's the Comic Geek Speak Super-Show. The guys at CGS have been big supporters of our work and our comic for a long time and though we may regret another show so close to our deadline, we won't regret the chance to pal around with the fine people in attendance - or the chance to visit sunny Pennsylvania once more, the home of fictional Madison, PA where The Uniques takes place!
The end of September brings the Baltimore Comic Con, and after that we have the Mid-Ohio Con in October. Man, this is a lot of driving! But it will be worth it, no matter how upset with us our car will be.
We'll blog again next week, but until then we remain-
Adam & Comfort
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Uniques: Half the First Page!
Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:40:56 GMTWe are pluggin' along today as Comfort colors 7 pages simultaneously and Adam finishes page 24 and moves onto 25. We still actually have the first few pages of the book to finish because we do them out of sequence, but we're getting closer to being finished with the drawing and that's awesome! Another week like this and we'll have the pencils wrapped up for sure.
So today we're putting up one of the first (half) colored pages of issue #4. As with issues 2 and 3, we open with a flashback to the day of the New York Disaster, this time from Motherboard's perspective. It's simple and straightforward, much like Motherboard herself. It was fun drawing a 15-year-old MB and reminiscing about the early 90's fashions. We might make her shirt plaid before it's done, and how about that hat' Remember those soft, swim-trunk fabric ball caps' Good lord was that a rough time for hotness. Blech.
Comfort has the foreground colors mostly wrapped up, but Adam has yet to add any
background color or textures. The page will likely change a lot before you see it again...
Comfort has the foreground colors mostly wrapped up, but Adam has yet to add any
background color or textures. The page will likely change a lot before you see it again...
One last note: We use photo-reference for all our major players, and several of our backups. It helps keep them consistent and individual looking. Early on in Motherboard's illustrated history, people kept telling us she looked like Rosie O'Donnell. Well, she wasn't supposed to be, and we actually had several conversations between ourselves about what that said about our society - that there's only room for one overweight brunette gal with a sardonic sense of humor and sharp wit.
So anyway, when it came time for 'casting' Motherboard's parents, we chose - you guessed it - Rosie O'Donnell for her mom and John Hodgman for her dad. Yes, John 'I'm a PC' Hodgman. Because Motherboard would definitely be a PC.
-- Today's Tidbits --
Took a beautiful bike ride this afternoon. It's cool for August today, which is a nice change of pace. The wooded path was beautiful and there was a nice breeze. All in all a wonderful time, and we recommend that everybody get out and enjoy nature while we still have it. Winter is coming faster than you might think, and you'll wish it was early August again!
Going out to see some of Comfort's old family friends tonight, along with her brother and sisters. Should be good for a few laughs, and we'll have our drawing boards with us so to keep the work flowing. Boy howdy are we dedicated people!
See you next week-
Adam & Comfort
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Uniques: Karaoke Night Musings
Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:57:24 GMTHey again, friends. This week we wrapped up our big summer teaching sessions, which means two things: First, we can finally get enough sleep in a night. Second, our days are again filled with drawing and coloring for The Uniques. Issue #4 is coming along pretty nicely, and we're feeling quite good about it. We'll probably even meet our self-imposed deadline, meaning a September release is likely as of now.
We titled Uniques #4 'Karaoke Night,' so you can imagine what goes on for at least some of this issue. Karaoke actually holds a kind of special place in our hearts; see, back in college we went out with a group of friends almost every Thursday to a local dive that had great Karaoke. We'd sing all night until they kicked us out' well, between the two of us Adam did most of the singing. He was in a band way back when, and can actually sing pretty nicely. Comfort mostly just talked and drew with her ever-present art board and/or sketchbook. Always working, that Comfy.
Anyway, we and our friends had a blast. Catch-phrases were coined, inside jokes were hatched, and we look back on that time as being very special. It eventually wound down and we stopped going, and haven't gotten to do more than the barest smattering of public singing since. Oh, for the days.
All of which is why we thought it would be fun to take the group of friends that are central to The Uniques out for a night of singing and silliness. It's what friends do, dang it! And it's a rare opportunity for people to act totally ridiculous in a very public spectacle and be totally fine with it. People normally shy and reserved get up on that stage and all of a sudden they're going nuts for three and a half minutes.
So yeah, that's part of what you have to look forward to in Uniques #4. There's also revelations regarding a certain ongoing sub-plot that leads into our first serious multi-issue story arc. We're looking forward to seeing what people think of it, especially as it leads into #5 which is a real doozy of an issue and has some very heavy stuff inside.
See you next week with more!
-Adam & Comfort
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Uniques: Issue #4 Thumbnails
Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:00:33 GMTHey again, gang. Today we looked at our calendar and gauged our deadline for Uniques #4. Let us tell you - it's tighter than we thought. It's eminently doable, but tight. Thankfully, we've got five pages of penciled pages finished, Adam's got about a third of his penciling done, and we're a mere two pages from having all the thumbnails done.
Some of you might not know what our thumbnails look like. See, we work these little buggers really precise. The cleaner and nicer the rough thumbnails are, the faster the final pages go. We do these things at a scale of four to an 8"x10" page and then scan them, blow 'em up and print them on the final 10"x15" board in a light, nearly transparent blue. Tighten those with insanely clean pencils and boom shakka-lakka! Page done.
Anywho, here are a couple thumbnails for your perusal-- now just imagine them only being a few inches high. Enjoy!
Until Next Time-
Adam & Comfort
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Uniques: First Previews of #4
Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:16:42 GMTWe've been working hard these last couple weeks. Both of us teach continuing education classes at Kendall College of Art and Design - non-credit art classes for youth and adults. From September to May, we teach on Saturdays and it's no big deal, but in the summer we teach all week long and don't get home until 4 pm. Not to mention that Comfort teaches for 10 hours straight on Tuesday and Thursday because of her Adult Classes. By the time we get home we feel beat and need to rest before we can get into any of our artwork, and the whole mess can become something of a grind.
All that said, we're still making progress on Uniques #4. It isn't as fast as #3 was, but we've got maybe a quarter as much time in a given day to draw, so we're not doing all that bad considering. Anyway, it's high time you saw some progress, so here goes - a couple pages from the upcoming issue.
Uniques #4 begins with a Motherboard flashback. We missed her not being around as much in #3, and she's got a lot more to do in #4. If you like Motherboard, you'll love this issue.
--Movie Rant--
Last night we saw the midnight showing of Batman: The Dark Knight. Without spoiling anything, this film is amazing. Every good thing you've heard about it is probably true.
Thankfully, the same can be said for Heath Ledger's performance. His Joker is exactly the kind of Joker we want to see - chaos incarnate, but no joking matter. There's no smiling and winking at the camera, and no loony-toon goofiness, just a terrifying psychopath with no motive but lust for destruction. His only desire is to play the fiddle as the city burns, and the intensity he brings has given life to a character that can be so hard to really capture.
More than this, the entire cast shines. There isn't a middling performance in the movie, and rather than crowding the screen with stellar actors looking to dominate, they all blend together into the tapestry of the film. It even accomplished what we thought impossible, and managed to showcase a pair of equally deep and important villains, give each more or less equal screen-time, and not do either one an injustice. Both are fully fleshed-out and both have vital rolls to play without having anything taken away from them by sharing screen-time.
It's a long movie, certainly, and one of the darker ones we've seen in a while. Definitely much darker in tone than your usual superhero romp. But it isn't just dark - it's emotionally dark. It gets in your head and tears at your thoughts. It gets in your heart and twists. There are impossible choices and terrible turns that, either in spite of or because you know how they'll end, have you grating your teeth and hoping it will end some other way-- any other way. No question has a simple answer, and no answer can solve the whole problem.
Which brings us to our final point: children should not see this movie. How it managed a PG-13 rating is beyond us (probably simply by avoiding nudity or the F-word, because that's how backward and puritanical our culture is), but it is a truly disturbing story. Horrible, horrible things happen to these people. Deeply terrifying events are around every turn. Kids looking to see Batman fighting the bad-guys on rooftops like some cartoon are going to be freaked right out - or they should be. It's probably a better commentary on our society if kids could watch this without being emotionally wracked. The Dark Knight earned it's title by being a dark, dark, DARK movie' which is a really GOOD thing. This is exactly the Batman movie we need, and absolutely the Joker movie we need. And the Harvey Dent movie. And the Jim Gordon movie, for that matter, but we digress.
Bottom line: The Dark Knight may be the greatest Batman movie ever made. It is easily the best superhero flick of the last several years, and blows away anything Marvel's put out this year. We loved Iron Man. Dark Knight whups its tuchas. Everyone should see this movie both for the negative things it points out in us, and the good things too. But you should not take your children. This is a very adult film with very adult themes, and if kids see it then it should be in a setting where you can talk to them about it as it goes along rather than in a crowded theater.
See you next week-
Adam & Comfort
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Uniques: Con Commissions!
Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:40:39 GMTHello again everybody. We're artists. You probably knew that. But even as artists, it's often really fun to get drawings from other people. Being creators of our own comic, one of the special thrills we get is when other artists do illustrations of our characters. Now, we were never ones to get con sketches in the past, but this year we've actually started getting some and it's gotten to where we'll get one or two at most shows we attend. Today, we'll share the pieces we got at Heroes Con and Wizard World Chicago.
At Heroes we got three commissions done. The first one is from Ryan Ottley of Invincible fame. He's been one our favorite artists for quite some time now and we've been dying to get a commission from him. So first thing Friday morning at the show, Comfort high-tailed it over to his table and commissioned him out for this awesome Michael sketch.
Michael by Ryan Ottley; color by Comfort
You'll notice we're showing black and white art next to colored art. The thing is, when we get really neat sketches back, Comfort (queen of self-restraint) feels the immediate and driving need to see them in color. So all the stuff we're putting up will show the original drawing we got next to the colored version by Comfort.
Next at Heroes we got sketches from one of the most a-dorable couples in comicdom, Taki Soma and Mike Oeming. We love them in part so much because they, like us, have very similar styles and it doesn't hurt that Mike's the artist and co creator on one of our very favorite comics, Mice Templar. If you aren't reading it, you need to jump on the friggin' bandwagon now because it's one of the best things to come out of comics in years.
Michael by Taki Soma; color by Comfort
Virtue by Michael Avon Oeming; color by Comfort
Michael by Taki Soma; color by Comfort
Virtue by Michael Avon Oeming; color by Comfort
After we got done with Heroes we were off to Wizard World Chicago where we met up with Franchesco and we got this absolutely stunning Telepath picture. Franchesco is just such a sweetheart - one of our favorites. The man just has this really warm and friendly smile on all the time and it's always a treat to talk to him at conventions.
Telepath by Franchesco! Color by Comfort
Telepath by Franchesco! Color by Comfort
We picked up a comic from The Comic Creator Cabal and with it we got three free sketches. What a deal! And what a fantastic little compellation comic they have. It reminds us of our days with the old League of Sequential Storytellers.
The last thing for today is a couple pieces of fan art from two of our biggest fans and forum-members Mia and Lewis-Paul. Mia got the bug to draw us this very fun and very adorable picture of a young Scout in training...
And Lewis-Paul had this illustration of Telepath and his original Jedi character Drake Tay'lon commission by Emily Jayne Weber on deviantART.
-- Today's Tidbits --
Off to see Comf's siblings and cousins tonight for dinner for 4th of July shenanigans. Should be fun and a nice break from all the color we have to do today for a Stormbringers pin-up that has to be finished by' oh yeah, the end of today. Yay. Looking good, though. There's always that.
See you next week-
Adam & Comfort
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