Announcements

Three quick announcements, folks!

The first is that the Vanier Artisans will be having a spring show here in Ottawa on Sunday, June 8th at the Vanier Community Services Centre at 270 Marier Avenue. The poster by yours truly is at the end of this post and the Facebook page just went up, too! I’ll be there along with a number of terrific artists! One of the things I really like about the Vanier Artisans is that a wide range of styles are represented. Knitted items, food items, painted items, soaps, photography, and comic books and graphic novels (me). In other words, there’s something for everyone. It is well worth your time, so if you have a chance, please check it out!

The second announcement has to do with MailChimp. I had mentioned that I’ve not been a particular fan of their service, especially when I compare it to the “good ol’ days” of FeedBurner. Coincidentally, MailChimp has taken the interesting decision to make their service, at least for people like me, measurably worse. The screencap below has all the details.

What does this mean for you? Well, for regular visitors of this site along with folks that are using RSS to subscribe to my periodic updates, not a thing. For those of you who have subscribed via email, there is a big change. Sadly, as of June 1st, that option is now over. That means that you’ll no longer be receiving updates via email from me. There are a few options going forward.

1) Switch from email updates to RSS. I’m a big believer in RSS. For most people, it is quick and easy to use and is a snap to set-up. You just need a RSS Reader (aka a “News Aggregator”) and these can be installed on pretty much any internet-enabled device (desktop computers, cell phones, tablets, you name it). The one I use is BetterBird, a much improved version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird (or as the BetterBird project notes, it’s a “fine-tuned version”) and is tremendous. There are a lot of other options out there, though. Some for free, some not. Wired did a good summary but a simple search using Google or DuckDuckGo or whatnot will turn many up. You may need to experiment, but it’s well-worth your time.

2) If you truly hate this idea and would prefer to keep receiving periodic emails from me, drop me an email (media@vonallan.com). I’m going to put together an HTML email mailer that will be similar to what you were already receiving. So if RSS isn’t an option for you for whatever reason, we can still do email, just not the way you’ve been receiving it via MailChimp or FeedBurner.

The third announcement is that the new Bill and Butch short story is finished (pencils, inks, colours, lettering, you name it!). I just need to do some proofing/edits and then it will debut right here, hopefully before June 1st so that MailChimp can send out one last email.

That’s it right now! I hope to see you on June 8th!

Drawing Kids

Given everything that has been going on, when I get a chance to draw I've been looking for fun little pieces to work on. The illustrations below certainly fit that bill!

Drawing kids is a great deal of fun. Very challenging, but fun! Why challenging? Drawing adults allows for more "wiggle-room." In other words, there's more flexibility in how one chooses to render adults. Or rather, I find that there's more flexibility. That's partially based on style, probably mixed in with a bit of my own sensibility when it comes to figure drawing. If you over-render children, they immediately look "wrong." Generally my goal is to try and keep everything as simple as possible while (at least in these cases) still maintaining my own visual style. It might sound easy, but it's really not in practice. In the cases of all these girls, I didn't want to get too cartoony or abstract, so that also influenced how I approached each piece.

In the case of the middle illustration, I also decided to play a bit with colour holds (where I change my black linework to a colour). Why do it? Again, for fun! It's neat to play and see how the art (and, more importantly, the feeling of the art) changes with different visual approaches. I've done it before, something you can see in this little celebration of Mary Marvel.

One of the things I love about art is that there's no "right" way to do it. There are multiple ways and multiple approaches. How one feels about that is a reflection of them, at least in that particular moment. And, of course, opinions change about art, too. Even how I approach colour has changed over time (see this, for example).

I don't know about you, but I find that pretty exciting.

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

Concept Art and Character Design with Kids

I've been working on some concept art and character designs for a possible short story. I thought I'd share some of the designs I've come up with so far.

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478

I AM STILL YOUR CHILD Young Girl and Father Poster Process

Continuing the series of background "process" art for the poster series for the documentary film "I AM STILL YOUR CHILD." Today's poster features a young girl handling her father's medication. I knew clarity would be a problem, so I decided to go with a low "eye level" or horizon line. In this case, right at the ground plane. Why? It allowed me to put the medicine bottle strongly in the foreground and hopefully clarify what's actually happening. It also allowed me to make the young girl slightly bigger (closer to the viewer) than a more normal eye level would allow.

In discussing it with Stéphanie Couillard, my contact at Catbird, we decided that it still might not be clear enough so we added dialogue for the father just to be safe. There are no "right" answers with this; sometimes you want to be subtle and suggestive and other times you want to be crystal clear. In this case, clarity was one of the most important criteria.

Again, here is the Final Press Version with logo designed by Sara Morley of Design Postimage:

Initial Rough Layout sketch (approximately 2 inches in height). You can also see that I was initially thinking of making it daughter and mother:

Slightly tighter but still very loose figures. And again, illustrated pretty small:

A tighter rough, though still very small. The father was giving me some drawing problems at this stage, though it works itself out soon enough:

Tighter pencils:

Tighter pencils along with perspective grid and background:

And the final inked version:

As always, you can see the entire poster series at the film's official website. And the entire film can be streamed online at the CBC's website at http://watch.cbc.ca/absolutely-canadian/-/i-am-still-your-child/38e815a-00cec9fd824

Various Kids

Some inked illustrations of kids of all ages. The first two were done as warm-up sketches a number of months ago. The last one was a bit of character design for a short story and includes some rough pencils, too. Drawing kids can be challenging (they aren't small adults!), but a lot of fun, too.

Short Story - I Was Afraid For My Life

UPDATE! While you can always read the short story below, I have decided to start making my comics freely available to all for easier digital reading. Please visit https://www.vonallan.com/p/pirate-von.html for more information and download links!

I Was Afraid For My Life is an older story, actually a few years old now, that has never been published. I think, given the times we live in, it still packs quite a punch. Maybe more now than ever.

It's also one of the more abstract stories I've tried to tell. As can be seen once you've read it, the nameless main character and his dog Niko are growing up and getting older during the course of the entire tale. It was an interesting narrative challenge to get the flow of that down and to have it make sense. It might work better in print, given the nature of the "page turn" in comics, but I think it still comes across pretty well in this online version.

Note that pages four and five are shrunk a bit to fit the website. You can click on that image to make it larger.

This story first saw print in the comic book titled STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 back in 2019. Unfortunately, the print edition is out of print (though you might be able to find a copy using Bookfinder). But! This story — as well as a boatload of others — were collected into a beautiful hardcover edition titled LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LOSS: A COMICS COLLECTION. More information about that edition can be found right here.

In addition, there is also a digital comic book version of STORIES! 2015 TO 2019 on Kindle that can be read anywhere in the world. That edition is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089QX5LJC.

For more of my comic short stories, please visit my archive of comic books and webcomics.

Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure: I did briefly post this story on a Tumblr page while I was entertaining the idea of using a different pen name. I decided against going in that direction, so here it is where it belongs.

Other Links

• Overview of my Comics: http://www.vonallan.com/p/comics.html

• Wolf’s Head (My Ongoing Comic Book Series): https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/

• Von Allan Studio Shop Page: http://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

• RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Von_Allan_Homepage

• Mailing List Sign-Up: https://vonallan.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=f6d06612e90503db886a31a24&id=7642c19478