Wrapping Uncounted

Monday the final page of A K Anderson’s Uncounted will go live. We have reached the last lines of the script I was given to work with. There are no more words. Originally I intended to post some concept sketches to generate interests for the final page but when I was loading the files I noticed that the first sketch was drawn back on April 18^th. Wow, seven months ago. For a Writer/Artist, that is a long time to be playing in someone else’s sandbox. This was also my first time working from someone else’s script. I couldn’t change the rules or make it up as I went along. This also meant meeting someone else’s deadline. I grew to feel that in some way Uncounted was mine too but it’s time to hand the baby back over to the parent. I can’t play in the sandbox that I grew familiar with anymore. At some point, I may go into what I learned and took away from the whole experience. Tomorrow I will draw the final page of Uncounted and even though I will probably work all the way up until the final 6am posting deadline, I think I might just have to have to have a cigar and a glass of wine after I hit upload for this story for the last time.

Below are some of the first concept sketches. Click to Enlarge. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I did drawing it.

State of Affairs

I have been quiet for a bit. Was I pounding away at a keyboard writing a new story for NaNoWriMo? Nope. Well, I was but nope. Was I pulling all nighters drawing comic pages? Nope. I did have a birthday that was memorable though not in a very good way but I would like to thank everyone that wished me well on Facebook and Twitter.

Sadly, I am restructuring my creative energies or lack there of at the moment so I thought I would politely give a heads up to any loyal readers. First off, I am bowing out of NanoWriMo. I will though save my work so far, possibly post a snippet here at a later date, and if it speaks to me again I will revisit The Mekantic and the Robot as a short story or novella.

As for the comics, right now I just don’t have the energy to work on them. Life…after Death is in mid-story with the Order and Chaos storyline and I will wrap that up by posting sporadically with no warning. The storyline may be the last chapter for the Life..after Death line of comics. End of Times is wrapping up it’s last few pages of the current storyline. I figure I maybe have three more or so pages left on it and they will continue to be updated on Mondays until completion. After that, End of Times will be closing down.

I have been feeling this coming for a while and due to the light of recent events, which are personal in nature, it just felt like now is the right time to go ahead and let everyone know the status of the comics. I am impulsive but I don’t this was a rushed decision, with that said, I could just change my mind next week. I will still be around on social media and you have probably already noticed my declining use of that medium. Over the years I have developed many close friends and great friendships so I hope the change in my creative status does not effect those relationships. I think that’s about it.

Until next time,

Carlo

Uncounted

I have been drawing A K Anderson‘s Uncounted prequel to her novel Salvaged for 18 weeks now. I thought this would be a fun image to see. This is about half way through the process of last weeks page.

Click the image to see the finished product or just start from the beginning and enjoy the story so far!

Progression of a Page: A. K. Anderson’s Uncounted

Those, that are familiar with my comics, know that I am currently illustrating Science Fiction and Fantasy author A. K. Anderson’s: Uncounted on my webcomic anthology site, End of Times.

One thing I enjoy doing on my Life…after Death fan page is to post what I call, “Progression of a Strip.”
The idea is to present a short step by step process of a drawing from start to finish. The reason I like to do this is because I enjoy seeing things develop and I enjoy seeing the same progression from other artists and from the writings of other authors. I find it intriguing to see the differences, from a sketch or a rough draft to the final product. I thought it might be fun to showcase the process of this past Monday’s page.

All of my pages are drawn on an iPad using the application, Autodesk Sketch Book Pro for iPad. This is the preliminary quick sketch. Part of my process is what I refer to as “pre-drawing” done in my head and then when I have the layout that I want, I make a quick sketch.

Then I stare at the sketch forever. The next step is the rough sketch adding a bit more form and detail to what I want to convey on the page. I usually finalize my panel boarders at this point to give myself boundaries.

This step is inking but, Gasp! I have color in some of the drawing. This was actually a mistake by me. Sketch Book limits the layers to six and I was combining layers to free a slot for a new one and I accidentally placed part of the base color layer on top of the inks which presented a huge headache when it came to the shading portion of the process.

At this point I lay down the base colors to get an idea of how I want to have the light sources and shading come into play.

Which brings us to the final product.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a little bit of my process. There must be an easier way though. Like transferring the image in my mind to paper digitally via a USB port implanted behind my ear.

What do you think?