ULTRAIST STUDIOS

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Below is my piece for The 2008 Shuster Awards Visions Of An Icon exhibit on the drawing board just before I sent it off to the Lillian H. Smith Library Auditorium, 239 College Street, Toronto.

If you’re in the neighbourhood, be sure to drop by this Saturday June 14th and see the original art, along with work from all the other fine contributors! Blair Kitchen (of The Possum fame) and myself should be making an appearance for the first hour of the show. Room B Exhibit opens at 10 am and runs until 4-4:30 pm.

Click the image above for more details.
Maybe we’ll see you there.

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Last October when Hawley Anderson contacted us on behalf of Dimension Films for comics, product, and signage to use in the upcoming feature film called SUPER HERO, I got the idea to create a life sized cut-out of SPY GUY.

The following documents the “creative process”.

Originally I was going to use existing artwork (due to time constraints) however there wasn’t anything in existence that matched what I envisioned in my head - so it was back to the drawing board. In a last minute rush, I hacked out this sharpie sketch.

I’ve started using sharpie markers to force myself to commit to a gesture rather than endlessly chicken scratching with pencil.

Next I used the Dave Sim tracing paper method to pull an actual drawing out of my sharpie sketch. I find that drawing on the mirror image helps to quickly tighten up the drawing, and then enables an easy transfer to the S-172 Bainbridge.

Once the pencils are transfered, the inking process begins, using primarily a Hunt 102 nib and a Windsor Newton #2 (not to mention some form of white out).

At this point I scan the artwork into the computer, and in this case I realized that I had drawn SPY GUY’s head too small. D’oh! For a moment I thought about redrawing the whole thing, however instead opted to just scale the thing in Photoshop.

Then I added some colour (doing my best to ape the Anime cell animation style) and voila! I had a final image.

This was then sent off to the fine folks at The Lot to be turned into a life sized cut out. Here is the final product!

Look for it in the background of the SUPER HERO movie coming soon to a theater near you!

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I’m looking forward to inking this one.

This shows my new work process of roughing out the page on 11″ x 17″ paper using pencil and sharpie marker (and whiteout) before doing a tracing paper transfer to bainbridge s-172 illustration board.

Photo was taken while on public transit commute.

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The production progress of SPY GUY #1 can now be monitored via twitter.

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Status Report.

This is the situation from the Ultraist War Room: It’s been a slow going summer. Most of it was spent re-calibrating my life and recovering from working too many jobs. The bulk of 2007 has had me firing on all cylinders, and now that the year is 3/4 over, you wouldn’t know it even happened. Interesting. There has got to be a lesson to be learned in there somewhere… Luke 12:24 comes to mind.

New Weapon For My Arsenal.

In the efforts to boost productivity and to provide a hospice environment when matters are beyond my control, I picked up…

THE ALL NEW ULTRAIST STUDIOS PORTABLE WORKSTATION! It’s an HP Pavilion tx1228 which is fully equipped with everything I need to bring my comic work with me. Small enough to fit in my backpack, and powerful enough to run Maya and Photoshop full size comic pages. The wireless connection allows me to keep this blog up to date. As a matter of fact, this post is it’s first.

I went through some deep meditations to arrive at the decision to make this purchase for the Studio. In the end, the answer that came to me was “What value does money hold? If it holds no real value, then why allow it to hold control over your life? Why allow it to prevent you from doing the work that you know needs to be done?”. Interesting…

In Other News…

Production on SPY GUY #1 has moved from pre-production into full production! Work has begun in transferring the rough layouts and script on to full 11 x 17 pages. Currently page 7 is in the works. Once location and character designs are 100% locked, inking on these pages will begin.

I’m very excited about this one folks.

Hope to do it justice.

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The SPY GUY Webcomic: I had meant to get a strip done over the last two weeks. Only I cleaned out my backpack for A.P.E.’07 and keep forgetting to load it with the pencils I had done. Once home, my thoughts are occupied by keyframes needed to be set on jobs number 2 and 3, leaving no thought process to remember to load my backpack with webcomics. Maybe typing this musing will help me to remember. However, my GO Train rides have not been unproductive as I have been working on…

SPY GUY #1: Yes. Pre-Production is well on it’s way. I’ve been getting deep into the nitty-gritty of my final (?) script re-write. All the content and structure is there. Now it’s just a matter of reworking sentences and pacing for maximum effect. I’m starting to understand when writers say that 80% of writing is organization. Or something like that. I’ll post the actual quote as a mantra at some point. Above is the thumbnails for pages 1-3 of the story (actually pages 6-8 of the comic). Hopefully it’s vague enough that it gives away absolutely nothing. I’ve been experimenting using a Faber-Castell brush pen instead of using my usual blue and mechanical pencil. I like it.

Now that my mind is starting to obsess over SPY GUY #1, it has me thinking about…

SPY GUY #1 Production Journal: Ever since SPY GUY: Bootleg, I had thought it would be interesting to document the creation of a comic. In the back of my mind I had thought that SPY GUY #1 would be a good one to document, for the sake of nostalgia if nothing else. I wasn’t sure what the best way to document the process would be, however now, with the advent of message boards and blogs and youTube and digital cameras capable of high res images and video recording, I’m thinking that I could piece-meal something together as I’m doing it. It would take a bit of discipline to keep with it, but it would also supply a massive amount of blog fodder. The only thing I’d have to do is strike a balance of behind the scenes material, and out-right spoilers. If anyone out there has any thoughts on this, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

What is an ISSN? The ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is the standardized international code which allows the identification of any serial publication.

SPY GUY is ISSN 1913-5181

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