A flash back

Since I'm taking a break to get ahead on pages, I've decided to post an oldie but goodie - the original small press, black & white, do it yourself, home-made, Tales of Arcanna!!!!

As you can tell from the cover piece, this was printed back in 2002.  Several friends and I had undertaken a small press venture back in 1999, which continued into the early parts of the 21st century.  The format was digest - in other words we took a regular letter sized piece of paper, turning it sideways and folded it in half.  And we were limited to b&w printing - ie, Xerox machines.  And we set some pretty crazy time schedules for ourselves.  But it was a lot of fun and a great learning experience.  Ah, good times, good times ...

Anyways, this will be a 12 page story, giving some insight to the djargr character known as Bacardi, and perhaps why he chose the adventurer's life.  New pages will go on-line every Saturday and Wednesday.  Then, hopefully, we'll be ready for Chapter Two of the main story.

Till then, enjoy this flashback of B&W art refinement.

Epilogue - finally

We, here you have it - the ending of the chapter.  Ominous, no?

I borrowed a couple of ideas from the animation crew of Batman: the animated series for this one - a solid black background, instead of the regular white.  Think I kinda like it better.

I'm going to be taking a break from posting pages for a little while - need to build up my cache of pages before we get started.  In the mean time, I'll be finishing up the web page updates and I'll probably post some sketch pages and such over at DeviantArt.

I've picked up on a few things with this first chapter.  First off - I shouldn't take so long to finish a chapter.  This version has only take a few years to reach the conclusion.  The original tale was begun way back in 1999, we myself and a few friends decided to break into the small press market of comic books.  Then somewhere around in 2005 was when I began this version - the version that I didn't have to edit because I could only have so many pages to tell a story, or had a deadline that I probably wasn't going to meet, unless I cut out some pages.  Then, of course, sidetracked by life for a little while, then here we are today.

Secondly - that I have a bad habit of researching some things too much.  Which leads to me getting sidetracked more that a few times, which eventually leads to me losing track of time.  Which always puts me behind schedule.  So, limit my research, don't get distracted, and stay focused.  Right.

Thirdly - respect. There is a lot of time & work that goes into artistic creations.  Music, illustrations, paintings, writings - all of them are works of passion.  Along with this passion comes a learning curve, especially when you do most all of the work yourself.  Exercise patience, please.  It isn't easy baring a part of one's soul for the world to see and be critical of.

And I'm sure there is more I could ramble on about, but I think this is more than enough for a 4am post.  I hope everyone has enjoyed the tale thus far, and please feel free to spread the word to others that might appreciate my work.  Thanks for reading.

One page to go!

An almost conclusion to the first chapter.  Took a bit longer than I expected.

Kinda happy with this one - needs more work on the colors and shading.  Oh well ...

Next up is the epilogue ...

A taste of magic?

Finally!  A show of magic!  Kinda necessary in a story concerning swords & sorcery.  Are our heros about to be rid of these hideous tunnels?

For the most part - content with this one, although I feel like I need to do some work on the magic wall effects - just doesn't seem like it has enough pizzazz.  *shrug* Oh well, good enough for now.

Melee continues ....

Yet another page, as the combat for our heros continue.  Wonder if they can tell the difference between the enchanted Yig Sith and the not-enchanted Yig Sith, as far as combat goes ...

I still would like to finish the chapter before the end of the year, but there's no way I can do five pages in three days.

I'm ready to get the characters out of these alien-esque passageways - I'm tired of drawing and coloring them already.  Not to mention, I'm past ready for the heros to get on the move; explore distance lands; encounter exotic creatures; and get into even more adventure.

*sigh* Oh well, we'll get there eventually ....

A return to the action

With it being only around 16 or so hours late.

With that being typed, I wish everyone a very blessed holiday season, no matter which religion, if any, you celebrate, and a happy new year.

Info dump.....

I suppose a couple of apologies are necessary for this one ....

First - I know, I'm late - pre-generated excuse #044 - the holidays.  'Nuff said.

Second - this is a little back ground on the monsters that our heros are currently fighting against.  Again.

Since last time (yeah, back in November) I couldn't fit all the script on the planned page, I ended up adding a page to the script in order to handle my overly verbose nature.  Fairly happy with the layout on this one, but I have decided that I need to re-do the Temple of Romanova.

I "constructed" the Temple in a 3D CAD type program.  That way I wouldn't have to wonder what the temple looked like from odd camera angles.  And I wanted it based on the ancient Greek temples, ala Amazonian style.  In theory, a brilliant idea.  However, since I didn't get the scale of the temple right (from the beginning), and since I'm not liking how my digital engineering is turning out, I've decided that I'm going to delete the file and start over from scratch.  So, maybe one day, I'll go back and edit the previous pages with the new temple design.  Yeah.  Right.

Another thing is that I've gone back a page, and "fixed" my editing mistakes on the first page of this info dump.  Now, I just have to work my way back one more page to fix editing mistakes.  Then I get to go back even further and fix some shading errors (or lack thereof).

I was hoping to have this chapter finished by the end of the year - probably not going to happen.  There are five more pages (maybe even six) to go before the chapter is finished.  I have three of them ready to color and am still working on the pencils for the other two.  So, I'm gonna say this chapter won't be finished until February of next year.  Apologies, but that's just life getting in the way of my artistic endeavors.

Any ways, enjoy the end of the info dump.  Cheers!