Tag: illopond

Captain's Blog #10 – Update of "8 in Spaaace! Anthology and my extra contributions!

derrickutz

Avast Fans, Friends and Visitors!

WOW! It has been insane here on the boat as of late!! I have been mostly anchored down with major work projects due to a large trade show that we had a ton of work for and I just returned from there a few days ago. On the Captain’s personal project side, the first Space-themed anthology out of Illopond.com‘s community of artists is now off to the printer’s!!!

It was a blast to work with the other amazing artists in this series and I look forward to many new projects with them in the future! For now, we are working on setting up promotional material and collateral so we can hit the ground running as soon as the first prints are available!

Just for fun, I wanted to post some of the additional art I helped with during the creation process of this anthology. I am very appreciative to Paul Cageggi of processdiary.com, the project lead, for letting me participate so heavily! You rock Paul and were a “blast” to work with!!!!

Do It Yourself Comic

First is the cover to the special “Do It Yourself Comic” section. We have a lot of neat hopes and ideas that kids will take this section of the book and really enjoy creating their own awesome tale of Spaaace or any other fun comic they want! I had a lot of fun creating the cover art for this and stylized it after a true comic illustrator’s page. I also was thinking a great deal of my 6 year old son so the character resembles him heavily! He was quite excited about that!

Contributor’s Concept Gallery
I was also able to help with an additional special section called the “Contributor’s Concept Gallery.” This was to showcase some of the sketch and doodle work that each of the contributor’s created while designing and laying out their tales. This was a great opportunity to use the other artist’s work and my graphic design skill set to create a section that was truly unique. 
I intended for this to look like a very aged and weathered sketchbook floating through space and then I imposed the different artist’s works onto the pages. Below is a quick look of the Gallery section that you will see in the final product! Click on it ‘cuz the Captain gave you a big picture here!

Alrighty me Mateys, I think I will stop this post here and I will have more complete information in the next post about the purchase price and locations we are looking to use to distribute the anthology for all of you waiting so patiently!

Thank you all so very much for following along with the Captain for this first anthology/publishing adventure and I will keep you all in the loop with progress on the new Spaaace anthology book #2! I will be posting the books progress here and Kodi’s story entry progress on his new blog, kodithestarfish.blogspot.com. The first layouts of the 8 pages are already posted there so go take a look!

Until the next visit from the Captain,

May the winds be at your backs and friends be at your sides. Blessed be your journeys.
Captain Dutz

Captain's Blog #9 – April Sketch Dump!

derrickutz

Avast me Matey’s!

Here is a quick dive into the Captain’s current world with a new sketch dump and a listing of current project progress!

Sketches!

Here are some regular sketches compiled from either my little travel pad all the way to my legal pad for notes! I don’t care what i draw on some times, as long as I get it out of my system! Ha ha!

Dr. Stahr, an upcoming character for the Kodi the Starfish.

Now this is new. I have been considering for a long time about going mostly digital in my illustration process. It is a huge time saver and it is easier to to fix mistakes and transition into the coloring stage directly afterward. My awesome wife also thinks that I will be successful at this style of illustrating and she knows my weaknesses so that is encouraging. This is also the same process that one of my favorite web comic artists, Lora Innes, uses and her work speaks for itself. So, to test out the process, I made the following two drawings in a two day period. Both were drawn straight into photoshop without starting on paper first. After working these digital sketches, I too feel that this would work for a great direction to take Kodi that still expresses my style but does so in a more modern and faster way.

My little buddy, a dragon.
 I think this is what I think Iron Man’s butler would look like if he built one, Ha Ha!

Project stuff!

1. ) Kodi the Starfish contribution to Illopond.com’s Spaaace book #2

     This is the second showing of Kodi following his debut in the first “8 in Spaaace” book from Illopond. I have now worked up the first layouts for the 8 page contribution to the anthology and those have been posted to Kodi’s new art and story blog at kodithestarfish.blogspot.com so visit and take a look! They will undergo a bunch of changes in process from those layouts to the final production but I really enjoy showing people to process. Here is the thread to the whole project and here is Kodi’s thread there too.

2. ) Secret Comic Submission

     My writer and I are very close to sending off the top secret, awesomeness submission of comic-dom!! Only time and timing will tell if it gets to go through a publisher and on to the comic book stands for you excellent visitors to seek and buy…but I will let you know if/when that happens! Exciting stuff!

Alright my friends and visitors, stay safe and keep being amazing! Till the next visit of the Captain’s Blog,

May the winds be at your backs and friends be at your sides. Blessed be your journeys.
Captain Dutz

Captain's Blog #5 – 8 In Spaaace!!! Book #1 Advertisement

derrickutz
Avast me Maties!
Your Captain here and I just wanted to pass on some awesome news to yee!!!

Our project lead, Paul Caggegi and one of the other contributors, Lee Wiley, designed this advertisement for the “Illopond.com 8 in Spaaace!” book #1 anthology! 
It looks Awesome! 
And look, Yer Cap’n’s name is there in the listing, soooo cooooolll!

I just wanted to spread the excitement and tell you thank you for checking! I will update the BLOG with more art and news as I finish project stuff this weekend!
Yo’ Ho’!
Captain Dutz

Captain's Blog #4 – Big Spaaace News!!!

derrickutz

Avast me visitors and Maties!

I have awesome news to pass on and update you with. But first, a little set-up. As many of you may know, I am a professional graphic designer by day and I create my illustrations and extra designs on what extra time I can put together. This has lead to an awesome amount of learning on my side alongside excellent opportunities to meet amazing people in this vast sea of talent online. This has made me a better artist and has improved my abilities to aid and work with others in both a learning environment and a project one. I have even made friends with an amazing Disney artist in Chris Oatley and a wise and talented independent comic writer and artist named Lora Innes of the comic “The Dreamer“. Both of whom host the Paper Wings Podcast site and who I have been great teachers to me. Visit their site and you will know what I mean!

Well, through the community in their blog I learned of and met the artists of the illopond.com site. That is the group I am working with for my Kodi the Starfish short story. While building, drawing and digitally painting the story, I have also been helping where I can with the book’s layout and design. That is the common type of work I do daily so it was pretty easy for me to add that kind of work into the mix. The project lead, Paul Caggegi, has been great to work with and I have truly been enjoying helping out with such a big project.

After the recent delay due to the loss of two contributors, the Paul re-opened the book to the illopond community and additionally to his local area of Australia (yeah, Australia!!!! I am working with an artist on the other side of the world from myself here in Texas!! How awesome is the internet!!).
Following this opening, Paul was faced with a great amount of submissions and interest from both sources! We now officially have illopond member, Lee Wiley, taking a spot and an Australian local, Michael Patrick Monaghan filling the 8th to round out the spots needed to have the full book.

What to do with the rest of the submissions you ask? Well, after discussing things with community members and my wife (I cannot take on such a task without her brilliant support), I have taken the position as lead on a second space-themed anthology book!!! Man, that is crazy- awesome!

Now, I am still working with my writer on my other comic submission and I am dedicated to ensuring that is exercised to its proper ends to see if we can get picked up with either Image Comics or Dark Horse Comics!!!! That would ROCK!! So, while we finish out the submission (the goal is the end of this coming week) I am only taking on the task of project lead with this second space book. I am looking forward to the type of experience that it will bring me and I would love to put a project like this into my resume! If things change, then I will also add a story to the anthology with a second tale for Kodi the Starfish! ( since I have like 7 waiting in my file, it would be pretty easy to pull one out!)

I will continue to update you as I finish my last 2 pages for the first space book and I will get back to regular posts of inspiration, tutorials and rants so no worries! Below is the new project’s logo and here is the link to the new anthology’s main discussion thread and it is also linked in the NEW TABS under my header art at the top of the Captain’ BLOG page! These things are awesome and I am hoping to build them in a way so that I can link all of the tutorial posts to one and inspiration posts to another. Thats is for the near future though. Follow the link to discover why I named the project “The Gemini Project!” ( aside from the obvious fact that it is the 2nd book with that same theme). Also, if you are an experienced artist and want to throw your hat into the ring and submit a potential story and its art to the anthology, go to this link and click on the post titled, “Across Spaaace…Again!”. It will have instructions about the project and a link to the starter kit I developed so contributors could hit the ground running!

(See, it just screams spaaace awesomeness!!!)

Either way, thank you all for visiting along with this journey and please check back often as I will try to post more crazy fun stuff soon!