The Conjurers

January 2012
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The Conjurers Webcomic

by admin on January 24, 2012 at 12:01 am

A day late but not a comic short. This one took a bit for a couple reasons. I have the entire story plotted but when I hit this page I realized it could be combined with the next page. So I scrapped them both and wrote this hybrid page.

And yes, this shop is based on a real magic store. I used to live right down the street. And it’s a magician’s magic store. By that I mean, unless you’re a magician, you would never know it existed. Yet a parade of who’s who in the magic world parade through the closet sized store whenever they’re in town.

A little side story for my magician pals: One Saturday at the shop I got to spend the afternoon browsing through and trying out a box of spirit slates and such with Eugene Burger. Now that’s a real magic shop!

└ Tags: books, comic book, magic, novels, webcomics, young adult

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Other Magicians with Comics

by admin on January 3, 2012 at 6:12 pm

Posted In: All things Magic

Ever here of Barry and Stuart? Yes, no, either way, the Barry side of Barry and Stuart started a webcomic. You can take a look-see by clicking the magical hyper-loinked text below:

Click here to read the Marely Fish Webcomic

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Character concept – the princess

by admin on June 16, 2011 at 10:06 am

Posted In: News

This is a character that will be in the first webcomic story and in the novel. She is based on a real magician, Princess Tenyo. I’m a long way off on her look so I’ll share some sketches from the process.

└ Tags: novels, webcomics, young adult

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Some pages from the Moleskine

by admin on June 1, 2011 at 5:53 pm

Posted In: News

Thought I’d post some quick thumbnails from the sketchbook. Currently I’m scripting the entire story arc for the first episode of the webcomic. Once that’s done I’ll start the breakdowns for each page.

The above image is a definite scene from page two. I’m learning as I go that I’m just not going to get as much into each page as I thought. Taking a cue from Freakangels, I’m going for bigger panels with concentrated drama. Originally I thought the panel above would be on the first page. Not the case. Pacing will be key, as will character development. The trick is to hook the reader enough to come back without becoming a melodramatic cliffhanger.

The image below is a quick sketch of one of my favorite creatures from the story. It appears in the opening chapters of the Novel, and will also appear in the webcomic. It’s just a skull, spine and arms shrouded in decaying robes:

I’ll keep posting images from the sketchbook along with my initial outlines for the webcomic. Try to document my process, including all the horrendous errors and wrong turns the writing will initially take.

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Webcomic Process: Grayscale

by admin on May 23, 2011 at 12:47 am

Posted In: Webcomic and Novel Previews

Here’s another look behind the curtain on making a webcomic, or at least on how I do it. This is the grey stage. It’s the hardest part for me as I always want to charge ahead and splash colors all over everything and be done with it. That always ends in a mess.

Not that this won’t end in a mess, but by having a process in place, I’ll be able to improve the art over time and get it to where I want it. In this step I flatted all the figures. That means coloring them in with just grey.

After that, I throw in some subtle shadows and highlights. Subtle is the key word and it’s the hardest part of this hardest part.

The backgrounds are combos of vectorized photos and some square brush work. I’m trying to push the style towards something I’m not comfortable with which means further away from attempting to draw pure realism. A little abstraction adds some energy methinks.

And you can see just the inks in this post from a few days ago: http://theconjurers.com/the-webcomic-is-real/