Colors make the comic world go round.

Ooga booga,

Shortly after my internet barrage of requests for colorists I was fortunate to be contacted by two talented individuals. One of those folks is Jason Wojtowicz who has finished working on flats for the Seniority characters (flats are the colors before highlights and shading have been added). This is very exciting stuff for me. After a couple years of writing and rewriting this story, I can now imagine these characters in color! Here are a few of the colored characters designs.

First is Successor, which Jason nailed on the first try.

Next is Drama Queen. This is a little different than her original red/white color scheme but I dig it plenty.

Doc Tectonic was the toughest. Jason and I went through a few revisions, a really retro purple/orange/yellow costume to a bright blue. Finally, we settled on rock-like tones to match his earth-manipulation powers. What I love about working with people who know what they’re doing is that I can send a really lousy Photoshopped coloring job and Jason sends me this back…

Doc Tectonic now officially rocks…pun intended.

The last character to be worked on is Magnate. I decided that the blue/yellow combo was a little overdone…I like it but I wanted something different. I’ll post Magnate when he’s ready.

Page 8 inked

Ooga booga,

Here’s page 8 from “Seniority” all inked up and lookin’ purty. This page focuses on young Echelon member Adrenaline and the will-be antagonist Dr. Lindst. I love the action on this page (especially the panel of Adrenaline kickin’ it) and although I would’ve loved to carry it over to two pages, Tim managed to piece it all together really awesomely.

I think that’s my biggest problem when it comes to writing comics: I love to cram as much story in as I can for fear that pacing it too slow will bore readers. It’s funny, with comics, taking too long to tell the story just makes the experience of holding the story in your hands that much shorter. When you take too long to tell a story in a novel or a movie, it just prolongs the experience — not always a good thing. I find that comics with 3 or 4 panels per page tops are always done so quickly that I tend to feel ripped off. At the same time, I’m trying to teach myself to let the reader soak it in. This is one heckuva learning curve, but with talented folks onboard, it’s an amazing experience.

Roll ball, roll!

Ooga booga!

Tim sent me the final page for this stage of the project (pencils and inks) and now it’s time to hunt for a colorist. If I had a few hundred bucks lying around I’d gladly pay Tim and a colorist to work their magic, but it just doesn’t work that way.

I’ve attempted to do colors myself (putting years of neglected art and Photoshop skills to use) but I know there are others out there who can do it much better. So, just in case someone out there is reading this who has digital coloring skills I’ll post a few character design with which you can play around. If you’re interested, contact me at joelkleine@gmail.com.

Getting the ball rolling…

Ooga booga, folks.

Here it is.  My little corner of internet real estate.  As you can see by the sub-title of the blog, this is a place to talk about making stuff up. I’ve always enjoyed the process of creating and I’m finally at a point with a few projects where I can finally start to share them.  I’ll post news and images from comics that I’m in the process of writing (and hopefully publishing), music that I’ve written and recorded and maybe even things about teaching.  If you enjoy fabricating ideas, feel free to share — your process, tips, challenges and successes.

Over the last few years I’ve been working on a story called “Seniority”.  It’s had a few iterations, but it’s finally getting somewhere thanks to the awesome artwork and collaboration of Tim Rees. Here’s page 2 where the reader first meets “The Echelon”.

Cheers!