Let the Games Begin

Things are starting to pick up steam here at the Fizzmont Auxiliary Imaging Division.  In LESS THAN A MONTH, the first official fully-illustrated Fizzmont experiment is going to be released in Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth.  I can't tell you how excited I am.  I'm serious, I CAN'T.  The Fizzmont Secrets Squad is watching me super duper closely!

Also, I'm pleased to announce that I will be doing an artist talk as part of my show that I have up at the Center for Cartoon Studies with CCS alumni and all-around great guy, Joe Lambert.  There will be open gallery hours FRIDAY, MARCH 2nd from 5-8pm with a talk from yours truly at 6pm.  NERVOUS!!  I anticipate that I am going to be trying to do as many events and whatnot as possible in the upcoming month, so I'll be sure to keep you all

In the midst of all this brouhaha, you can imagine how surprised I was when Hank Handy, one of Dr. Leo Geo's assistants came into my office and sheepishly pushed a box onto my desk with an old IBM Aptiva computer and a handful of games on floppy disc.  He said that Dr. Geo wanted me to take the afternoon off and try out these old games.  There was a copy of Word Muncher in the box, along with Ski Free and Chip's challenge, just to name a few.  WHAT A TREAT!  I eagerly agreed and hooked the computer right up and booted up the games.  It wasn't like I remember...

 

I should have known!  Leo and Matt Data were experimenting with some sort of Tron-you-go-into-the-computer-type-setup.  Leo always keeps me on my feet!

010110101 - Cover Blueprints

Hello and well come to the Fizzmont Institute for Rad Science.  I am FizzMAC, the super computer in charge of run-ning all of the a-maze-ing x-periments here at the Institute.  Jon Chad has asked me to search through my sizable archives for a sample of art from when the cover of Leo Geo nd his Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth was being designed.  I have complied with this easy request and have found too pages of sketches of possible cover ideas.

Ah, human art!  So lush yet so...unrefined.  I should give Jon Chad credit, though; these are only meant to be sketches.  I don't see the final cover amongst them, so there must be more sketches and ideas.  It is not uncommon for an artist to go thru dozens of sketches before settling on a final design.

That is all for now.  Be nice to your computer!

Fresh from Quarentine

Despite a brush with disease here at the Auxiliary Imaging Division, the Fizzmont Contagion Control Team has cleared us to release images of a new piece printed right here in White River Junction.  Behold, the Fizzmont Institute bookmark:

 

One side of these immaculate literary placeholders was letterpressed at the Dartmouth Letterpress Studio in Hanover, NH.  The open sessions are run by Bob Metzler, and he has always been super rad and welcoming!  Each bookmark was handstamped at the bottom to mark their number in the edition.  The reverse side was printed with a two-color screenprint.  Both passes incorporated half-toning.  That's why there appears to be a fade with the yellow pass, and varying degrees of density with the blue pass.  Last month I printed some cats for some non-Fizzmont related projects, and ever since I've been interested in doing half-tone printing.  My goal is to eventually work my way up to full-blown 4-color process printing.  Keep well everyone!

Also, I got a nice little mention in a Beat article about the Library Association Mid-Winter Meeting in Dallas, Texas.  You can read it HERE.

Testing

Happy Wednesday from all of us here in the Fizzmont Imaging Division!  Things have been really busy both here at the institute, but also at my day job teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies.  We are one week into our spring semester, and my students are neck deep into their first project; the Silver Age Project.  The basis is this: the students break off into groups of 7 and create a comics with the look, feel, and coloring limitations of 1967, but with the narrative know-how of today!  I was asked to be an editor for the Swords and Sorcery group and nearly fell out of my chair to accept.  My students are really kicking butt, and the book is shaping up really well.  Did I mention that it's a full-color, 36-page book?  And that they have 2 weeks to do it?  Hardcore.

This sort of comics chrono-displacement has gotten a lot of traction here at the institute, and has sparked a committee for Visual Narratives Historical Studies and Recreation.  It's basically an excuse for me, Leo, and Dr. Wurada to read some old comics and compare them to comics today.

ANYWHO, in the midst of this tomfoolery, there has been a glut of testing going on here at the institute.  Dr. Leo Geo wanted me to draw up an illustration of one of his more recent tests so that he could better explain it to his mom.  I like how it turned out.

Leo Geo Show Now Up!!

I'm proud to announce, on behalf of the Fizzmont Department of Exhibitions and Glamor Shots that a Leo Geo show is currently exhibiting at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, VT.  This show consists of the various steps that it took for Leo Geo and His Miraculous Journey Through the Center of the Earth to become a real book!  Everything from the original 1-hour minicomic to the original minicomic made while interning at the Center for Cartoon Studies to the final Roaring Brook version.  Also included are the pages that were cut and didn't make it into the new version of Leo Geo.  There is also an exhibit on how some pages were refined and re-crafted. 

Also in this amazing show is the infinitely talented Joe Lambert.  Together with his impeccable pages and process notes/sketches from his upcoming book Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller, our show is called "Science & Silence".  The show will run through end of February every Saturday from 10am-2pm (or by appointment with me : ), and there will be a First Friday event at the Center for Cartoon Studies on Friday, February 3rd.  More info on that later, though.  For now, below are some pictures from the hanging process:

 

(turning old 2007 pages into GREAT 2011 pages!  Is there a machine that could help with that?)

 

(original Leo and the Snake on the far left with Leo Geo Covers)

 

(the show's almost up!)

 

(pages on the wall without the glass)

 

(all of the process and graphical assets needed to make the cover)

Again, I'd like to thank Joe for putting this show together with me.  There's a really great cross-section of both style and process that I think the students especially will REALLY dig.

Envelope

Yesterday was my Birthday!  I got a couple cards in the mail, which is always nice.  Usually, I'm the one mailing out stuff.  Whenever there's a lull here in the Imaging Department, Leo Geo will come down and ask me to work up some new letterhead or correspondence material.  I hit one of these lulls last week, and, like clockwork, Leo poked his head in and asked if I could make an envelope that he could use to send out some reports.  Here's the original art:

 

Obviously, I was trying to keep with the geology motif.  Those stray marks that you see around the return address were test strokes that I made with my Hunt 102 Crow Quill while I was drawing.  Although I was happy with the outcome, I still needed to bring the art into Photoshop and clean it up before I could screen-print the envelopes.  Here's the end result:

This is a one-color screen-print.  The light tan is the printed color, and the brown is the color of the paper.  In some instances, like the lines where you write the sender address, you can see that the paper color actually serves as lineart.

CMYK

I hope everyone had a safe and educational New Years!  2012 is going to be a great year, I can feel it in my bones.  The boys down in the Osteology Department say that I should have that checked out.

 During the holiday season I actually got my first tattoo.  When I came back to work at the Fizmont Auxiliary Imaging Division today, I passed Dr Geo in the hall and he asked me what my tattoo stood for.  I replied that they were C M Y K.  Leo said, and I quote, "OK, soooo...  the C stands for Carbon, and the K stands for Potassium, but what are the 'M' and 'Y' for?"  Of course, Leo was referring to the periodic table of elements.  What I was actually referring to was the four process printing colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (the key color is black).

My jobs, both teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and drawing here at the Institute, revolve around printing.  These four little colors are indispensable to the book making and printing process.  When you see green on a printed page, it's actually made by printing very small dots of Cyan next to small dots of Yellow.  Here's an example:

You can see that by varying the size / combination of the different process colors, you are able to obtain a wide variety of colors!  Give it a try!  Go grab a magazine and a magnifying glass and I guarantee you'll see the dot patterns of the four process colors.

This is an interesting graph that shows all of the different colors that are possible through different printing and image modes.  Notice that even between ALL these different methods, there are still colors that can't be reproduced.  I think that's extremely cool.