  Mickey Monsters
Hey Everyone! Just wanted to share with you guys some Art Cards i did for my etsy shop a couple months ago. These we're fun and also what was fun was making up the little 2 or 3 sentence background story's for each character. This one with the teeth's name is Joe Teef! E.T. Phone Home Joe Teef has a job at a theme park operating the "Romp A Whirl" that comes with a built in puke bucket in every cart. He was stranded on earth when his recreational space ship crashed on Planet Earf who's inhabitants had only a primitive understanding of space travel. Unfortunately he was too busy fooling around all the time when his uncle Ernie was trying to show him how to re build mechanical devices so he has no way to get back home. Lovin Some Etsy If you'd like to hear the tale behind some of these other guys feel free to come on over to the etsy shop and check um out! And if you feel so inclined pick up some artwork as well. I love etsy not just for selling but also shopping for gifts and oddball pieces like these. Anyways yall thanks for stopping by! :) You can find my shop on etsy here! http://www.etsy.com/shop/Calmplex God Bless, -Marshall aka Calmplex Also Find me on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]
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 Hey Everyone! Just wanted to give you an update on the Mini Comic I'm doing for the Art & Story Supreme Mini Comic Challenge. In the last update i talked about the fact that i needed to re boot with a quicker and simpler idea for the comic and I shared some character designs i did for the new Glyf project. Next step was to get to the thumb nailing stage. All Thumbs Now this is my first ever comic im creating but from what Jerzy Drozd (from ComicsAreGreat.com) says thumb nailing can prove to be the most critical stage of comic making for the independent creator. It becomes the blueprint for everything else and is in fact where much of the storytelling gets layed out. So here goes nuthin! The Spark Now even before i went into the character design I actually did a real rough version of some thumbs and script. The image to the left shows my note book where i sort of scrawled out the loose idea of what this mini comic would be from sudden inspiration which conveniently happened one work night right before bed when i should have been getting my beauty snooze! Typical ;) Anyway in this inspiration session I discovered that I could do a pretty cool story with just two characters with a simple plot and, most importantly, a gnarly fight scene!!!!! Basically I built this ship from the outside in. Yep an amateur move but hey what do you expect? I'm an amateur.   Click images above for larger view Fleshing it out After I did a little character design I then turned back into the all important thumb nailing stage. I decided not to make this too complicated and gave myself a lot of leeway. My 10 page simple thumbs turned into 18 pages and much more dialogue was added. I also expanded on the all important fight scene! There were points I came to where I felt like I may need to do more research or where I could go a few different directions with the story but I resolved to not dwell too long on these things and I forced myself to be decisive. I can't learn from my mistakes if I never give myself a chance to make them U suppose. I also kept the thumbs extremely small using mostly stick figure type design and a permanent marker so i wouldn't get sucked into drawing pretty pictures. I suppose if you take the time to examine my thumbs these images spoil the whole story but that's ok. Just promise you'll give me lots of money next time you see me ;) Penciling Paradise So whats next? Finally the moment we've all been waiting for. Or at least the moment I've been waiting for for most of my life. Penciling some comic pages!!!! Below is my progress so far. A half penciled first page. Get Excited!!!!! :) Stay Tuned.... more coming soon! And Thanks for stopping by! God Bless, -Marshall aka Calmplex Also Find me on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]    Here is another ATC (Artist Trading Card) i did with my friend Jen aka Aloquin from Etsy.com. Jen has a passion for Art Cards and has many high quality pieces up on her Etsy shop. I definitely recommend anyone to go check her stuff out! If you don't already know ATC's or ACEO's are small pieces of original or printed art that come in the standard size 2.5 x 3.5 which is the same as a baseball card. They are very addictive and fun to collect, create and trade and they can be made in any style or media you can think of as long as they fit the size requirement. We both enjoy street art so we did each others names in graffiti. Hope you like em. Thanks for stopping by! Connect with Jen on Etsy here http://www.etsy.com/shop/Aloquin?ref=pr_shop_more# God Bless, -Calmplex Also Find Calmplex on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]   Hey everyone just wanted to share this Art Card trade i did with my internet buddy Rob May. Him and I have started this monthly ATC (Artist Trading Card) thing where we pick a theme and create a card to trade and send it to each other via snail mail. So far we're 3 months in. This is the first months trade. The theme was anthropomorphized food.
The top Card is Rob's card he did 'Love Me Tender' a Elvis character made out ground beef. LOL I love it!!! On the bottom is mine and he's a swashbuckling swordfish. Was definately fun! Believe it or not it gets me to actually draw. Its wierd i consider myself an artist but until recently drawing isnt something i do on a regular basis. I'm hoping to change that to a daily practice. My buddy Rob is a great Illustrator. If you have any Illustration needs you can hit him up at http://www.rlmay3.com/ or connect with him on twitter @TheThirdRLM I also have some art cards on sale if your interested at my Etsy shop. Thanks for Checking in guys! God Bless, -Calmplex Also Find Calmplex on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]  3 Logo's
It's all about the branding they say! lol Well if so then i guess PlexHop needs a logo so in the last month or so ive been kind of brainstorming randomly about what i would do for a logo. Now with logo's there tends to be three types, simply words, words and an image/icon, simply an image. Ive always liked the idea of the combo. The reason being is in my oppinion it kills two birds with one stone. First and formost the words communicate exactly what the brand is. Second the image helps the logo be instantly recognizable. A Logo that Adapts Another goal i wanted to achieve when creating my logo is something that can be modified for different purposes. PlexHop is my general brand. But at times i may produce the sub brands PlexHop Comics, PlexHop Music, PlexHop Animations etc. Not only that but i want to be able to play with the design with merchandising and products similar to how brands like Echo Clothing have tons of variations of there logo with the rhino on there t shirts. Last but not least i want this logo to communicate the two main love's that my brand encompasses which basically is Hip-Hop and Comic Books the Calmplex way. ;) What i saw in my head This Idea is one of those designs that just dawned on me one day and so i did a little google image research on a "Guy holding a boom box" and executed! And i think it came out pretty good for a first draft. I love it when that happens! The antennae we're a last minute addition but i think they really help bring the comic aspect into the design. Now this is not the final but the outline of the silhouette is probably pretty close to what the final will look like. The letters are definately going to change but the will probably have a similar feel. Thanks for checking this out and id love to see what you guys think of this. Is it something you'd wear on a shirt? Does it seem instantly recognizable and reflect the brand well? Thanks Again! God Bless, -Calmplex Also Find Calmplex on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected] My friend Jay just got this Spider! What should he name it?  Little spider inspired drawing i did with paint markers the other day. Thanks for watching!
God Bless, -Calmplex Also Find Calmplex on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]  Alright it's on again!!! Was inspired by all the talk on the Art and Story Supreme Forums of putting a big project into smaller steps and now i got my whole mini comic mapped out!!! well roughly mapped out. Ditching my initial idea for something simpler. I'm not 100% sure of the title of the comic but its going to be featuring a character ive loosly created called Glyf (to the left). The comic may just be called called Glyf and the episode is going to be titled "Elephant in the room". The main dialogue is written. Literally 8 small lines. There will be a 2 to 3 page fight scene YES!!!! :) where there may be some small dialogue added. There are only two characters. So that should help with simplifying things! I guess the next step is some character design turn arounds and thumbnailing. Then i think I'll attack actually drawing it. I can't remember which podcast it was but somebody explained the way they attacked there comic was all the pencils first for all the pages and then all the inks then colors and digital clean up etc. instead of doing it a page at a time start to finish. I think that's how im going to try it out. Can't wait!!!! :) Also below is some sketches for the villain of the story "Tusk". Still not settled on a final design but its enough to move forward onto the thumbnailing stages. Very excited to get this progress going on my mini comic. The due date is coming up in less than three months and there's a lot that goes into creating a comic from start to finish so i better get crackin!!! Thanks for stopping by and checking out my progress! God Bless, -Calmplex Also Find Calmplex on Twitter, Facebook,and YouTube or email me at [email protected]   |