Skip to main content

Redtooth is in inks!

All right, after at least a month of pencils and discussions and friggin' bad weather keeping me out of Lansing, Redtooth is finally in inks!

Redtooth (in case you don't know) is a comic project I'm working on with Jay Jacot over at Comics Obscura - Comics Obscura being a group of local artists in the Lansing area who have come together to create an anthology publication of their work, titled - get ready - Comics Obscura. Each issue of the anthology features four or five of our artists, working on issues in rotations, so as to avoid any undue overwork. So far we have three issues out, and the fourth issue is in the works.

Unfortunately, the fourth issue has been having some...deadline problems. Suffice to say we at Comics Obscura are a fairly far-flung group, and thus organization is not one of our strong points (I know Jay will back me up on this). We've been working to remedy this situation. As of this moment, we expect the fourth issue to wrap up by mid-February. Thus, with a little patience, all things shall come to pass.

Jay and myself, however, are not patient people. In fact, we are squirrels-on-amphetamines when it comes to creating comics. Thus we have decided to begin a side project to the main anthology, titled, Comics Obscura: Split Decisions. Not only does it sound cool, but it will look cool, too: you read the story on one side, flip the 'zine over, and read the story on the other side (Unless you're none too bright, at which point you read the issue from cover to cover and wonder why half the story was upside-down).

Enter Redtooth. I'm doing the art, and Jay is doing the dialogue. The story is about a boy who has grown up with a pack of Deinonychus in a primeval valley, and must bring the various conflicting dinosaur factions together to defeat an enemy threatening the valley from the outside. The "Redtooth" refers to the quasi-divine Tyrannosaur who founded the valley thousands of years ago. Along the way, our human hero - named Haiyah - will have to dodge the murderous intent of his 'raptor "Brothers", put up with a shifty-eyed Troodon sidekick, and avoid being eaten or trampled on by the denizens of the valley.

In other words, AWESOME.

So bringing it back around to the beginning, we have just finished the final finagling over the pencils, and now it is time for the inking to commence. I have to admit I'm a little nervous, but I think it will work out just fine.

Expect Comics Obscura: Split Decisions out in April '09. If you can't wait till then, try playing football with a beer your hand and a dripping three-inch steak clenched in your teeth while dodging around exploding land mines while a band plays The Star Spangled Banner in the background. That may at least take the edge off your need for an "awesome"-fix before the first ish comes out.

Rick Out.

Comments

Unknown said…
Awesome and looking forward to see inking Redtooth someday.

Popular posts from this blog

The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor  to you Jurassic Park  aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life  when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's  burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi

The Horrendous Space Kablooie!

Sorry, Bill Watterson, but I just couldn't resist using this one...all hail Calvin and Hobbes! This comic illustrates a point that confronts us when we attempt to speak about the titanic phenomena occurring in the universe every day. We can speak of a supernova exploding "with the force of x  megaton bombs", or a star that "could hold a million of our suns"...but ultimately all this is meaningless. When the standard unit of interstellar measurement, the light year, is about 8.7 x 10¹² miles, human language (and thus, comprehension) just sort of...blanks out. Here's a lovely example: I'm currently watching a JINA-CEE video about novas in parasitic binary star systems . Essentially, a small, dense star (such as a neutron star) will form an orbital relationship with a larger, less-dense giant. The denser of the two will start vacuuming material off its host, adding to its mass; however, because of its size, it compresses the material into its "