blog.maljones.com

The notebook of illustrator and designer Mal Jones. It's got sketches, photos, news, reblogs... the usual stuff.

#creator owned

In an effort to streamline some of my processes I’ve picked up the sketching app Procreate and a Pogo Connect stylus for doing thumbnails. I still do a lot of my thinking in my sketchbooks, but I had to cut out scanning at this stage. I want to be able to get layouts solved and off to whoever I’m working with (in the case of the thumbnails above it’s Marc) quickly and easily. When I get notes back, I can go in to the existing file, iterate on the design, and ping it back. Cutting out the scanning step saves a HUGE amount of time in the brainstorming process.  Procreate’s responsiveness to the stylus is what made me go with it and not Paper, by the way. I love Paper for it’s UI and it’s tools, but the lag was killing me when I tried to get a quick idea down.

In an effort to streamline some of my processes I’ve picked up the sketching app Procreate and a Pogo Connect stylus for doing thumbnails. I still do a lot of my thinking in my sketchbooks, but I had to cut out scanning at this stage.

I want to be able to get layouts solved and off to whoever I’m working with (in the case of the thumbnails above it’s Marc) quickly and easily. When I get notes back, I can go in to the existing file, iterate on the design, and ping it back. Cutting out the scanning step saves a HUGE amount of time in the brainstorming process. 

Procreate’s responsiveness to the stylus is what made me go with it and not Paper, by the way. I love Paper for it’s UI and it’s tools, but the lag was killing me when I tried to get a quick idea down.

Episode Notes It’s the brothers and sister from Episode One. Now we know what they were tracking. Proper planes just get swatted out of the sky by giants, but the ultralights are more like annoying flies then giant mosquitos. They let the crew get closer for attack runs.  I’m using an already limited palette, but I seem to be settling in on a few dominant colors these days.

Episode Notes

  • It’s the brothers and sister from Episode One. Now we know what they were tracking.
  • Proper planes just get swatted out of the sky by giants, but the ultralights are more like annoying flies then giant mosquitos. They let the crew get closer for attack runs. 
  • I’m using an already limited palette, but I seem to be settling in on a few dominant colors these days.
Episode Notes Almost didn’t get this one in. I was out of town a lot last week for the Day Job and to visit Mom and Dad. I guess getting the update done under the wire makes me an official webcomicer. The riders are not giants. I’ve always loved the style of sound effects as speech. Comics everybody!

Episode Notes

  • Almost didn’t get this one in. I was out of town a lot last week for the Day Job and to visit Mom and Dad. I guess getting the update done under the wire makes me an official webcomicer.
  • The riders are not giants.
  • I’ve always loved the style of sound effects as speech. Comics everybody!
We’re five weeks in at The Giant War. If you’re following the story on Tumblr, do me a favor and like this post. I just want to see how is actively out there. Episode notes: This is one of the original stories that sparked the whole Giant War idea. Yes, she has Tank Girl’s haircut as grown up. It’s not a Mal Jones drawn project unless I work DC in there somehow (that’s the Metro in panels 2 and 3).

We’re five weeks in at The Giant War. If you’re following the story on Tumblr, do me a favor and like this post. I just want to see how is actively out there.

Episode notes:

  • This is one of the original stories that sparked the whole Giant War idea.
  • Yes, she has Tank Girl’s haircut as grown up.
  • It’s not a Mal Jones drawn project unless I work DC in there somehow (that’s the Metro in panels 2 and 3).
Yesterday Marc Bryant and I launched The Giant War, a new webcomic we’re updating every Monday. From the description on the site: The concept is simple. One day humanity woke up to find themselves the second most dominant form of life on the planet. As insects are to man, humankind is to the Giants. What are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? No one knows and no one cares. The only question is, how do we make it through one more day? It’s the first long form comic project Marc and I have worked on since the The Card Cheat pitch a few years back. We have both hit a point, creatively, where we just needed to get out of our own way and out of our comfort zone.  There is no ongoing storyline (besides Giants show up. World fucked.). Instead each week the update is a small snippet, a moment in the The Giant War world.  Sometimes it’ll be a comic, some times illustrated text, and we even have plans for some audio episodes. The art will shift a bit too… sometimes it’ll really stink, sometimes I’ll knock it out of the park. The whole thing is one long experiment in fun for Marc and I, and we hope you enjoy watching it unfold. The Giant War

Yesterday Marc Bryant and I launched The Giant War, a new webcomic we’re updating every Monday.

From the description on the site:

The concept is simple. One day humanity woke up to find themselves the second most dominant form of life on the planet. As insects are to man, humankind is to the Giants. What are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? No one knows and no one cares. The only question is, how do we make it through one more day?

It’s the first long form comic project Marc and I have worked on since the The Card Cheat pitch a few years back. We have both hit a point, creatively, where we just needed to get out of our own way and out of our comfort zone. 

There is no ongoing storyline (besides Giants show up. World fucked.). Instead each week the update is a small snippet, a moment in the The Giant War world. 

Sometimes it’ll be a comic, some times illustrated text, and we even have plans for some audio episodes. The art will shift a bit too… sometimes it’ll really stink, sometimes I’ll knock it out of the park. The whole thing is one long experiment in fun for Marc and I, and we hope you enjoy watching it unfold.

The Giant War

Samurai Duel now available for iPad

With all the new iPad talk going on (I’m glad they lost the numbering on the name), here’s the real reason you should buy one:

fancyladsacademy:

The Fancy Lads Academy is proud to announce the release of our first game, Samurai Duel! It’s a fast-paced, two player samurai showdown for ipad featuring one finger controls, colorful cartoon graphics and cool minimalist interface.

We will probably write up a little review of the process of making our first indie game after we take a breather and fix any bugs that pop up.

In the meantime, go get Samurai Duel for iPad now!

These are some thumbnails for The Giant War. Marc and I have worked together for so long that we have a bit of a short hand between us. Thumbnails are still where I do like 60% of the work. I’m thinking of evening doing color concept work on the thumbnails to get that fleshed out too.

I use these Non-Repro red pencils for thumbnails and pencils on art board. Oh my god do I love them. I mean, seriously, they’re fantastic.  I’m a bit of spaz when I layout a page, so all the erasing I used to do just ate up my paper: ink would just lay down terribly. Now I do all kinds of scribbling in the red and either tighten it up with my trust Bic Mechanical Pencil #2 or go right to inking.

The goal at the moment is to get the comic up and running around the first week of April. I’m getting impatient with myself and just want to get it going out there. It’ll be weekly so we’ll have about six weeks of episodes in the can before we go live.

About a year and a half ago or so, Marc and I pitched The Card Cheat around to some folks. It didn’t get picked up anywhere, but I’m still proud of the work we did in the pitch.

Since Tumblr only let’s you upload 10 images at at time I’ve broken the art up in to a couple of posts. Here’s the first of two scenes we did for the book. We ended up thumbnailing the whole thing and doing character designs for all major characters as well.