David Chelsea's Blog, page 9

David Chelsea At Free Comic Book Day!

This coming weekend I’ll be making a rare public appearance- signing copies of all my books and giving away copies of some of them this Saturday, May 6th, from 1 to 3 pm, as part of Free Comic Book Day at Cosmic Monkey in Portland, an annual event which takes place at comic shops across the country. With me will be Jacob Mercy, co-star of the documentary 24 HOUR COMIC, and co-creator with Pete Soloway of Barkles, America’s Favorite Dog.

David Chelsea is reading: Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

by Steven Johnson

I’ll be selling copies of my various books, as well as DVDs of 24 HOUR COMIC, and giving away copies of my first SNOW ANGEL comic. Jacob will be selling copies of several Barkles comics, including the most recent, BARKLES: ONE HELL OF A DOG. I hope to see you there!

Barkles

David Chelsea and Jacob Mercy at Free Comic Book Day

Saturday, May 5, 2018.

1 pm-3 pm at Cosmic Monkey 5335 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, OR 97213

Secret Stash: The Real Zoners

I’ve been continuing to post two pages a week from my revamped version of WELCOME TO THE ZONE on Patreon. I’m now up to part 15, including this particularly grisly death scene:

David Chelsea is reading: Winter: Five Windows on the Season (CBC Massey Lecture)

by Adam Gopnik

I also recently posted a Secret Stash of sketchbook drawings of some real-life singers and performers who served as models for characters in the story, paired with panels depicting their WELCOME TO THE ZONE counterparts. Many of them were part of the lower East Side Anti-folk music scene, such as Cindy Lee Berryhill, Lach, Roger Manning, Kirk Kelly, John S. Hall, and Brenda Kahn. While these may not be household names, at least they all have Wikipedia pages, unlike a certain graphic novelist named David Chelsea.

The image below shows two sketches of Anti-folker Roger Manning, along with his WELCOME TO THE ZONE doppelganger Folkie Joe McCoustic:

(By the way, Folkie Joe’s bizarre reverse Mohawk is my own bit of whimsy; Roger favored a half-long, half-crewcut hair style.)

To see the rest, you’ll have to click over to my Patreon page. While episodes of WELCOME TO THE ZONE are free for all to view, membership has its privileges; Secret Stash material is viewable by Patreon sponsors at the $4.99 level and above. Here are links to the sketches:

Cindy Lee Berryhill/Candy Lou Heatherhock

John S. Hall/Jones

Brenda Kahn/Puffy Prawn

George The Communist/Commie Dick Tater

Roger Manning/Folkie Joe McCoustic

Kirk Kelly/Smirk Smiley

Lach/Lunch

Sarah Hauser/Tasha Tigerbaum

Sandra Koponen/Marcie

Austin John Marshall/Horn

The Modern Love Podcast: A Cup From The Fountain Of Youth With Mel Rodriguez

The Modern Love Podcast has recycled another of my illustrations from the New York Times column. In this week’s podcast, actor Mel Rodriguez reads “A Cup From The Fountain Of Youth,” a 2007 essay by animator and video editor Andy Christie.

David Chelsea is reading: Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud

by Elizabeth Greenwood

Mel Rodriguez

When the Times decides to reuse an illustration they usually ask for a high-resolution image file, and I usually have to hunt for it on an old disc. This time I came up empty- apparently there were a few months of work that I had saved to zip discs (it was 2007) that I had not burned to CD. So I had to go on ANOTHER hunt through boxes of original art to find the old pieces to scan again. “Pieces” because each of my illustrations for the column was a combination of two pieces of art sandwiched together in Photoshop: a pencil drawing on coquille board, and a painting on watercolor paper. This sequence shows both elements along with the finished result:

Coquille board drawing
Watercolor painting
Final art

And after all that work, they wound up cropping it down to a narrow strip (see top image).

American Bystander #7 Has Arrived!

Well, actually I got the PDF for it over a month ago, but I don’t REALLY think an issue of AMERICAN BYSTANDER has arrived until my package of physical copies shows up on the front porch. This issue continues the high standards the fledgling humor magazine has set for itself, with contributions by mainstays M.K.Brown, Howard Cruse, Mimi Pond, Ron Barrett, Rick Geary, and Shannon Wheeler, as well as blushing newcomers Ted Jouplas, Sally Gardner, and R.O.Blechman, and a portfolio feature on pastiche maestro Chris Shapan.

My contribution is an illustration for a piece on mindful meditation practice in a Mad Max-style futuristic dystopian hellscape by Lars Kenseth (a gifted cartoonist himself, but possibly too busy to illustrate his own piece this time).

David Chelsea is reading: At the Strangers’ Gate: Arrivals in New York

by Adam Gopnik

Editor Michael Gerber asked for something riffing on this ancient Chinese mandala:

Here’s my first rough:

I usually do some combination of watercolor and coquille board for BYSTANDER pieces, but this job seemed to call for a digital approach. I constructed most of the illustration in Adobe Illustrator, but the meditating figure and the severed child heads were drawn separately in Photoshop and imported:

Here is the final result:

Think they don’t make magazines like this anymore? Well actually, they do. Or they will, if they can build a subscription base. It’s impossible to sell advertising in it for a million reasons, so AMERICAN BYSTANDER sells subscriptions to pay the writers and artists. Check it out here.

Or, just order an issue. Every little bit helps!

The Artcasters #126!

If you missed it last night, catch it on archive! The Artcasters #126, A live show featuring art talk from artists Scott Serkland, Joshua Kemble and a rotating third guest chair. This week’s special guest is me, Eisner nominated David Chelsea, showing image files of current comics work for a scintillating hour and a half while chatting with Joshua and Scott about comics, perspective, and why the scalloped edges of a sharpened pencil are hyperbolas. Highlight: me begging for storyboard work!

David Chelsea is reading: Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life)

by Mark Cohen

Also seen: an explication of the layer-by-layer Photoshop process involved in a single panel from WELCOME TO THE ZONE, now in its thirteenth serialized week on Patreon:

WELCOME TO THE ZONE: Out And About With Oot And Aboot

In this week’s installment of Welcome To The Zone, my 1995 graphic novel revised and revamped for a new century and serialized on Patreon, we are introduced to Oot and Aboot, two homeless aliens from the Planet Borgon. Their nameless species graces the cover of the original edition:

David Chelsea is reading: Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life)

by Mark Cohen

In my original rough version these two characters were African cannibals, but at my publisher’s urging they changed nationality. They do retain their taste for human meat:

For the alien design, I went back to a character I had drawn in old sketchbooks, “The Mutant From Mars.”

As an aid to drawing and lighting these characters I built a sculpy maquette, which served as reference for all the aliens in the story. Oot and Aboot are basically identical, except that Oot is half the size of Aboot:

Alien maquette

Patreon is a reader-supported site, but all comics content is free. If you like what you see, tell your friends, and $how Your $upport!

WELCOME TO THE ZONE Rebooted: Enter Mugg

I’ve been continuing to put up episodes of the rebooted version of my 1995 graphic novel Welcome To The Zone on Patreon at a rate of two pages a week. This week’s installment introduces three new characters, Invert, Shroom, and Mugg. The three of them run a mobile soup kitchen which feeds the homeless, whether they want to be fed or not:

David Chelsea loves his: Victor M241 No Touch, No See Upgraded Electronic Rat Trap

Regular readers of my work will surely be familiar with Mugg. This was his very first appearance, but he later became the perspective pupil in two of my instructional books, and the Faustian hero of my Reality TV webcomic Are You Being Watched? He’s a bit different here than later- his handle is on the other side, and he doesn’t speak (which may be lost on readers who don’t notice the absence of speech balloons). By the way, the first comic featuring Shannon Wheeler’s similar-looking character Too Much Coffee Man appeared in print before Welcome To The Zone, but I hadn’t yet seen it when I originally drew this sequence.

Mugg in Extreme Perspective!
Mugg in Are You Being Watched?

I sculpted models of the entire cast of Welcome To The Zone, which was a big help in drawing the characters consistently as well as lighting them realistically. Here’s a photograph of me with the crew:

Me with maquettes. photograph by Dan Nelken.

I gave most of the sculptures away or threw them out when we moved from Portland to New York, but I kept a couple of them, including Mugg’s, which was made of durable sculpy rather than perishable plasticine:

I also kept a sculpy bust of Invert:

I’m pretty sure I still have a sculpy Shroom, but he seems to have gone awol for the moment.

Here is a comparison of a panel from the original version of Welcome To The Zone with the newer version. My original method was to Xerox a pencil drawing on coquille board at high contrast, then add details to the photocopy in ink. My new method is to work over a scan of the original drawing in Photoshop, using a full arsenal of brushes, overlays, and filters. Panel borders and balloons are added in Indesign. I think the new version is a big improvement- I’m particularly pleased with the dripping coffee on the character’s face:

Here are links to all the Welcome To The Zone installments posted so far:

Pages 1-9

Pages 10-11

Pages 12-13

Pages 14-15

Pages 16-17

Pages 18-19

Pages 20-21

Patreon is a reader-supported site, but all comics content is free. If you like what you see, tell your friends, and $how Your $upport!

Help Out American Bystander #7!

Hungry for comic humor? American Bystander, now up to its 7th number, will do it for you.

Here are just some of the contributors in this issue : Charles Barsotti, R.O. Blechman (who’s provided the cover for #7), Harry Bliss, George Booth, M.K. Brown, Roz Chast, Tom Chitty, Randall Enos, Drew Friedman, Rick Geary, Sam Gross, Tom Hachtman, John Jonik, Lars Kenseth, Stephen Kroninger, Peter Kuper, Sara Lautman, Stan Mack, Brian McConnachie, P.S. Mueller, Mimi Pond, Mike Sacks, Maria Scrivan, Rich Sparks, Ed Subitzky, Shannon Wheeler, P.C.Vey, and Jack Ziegler. Oh, and an illustration by one David Chelsea.

Think they don’t make magazines like this anymore? Well actually, they do. Or they will, if we meet our funding goal. Click here to find out how you can support the funniest kickstarter on the web, and make lucky issue #7 a reality.

Or, just order an issue. Every little bit helps!

Kickstart American Bystander #7!

Hungry for comic humor? American Bystander, now up to its 7th number, will do it for you.

Here are just some of the contributors in this issue : Charles Barsotti, R.O. Blechman (who’s provided the cover for #7), Harry Bliss, George Booth, M.K. Brown, Roz Chast, Tom Chitty, Randall Enos, Drew Friedman, Rick Geary, Sam Gross, Tom Hachtman, John Jonik, Lars Kenseth, Stephen Kroninger, Peter Kuper, Sara Lautman, Stan Mack, Brian McConnachie, P.S. Mueller, Mimi Pond, Mike Sacks, Maria Scrivan, Rich Sparks, Ed Subitzky, Shannon Wheeler, P.C.Vey, and Jack Ziegler. Oh, and an illustration by one David Chelsea.

Think they don’t make magazines like this anymore? Well actually, they do. Or they will, if we meet our funding goal. Click here to find out how you can support the funniest kickstarter on the web, and make lucky issue #7 a reality.

Or, just order an issue. Every little bit helps!

Welcome Back To The Zone… Again

Longtime readers will remember that I began to post revised pages of my 1995 graphic novel Welcome To The Zone on my Patreon page during the election campaign of 2016. This 21-year-old story was newly relevant because of the character Ronald Duck, a thinly-disguised waterfowl caricature of real estate developer Donald Trump, who had become a presidential candidate that year. I set aside the reboot to work on other things for a while, but now I have come back to it, with Ronald Duck more relevant than ever in the age of President Trump. Apart from minor details I have not altered the story or dialogue in the slightest, but the art is getting a major overhaul. My friend and sometime assistant Jacob Mercy likens this to George Lucas going back in and inserting CG effects in the original Star Wars trilogy– fortunately for me, there does not seem to be a contingent of diehard Welcome To The Zone fans to object.

David Chelsea is listening to: 3:47 Est

by Klaatu



>

First page of WELCOME TO THE ZONE as originally published, 1995.
Page one of Patreon version.

There are a couple of reasons for me to want to revise the art. To begin with, I originally chose a square format for the book because– well, it just looked cool to me. This was a commercially disastrous decision, since the standard format of comics was and remains 7 x 10 inches, and books which depart from that format are hard for retailers to display. Since I am hoping that the new version will eventually be published in book form, I have re-formatted the pages into the vertical format (This has led to a reduction in the overall number of pages from 90-something to 60-something).

Also, in 1995 I chose to do the art in a stippled line art style somewhat reminiscent of the work Drew Friedman was doing at the time. A large part of the reason for this was that I distrusted the quality of halftone reproduction, and figured that I would have more control over the final result if I submitted line art to my publisher. I drew most of the book in pencil on coquille board, a paper with a mezzotint texture. Drawings done on coquille board can be photographed as line art, and the paper texture will give the finished result a stippled appearance. As a further measure of control, I xeroxed the pencil art at high contrast, adding details in ink over the photocopies, and used that rather than the original pencil drawings as the finished art.

Panel by Drew Friedman

Now, decades later I have my own scanner, and software programs like Photoshop and InDesign to give me more control over the appearance of the final art, and no publisher’s production department to intervene- the art I post to my Patreon page looks exactly as it does on my monitor. I have gone back to my original pencil drawings, rescanned them, and am adding gray tonal effects in Photoshop. The new, gray-toned version looks less like the stippled Drew Friedman style and more like the noirish art of French bande dessinée artist Jean-Claude Claeys.

Panel by Jean-Claude Claeys

This sequence of panels should show you what I am talking about. Below is a panel as it appeared in the original book, a coquille board drawing xeroxed and finished in ink:

Here is my original pencil drawing:

Here it is with layer of gray tones added in Photoshop:

I add a top layer of pencil texture to introduce some diffusion and visual noise:

Lastly, I put the drawing into a panel frame and add the dialogue balloon in InDesign, and I have the final art:

This Ronald Duck panel shows the difference:

My plan is to drop two pages a week until I finish the book- at this point I’m at page 15, about a quarter of the way through. I will decide then if I want to follow up with a story about President Ronald Duck- cartoons about Trump are hot right now, but that may not be true by the time I finish up. Here are links to the pages posted so far:

Pages 1-9

Pages 10-11

Pages 12-13

Pages 14-15

Patreon is a reader-supported site, but all comics content is free. If you like what you see, tell your friends, and $how Your $upport!