Eric Orchard's Blog, page 54

Free Prints With Art Purchase!

My current sale is a big success! Thanks so much! There are seven days left in the sale and I've decided to give away one free print with every purchase of original art. Due to a snowstorm yesterday none of the original art has shipped yet so I'll be including free prints in all the orders I've received. Here are just a few of the originals up for sale at reduced prices.

Get 'em here. 

Prints And Original On Sale! Nine Days Only!

Starting today I'm having a huge sale at my Etsy shop. I've cut original art prices in half and reduced print prices by a third, all prints are now 10 dollars each plus shipping. 
My print sale in November and December really helped us get through those months and I can't express my appreciation enough. At the moment most of my income comes from print and original art sales so every sale counts and means a lot to me. Every sale literally helps my family eat and buys me supplies to keep doing comics. 
And now that Maddy is almost done and I'm starting in on The Robot Museum I need to do another push.
I'll keep these items on sale for nine days, there has not been a better time to buy my art.
Check out the sale here. 
Or you can contact me directly at eric.orchard@gmail.com
Thank you SO much. 

Robot Museum Process Part One

I thought it'd be fun to to post all my progress on Robot Museum here on my blog, right up to it's publication. Yesterday I posted the main character to get things started and today I'll start with the earliest parts of actually making the story happen.

 It was around Christmas time I decided to finish the Robot museum outline I'd had kicking around for a long time and with a lot of work things started to fall into place. All the world building and characters started to build a story on their own. I started by scribbling notes and sketches in my sketchbook. I was travelling when I started so this makes sense, but it's how I always start something.

Once I was back in Toronto I started gathering up all my notes and began the process of actual outlining. I like to have my outlines typed up. I have been using Scrivener for a while, Scrivener is a Mac writing program which is deep and excellent. But I needed something simpler. So I went back to using Word. which is great. But more recently, after having memory lapses and not saving stuff I opted for Google docs and it's wonderful autosave. Not only autosave but I can edit on my mobile. Perfect! Thanks to my friends at the International Komic Krit team for pushing me in that direction.

Speaking of IKK, the next thing I did was get together a team of international cartoonists and writers to help each other edit our work. These people are mercilessly helpful. It's amazing. With my writing I feel I have good ideas and can even manage a good basic structure for my stories but i lack the self awareness to really examine it and see what could make it the best story I can write. I can't say enough good things about a good editor.

so now I'm editing in google Docs on my desktop and my phone. The ability to do this is great.

While working on the outline i also work on thumbnails. In my own process the words and pictures go back and forth from the beginning informing each other. I find this back and forth magical. something new emerges from this process. It's r a lot of work but it's also really exciting.

And that's where I'm at right now, a nearly completed outline and ongoing revisions to both the outline and the thumbnails. I'll update again soon. I'm doing the thumbnailing a little differently this time around and I want to share it.

Keep an eye here tomorrow afternoon! I'll be announcing a special sale at my shop!

Quentin The Transgenic Telekinetic Mechanic

I finally have a script for Robot Museum I'm thrilled about, thanks to all the creators who joined me in the International Komik Krit team. Since about Christmas I've been reworking the story and things have finally started to fall into place for this book. If you're a long time follower of my blog you'll recognise Quentin and the Museum from the first few days I started posting. It's an idea that's been gathering other ideas for years. And I'm finally ready to stat drawing it.

Quentin is a transgenic (a sort of clone made from the genetic material of different creatures) who was created specifically for the task of maintaining robots. In the case of this story, vintage robots. The story begins when the Museums owner dies leaving the Museum to the hapless Quentin in his will.

At the moment I'm thumbnailing it, and for the first time creating a book specifically for digital readers. Although I'm keeping in mind print as well. Over at Komik Krits there is a ton of lively discussion about the future of comics and the best way to approach selling them. This is turning out to be a real adventure. I hope you'll all join me on this and support it when it comes out. I'm hoping for a Summer release. Get your tablets ready!

I'll post more soon.

In other news I'm going to have a print sale soon, so keep an eye on this space.

Also, the Saturday Morning Webtoons launch was a huge success! Have a look at what we're doing if you haven't already. 

Saturday Morning Webtoons

I'm very proud to be a part of this new weekly webcomic, even a small part. A group of amazingly talented people; J Torres, Andi Watson, Stephanie Buscema, Agnes Garbowska, Jack Briglio, Tracie Mauk, J Bone and Alex Szewczuk and myself are bringing you a weekly all ages compliation of funny comics.

Please visit the site here. And my comic here.

And you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Have a happy Saturday!

Digital Inks, Vintage Robots And Crowd Sourced Editing

As is often the case with me an idea soon takes a funny twist and I'm off and running before I know what's going on.

As Maddy Kettle nears completion I decided to pick up another story that I really want to tell, The Robot Museum. And, encouraged by amazing articles about self publishing, digital publishing and the artist entrepreneur such as this one, this one and this one I decided this route might be the most interesting. It really seem that this is the year of the creator, maybe the beginning of the age of the creator.

My one worry is editing, my work is always improved by strong editing. so, no sooner did I put the question out there I was able to find an amazing team of cartoonists and editors who are willing to work together to edit each others work! I'm really excited about this idea. I'll report more on it later.

Finally, just a note on Robot Museum, I may have mentioned this before but I'm going to do this book in pencil and push it all digitally. Above is an example of one of earliest attempts at working this way, owning a Cintiq really opened this up for me, presenting new ways of working that hadn't occurred to me before.

More soon!

Thimble Rock

A full page spread from Maddy Kettle, which I'm back penciling. I've pretty much mapped out the first story for Robot Museum too, so 2012 has already started off as a sprint. My idea for Robot Museum right now is self publish as a digital only book, for now. As things start rolling and I'm working on the book, the funding and publishing plans I'll post more and more to let everyone in on the process. More soon!

Some iPod Bots

After a bit of a hiatus I've started posted iPod sketches again. Such a fun, versatile tool for sketching. And as I'm writing The Robot Museum again right now it's pretty useful as well. I can use some of these designs i the comic. And when I'm out and see something that has a striking shape I can easily take out my iPod, open Brushes or Sketchbook Mobile and turn it into a robot. 

A Bat Leading The Way

A panel from Maddy Kettle which I am now returning to after about 2 weeks of working on The Robot Museum. I managed to get a lot of stuff finished for Robot Museum and I'm really, really happy with were it's heading. I love the story and the tone and the characters but it still needs lots of work and polishing. As for Maddy, I'm working on the next lot of pencils which pages 41 to 61, I'll posting more updates soon. 

Airship Pilot's Son

I have an old pair of Russian goggles that my son has become obsessed with. I think they go well with those pyjamas. Just finished reading an amazing book, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I could not put it down for 2 days. If you like science fiction, role playing games, video games and the Eighties you should check it out. I'm taking another day or two Robot Museum pretty soon.