I plan on doing a whole series of public domain beauties from the Golden Age of comics, and this is the first up.

So, if you have a hankering to own some Scott Story art, please go to eBay and bid often!

This is a bit of a tease, really, because I don’t have a firm date when this is going to come out.  But, come out it will!  The time is drawing nigh!

Doesn’t require any explanation, does it?

Scott

As you probably know, Benita and I have been putting together a lot of background information on the people, places, and history of Spire City.  That’s taken longer than we expected, because we have really high production standards in mind.  But, until then, here is the map of Spire City!

I know the street names are a little hard to read at this size, but I want to find a plugin or tool that allows for zooming in on pictures.  I remember they exist, but I just have to find them.

Benita is hard at work making up the rest of the street names.  I’m also of the opinion that I should include a larger scale map that shows the city and its lake in relation to the surrounding cities and states.  What do you think?

Scott.

When my visualization abilities are at full charge, I tend to go right to the art board and draw the pictures there directly, skipping thumbnails altogether.  At all other times, I draw the picture on a separate piece of paper, make changes in the computer, and trace it onto the art board.  I wish my visualization abilities were always at full charge, but stress or illness or fatigue can sideline them.

When I mention life drawing from reference pictures in my mind’s eye, I mean that I am using the same skills that I would use to draw a live models, props, or settings. Visualization and concentration are among the artist’s most powerful tools.

I have changed paper, inking supplies, pencils, and other tools often over the years.  Sometimes I’ll hand draw backgrounds, sometimes I’ll use Sketchup to build the background.  At one point, I cut and formatted all my own art boards, but now I use Blueline Pro paper exclusively.  When it comes to inking, the mix of brush, crow quill, fountain pen, and technical markers in my art has changed regularly.  These changes are based on my mood, but no one has ever noticed or pointed out the change, because my art looks like my art no matter how I did it.  (It’s the artist, not the tools!) For years I drew with 4H pencils in lead holders, and now I’m partial to 3B in lead holders and draftsman’s mechanical pencils.  I should be more consistent, but it’s the mood I’m in, and the availability of tools, and the tooth of the paper that makes up my mind more often than not.

I used to collect toys for reference.  I have a drawer full of realistic looking squirt guns, for example, that have shown up as real guns in the comic again and again.  If I am having trouble drawing a character from a sharp angle, I will often use my Art S. Buck plastic models posed correctly, or perhaps my old GI Joes.  The older, large GI Joes are fantastic models, because they are well jointed and capable of almost any pose.  I also have tons of vinyl animals, and lots of vinyl dinosaurs, but the latter rarely get used as art models, primarily because no dinosaurs have shown up in the comic.  I love drawing and painting dinosaurs, so maybe it’s time for a Jurassic invasion of Spire City.

When drawing or inking, I am often in “the Zone” for hours on end, a higher state of consciousness when the pencil seems to guide itself, everything I do is gold, and I feel and overwhelming sense of joy.  This is really a wonderful state, and the brain releases endorphins like crazy when I’m there.  Like my visualization abilities, illness, emotional turmoil, and fatigue all have the ability to keep me out of the zone.  I wish I could bottle this state, and take a swig whenever I needed it, but I cannot.

Despite have drawn tons of stuff over the last fifteen years, I feel confident in stating that life drawing at the Indianapolis Art Center’s open studios has increased my ability, and my visualization powers, by ten-fold.

When I revisit this subject, I will go into some detail on how to develop and make use of visualization in art.

Scott.

These last few weeks have been, shall we say, “non-standard” around here.  I’d like to think that we are back in the saddle and gearing up for some big stuff. (Ah, the joy of mixed metaphors!)

At the moment, plans to put “Johnny Saturn” out for the Kindle have been halted.  It seemed like a great idea, but a full “Johnny Saturn” page on the Kindle screen is just illegible. It is my hope that this can be figured out, but at the moment this push has stalled out.

I’m working on putting a new transcription plugin on the site, John Coswell’s “What Did They Say” plugin.  This has all the potential of being really fun for reader and creator, and helping out our traffic.  Unfortunately, I’ve run into problems with it, and I can’t get it to work right.  I’ve got a post on John’s forum asking for help, so perhaps he can get us up and running.

I have a huge artistic goal for the rest of this year, and it’s not the standard “draw better” or “study anatomy” type of goal.  Essentially, I want to be able to draw at my top level no matter what my mood or energy level is like.  The way it currently stands is that I draw pages in silence at my art table in my art nook.  If I’m sick, or someone stresses me out, or I’m really tired, then I no longer draw with inspiration, but get by on learned skills and memory.

Perhaps I should explain.  When we learn a skill like art or music, we practice a great deal to learn patterns and processes and build muscle memory.  When we start drawing, then we purposely forget all those rules and set out on inspiration.  You don’t really forget all the rules, of course—they are still there and hard at work in your subconscious.
A comparison might be a master guitarist—he learned all those chords and scales and modes and so on, but when he bends his mind to playing he thinks of none of that.  The technical aspects drop out of conscious thought, and there is a direct conduit between the musician and the music.

Well, musicians always play, no matter what’s going on.  The generally don’t skip concerts because they are in the wrong mood, or suddenly switch to playing only rhythm guitar because playing lead guitar feels clumsy.  Well, that’s how I want to be with my art.  The show must go on.

Scott.

Because of several requests, I am putting together a comprehensive who’s who of the Spire City universe. I’m going to present it in two forms, the Hotlist, and the Full List.

In the Hot List, I’ll mention the main movers and shakers, the recurring characters we see time and again. To make the Hot List more a quick reference, I’m leaving out all the personal information of these characters (height, weight, age, eyes, hair, skin, country of origin, etc.)

In the Full list, I’m including all Spire City characters that have appeared to date, and I am including their personal information with their listings. This is meant to be more a reference tool than a quick introduction.

This has been challenging, because I never have made a comprehensive list of the characters before. Many were missing, and some of those who were already included had long, rambling descriptions that badly needed rewrites and condensing. To be accurate, I have been going through the comic, issue by issue and page by page, taking notes.

Here’s a sample character listing:

Benedetti: Named Salvatore Donatelli, he is a Squadron Premiere member who died in the War in Heaven. His powers include levitation, telekinesis, and blessing/curse. Death is only an inconvenience for him, and his ghost is still active in Spire City. He is an Italian-American, 6’1” tall, 190 lbs., and he is 50 years old. He has auburn hair, blue eyes, and olive skin.

Benita and I have made big plans for selling T-shirts. We’ll be selling funny shirts, inspirational shirts, fantasy art shirts, and (of course) Johnny Saturn shirts. To this end I’m looking at some new store plugins, and I think I’ve found what we want. I should even be able to sell digital versions of the comic again off this site, which is great because anything you buy from us earns us more money.

EvilSupahFly has pointed out that we need to update our character listing, as well as guides for Spire City itself and a new readers section. I’m combining this task with finally filling out our media kit, and quite possibly a printed reader’s guide to “Johnny Saturn.”

For those who don’t know, we are fast closing in on the end of issues 11, which concludes the first part of the second story arc called “Homeland Insecurity.” Finishing this story arc is a pretty momentous occasion for Benita and me. I’m very proud of it, because this is when Benita and I really worked out the plot lines, and we finally learned how to write something that reads well as a web comic. We’ve both been writing for years (mostly prose stuff, but occasionally magazine articles too), but learning how to maximize our writing for sequential art was still a challenge.

On a personal note, I’m pretty pleased with myself this evening because I adapted my Belkin game controller, which I use in Photoshop, to change brush/pencil size, opacity, and mode all in a very fast, efficient way. I endorse the use of a game controller (whatever brand you buy) to make your coloring easier.

This week, I’ve got several things on my “To Do” list. I’m contributing “Johnny Saturn” pages to the Indy Webcomic Group’s forthcoming sampler. I’m formatting our comics for the Amazon Kindle. I’ve got some code to install on the website from the Webcomic Planet Collective and Palace in the Sky. And, I’m going to wrap up the media kit I mentioned before. This media kit will also go nicely on numerous wikis and websites, so I’m pretty excited about it.

In addition to this, I’ll be creating two more episodes of “Johnny Saturn” for next week. Once, a few years back, I had a buffer of comic pages that were pre-loaded and ready to go. That day has come and gone, and now I’m on a weekly cycle to make new episodes every week. This arrangement has worked out pretty well, to be honest.

“But,” you interject, “Two penciled, inked, colored, and lettered episodes a week, the equivalent of a single comic page, is that all you can do?” Well, no. Running the publishing side of Story Studios takes a good chunk of my time, as does promotion, and other less common elements like interviews, art for this site or that, and interaction. When we were doing three episodes a week then all the extra stuff was neglected, and that’s why I had to cut back. That worked out well, and our audience has grown since then.

Scott.

Story Studios (aka Scott and Benita) are thrilled to announce that “Johnny Saturn” is available for download on iTunes! I repeat, you can get “Johnny Saturn” on iTunes! All our titles are available in the Panelfly store, and just searching for “Johnny Saturn” on iTunes apparently doesn’t get you anywhere. So far we’ve got issues 1 through 9 available, all at their standard download price of .99.

Is “Johnny Saturn” available on the Kindle yet? Nope. It’s going to happen very soon, but technical issues led me to ordering a book on formatting comics for Kindle. Honestly, I’m pretty excited about this, and we’ll soon thereafter move to make our books available on other hand-held devices. I believe we’ve entered the age of the digital comic, and we always want to keep “Johnny Saturn” at the forefront!

I’m reorganizing and remaking my studio. I’d like to say that it has “exceeded its effectiveness,” but all that means is that it looks like a bombed out city. All those months remodeling the downstairs of our house meant I neglected the studio, and now is time to put that right! I strongly believe that your environment mirrors the state of your mind, and that recently the good ol’ brain has been unfocused, leading to a refuse strewn maze of paths. Well, I need all my facilities functional, because 2010 is going to be a great year for Story Studios!

Scott.

I’m hard at work on episodes 33 and 34, and they are brutal! Well, to be exact, the subject matter is brutal, the drawing of it has been a real joy.

So much happens in this scene that Benita and decided that there would be an aftermath issue to establish who lived, who died, and the current status quo. The only constant in Spire City is change, after all.

I noticed today that www.comicsxp.com has all ten published issues of Johnny Saturn available in digital download format, so be sure to go there and look over their fine selection of available comics.

These days I’ve grown used to not having a comic buffer. A buffer is when you have comics lined up for future publication, giving you some breathing room. I haven’t been able to pull that off in a long time, unfortunately. I’m OK with it, though, because it gives the comic a sense of immediate freshness to me.

Last year we more than tripled our readership. We hope to do the same again in 2010. That readership means everything to us, because we support the comic through book and digital sales, and more readers equal more sales.

I’m not ready to announce Johnny Saturn on the Amazon Kindle yet, but soon… I downloaded the publishing guide, so it’s coming quick. My mom has a Kindle, and I am very impressed with it. I wouldn’t mind having one of them myself, one of these days.

Well, that’s enough for this post.

Be Good! Scott.

More Hotfoot.  The first half of this image is assorted footwear designs for a super speedster, and the second half is the construction drawing for a promotional poster I did, featuring the women of the Squadron Premiere.  I drew this second picture while sitting in a park, and the duck or goose pictured kept pestering me.  These ducks are bigger than you imagine, especially when they are nosing around for a treat, so I left before I could draw Hotfoot’s clothes on.  Luckily, the duck posed for me.