Ume Abroad Mock Up

This is the "mock-up" (of a mockup?) for the preview of Ume Abroad. Which is going to be at CAKE this upcoming weekend. I hadn't started something from scratch without a paper mock on InDesign in several years, so this was a little nerve wracking today. Spent a lot of my time at Boneshaker poking around files. But eventually everything worked out! Tried printing it just on my 8.5"x11" printer, and sort of like the smaller size, going to maybe go with that instead.

New Book and World Turtle Day

 

Recent updates around the other sites are this new charm book, you can find out more on Paper Tapir. Also here is a sneak peek for tomorrows special Ume update for World Turtle Day. 

I have a whole bunch of things going on until around the beginning of August, hopefully everything will get done and I'll have time to work on my own stuff, but I'm not holding my breath on this one. Trying to finish redrawing the Ume Abroad preview for CAKE (June 15-16), I'm helping with two different art festivals. CONvergence is at the beginning of July and we have to to a bunch of work for that, and I'm TAing for the MCAD pre-college program again during the middle and end of July. 

I'm going to be trying to get a normal website up for Paper Tapir and then un-merging the blog and the actual site, unfortunately that's going to come after all these other things. 

Again, thank you all so much for the additional support on the Facebook fanpage of Paper Tapir!

Progress on Ume Abroad

Been working on Ume Abroad, this bigger panel is costing me though, because I refuse to utilize my tiny awkward flickery light box, and choose to use this window. It's fine, until it gets dark out.

Going to finish inking it today though, then the panels get "normal" sized again for a while and I don't have to do larger things. A plus of this whole thing is that I'm pretty awful at doing the perspective on these types of buildings, so it's good for me.

Here's a progress update on the inking. It's slow going. I took a break with working on finishing the reopan print.

Mini card

Printed out one of the headers, I might use this as promos for Ume Abroad, I like the size too. Though I would have to switch companies for printing. Haven't thought about what to do with the back. Will be doing that soon. Working on that among other things. Going to try and get back to books and stuff soon.

I have about sixteen pages done right now. Will be trying to make it to twenty this weekend. Before June I want to have a pretty big chunk done in b/w and a lot of it colored. Going to decided on final coloring style soon as well.

More comic headers

Two for this "part", there's one more to go. The one above is the first one for the entire thing, the bottom one is the second to last section. Drawing four people in these little boxes seems to work pretty well. It's quite a bit easier than drawing in huge open 10x15 pieces of bristol. Also I noticed I didn't draw -any- hands in the last one. Huh.

I also went back and changed the one of Senbei a little and added the spot of red. Oh look in that group one they're all wearing blue. Crud. I'm bad at this.

More comic header progress

click to make it bigger!

Still having some issues with the drawing of Senbei, I just...never like them when they're colored. I even referenced this one! Though maybe that's the issue. Maybe. Bleh. I have three more to do, but they're less Asian. So therefore less...fun. I'm also redrawing the third one. This though, is because I was drawing it at 2am last night and the pen sort of got away from me.

Here are the two that I still have to draw. No there is not THAT much of a height difference, maybe they're standing on something. The one of Pop is for the first section. Yep. These "sections" are getting weird though, they keep really varying in length. Man, I could never draw a comic that had to have floppy versions or anything. Yeesh.

Do these borders seem familiar? That's because they're business card sized! I need the shape for the comic, so that's what everyone gets. Also it's a plus because if I ever want to put them on cards I'm set.

Ume Abroad progress

I wrote this nice happy journal and then the internet ate it. So have a shorter less involved one. It's probably for the best anyways. This are header images for different sections of Ume Abroad. I figured because they happen to have Japanese names (even though none of them are) they'd start in Japan. The next one might be Europe. I really do want to hit the Euro, but maybe not Russia. Curse you fancy buildings.

The one of Senbei I gave up on because I don't like the original drawing so I'm starting over on it. Yes, they all happen to be wearing various shades of blue or teal, it was actually unintentional for once. But it might have to stay that way. Tamago is hard to color because her skin and hair are so...eggy. Ahaha I didn't do that on purpose either.

So yep. These might end up being the promos for the preview, but who knows. My computer is so sad right now. I've been running photoshop and a bunch of other things.

Looking at printing for the preview, Jubilee and Fresh Ume. Jubilee is proving harder than Fresh so that's going to be interesting.

Ume Abroad progress sketches

 

The first section of Ume Abroad is going to be taking place in Europe. These are some quick pencil and ink drawings. Older European architecture is a bear to draw, yes I happened to sketch some of the easier ones. Wait until Russia, just wait. It's a horrifying prospect really. Um. These are from Estonia and Sweden. The statue and wall piece are from St. Petersburg.

Ume Abroad

I am going to be starting the side comic Ume Abroad soon. Well, it's been started but I'm going to post it. Probably going to try and get up a side page off of Ume so it won't be too weird to have both of them be related. It's not going to be in color, but I wanted to have a temp image that was. I guess I also shouldn't have used this as said image. But whatever.

Rounded 4-panels to begin with, they will eventually change to fit the story.