Battle Rally Proof Photos

Hey everyone, hope you have been having a wonderful and happy holiday season, I received some more great photos of my third comic BATTLE RALLY! from the good people at Print Ninja looks great so far and a sample copy is on the way for me to hold in my hands.

For the next month I'll be drawing a series of comic characters and film characters for a show at 7 Crown's Tattoo (Toronto) and launching all three books there, mark it in your calendars good people, the show is called SWEET ACTION! and it's going to be hoot.

have a happy New Year's Eve.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com 

Project Bouncing, Book Two News

So I started working on the first two pages of the second issue of Battle Rally for two days (see top) and then switched over to work on the second issue of Crypto Zombic. I have five pages almost finished now and should be able to pencil two more before I take a break for Christmas.

It does seem a bit crazy to be working on all three (yes I have pages for the Homeless G-Men issue #2 as well) but I'd like to have at least one of them sent to the printers by the end of February.

Most of January is going to be spent finishing and creating drawings for my show at Seven Crowns Tattoo in February and then move back to the comics.

I would like at least two more issues available for purchase at the start of April just so folks who bought the first issues and are hyped about the stories don't have to wait too long for the next installments. Most comics are made well in advance of publication, that the team have at least two or three finished before the first issue is released but it's not like that with independent self published books.

I'll let you know when the story I drew for Amazing Forest is available on comixilogy.

send me any questions or let me know if you'd like a review copy of one of the comics when they are available in January.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

Second Issues, Digital Hybrids

 

After a few days of puttering around getting the house ready for Christmas and having some friends over to watch Kung Fu movies I started the second issue of Battle Rally. With this issue I have combined  using models of vehicles the I've built and importing photos of them to trace in Manga Studio 5 and actual manual drawing of characters/scenes. Battle Rally is very different from the other two books since it is so heavy with vehicles and instead of driving (get it "driving") myself crazy getting the lines right by free handing and using rulers I'll just be photographing the cars, trucks, planes etc. and developing them digitally.

I haven't decided if I'll work on this issue exclusively or work on Homeless G-Men and Crypto Zombic all at once, I'm just going to let the story ideas come and see where they take me.

For the month of January I'll be posting mainly drawings here,  I have a show of my comic themed work coming up in February at Seven Crowns Tattoo shop and will be focusing on drawing pin ups of some of my favourite comic and movie characters.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

 

Physical Sample Copies, Smiles, Tears of Joy

As I was heading out to walk the dog yesterday I found this envelope in the mailbox, our dog, Double is excitable and a bit manic and going for a walk gets him jacked up and crazy so there was no way that I'd be able to open the envelope until I got back from our walk.

I spent most of the walk completely distracted, worried that I made a mistake in my proofing and that there would be pages that repeated and I would have 1000 comics that I couldn't sell.

At around 5:30 pm I opened the envelope and looked at the covers of my first comics but I couldn't open them and read them yet, I wanted to surprise my wife who had been in a business meeting for about 12 hours straight  and decorate the house for Christmas, wrap some gifts for my nephews and clean up a bunch of piles of stuff on the dining room table which I have to clear off since we're having six or seven people over to watch Kung Fu movies and eat cheese and meat , it's a Kung-Futerie.

I finally sat down around 7pm last night with a glass of wine and went over the comics word balloon by word balloon, image by image.

They look great.

I really enjoyed the flow of the stories, the humour that was there, the homages to movies and comics that I'd added here and there, sure there were a couple of typos and a few clunky balloons but it doesn't matter these were my first books. They have the feel of comics from the 70's-80's the paper is a matte, the covers aren't gloss, they look and feel like the comics you'd roll up and put in your back pocket and that's exactly what I wanted. A sense of nostalgia, some casual fun, I think you're really going to enjoy the introduction to this comic universe I've created.

 I'm taking a day or two off this week to just let it soak in, and after all this work, and even not getting into TCAF doesn't bother me, I'm holding my comics, it feels great. 

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Good News and Bad News

The Good News is that I finished my very first professional comics job, I was contacted by Eric Freitas who has a comic available on comixology (via monkeybrain comics) called Amazing Forest, his partner in crime in this venture is Ulises Farinas a very talented artist whose work is reminiscent of Geof Darrow. I have one of their books called, "Gamma" and it was a fun one-shot issue so when I received an email asking me to do this story and saw the name Freitas I knew exactly who was getting in touch with me. I received the script over a month ago but wasn't able to get to it until the first of December due to other work obligations.

I knew it was going to be a tight deadline to this drawn, inked, coloured and lettered before Christmas, because what good is a Christmas story submitted after the 25th, so I said I'd have it done by the 14th. My schedule was pretty empty so I was able to dedicate full days to getting the work finished and I turned in the story on Monday.

The feedback is received was "OMG this is unbelievable!" so I feel pretty good about that.

 

The Bad News, I was not accepted for TCAF 2015, this does not surprise me, at the time of applying for the festival I was still finishing the comics to send to the printers, so on end of the TCAF my application would look almost incomplete - what if the books weren't finished? what if they don't arrive on time. I'm sure my application was risky and with over 700 applicants I know there were folks who applied who were more ready than I would appear. This is fine there are many cons to sell my books at and coming in February at Seven Crowns tattoo you'll be able to buy them (they will also be available online and in some Toronto shops).

So there you have it, the good and the bad but one way to look at what has happened is this, nine months ago I started drawing a comic book, now I am a professional, that's a pretty good timeline.

 

I am now creating the drawings for my show at Seven Crowns so expect to see a lot of posts over the next month and a half.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

Pictures of the Physical Copies

Thanks so much Print Ninja for sending these photos of physical copies of both the Homeless G-Men and Crypto Zombic along with some interior shots of Crypto. The books look great and I can't wait to get my hands on them so I can get them into your hands. The proof for Battle Rally has been approved so in 2015 you will be able to purchase three different comics from me. This has been one heck of an adventure and I'd like to thank the people at Print Ninja for their help with getting the books together.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

The Battle Rally is off to the Printers!

The third comic is off to the printers for proofing, I thought I'd do a break down the work that I've done since April for a quick timeline.

 I began drawing some rough comic pages in January of 2014, I have been reading comics since the age of six, I am a life long fan of the medium. Growing up with the drawings of great artists like John Byrne, Michael Golden and George Perez really formed and helped my drawing skills as a kid, my vocabulary and spelling were leaps ahead of many kids in my class. Although I took many breaks from buying comics over the years either because of lack of money or my interests were elsewhere if I visited a friend's apartment who was still collecting I'd always borrow theirs to see what the X-Men or whoever were up to.

If I hadn't set my mind on going to art school when I was sixteen I would have worked on my portfolio and tried to break into comics.

Now that printing is easier to access and programs like Manga Studio 5 have made the process easier to get through I decided that it was time to make my own, in April I began drawing the first issue of the Homeless G-Men, I knew there were two episodic stories I wanted to tell so I grabbed a bunch of 11x17 boards, bought a ton of graphic novels to get current with the new bunch of creators and illustrators  and went to work.

As I was working on the book I decided to do another - and then another. I get bored very easily and working on three books at the same time was a great way to keep things moving. I wrote barely any script notes, I made up the comics as I went along letting my thoughts guide the story and writing dialogue notes at the same time so I could plug it in when it was time.

 There were many checklists made, many story notes written on legal pads and a deadline coming - I had to get everything ready to digitally colour and letter by August 1rst. I finished drawing three 32 page comics by my deadline, I also started drawing 13 pages of a mini-series that is going to feature all three teams in the comics coming together and the two of the stories for the second issue of the Homeless G-Men.

I have spent the past three months keeping crazy hours (8am- 3:30 am)  and teaching myself to learn Manga 5, at the same time I finished 14 paintings for my annual Cameron House show and committed to a show of my drawings for Seven Crowns Tattoo in February, we also got the great news in June that my wife is pregnant and due in February, it has been a very busy seven months.

Now that the third comic has been sent to the printers for proofing (thanks print ninja) I can take two minutes to pause and pat myself on the back and also get to work on my first professional comics job that I was offered about a month ago. I will be drawing a Christmas 7 pager for Eric Freitas and Ulises Farinas comic "Amazing Forest" on Monkeybrain comics. 

So there you have it, amateur fan to professional comic artist in nine months.

 

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Book Three Is Not Set In Krakow

Hey there, deep into Book Three which is the one that surprised me most of all when I chose

to do it way back in May, this needs some explanation.

Homeless G-Men was the comic that I started, it was the first, there were some character concepts in place and two of the stories were kind of thought out in my head, as I worked on the book I was deciding if I wanted to commit all of my time to just doing issues of the HG's or maybe I should do two comics instead and I could bounce back and forth on them

So I wrote a list of six kinds of comic that I was interested in doing (I'll talk about this in another post)   of the six, Battle Rally was the most surprising to me, considering all the drawing that would be involved I could have skipped it - but I had an idea.

If you know me, you know I don't get bored I'm always doing something one of those things is build models out of wooden kits, we have a whole basement full of stuff like this crazy car here.

I decided it was time to put the vehicles into play and needed a concept that 1) I wanted to do more than one issue of and 2) would allow me to use a wide variety of vehicles

and that's how the initial idea for Battle Rally came.

The second part was the most important for me to commit the time to the book, what was it about beyond vehicle racing? I surprised myself at how quickly I got to the answer, the issues in Battle Rally are about corporations interfering in sport (Rollerball) vehicular combat (like Death Race) but it's a character piece first and it's the story of two women who are in competition for the same job.

This interested me, if I hadn't gotten to the two lead characters and what they were about I would have never committed to the commit.

I hate drawing vehicles, every artist does but this book is going to help me get over that and I can't believe just how much I enjoyed working on this one.

This may be the last comic before the end of 2014, I have a few jobs coming up that I'll need to commit my time to, two of them are comic jobs so I'll still be posting here at least twice weekly.

Hang On People of Buffalo!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

Half Bad Ass/ Half Ridiculous

All villains must look half like a total  bad ass and half kinda stupid, that seems to be the rule- I mean look at Doc Oc or the Vulture or most of the villains in the DCU. I kept that in mind when concocting this bird of prey inspired armour.

This guy is from the THIRD book that I am finishing this month and sending to the printers so right now I will have three books available at TCAF (if I get accepted to TCAF of course) I figured it would be good to have more than one book available if I got a table and I think it will be very interesting to see which of the three titles is the most popular.

The Homeless G-Men proof is now going to print!

These are exciting times we live in, also be sure to head to the Cameron House (Toronto) to check out my show of paintings it will be up until the end of November. Check the Mad Craft Shoppe blog to have a look at some fine abstracts.

cheers, it is cold outside just ask my dog

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 



Cover Sketch Process, Homeless G-Men #1

Here's a quick breakdown of the cover sketch. It's a very simple picture but still needed to be perfect, I've been struggling with the covers of two of the four books but I had to move on. I figured an images of the main G-Man and hero of the book would suffice for the first issue.

Top page is the first sketch, was pretty happy with it so moved onto cover weight paper and traced it on the light box and then (final photo) laid in the inks.

After this the drawing was scanned and then coloured and some of the blacks were touched up in Manga Studio 5 and then the lettering was added.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Homeless G-Men ready for proofing

After many, many sketches that used the whole cast of the comic ( none of which I was happy with) I reworked an older drawing of Swinnerton for the cover of the Homeless G-Men No.1.

I like it, I actually like using the while/red for the front and back covers. I'd thought of using black but it didn't fit. I think the blue buts up well with the red and white.

The pages are now in the capable hands of the folks at Print Ninja and I'll be seeing the final proof soon. Comics will be available in the New Year from me in person or you can head to my shop at storenvy (not open yet since I have no comics available to ship).

In the next two weeks I'll be finishing the third book and sending it off as well, I'll also be reorganizing the studio to make space for the stock that will be showing  up.

enjoy the Santa Claus parade

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Crypto-Zombic is off to the printers!

Very happy to announce that my first completed 32 page comic has been sent to the fine people at Print Ninja, I should be getting the preview copy on Monday (of course I spotted a typo after I sent it off) and I can't wait to sign off and sent it to press.

I'm allowing myself twelve hours off from work before getting to the next comic The Homeless G-Men, which has been drawn and coloured, I just need to add the text, that should take another week and then I'll be onto the THIRD comic which still needs a few pages drawn and coloured.

At this rate (and of course if I'm accepted) I will have three (and possibly a fourth) comic available for sale at TCAF in May 2015.

If you're interested in seeing some of my other work check out the mad craft shoppe in the links and you can see my show of paintings that is currently hanging at the Cameron House in Toronto for the month of November.

cheers!

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Detail Images From Three Books

Here are three detail images from each book that I think best sum up what each one is about.

Any queries or questions feel free to email me at madcraftshoppe@live.com or over on twitter at @madcraftshoppe

back to the boards

A.Shay  Hahn

Full Pages from three books looking great

Here's  a full page from each of the three comics I hope to have at TCAF (hope to have meaning I hope I get accepted, not hope to have finished) in May 2015 I'm really happy with the work. There are a few tweaks for each page still but that's fine I'm in a great place with the books, feels awesome.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Inktober sketches

Inktober is a sketch event that runs for the month of October where pencillers are encouraged to practice their inking by inking a drawing a day and posting it over on twitter. I've done three sketches so far, which means I'm a few days behing, but I have good reason I've started scanning and colouring the second and third issues of Homeless G-Men and another title that I will talk about in posts later on. I'm going to colour these pics later on when I have some time

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Where We're At , Comic wise that is

September was one heck of a month, I digitally coloured 95 pages for the three comic books, I still have a few pages to draw for one of the comics but that's fine I wanted to get the bulk of the work finished and will come back to them. They're already sketched they just need some ink lovin' and will be ready to be coloured soon.

The hardest part of the process are the covers, the cover above is for "Battle Rally" it's my favourite of the three, I imagine I'll be changing the covers right up until the end of November when I send the three (and possibly four) books off to the printers. The Battle Rally cover works, it's supposed to reference 80's action movies like Mega Force (with Barry Bostick!) just needs some more painterly colouring to make it pop, right now it looks like it was coloured in Digital Pencil Crayon

 

It has been a hell of a step learning curve, I didn't know how to use Manga Studio 5 on the first of September and now I feel very comfortable with a good portion of it's functions. There are quite a few that I still have to figure out but the books look good, I'll print off a few pages and post them next week. I wish I could get screen captures from Manga but that doesn't seem possible (let me know if you know).

more to come,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

 

Working on the G-Men all day long I don't stop

We're into the second comic now the first issue of the Homeless G-Men my strange and fun cop procedural. This book is told in three story increments each story providing a clue that leads the G-Men towards solving their last case together- the case that got them fired.

There's still lots of script work to do in Crypto-Zombic but I'm going to do all the text at once so it's got some flow. I hope to be through the flatting and colouring of the G-Men by the end of next week and into the THIRD comic Battle Rally.

I'm also designing stickers done in Old School American tattoo styles for each book.

There's lots to do and I'm still keeping crazy hours but I need to straighten that out since I'm running a 10km on the weekend.

back at it, hope all is well

A.Shay Hahn

Jungles, Titles, dialogue

Here's a terrible photo of my screen while I'm flatting out one of the many hundreds of panels

where our MC's are traversing the jungle. After nine days of this I see why so many comics take

place in big grey rooms, jungles are a challenge, you want to create a feeling of depth and also have

foreground light. I'm sure I'll get better with my approach when I start the second issue of the book but now this is slow and tedious work.

I have most of the flatting finished for Book One and I think as of 2 AM last night that I have seventeen finished pages, so only fifteen more to go and the cover/back cover and inside covers need to be done next then we're on to the first issue of The Homeless G-Men.

I have one more page to draw for that book and will be including some supplementary material

since that was the book that I drew and plotted first.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Deep In the Heart of Cryptozombic!

 

 

 

It has been a very long time since I've posted, I thought I'd be able to balance regular

blogging and updates as I began doing the flatting and colouring for Issue One of Cryptozombic but since this is my first time using a Wacom and manga studio 5 blogging (and clogging) had to take a back seat to getting the work done.

At this writing I have sixteen finished (words, colours, everything) finished pages and that leaves only sixteen more to go before I move on to the next comic "The Homeless G-Men" my goal is to have four comics ready for TCAF in May 2015. If all goes according to plan that shouldn't be a problem I just wish someone had told me to make sure all of my "loops" were closed in my original drawings, if you use Manga studio or any colouring program you'll know what I mean.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com