SquirleyCorn and Homeless G-Men

Here's the other Squirleycorn (how do I spell that again?) drawings that I did a few weeks ago, the lettering is terrible, that's fine that's what Manga Studio is for my lettering has always been terrible and my carpal tunnel always gets in the way when I'm lettering because my hand gets tense.

Anyways, if you haven't seen the hero of our series here he is, I do predict that comics with animals as the lead characters are going to be all the rage this year, I picked up an issue of "Beasts Of Burden" by Evan Dworkin and Jill Thompson, it was a one off so I really didn't get a sense of the story but the collected TPB is supposed to be excellent, Mark Waid of Millar or one of those guys is also doing a series called, "Red Rover Charlie" or something which is all about talking dogs and I may pick up an issue or two to see how it is.

I'm currently reading "B.P.R.D Hell On Earth" which features the kick ass style of James Harren and also I'm a huge fan of the new series "Manifest Destiny" which is drawn by Matthew Roberts. I think my style for "Homeless G-Men " will fall somewhere between these two guys.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com



Assembling a New Studio

I've been spending most of the past week doing research on tablets and programs to get the digital side of the studio together, I've settled on buying the Manga Studio 5 program over photoshop to get started. The initial start up to buy photoshop is prohibitive right now and since I'll mostly be doing comic work Manga Studio is the best priced program for my needs.

Next I bought a lightbox, something I should have built at the Theatre Passe Muraille shop years ago but live and learn, it's a standard size and may take some getting used to but for reproducing sketches I have to have it.

The final piece was purchasing the Wacom Intuit Med. Size tablet for drawing, this is going to be a huge learning curve and I'll be posting a lot of my progress here, even though you may find it boring to read I'll be using the blog as my own cheering section.

When not reading and researching I've been drawing lots of mugs like the guy you see at the top of the page, he's one of the cast of characters who occupy "Gull City" which is where "Homeless G-Men" takes place, the second comic "Squirleycorn" also takes place is Gull City but is a story solely about animals.

I'll be using the models that I build over at "Any How Town" (see sidebar) for references as I draw "Gull City" they are an invaluable asset and I thought it was a strange way to approach drawing the comic until I got to David Petersen's blog, he's the artist who created "Mouse Guard" a fantastic comic about knights who are mice. He also builds models for things he needs, his blog is excellent and I want to take this time to thank him for keeping such a detailed record of his process.

I figure this weekend I'll head down to the studio and reconfigure it to hold all of this robot machinery, it's going to be a great learning experience, 2014 is all about doing new things, quitting smoking, running a 10km, playing the guitar and learning to use technology to advance my work.

Head over to the mad craft shoppe blog (see sidebar) to see some paintings, which is how I subsidize this new project.

cheers,

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com

Squirlycorn, the comic

It all began about a week ago some friends and I were talking on fb, a friend said that she had something galloping around in her ceiling, I joked that perhaps she had infestation of Shetland ponies after a few more folks chimed in that maybe the culprit was a unicorn. By the end of the conversation it was deduced that it was probably a squirrel but by then I had already drawn the first image. A squirrel dressed as a unicorn, my friend asked to buy the drawing but I decided to keep it, something about the picture just made sense to me.

I started to think that maybe this cute squirrel needed a comic book created for him, I decided to head to Guerilla Printing and figure out how much it would cost to self publish a comic. It turns out the price wasn't as prohibitive as I thought it would be so on the way home on the TTC I started to write the origin story of a hero that I would call, "Squirlycon".

It's been a couple of days and I can't figure out anything else to call this guy except Squirlycorn, my wife kept asking, "Are you sure you can't come up with a better name?" and try as I might I can't so here for the world to see is my creation, Squirlycorn.

To follow the story of his creation you'll have to head over to the Smudges and Lines blog, see links right side of page.

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com