It’s Friday! The Daily Mega Comics Group Updates are up!

Did you notice? We’ve added some poll questions at the bottom of the Left Side Bar. If you like take the short surveys and help us determine just who our wonderful group of web wayfarers are. It might not change what we are doing or how we are doing it but it would be nice to know and helpful mainly in knowing where to advertise. After all it’s not easy finding Mega Maniacs, they are an elite group who don’t just hang around low quality web sites!

Did you know? While you are cruising down the Side Bars take note of all the extra features we have available as well as ads from sponsors and our affiliates. If you see something of interest… Hey! Go for it! Sponsors and affiliates is one way we are able to keep publishing, so if you are looking for  a way to support our work, that’s a great place to start. Check those Side Bars often. We add new stuff all the time just for you.

Now with all that said let’s call this meeting to order. First item on the agenda please:

Humants #3:

Ya gotta admire the guy’s guts. Johnathan Towers may be a ruthless crime lord but he’s no coward. The sight of the ebony clad, helmeted Mageddon, Dark Lord of The Hecati materializing in his office with a billowing cloud of smoke doesn’t shake him. He sees the threat and attacks! No doubt the same instincts honed on the streets of the Border Line District which gained him his lofty position as a crime boss came into play in this encounter. But natural courage against a super natural foe is like spitting in the wind as The Tower immediately realizes.

So what is Mageddon up to? What could he possibly want with a guy like the Tower? Ah, now that is the subject we’ll probe starting Monday! Rest assured it’s not good, but it will lead up to all out action!

Project: New Man:

Still no new story pages today but we’ll have some brand, spanking, new ones up next week for sure. Here’s a little preview of what’s coming up.

Marcus Lusk, recently gave me an idea. Marcus is the creator of the highly acclaimed Tales from the Bog series and my ol’ pal and creator of the the Elf Trek mini-series we did together with Greg Legat several years ago and plan on posting soon. We also have some new work from Greg coming soon as well. Marcus suggested folks would like to see how we go about creating these little sequential tales we love to publish. So I thought I would let you take a peek at my thumbnails sketches for the next chapter of Project: New Man #4 in the concluding Haunted Man saga, plus the last page of the last chapter as a bonus. Just click this image:

Here’s the lowdown: I start out with just some ordinary letter size copy paper, count out how many sheets I need for an issue, then fold it and number my pages back and front. Then I rough sketch on each page the layout of panels and rough drawings of the characters. These are drawings I do in about 15 minutes or less per page, so sometimes the character may not be recognizable to anyone other than myself. I also fill in my ideas for captions and dialog and jot some notes in the margins when needed. Once it’s all done I scan it in and convert it all to a pdf file to email to Freazie. Freazie uses my thumbnails and notes to come up with the actual script. While he’s doing that I can be working on the full size pencils on 11″ x 17″ tabloid sheets within a 10″x 15″ margin. Once the pencils are done I overlay it with some tracing vellum and ink over a light box. I don’t like to ink the actual pencils, but that’s just me. I have done it plenty of times but it’s just easier for me now to ink on vellum and not have to erase graphite after the inking is done. With the inks complete I scan the art into my computer and clean it up in PhotoShop. By this time Freazie has long since done the script and emailed it to me. I bring my image into Adobe Illustrator and make a second layer to put word balloons and lettering on. I use some comic book fonts from Blam Bot and set it up. Once that is done I bring just the balloons with the words back over to PhotoShop and super-impose it over the art where I make any final adjustments for balloon placement. And that’s it. Now I’m ready to export it as a jpeg and use Comic Press to add it to the blog.

See? It’s easy! Yeah. Right. Well, it is a lot of work with a lot of steps but it’s also fun and the most fun is when I’m finished and it’s posted!

Thanks for the idea, Marcus!

From Yesterday:

We still have the awesome pin-up art by Jay Piscopo of Capt’n Eli fame showcased over on the Project: New Man site. I wanted to leave it up until Monday on the main page. Of course it will remain in the archives too. When you get a chance check out Jay’s web comic archives of some of the early adventures of Capt’n Eli on www.captneli.com.

While you’re at it go to his online store and order copies of The Mystery of the Sargasso Sea Graphic Novels #1 and 2! And don’t forget Capt’n Eli’s Soda! Plus Jay has some other cool items you will probably want to snatch up as well.

Thanks, Jay, for doing such an awesome drawing for us. It was right on time!

Click the images for today’s web comics updates.

Check out Friday’s posts for Project: New Man and Humants’! CUMonday!