A Special Mega Tales Update!

Yes! It’s Official!

Mega Tales #1, the 32 page full color, printed addition is available online at IndyPlanet.com and for Comic Shops at ComicsMonkey.com! Also we have copies available from ComiXpress.com! If you enjoyed this 10 page preview of the book certainly you’ll want the printed addition, right? Well,  here’s your chance to get your own printed copy!

Here’s a  little Tess recap. If you are  just joining us and for those of us  who need a little reminder, we present this brief synopsis of our story:

This first story does not start at the beginning. We join an established cast with Tess, Theo, Nostradamus, the 4D Cocker Spaniel, Anamanda, General Bohannon and many more we’ll clue you in about as we go along. There is a lot of mystery surrounding these characters and how they all came to be friends and what the is mission which they share with Tess and Nosey. Some of the answers will be in this first 32 page story. Tess lives on her 4D Star Ship which orbits and monitors the earth for any extraterrestrial and extra dimensional activity. As we join the story another star ship bursts into earth orbit which begins this adventure. Tess and her friends encounter a threat, which is at first glace is very disarming, however before the end of this issue we will see how very dangerous these aliens can be.

Tess, is short for tesseract. If you don’t know what a tesseract is Wikipedia defines it as: In four dimensional geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube, which is in turn the three dimensional analog of the square. Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog with a very high I.Q. named Nostradamus. In short: we are 3D beings, Tess and Nostradamus are 4D beings.

Mega Tales #1 TM and © Greg Legat, Mark Poe, J. Adam Walters, Mega Graphics, LLC . All rights reserved.

Here we are at page 10. We thought this page turned out pretty nice. Of course we try to make all of them special but some seem to work out better than others. Mark had a great time coloring it. There was the opportunity for some photo backgrounds which he always enjoys using and there was a wide range of color called for which just makes for a more appealing page all the way arround. That always takes a little longer but it’s still fun.

Some have asked what we mean by remastering the art. Well, the line art, as you may recall, was done back in 1987, 22 years ago. We didn’t even have the use of computers then and even those that were available were like hand held calculators compared to what we use today.  All the art and lettering is therefore done completely old school style. So what we did to start with was scan all the black and white original 11 x 17 art boards into our system. We use an oversize scanner which is perfect for this. We then do initial clean ups, removing dirt, blemishes or scratches and patching anything that needs it. The next step is to remove the old panel borders and replacing them with crisp computer generated lines. The same for the lettering. The book was originally lettered by hand. Unfortunately the letterer did it a few pages in a sitting and and even though it was a good job, it was inconsistent in places. We thought the computer lettering with Blambot fonts would make for a better read. In some cases the art has been modified beyond the patching after removing the old word balllons. For instance the backgounds on pages 6 & 7. Pages 9 & 10 feartured a completely overhauled autogyro design. Then after all that the coloring process begins. Mark uses PhotoShop to break the pages down into layers. The line art is divided into two different pieces. One is for the coloring and the other is a black outline copy that fits over the color outline copy. Sound effects are separated to an different layer as is all the lettering. Each file may have as much as 15 layers. Some colors are filled with the paint bucket while some are filled with gradient colors. The retouching and shading are done and final adjustments to finish. Whew! That’s a lot of work just to explain!

And that’s pretty much a wrap for this week. Everyone have a great weekend and do something special for the moms in your life on Mother’s Day this Sunday!

We gave you the lowdown on Autogyros in Mondays’ MCG blog. In case you missed it here’s a litlle recap: Similar to helicopters, autogyros use a rotor to develop lift. Unlike a helicopter, the rotor is not powered by the engine. While a helicopter’s rotor is rotated by an engine during normal flight, the rotor of an autogyro is driven by aerodynamic forces through a phenomenon called autorotation. Since the rotor is not powered, an autogyro needs a separate source for propulsion, like an airplane. An engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, may provide thrust for the autogyro, but it’s possible to use jet engines or some other propulsion as well.

This technology has been around since the early 20th century and by all rights, with safety and efficiency in mind should have been developed instead of the helicopter. Some of the reasons it was not were purely political. But we’ll talk about that more elsewhere.

The Autogyro Theo and Nosy built. It started out inspired by the Delorean, then we added a little Mustang, ’70′s model Charger stylings, and a little ’60′s Batmobile and came up with our own vehicle. We kept the idea of stainless steel for the body. Rather than a plane propeller or jets for propulsion we went with the air-car style fans mounted as wheels which retract back into the fenders for driving down the highways like a regular car. Also for highway driving the rotor blades will retract to a smaller size, fold back and store in the rotorblade housing that goes from the back of the vehicle through the roof to the front hood.

More characters introduced! Yep, the little fellow you see playing video games is: Nostradamas. The blond cocker spaniel of Dr. Quillin. He is actually not a dog at all, but another fourth dimensional creature somewhat like Tess. He was a “gun-runner” in his home dimension, and came to this universe to escape clients. He is capable of transporting objects as Tess does, and is able to communicate telepathically. He often goes with Tess on her trips into apace. He is called “Nosy”, for short.

Then we have, not pictured, but represented by her room: Alicia Quillin – Daughter of Dr. Hoyt and Helen Quillin. (Mrs. Quillin is deceased.) Age: 5. She likes to wear her hair in braids or a French braid. Wears dresses to school and sweatshirts and jeans around the house. Nosy is her “dog”.

This was a fun page to do. It is a bit dated with the Muppets’ poster, Ms. Pac Man game and all the rest, but still works for the story.

Hang in there, folks, the stage is almost set and we’ve got action coming right around the corner!

Have a great weekend! See you Monday in the MCG blog to talk about…whatever we have to talk about.

Today we introduce another regular cast member, Dr. Hoyt Quillin. He and his family figure into the Tess Adventures prominently. See his profile in out MT Guidebook linked here. After her ship crashes to Earth, which is a whole other tale for a future issue, Dr. Quillin guesses the nature of Tess’ powers and gives her a nickname. As you can see here Theo popping into Dr. Quillin’s house unannounced is nothing out of the ordinary. On the next page we’ll meet another co-star, Nostradamus.

This page is a favorite of Mark’s who likes drawing ordinary settings with un-ordinary action occurring like Theo popping in seemingly out of nowhere. This one did not require as much correction to it. There is a bit of controversy surrounding panel 3. Greg as well as Marcus Lusk did not like placement of Theo. Mark agreed it could be better also and almost changed it for this posting but decided to leave it as is and see what others think of it. It can always be revised later if enough demand it.

Today’s page was a little difficult. Keep in mind this line art was done 22 years ago, and is now being remastered, re-lettered and colored. We  have been adjusting and correcting as we go and this one needed a lot of correction. Some of the perspective, particularly in the background was skewed. In addition when Mark and Adam did the line work they were doing it hoping that color would be added. So a lot of open area was left around Theo as Tess replaces his pajamas his NASA jumpsuit and then teleports him off to earth. This was done with the idea that special effects with color would be put into those areas for the action. If the idea for the effect was ever really sketched out it has long since been forgotten. SO not only did this page have to have extra correction but extra time was required to color as well. We racked up double hours on this one. We are not totally satisfied with the end result but then we never are.

So what did you think about the Nazca Lines Wednesday? Did you read the Wikipedia article we linked to? Interesting stuff, eh? What fascinates artistic types like ourselves is how they did designs of monkeys and spiders on such a large scale. It wasn’t like they could fly up to the moon to observe their progress as they were working on it. Or did they have some help with someone or something from a higher perspective? Hmmmm….Makes you think , eh?

Everyone have a great weekend, rest up enjoy life and report back to the MCG Blog Monday morning for the latest briefing. Class dismissed!

Here we go with Page 5! Now things are starting to jell! The Aliens have not only come into our Solar System and started an orbit around the Earth but now they have launched a shuttle to the surface. What could this all be about? Hang around and see!

We used the Nazca Lines as our backdrop setting for this segment, one of the ancient wonders of the world. What are the Nazca Lines? Glad you asked. Let’s access our favorite info resource, Wikipedia, for the answers:

The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches more than 80 km (50 miles) between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. Although some local geoglyphs resemble Paracas motifs, these are largely believed to have been created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, fish, sharks or orcas, llamas, and lizards.

The lines are shallow designs in the ground where the reddish pebbles that cover the surrounding landscape have been removed, revealing the whitish earth underneath. Hundreds are simple lines or geometric shapes, and more than seventy are natural or human figures. The largest are over 200 m across. Scholars differ in interpreting what the lines were for but generally ascribe religious significance to them. “The geometric ones could indicate the flow of water or be connected to rituals to summon water. The spiders, birds, and plants could be fertility symbols. Other possible explanations include: irrigation schemes, giant astronomical calendars, or landing for spaceships.”

The dry, windless, stable climate of the plateau has preserved the lines to this day, for the most part. Extremely rare changes in weather may temporarily alter the general designs.

More…

It’s slow going when we’re only showing you 2 pages a week, but have patience faithful reader, we are starting to see some character development emerging as well as a plot developing here. It get’s even better, so don’t go away! Stephen Greg Legat has done a great job with the script and handling so many characters, which we will meet in the coming pages. The story itself contains many elements of science fiction, adventure and super hero fair. There is also several light hearted moments such as the scene we see here, but also some deadly serious ones we’ll see in the pages to come. Greg and artist Mark Poe like to do stories which contain the serious as well as the humorous aspects of life because thats the reality of life. So don’t be surprised when these light hearted moments pop up to break up some of the tension of our little tales. But if you have read our other comics you can see a similar treatment in them as well with the scripts Freazie White, Jr. has done.

We’ll be getting the rest of the characters guides for the story up very soon but this is enough to get you started.

Dr. Anamanda Johnson is a retired NASA assistant programs director who was lured back into service to study Tess’ spacecraft. She is an expert on extra-terrestrial life, astronomy and spacecraft design.

Captain Theo McClendon is an astronaut scheduled for several more space shuttle missions before retirement from NASA. He was the first one to see Tess when her ship initially crashed to Earth. He fell in love with her and recently the 2 were married.

Fah’Drah is her birth name, Tess is the name her earth friends gave her. She comes from the planet Xan’Dahr from the 4th dimension. More on her later.

In scripting this story Stephen Greg Legat likes to take a screen play approach to his writing. In the plot he will describe the scene and plug in dialogue but he does not like a lot of narration in the final script. He likes the artist to tell the story with pictures as the camera would in a movie or TV show. This works well for the comic book as well. However, with this or just about any adventure strip in the form of web comics which are only posted 2 pages per week, following the story takes a little more patience.

Mark Poe has done new lettering and colors for these pages which he drew and J. Adam Walters inked back in 1987. PhotoShop is one of the top choices for comic book colorists in this digital age of 2009 and that is what was used for these pages. Back 1987 PhotoShop 0.63 was a year away from being released with PS 1.0 not to be on the market until 1990!

Page 2 of our story takes us on a little tour of our Solar System as the alien ship makes it’s way to it’s destination, which of course is the planet Earth. Note the differences in the star ship Tess uses and the other ship which will be a point of interest later on in the story.

The art on this was fun to do. Mark used some of his ’80′s Al Williamson Star Wars comics for inspiration as well as that classic Neal Adams’ Supeman vs. Muhammad Ali Star Warriors Tabloid Collector’s Edition from back in the late ’70′s.

Monday we’ll have a new blog up date on teh MCG homepage. Maybe we will get back to the bios of our Mega Bullpen or maybe we’ll talk about some other sites we’ve found on the web. Tune in and see. We’ll have the thrilling third page to our Tess story next Wednesday.