The Rough Pearl Page 13: Glad To...uh, Be Here.

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Moon Prince Page 143: Plop!

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Fantastic Life Page 3: No Time At All

Here's the latest page of the re-jiggered Fantastic Life. By the way, I skipped Monday's installment of The Rough Pearl (my ongoing sequel to Fantastic Life) owing to family Xmas obligations, but it'll be back next Monday, Dec. 31.

Happy Holidays!
Kevin

Click HERE to see the whole story so far.

Moon Prince Page 142: Mmph!

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Fantastic Life Page 2: Fuckin' Leeches

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Rough Pearl Page 12: Too Bombed to Remember

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Moon Prince Page 141: Somehow

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Fantastic Life Page 1

I've been tuning up the color in my first graphic novel Fantastic Life, fixing the crappy pink flesh tones I used originally and adding tonal gradients so it doesn't look so flat and washed out. I'm happy with the results, so even though this is "old" work I'm going to re-serialize it here every Wednesday, starting today with page 1. I'll post the whole book, which will take a couple of years, so if you haven't read it yet this is your chance! Of course, if you're less patient than that (and don't mind it being in black and white) you can order a good old fashioned printed copy HERE.

Rough Pearl Page 11: The Shock Troops of Gentrification

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Moon Prince Page 140: Twigs and Berries?

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The Rough Pearl Page 10: Yuppie Shit

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Moon Prince Page 139: Plain Ignorance

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Rough Pearl Page 9: Some Old Man

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Moon Prince Page 138: Grakko's People

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Rough Pearl Page 8: Two of 'Em!

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Moon Prince Page 137: Suit Yerself, Pal!

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Rough Pearl Page 7: A Zoned-out Weirdo

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Moon Prince Page 136: A Lotta Spiders

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Rough pearl Page 6: It Ain't Lookin' Good.

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Moon Prince Page 135: Grakko's Not Scared!

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Rough Pearl Page 5: A Lazy Tenured Old Prick

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Moon Prince Page 134: A Bad Idea

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The Rough Pearl Page 4: Glamor

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Moon Prince Page 133: Something Up Ahead

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Rough Pearl Process

Here's a little animation showing the process I'm using for the new "realistic" version of The Rough Pearl. It starts off with the rough pencil drawing I made as I wrote and designed the page, then switches to a digital collage made from crappy iPhone photos, Poser renders, Sketchup backgrounds, and background figures swiped from the internet. Next we see the drawing I make from this in Photoshop, and finally the grey tones I add (there's a blue tint which I also throw in when I upload the final pages, but I'm considering abandoning it because the black and white look sort of appeals to me).

Rough Pearl Page 3: Regan First Manifests Herself

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Moon Prince Book Two Begins!

Here's the first page of Book Two of The Moon Prince - hope you like it!

Best,

Kevin

Rough Pearl Page 2: Kill Your Boss!

Click HERE to see the whole story so far.

The Harbor Map

Dear Readers:

Stay tuned for Book Two of The Moon Prince starting next Friday, October 12th. In the meantime, what could be more fun than a map of the area where Max and Molly lived at the start of the book? The dotted line is the path they took in the rowboat to get from Hoboken to Mad Billy's cabin in pages 41-50.

Best,

Kevin

Click HERE to read the whole book.

Once More From the Top

Here's the first page of the new, more "realistic" looking Rough Pearl. I'll be putting up a new page as often as possible -- hopefully every week, but this way of working is very time consuming so please bear with me!

Best,

Kevin

Moon Prince Cover

Dear Readers:

As I mentioned last week, Book One of The Moon Prince ended on page 131. Before starting Book Two on October 12th I've got a couple of little treats - starting with the cover for Book One. I hope you like it!

Best,

Kevin

Click HERE to read the whole book.

Dear POOD Readers: 

This is the last page of the "cartoony" version of The Rough Pearl. As I mentioned here a few weeks ago I've decided to re-draw the entire story in a more "realistic" style, so starting next week I'll begin posting the new version, starting with page 1. For those of you who've been following the story, I'd just like to offer an apology for the delays and I hope that you'll stick around to watch the new version unfold - it should be caught up to the same point in the story by May or June next year. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading!

Kevin

Click HERE to see previous episodes.

The Moon Prince Page 131: Trust

Dear Readers:

Today's episode marks the end of the first book of The Moon Prince. The second book will start serializing here three weeks from today, on October 12. But please be sure to check back in next Friday (September 28) to see a special treat - the cover for Book One! - and again on Friday October 5th to see  a map of the area around where Max and Molly lived at the start of the book.

Thanks for reading The Moon Prince, and I hope you've enjoyed the story so far!

Best,

Kevin

Click HERE to see previous episodes.

The Rough Pearl Page 33: Awful Scary Shit

For previous episodes, click HERE.

Moon Prince Page 130: A World Full of Enemies

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Rough Pearl Page 32: Can't Keep Anything Straight!

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Moon Prince Page 129: One Slight Hope

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Style Crisis!

Back in June I stopped posting new pages of my graphic novel The Rough Pearl so that I could go back and rework the drawings, which I'd decided were too loosey-goosey for my uptight tastes. I devoted hundreds of hours on lovely summer days to this obsessive task, hours which might have been more profitably spent playing with my young children, or romancing my wife, or drinking beer, etc.

Anyway, just when I had it almost done (there's about five messy pages still left, you'll probably be able to tell which ones if you read through it), I started to get really sick of the style I was using. I know, I know, ridiculous, right? Just get on with the damn thing!

But frankly, this was all part of a bigger issue I've been having with making comics - the old "realism" versus "cartooning" stylistic debate. When I started The Rough Pearl I imagined it as having a certain "noir" vibe with lots of shadows, as well as a little more gravitas than its prequel Fantastic Life, since it was about characters who were now older and working real jobs.

However, because of time constraints (I'm also doing another book, The Moon Prince, at the same time) I decided to draw The Rough Pearl in a cartoony style similar to Fantastic Life. Even though I liked the results, I always knew it wasn't honest to what I had originally wanted to do, and eventually this nagging, guilty feeling became impossible to ignore. So I did a test page in a more "realistic" style, and immediately realized this was the right way to draw the book. The upshot of all this: I'm going to redo every page from scratch!

Since I had 4 more pages done in the original "cartoony" style I'm going to go ahead and finish posting them, and I've also uploaded all the "polished" versions of the 30 previously posted  pages. Once I have those last few pages of the old "cartoony" version posted, I'm going to start posting the new "realistic" version from the beginning -- page 1. If you've been following the story and wondering where it would go, please accept my apologies for all these delays - I promise not to do it again!

Just for fun, here's the latest page of the "cartoony" version plus, as a bonus preview, the same page done in the new "realistic" style (click on either one for a full size version, and if you'd like to read the "cartoony" version from the beginning, please click HERE):

Moon Prince Page 128: What's a Telepath?

Click HERE for previous episodes.

Moon Prince Page 127: Molly Hurt?

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Moon Prince Page 126: You Must Be Careful!

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Moon Prince Page 125: Hrmmm!

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The Moon Prince Page 124: A Great Favor

Click HERE for earlier episodes.

ah004

Here's another digital piece, this time from 2001. As with most of this work it's based on a found image  from the internet, acquired via a little piece of software that vacuumed up hundreds of images from various sites. Then I batch-processed them with a series of filters and color manipulations, and combed through the results looking for the ones that appealed to me. In this case I strongly suspect the original image was pornographic.

There's more of these HERE.

The Moon Prince Page 123: Marigroo's Reminder

Click HERE to see previous episodes.

mintexotics03, 2002

The Moon Prince Page 122: Breakfast with a Robot

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Moon Prince Page 121: Mother

Click HERE to see previous episodes. 

Finesse33

The Rough Pearl is still on vacation (I've got 14 pages left to tweak, after which it'll be back to regular weekly updates) but in the meantime here's another piece of the digital art I've been basing Adam's work on. This one is from 2002 and it's called Finesse33. Like most of these pieces it's based on a pornographic image swiped from the internet. Looking at it today I was reminded a bit of Joe Camel, the cigarette mascot! If you're interested, there's more of these HERE.