New Heavy Metal Garage Comic

 

This is just the cover of the new comic.  It is 16 pages so far, covering 4 topics that are close to my heart. 

On our website I have 46 single panel Heavy Metal Garage cartoons, such as this:

 

But the new Heavy Metal Garage Comic is following the format of our THE SHADOW and IN THE NEXT DIMENSION, being multiple panels a page and multiple pages.

It is 2 guys discussing and demonstrating various car things. Because that is what I feel like doing. 

My Page Format, is Manga styled

The format I am using for my webcomics and CBR books now is basically formatted to be 2 pages on a landscape A4 sheet, black and white, or rather mostly gray scale.  With typically up to 6 panels a page, it makes it readable on a smartphone or printed like this: 

 

This is very much a printed manga page style. I'm just not printing it at the slightly smaller B5 landscape page size, as there aren't any clear files for that, and the A5 Clear Files I am using aren't the kind of thing stocked at many places.

The new thing I am doing in this comic is drawing lots of realistically proportioned cars and things. Like the Fiat 500 and piano in the cover above. Drawing them on blank DELETER A4 Manga paper in marker, nib and brush pens.

This image shows the ruler supported on 5yen coins used for drawing inked lines. Stops smudges even when using a nib pen and bottled ink. 

Also trying to make it funny, as that is what I like, even if that is very hard to do. Also educational, at least a bit.

We will see how we go...

It takes a lot of time to make a comic

It takes a lot of time to make a comic, even using the hybrid digital/drawn approach I am using. 

It took much of 4 days to do the first 5 pages, but that also involved designing the new characters with expressions and posses, and a bit of experimentation as to whether  just B/W or toned cars and things was better.  Some "mulling" time in there too, just thinking about it all.

Drawing all the ellipses gets tedious with cars without templates. Finally found a reasonable set of 10 templates. These things are so expensive to buy new and could never justify the cost. Bought these second hand on Mercari. Would be nicer to have a set of 15, but will make do.

I write the "script" directly on the panels of the pages and have characters down very quickly, but then I think of something better, or it needs to lead into something else, and I modify things "a lot".  It is iterative.

In the currently completed 4 page book, I had the first 2 pages down, then didn't know how the next pages should go.  Ended up, after a night I didn't sleep well, coming up with the car I wanted to make the point of to fill the last page.  It may start off in one place, cover a couple of things, then end up at another place, and I want to make that journey interesting.

Not sure how long it will be yet.  Maybe 8, 24 or even 28 pages, but it all depends on other things happening around me and if I "scratch that itch" in 8 pages, that may be it short term.

Doing a comic in 4 page episodes is the right approach for this one. An achievable goal. 

The first multipage comic I wrote was TERRAFORM at 16 pages, and it took months just working on it about 1 day a week. It was in color and I drew every panel with ink on paper. That isn't the approach I am using anymore.  It just takes too much time.

Download Adrian_Bruce - HeavyMetalGarage comic as a CBR file here

We can be contacted at ArtAndTechnology

Interview on my work at Fairlight Instruments and Roland

 

Never done one of these before.  People seem to find it interesting, but I repeat myself constantly, mispronounce things, get distracted, forget what I was talking about and don't get back to the question. 

I could put here some corrections, but really, no one reads this blog anyway.   

More details I've written about some things are tech on our website   and the webcomic we wrote, This is Where The Smoke Comes Out. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

153 Pages of Our Comics, as CBR files for download

We have made CBR formatted versions of the main comics we have done in the last 2 years for free download. I use the free YACReader for PC and Perfect View on Android, but there are many. And these aren't all I've done, just the most recent.

 

In The Next Dimension

Bright, colorful very simple vector graphic SF stories in the next dimension. 18 pages. Done in a style I have not used before so that the art is quick to do. Most of the Vector Illustration I get commissioned to do is very different and more time consuming than this to do. Kind of a fun break.

Download In The Next Dimension

Just Thinking

56 pages of the comic strips and comics I did over the 2 years so far, mostly around living in the time of covid in the outer suburbs of  Kyoto Japan. Mostly off the cuff thoughts. Black &White comic. We moved back to Japan just before the Pandemic hit, and I have spent almost all that time in my new studio...

Download Just Thinking

This Is Where The Smoke Comes Out

43 pages at the current time. Name is from the inscription musician Peter Gabriel put on an Album he gave me. Inspired by the Historical/Autobiographical work SHOWA, by Shigeru Mizuki, Has historical and personal memories of looking what influenced me to end up where I did. From Sydney Australia, to Japan, to Australia and back to Japan, with 20+ years in the electronic Musical Instrument development Industry, then not.  

Combines Narrative Captions, comics and Black&White photos

Download Smoke

My Music

14 page book.  8 pages on how I wrote and recorded 6 songs in 2021 in our studio, 2 pages on Headphone thoughts and 4 pages on the history of Listening To Music In Stereo. Black &White comic.

Download My Music

The Shadow

26 pages on the History of THE SHADOW car racing team started at the end of the 1960s by someone who may have been a CIA SPY. Black &White comic.

Download The Shadow

And similarly our music 

Download Megacurve Music here

We can be contacted out at ART AND TECHNOLOGY  

COMIC: In The Next Dimension Comic

 So trying something different. Simple, bright colored, very graphical images and panels.

The movie SERENITY (2005) and the book A FIRE UPON THE DEEP are influences here, but only realised that after doing the first few pages.  Papers on the psychological problems social media brings are what I referenced to come up with the second half. 

I also have to say I find SOCIAL MEDIA unpleasant much of the time, terribly addictive and difficult to cut down on, wastes time, leaves me down far more than up after checking it, and  a large percentage of the population show themselves to be unpleasant more than they should.  

The complete comic is 8 pages. And I printed mine to fit in an A5 clear file. With room for more chapters  

UPDATE: Feb 24 2022. Completed 18 pages worth, and made a CBR file. I use the free YACReader.  Here for comic download:  IN THE NEXT DIMENSION 18 PAGE COMIC (CBR VERSION)

Also made PDF and MOBI and can supply those if you are interested. 

It is getting much easier to ignore FACEBOOK now, as it doesn't show me anything friends post, and they don't see any of mine, without "paying to boost the post" so have really cut down on using it. Little point if no one sees anything I do post. Twitter is still a problem though, and am now following less people and posting much less.  I get so little interaction on it, the ROI is all wrong.

We can be found at ART & TECHNOLOGY 

Steampunk Sunset Animated in Moho 60sec Music Video Clip

 

The last music video clip done we have done in Moho 12.

The sunset was taken in Kyoto in 2020. Just think it is so beautiful and needed to be applied somewhere. 

My track is a download at:  https://megacurve.bandcamp.com/