dennmann brand: Jesse James Comics

Showing posts with label Jesse James Comics. Show all posts

Monday, September 21, 2015

24hour Comics Day is Upon Us

Come out and support us at Jesse James Comics.

Sunday, March 15, 2015

My Mini-Comics Day Experience 2015

March 14th, 2015 was Mini-Comics Day. The goal is to make a mini-comic from start to finish in 1 day. That means write, draw, copy, fold and staple all in 24hours. I do not think there is a limit on the size or length of the book, but when I think of a mini-comic it is a letter-size folded comic that is 8 pages in length. So that is what I made.

The night before I packed all the tools I thought I would need to make this mini-comics a reality. Paper, pencils, pens, stapler, cutting board, scissors, a mini-comic and a couple of comics for inspirations.

The blank page. I woke up at 2am, took a shower and then headed to the table to start doing layouts and writing my story.

At 3:08am, I had a complete set of layouts and enough dialog and story to start lettering.

During the lettering process, I finalize all of the story. I hate my handwriting so I letter digitally and then print it our on sticky back paper. It occurred to me that I could use the Chartpak stuff that Eric Mengel uses to make tones to do my letters in the future. I might try that next time.

At 5:31am, I had my lettering printed out and ready to lay down on the pages. I put the lettering on the pages first to help me save time in the drawing stages later. It forces me to draw in only specific spaces and work around the lettering.

I had the cover finished by 6:14am. I was well ahead of schedule at this point. So I got to place the lettering on the pages, but for some reason I lost that picture.

I arrived at Jesse James Comics at 9am and was ready to work. By noon, I had 3 pages done and was building momentum.

Not sure how this picture was only taken an hour after the previous one and I had finished 2 more pages. Maybe it was that momentum.

I had finished at about 3:30pm, but had time to go back in a clean up the art work a little, spot some extra blacks and add some over all flair to the art. This picture was shot at about 5pm, just before out journey to Office Max for the photocopies.

A picture from the copy shop (taken by Damon Begay). I had to fight with this machine to make the books. The place I usually use was suddenly closing and I was forced to go somewhere else. Because of the copy qualities I only made a hand full of these books. I will be printing up some nicer copies in the near future.

The finished books at about 9pm (because of the copying machine fights.) No trimming was done on these books and they ware very misaligned , but hey what can be expected when making a book in one day on a strange new copymachine. An 8 pages with a cover, not bad for 19 hours of work.

Big Thanx to Jesse James for letting us set up and take over a room of his store for the day. If you have not stopped into Jesse James Comics yet, you should.

Shouts out to my comics brothers who drew with me all day, Eric Mengel, Damon Begay, Bryan Graham and Wil Hines. They all created some awesome stuff as well during Mini-Comics Day.

Special thanx to Birdie Birdashaw, Dadicus (John Derrick West) and Shawn Demumbrum for stopping by and hanginf out throughout the day.

Also thanx to all those who followed my adventure online through social media.

WOW! What a day and you know what, I cannot wait for next year!

-denny!

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Mini-Comic Day was AWESOME!

I cannot express the feelings I had about yesterday. Mini-Comic Day might be my new favorite challenge.

I started the day waking up at 2am and doing layouts and writing my story for the challenge. I also spent some time digitally lettering, then it was off to pick up my comic Partner in crime, Eric Mengel. Eric and I had a quick breakfast at Denny's (cue up the Denny at Denny's jokes) before heading over to Jesse James Comics to start drawing.

Drawing began at about 8am. and went steady until I had a minor meltdown at 10am. So I took a short break and went to Kinko's to print out the word balloons that I had made earlier. Once I put those balloons on the pages, the meltdown disappeared and it was smooth sailing until 5pm, when I completed the art for the mini comic, 8 pages and 1 cover.

At about 9am Damon Begay joined us a Jesse's. If you are not familiar with his work and enjoy independent mini-comics this guy is AWESOME!

From Jesse's Eric, Damon and myself headed to Office Max to make mini-comic magic. This is where we hit our first snag. We were using different copy machines than we usually use, so it took us each a little time to figure out how the machines work. (Mini-Comic Pro Tip - always learn how to use the machines before you start making massive copies.) The lady at Office Max was super nice to us, even though we had paper everywhere and we bogating the machines.

With copies in hand, we headed to Lawn Gnome a couple hours late. When we arrived we were shocked to find friends and supports patiently waiting for us. Seriously, we were in shock that people were there waiting for us and felt really bad about being over 2 hours late. So thank you for your patients and support, you guys rock.

Thanx to Jesse James Comics, Lawn Gnome and Office Max!

Also thanx to Larry Sanchez for some awesome promoting before the event!!

And a bigger thanx to all our friends and supports, you guys (and gals) ROCK!!!!!