Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Beasts On A Hill


Here's a few thumbnail sketches for my two pages of the Sean Aaberg artzine. The left one is inspired by the body of an elephant and the head of a boar. The right one is inspired by a monkey, bird and crab.

Also, I guess the avatar thing wasn't working out?

19 comments:

Unknown said...

those look great, but wasn't supposed to be all on a "Eaten by Ducks" theme?

and yeah, what happened to all the stuff on the page?, i feel like a General stripped me of all my regalia

Aeron said...

I actually had a plan to do a small black and white painting of a hydra creature with the body of a wooden duck toy and long stretched out necks with duck heads, but I didn't do that one for whatever reason. A recent Sean email suggested there might not have been enough of a Duck blogger turn out for this to warrant a full zine of just the contributors to this place. So I suspect there will be other artists to help fill the pages.

I plan on finishing my 2 beasts on a hill paintings tonight but I can crank out a solid painting of that duck hydra I mentioned if Sean wants to stick with the Duck theme for the zine? It would be a two page horizontal spread so would take up 2 pages.

Sean, what say you?

Gaspard Pitiot said...

Arr I did the two pages for the zine some time ago… I didn’t realise it had to be about duks… So ???

Aeron said...

Don't worry about it, I think that was more an after thought theme idea after a lot of people had already started working on their pages.

SEAN said...

Yo, doesn't have to be Eaten By Ducks themed, it WAS indeed an afterthought. I'm pragmatic about this shit. Anyhow, today is the deadline, i've got five contributors which is enough for a small zine, which maybe that's what it'll be for now. I feel like the Luke commotion has made me question the general "ness" of this blog, which i'm interested in defining, so anyhow. I wanted this thing to be Eaten By Ducks content driven, but haven't gotten any response from more than half of the people on here... which once again, makes me question some stuff about the blog. On one hand, it's nice to have sort of a casual blogging presence, on the other hand, that's not how i run shit. So...

SEAN said...

As for the change in the blog's appearance, i switched us over to the template form so we don't have to fuck with html so much & can add some of the standard blogger functions that will help the blog to grow etc. I had no problem with the appearance, it was the functionality. I'd like to put everything back up as it was, except i wasn't a fan of the background image & how slow it made the page to load & stuff. The black is soothing on my eyes as well. We can discuss this of course, i just was trying to add features & couldn't, so i switched it over. The icons were great, we should ge them back up.

Gaspard Pitiot said...

Yes it was slow to load… I even couldn’t get the images which the contributors published with the old computer I used this weekend... I am zine addicted. So I always enjoy to be part of anything. Sean, you should have told me to send you more pictures, I would have done so. Please be more explicite about what you think about the blog, its content, ambitions and etc... I can’t see really what point you tried to make and I want to know what I belong to.

Unknown said...

Fuck the theme.

i have a second drawing that i did specifically for the zine, but i had doubts about how it would print, i'll scan it and send it to you ASAP Sean.

About the look of the blog, i'm in favor of anyone who wants to go wild tinkering with it, as long as it doesn't make it too slow oir distract from the artwork in the posts

Paleo

Aeron said...

I know Luke wanted this place to be more than just art, maybe a place to express more opinion oriented posts? Reviews? I can say that I've been getting a lot of people wanting me to review books lately and I'll be doing some of those in the near future that I'll likely post here.

And I know how busy everyone's lives can be so it's easy to understand how some folks come and go from time to time. If we could have some participants post once a month, at least? that would be great, so long as we have a core of more regular posters rotating in to keep things moving along.

And thanks for updating the blog to the new version, Sean. That make sense now as to why some of the stuff looks reset. It was a real headache having to deal with direct html coding previously. This will make it much easier to tweak things around.

zeke said...

Very cool drawings Aeron, I really like the sketchy style even though they're only roughs.
Good to know what animals you cooked them up from too!
Hope nobody minds (especially you Jeffrey!)but I took the liberty of reworking the EBD header. It's a cool design but the linework looked all smudged and unclear, so I've sharpened it up and reworked the colours.
Must admit I prefer the plain black backdrop, wasn't too keen on the blue backdrop.
Not suprising it's only half the Duckers who've contributed to the zine.As usual it's the same gang of us keeping this thing going with occasional cameo appearances from others who hardly ever bother commenting on people's work...
Fair enough we're all busy but think this blog should have a gang feel to it and not just be a place for self-promotion.

Jeffrey Meyer said...

zeke said...

"Hope nobody minds (especially you Jeffrey!)but I took the liberty of reworking the EBD header. It's a cool design but the linework looked all smudged and unclear, so I've sharpened it up and reworked the colours."

It looks great!

***

Regarding frequency of contributions... didn't we have this discussion a few months ago? Can't recall if any conclusions were reached. Certainly it's still a valid concern.

Personally, I'd like to think all of our own sites should get priority -- I mean, I'm subscribed to all of your guys' feeds at your own blogs, so I expect to see your material there or here, I guess. I have to admit my site is my first concern, but when I have a post over there that I think you guys might dig, I either repeat the post here or at least mention it with a link. And I have other posts that I create explicitly for this site. It is nice to have two outlets, each different.

Maybe I expect to see more "process" stuff and discussion here? More about how we're doing things? More back-and-forth from one artist to another (I know that's why I joined, after Luke's invite, to have a place where I could get some feedback from people I respect). But I imagine that sort of thing may not be as interesting to a casual reader/non-contributor.

I'm all in favor of interviews, videos, reviews, etc being added to the mix, but I'm satisfied with the blog as it is.

Human Mollusk said...

Hey Aeron, love those sketches!

The reworked logo looks great too, Zeke. You actually beat me to it - I've already started to make it into an animated gif. I think I'll finish it anyhow, now that it's almost half done and maybe we can use it somehow.
I agree with Zeke about the black background. Let's stick with that or find something really subtle.
Sean, I sent you two pages for the zine a few minutes ago. Not what I had intended to do but what the hell.

SEAN said...

Luke & Noah scared me away from doing opinion pieces, i didn't want to become a comic's journal lunatic curmudgeon person. Unlike Groth & Sims, i don't think my character should be judged by my enemies. Not into it. Anyhow, nice cleaned up Logo Zeke. I'd love to see a MESSED UP logo too. Using the same form & then going nuts with it.

Unknown said...

Very cool sketches, areon.
Sorry for not contributing to your zine, mr sean. I've been running behind on everything lately.
As far as the frequency of posting, by people on this blog- I think that's tricky, because we all want to see quality posts. You know, quality ideas, drawing, sketches, finished work, what have you. People basically have their own schedule and pace, and I guess that's just how it is. However, sometimes I also feel like this blog is not running on all cylinders.
And yeah, I like the current design of the blog, it looks cool.

Katie said...

I wish we had a discussion board on this to have these talks. Nice logo. I also love the process stuff but would love to also know more about where you guys put your finished work. Like Aaron for ex. does thousands of sketches but would love to see what you do with these.

Aeron said...

Thanks everyone, and I tweaked the colors of the text to match those of the logo. I don't know that they look good but I just wanted the color design of the blog to better match the blog title. Feel free to change it, anyone, if you want.

I was thinking a poll would be a good idea to have, now that we're on the updated version of blogger. What about something asking what people want to see more of, from interviews, artwork, reviews of music/movies/books, process pieces, etc?

And Kathryn, that is a good idea. That would help to bring some participants up to speed on things like zine deadlines. I don't know much about implementing a board though. As for the sketches I've posted, ah the thousands of sketches! Well, I'm doing a series of colored pencil drawings which I'll be showing and selling in the near future, many of the sketches became artwork I did for Jacob Covey's Beasts! Book 2 published by Fantagraphics and due out very soon. Other sketches have related to my Hob Bob graphic novel, paintings I'm going to be working on next year, and the list goes on into a lot of other small side projects, book projects, and other things I won't go into right now.

zeke said...

Really digging the new colour scheme, good work Aeron!

SEAN said...

yeah, the purple & yellow is really sick-ass. having a forum would be cool! I wonder if google has a forum builder or sommats.

SEAN said...

kathryn, the discussion board is up & just click on the link on the main blog page to check it out.