Jason-Brubaker.com

So here's the Deal.

2010-03-25T17:17:00.000-07:00

I am planning on canceling this blog becuase I just hate having a million websites that I half way use. I have reMINDblog.com active and very busy so please go there if you want to see anything new. Trust me, there is plenty of new stuff over there. I post new pages every Monday and new articles about making graphic novels every Thursday. Check it out! http://remindblog.com/

My other reason for cancelling this one is the fact that I no longer really like Blogger. I am so happy with WordPress that I might as well just keep using it for all my future blogging endeavors. If I choose to start a new personal blog, I guarantee it will be with Wordpress. But then again, every year technology changes so much that you have to keep moving to stay in the game.

Anyway, This will be my last post here. In a few weeks I'll pull the plug on http://jason-brubaker.blogspot.com so get it while the gettin's good. Whatever that means. And go to reMINDblog for any future anything from me.

It was fun while it lasted.

- Jason

reMIND - Spread 10

2010-01-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

Here is Spread 10 but very small. I have a large version of it with commentary on my new blog at:

reMINDblog.com

reMINDblog has moved to reMINDblog.com

2010-01-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

Hey all! This blog has been moved to a WordPress blog which means if you want to keep following the progress of reMIND then go to reMINDblog.com from now on.

You can keep following this blog which will be a random art blog but I assure you that it will be very random in subject and posting dates.

I hope you enjoy where reMINDblog is going. I will keep posting Mondays and Thursdays on the new blog, only at http://reMINDblog.com!.

- Jason

Making Your Own Comic Font

2010-01-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

This article has been moved to it's new home at the link below:

http://www.remindblog.com/2010/01/14/making-your-own-comic-font/

Publish a graphic novel?

2009-11-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

Publish a graphic novel?

Most people look at me cross-eyed when I tell them my dream to publish my graphic novel. Most of the time I have to explain what a graphic novel is before I can continue describing my fantasy. Then there are those who think I'm just a dreamer who's never going to finish because I've been working on this crazy side project ever since they can remember.

Well, now I can proudly just give them my blog address and keep my mouth shut.

But posting my pages online has been a whole new adventure. I can honestly say I'm terrified of what people will say when they see what I've been meticulously knit picking for the last 3 years of my life. I just started using Google Analytics last week and can't even concentrate anymore while at work. Every second I'm checking my stats. Just yesterday I realized it only updates once a day. What a relief. Now I only check it in the morning. But that doesn't stop me from looking at my rankings on Comic Blog Elite. At some point I figure it will all get out of my system and I'll be able to log onto a computer again without checking my feedback.

Yesterday was rough. I tried to pretend it didn't matter and I ended up with a headache and a stomachache.

Progress is progress

2009-10-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

These last few months I've set aside reMIND and focused on finishing up my old Phobos comics. It's a joy to tap into those old pages and try to spruce them up with some new dialogue and possibly new drawings. Phobos 5 had a major retooling; scrapping almost three quarters of the original comic drawn back in 1994 and adding new major moments to the story. Talk about a George Lucas moment. Sometimes I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels working on Phobos again. After all it's not really my best work and I don't want to showcase it. I guess I just need closure in order to fully move on to my new projects.

Because of this need to complete Phobos, I'm totally feeling like I'm dropping the ball on reMIND. One of my goals is to submit reMIND to the Xeric Foundation to try and get a grant to help pay for the printing. The next submission deadline is March 31st, so I have five months to get as much coloring finished before I submit.

If anyone is confused at what Phobos is, it's a comic I started in high school that got picked up and published and then cancelled shortly after. I had five issues finished that were shelved for over a decade. Four of them were never seen. Now that I've been trying to find my place in the graphic novel world I decided to reprint Phobos to learn how to publish and sell comics. I've never published a graphic novel before so I brought back Phobos in attempt to learn printing, marketing, and selling. It's been a great learning experience and I've spent way more money then I've brought in but I'm slowly whittling down this giant log of confusion into something I am starting to understand.

On a different note, my Man Baby picture finally made it on the ManBabies.com site. It looks like it was there for a while but I only found out today. Here's the link: Manbabies.com.

Phobos Chapter 3

2009-10-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

Here is the cover of Phobos #3. I have been waiting a long time to release this one and I'm very excited about it. I updated CoffeeTableComics.com so please stop by and see the new look...Okay, it's just a blog but it's the new home for ordering anything Phobos related. It looks like it will be ready to ship by November 30th. Just in time for all those stockings!

- Jason

reMIND cover...maybe.

2009-09-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here is, what was until recently, the final cover for reMIND. I really wanted to make Sonja(the girl) showcased on the cover and Victuals(the cat) secondary even though the cat is the main character of the book. The reason is mainly because I thought having a cool chick on the cover of my graphic novel would sell more copies then a precious little kitty picture. I guess to the audience I was trying to hit anyway.

After all I'm going to print this thing hardbound and it needs to sell a few more copies then the guaranteed three to my family. So everyone seemed to like this cover, and there were some who thought that I intentionally placed a cat at the crotch of Sonja to be a sexual innuendo. Well, I'm sorry to deflate your perverse perspective but that was not my thought process here. The linear positioning of the cat, girl, and lighthouse just looks really nice to me and I'd buy this book (I think) if I saw it somewhere, assuming the insides were nice as well.

I held fast to my non-perverted cover for quite a while but then I decided to email Kazu. Yes, I'm talking about the Kazu from the Flight anthology. I was curious what his opinion was about my book and if he had any suggestions. He kindly mentioned that it might go over well with a comic publisher like Image or Dark Horse but he didn't think the cover looked like a children's book in which a book publisher like Random House or Scholastic would be interested.

You see, ever since Jeff Smith started publishing Bone through Random House I've been hooked on this idea that I want to get published by a book publisher, not a comic publisher. It seems to me like Image doesn't care one way or another if you sell your books or not. There's no real effort on their part to push any sales from what I can see. Forgive me if you love Image. That's just my paradigm of the company and I could be totally wrong.

So, recently after talking to a few other people about all this, I've decided to draw a new cover that mainly focuses on the cat in his super suit.(that's not really what it's called) My new cover should focus more on showing off the idea that it's a story about a cat and not a hot chick with a cat.

Phobos Line-up

2009-09-03T08:06:00.001-07:00

Here is my cast of characters for Phobos. Issue 3 should be out soon but no real deadline yet. Issue 1 and 2 are for sale at CoffeeTableComics.com. Here is a new page from issue 3.

Vampire the Masquerade art

2009-08-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

An old friend called me yesterday who modeled for some role playing books I illustrated back in 1996. We tried to figure out which book she was in with no luck; all my books were packed away. This morning I remembered that I constructed a White Wolf website with art from all the books I worked on.

Here you go Justice! Here is the picture that you were in. Here is a link to the book info. Turns out it was from the Mage series in a book called "Horizon: Stronghold of Hope". Sorry you had to wait 13 years to see what I did with your picture.

Thanks for the call Justice!

Random character designs

2009-06-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Here are some character designs by Philip Pignotti and myself. These are not part of my graphic novel but I really liked the way they turned out. Check out Philip's blog for more fun artwork.

To give you an idea...

2009-04-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a page from reMIND. Sorry I'm being vague at the moment. I plan on posting larger files with sketches and breakdowns but this will give you an idea of what's to come.

One more painting test.

2009-04-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Painting tests for my graphic novel

2009-04-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

Here are some paintings I recently finished. They were tests to see if I could potentially do some panels of my GN in this style. I'd love to have a fully painted looking comic with solid lines over everything. I'm not sure it will work for my book but we will see. There might be a few scenes where I can use this technique.

Mostly I will keep everything in the same style but every now and then it's fun to experiment especially when it helps the story is some strange way.

#3 is my most successful try. I also painted it in half the time of the other. These were all painted with Guasch by the way.

- Jason

A brief history of "reMIND"

2009-04-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

My name is Jason Brubaker and I had this idea to make a 2 minute animation about a cat almost 10 years ago.

It was going to be a simple music video but things got way out of hand. I spent many hours daydreaming and storyboarding it to perfection and it turned into a 15 minute film idea. Then I started learning After Effects and I spent the next three years of my spare time making 10 minutes of badly exicuted animation. Not only that, it was only the first quarter of the story. I decided to take my cat film and turn it into a 5 minute section of a full feature film. But why would I want to spend all the time mastering one scene of a movie that no one would understand out of context.

A year or so later a friend and mentor suggested making it into a graphic novel and it all clicked. I scrapped the long slow animation project and rewrote the story to be a graphic novel. Now I could tell my whole story from start to finish and not worry about who to cast for voice overs. And even if I suck at pitching it to a studio they could just open the book at read it for themselves.

It's been about two years since I've started this book and I've come across may obstacles including time, money and work. Oh yeah, and I just had my first child last year. SOOOooooo, I decided to start this blog were I can post my progress instead of worrying about keeping it top secret until it's released. I have a bunch of finished pages I can post and lots of sketches. All the dialogue is temporary until it goes to print so you will probably see lots of typos and continuity problems. The full story is turning out to be about 300 pages and so I've decided to make a two part series.

I'll also try to share some of my process that I've developed for the book. If you want to be notified when reMIND is actually finished, I've set up a mailing list on the right hand side. Until next posting.

- Jason

Things I have learned while making a Graphic Novel

2009-04-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Here is my ever growing list:

1) Make your files in CYMK mode. All printers print in CYMK. And if you end up needing it in RGB for some odd reason then you can still convert it after the fact.

2) Work in at least 300 dpi. That's what all the printers I've talked to print at. Most Marvel and DC guys create their pages at 450 to 600dpi but it all gets reduced in the end to go to print.

3) Make rules for yourself to follow for your book or it will look like a different book at the beginning and end because you got inspired along the way with some new technique. My rules are pretty simple. a)I only use the paint textures that I made. b)Above ground the pages are more or less white and below ground they are more black. c)I can only do 4 panels per page unless it's a sequence of frames where the camera doesn't move. d)I draw everything on paper and scan it. No digital lines except for subtle changes. e)all my pages are planned out as double page spreads so I can control the mood and story better. Those are my rules for this book. My next book will change as I figure out what is important to me then.

4) Develop a style that is doable and wont take you a gazillion years. I learned that I didn't need to ink my pages because I can just boost the contrast on pencil lines in Photoshop. That alone saves me hours every page.

5) Read "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud if you haven't already.

6) Focus on your strengths. Draw what you love to draw. Don't make a story about the army if you suck at drawing tanks. Unless it's your mission to learn how to draw tanks while making a GN. But I'd suggest not using this medium to learn how to draw something. It will just look different from start to finish and you'll constantly want to go back and fix old ugly tanks.

7) Start with an idea that you really believe in and want to share with others. This is important because if you don't really care about your idea then you'll never finish it. It takes dedication to make a novel or graphic novel so you really need to love what you are trying to say.

(Excuse me for cheating. This post will be continually updated as I keep learning new stuff. So please ignore the time stamp.)