Atomic Tails #19

New Atomic Tails and I'm Going to SDCC 17 today! Keen. So, with the new Atomic Tails some stuff has changed. First, I've been studying (and practicing) a lot of new body forms for cartoon characters and I think (THINK) I like where this is going. Buttery, Chud, and Trog all have better sitting and body forms in this strip. Well, maybe. Also, I worked a bit more on Buttery's proportions compared to other two mice. Buttery is bigger than his friends, but not really fatter. Which, I think I was drawing him as in previous strips. I like his size relationship to the other two in this strip way more. Also, I got to draw a hooka in this one! I think the gag was a bit hacky in this one (Jas came up with it, but since I'm mostly trying to work on drawing the comic I thought it was good enough. Plus I wanted to do a comic that kind of went into why the twins are living apart up until now.), and hopefully I can get a better joke in #20.

I'm going to be at the con for the next few days, so I probably won't get to do any real work on A.T. until I get back Sunday night, but check out the full strip below and I hope you enjoy!!!

Cheers!

Atomic Tails #18!

New Atomic Tails!

Check out #18 below!

Finally here!!! Okay, I've been watching a lot of Rick and Morty, so I've been yelling a lot and typing in caps a lot too. However; Somewhere in between playing WoW and watching way too much fucking Adult Swim I managed to finish another strip. Like  always I tried new stuff or changed some old stuff to help improve the comic. This is one big learning experience so if you're reading this and you're reading the comic, please expect changes as I learn new stuff. 

Different stuff in this comic: 1. Buttery's fur. Though you can't see it in the grey scale version, I've decided to make Buttery's fur all the same yellow. That includes his hair style. 2. Chud with one 'D'. In the past I've always spelled it as Chudd. This is actually how Jason (my real life twin and the real life Chud) created the name for the character. Form now on though it'll be just Chud with one d. We love classic horror films of the 70's and 80's and both real and cartoon Chud's are representing the fandom. 2. The mouse faces. I actually learned a little bit about stylizing the mouse face from doing the Goldfinger mouse. I'm going to start applying this in future strips. 

Over all this was a fun strip. For #19 I'm going to get them off the couch. seriously, I'm done with the living room and want to move them somewhere else. Look forward to "the Tree of Woe!"

Cheers!

Atomic Tails #16

Last night I finally finished #16. Not that I really feel bad about taking my time with this one. there's a lot of changes in this strip from how I normally illustrate Atomic Tails. This is the first time I tried to do a larger, "Sunday" like, strip. It was fun, and I would like to work these strips in on a regular basis. Maybe every seven strips instead of days, maybe not. It does take me awhile to get a comic produced. Also, this is the first time I used Adobe Photoshop to fully color one of my strips. So, there ways a bit (huge) learning curve on how to work with PS on this level. I've only ever used Adobe Illustrator for my strip, but I can see how learning Photoshop will speed things up, once I get more practice. I still inked (digitally) the strip in Illustrator though. I just like AI's pen and brush tools way more than Photoshop's. Keep in mind too, I'm using CS3 a much older version of Adobe than most people have access too. I'm broke! I can't afford the cloud! 

Another thing of note is the logo for the Ascension of the Golden  Yo-Yo's, As Designed by Jason (aka: real life Chudd) Murray. I dig the design and think it'll give us a lot to play with in the future. Jason also helped with the writing of this strip and I think it came out a lot better than what I had originally planned. 

The last thing of note is the changes to Trog's apartment. I changed the couch to look more like my own couch at home (kind of...) and I also added some posters of stuff similar (kind of...) to stuff I keep on the walls of my own apartment. It wasn't until I had most of the strip done that I noticed how little detail I was putting into my backgrounds. I'm trying to work more with perspective and spacing, but I want to focus more on Chudd and Trog's world. I'm even playing with the idea of designing the layout of Trog's apartment. Right now I'm just throwing up walls, because they're in doors and there should be a wall there somewhere. In the future I'd like their living space to be more planned out and believable. Well, as real as an apartment for cartoon mice can be. 

So, I've already got a good bite into #17 and I'm hoping this one won't take more than two weeks! Keep checking back for more Atomic Tails goodness! Check out the full #16 below!

Strip #14 is here!

Yeah, it took me awhile, but here it is! One more strip for Atomic Tails. This strip introduces another many character to the story, Buttery Wholesomeness. Buttery is based (for the most part) on an old high school buddy of mine, but in a weird way, much less of an actual cartoon than the real guy. If you knew Chris, you would know what I was talking about. Anyways, Strip #14 was also a chance to work on the characters form and anatomy a bit more. Though I'm still unsure what happens to their tails when they sit on a couch, I actually like some of the poses I pulled off. All except the last panel. Trog's left foot still just looks weird to me, but as many times as I tried (which was a lot) I couldn't get the leg to do what I wanted. Oh, well... Practice!!! Also, though I went back and added it to strip #13, this is the first time I added a Logo type and creator credit to one of my strips. Chudd (the real life Chudd) helped a little bit with it. Anyways, I'm jumping onto Strip #15 now. I really would like to start producing one a week, but at this point I'd settle for anything under a month.

Cheers! 

Just Getting Started!

I just started putting the website together, and I'm running into all sorts of problems. Sorry if the comic strip is kind of unreadable or small. I'm hoping to fix that soon. Unfortunately I'm like really new to using Squarespace and this CMS isn't designed for webcomics. Well, not yet. 

The 10 strips I posted the other day were started about 3 years ago. I've been taking some time off from working on the strip it self to develop the form of the characters and study cartooning. I spend a lot of time drawing the Looney Tunes and cartoons like Tom and Jerry on top of normal character study and perspective work. I'm hoping the practice will pay off and I'll have better looking characters. 

One thing I've been doing is mixing my mice with other cartoons. Recently I did a couple of MOTU mash ups with the mice. I like doing this and I think it's helping me work out their overall form. Plus, it's just fun. After MOTU, I'm going to start on some DC Mash ups. I'm also working on a series of character sheets for the comics main characters (Chudd, Trog, Butter, D20, and Numbers) , I'm hoping to have that posted here soon too. Anyways check out the images below, and I'll have prints of them available on the Murray Brothers Creative website soon, and we're also taking them to Power-Con 2016! 

Enjoy!