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Tag Archives: cartozia
Hadpanagus Halloween minicomics.
Way back in 2011, AZ created Hadpanagus, a bizarre mythical creature who steals people’s butts and uses them for food and clothing. He loves butts so much, he links them together to make a tail of trophy butts, which he proudly wears alongside his actual tail. AZ’s original description was so funny, it led other artists to draw their own versions of the creature. Now our trip round the bend culminates in Hadpanagus’s inclusion in this year’s bundle of assorted Cartozia Halloween mini-comics. The Hadpanagus book features my illustrations with verses written by Isaac Cates and Mike Wenthe. If you want Halloween minis to pass out to trick-or-treaters, you can order them online at the Cartozia storefront.
And as long as you’re clicking links, open a tab for our current Kickstarter campaign to reprint issue 1 with bonus content! A pledge of only $8 gets you a copy of the new, improved issue 1. Higher tier rewards include 10 issue bundles, original art, and more!
Gremaxa
Gremaxa is a feathered, reptilian practitioner of essence magic, introduced in issue 5 of Cartozia Tales by Isaac Cates and Mike Wenthe. She goes on to appear again in issue 6, written by Jen Vaughn and drawn by Caitlin Lehman, and again in Tom Motley’s issue 7 story. Since I will be continuing the story in issue 8, I spent some time sketching her yesterday, and used fabric collage to color the drawing. Visit the Cartozia store to subscribe, and be sure to sign up for a premium subscription with fun bonuses, so you can get a neat little treatise on Cartozian magic and learn more about the essence magic used by Gremaxa.
This is one of the fun things you can do with layer masks in either Photoshop or Manga Studio/Clip Studio (I used Manga Studio 5 to create this image). Using layer masks allows me to choose where each fabric swatch should appear without actually erasing any of it. So if I need to, I can reposition the fabric under the mask to get all the colors and textures where I want them.
Matia in Color.
My story for issue 7 of Cartozia Tales is set in Matia, the Mother Wood on the western continent. If you’ve seen my paintings and my Lolly Poppet comic, you can probably tell that I like drawing trees. Though the panels in my Cartozia stories are usually quite small (like many of my Cartozia colleagues, I’ve been laying out the pages with 4 tiers so I can fit in as much story as possible), I wanted the tree in this panel to seem huge and expansive.
It’s design is based partly on the live oaks found in the southeastern U.S. Those trees grow huge, meandering branches that can arch down to the ground, descend into the soil, and re-emerge, as if they were trunks of separate trees. This panel is too small to capture that hugeness, but I tried to simulate it by extending the branches in the foreground to the bottom corners of the panel, as if they are extending toward the viewer.
The black and white version above is how the panel will appear in print (soon)! Just for fun, I made a color version to share online. (Because I’m excited that the mew issue will be in print soon. Soon!) Order yourself a subscription at Cartozia.com and our editor will mail you ALL THE ISSUES! That means you can get actual FUN mail that isn’t ads or bills! It’s a win!
Sand Witch
As we finish work on issue 7 of Cartozia Tales and lay the groundwork for issue 8, I’ve been looking back on the stories I’ve done for the series far. Many of the characters we create appear in more than one issue, being passed from artist to artist. Some only make brief appearances. In issue 6 I introduced a character who is NOT likely to appear again. She was only in one short flashback that took place 30 years before the main storylines, but she was such fun to write and draw that I wanted to revisit her.
The Sand Witch was Jessyn’s nasty, cruel alchemy teacher for a time, long before she had Gandria and Tierce or travelled to Upside-Town. The Sand Witch only appears in a couple panels, but her presence is felt for a whole page! She lived in the desert landscape near Urbs, on the western continent. We don’t know much about her except that she needs herbs for her work, and she likes rocks for her corns. But I wanted to do a color image of her, and thought the character and texture of her brief scene would lend themselves well to a fabric collage:
Here’s what she looks like in black and white on the pages of Cartozia, along with a young Jessyn:
If you want to see how she figures into the story, remember you can subscribe online at http://cartozia.com/store/.
Cartozia #7 teaser images
I won’t give too much away here, but my next Cartozia ( <- click the link to subscribe!) story will feature Phibbits. Phibbits are a race of froglike people I created for Cartozia. These two juveniles are called Kibble and Pip.
Here are a few teaser images from the comic. It is set in the woods, and I had fun drawing all the trees. I tried to make them look like they were done with pen and ink, but they’re completely digital. I used Manga Studio to draw the comic.
The Miners and the Mullypaw
my comic from issue 4 of Cartozia Tales, with settings suggested by Jen Vaughn and Isaac Cates. Visit cartozia.com to read about the collaborative process.
Shambling Tower (Cartozia)
Here’s a one-pager I did for Cartozia Tales, a series of collaborative all-ages fantasy comics I’ve been working on for the last year or so. The name “Shambling Tower” was suggested by editor Isaac Cates.
