

LEON for the holidays.
I'm a few behind, so I'll try to put a bigger drop of strips up soon...


Figure A here, is what my general roughs 'version one's' turn out to look like. I have an idea of where I wanted the strip to go, so I'd set out to lay out the page/s and block in some notes I had to myself, so I wouldn't forget them later when I was inking. As you can see I had 2 pages here, which got turned into 1 page. I forget why now - probably because of time constraints. A lot of things get shaved down by not having enough time or energy to do something else. If you can look closely at that rough up top, I have a couple of gags on Ice Tre's 40 bottle, - like calling it 'Assed Out 800', a play off of Old English 800 - more effectionately known in the outer provinces as "Old Gold", "8-Ball" or "OH EE". Anyway, I cut it out because I just didn't think it was necessary. I cut out a lot of stuff, like I was gonna have Ice Tre' rapping in the strip, so I wrote out a couple of bars for him to spit in the recording booth, but again, Cut. There's a lot of cutting that comes into my strips when I did them every week - I had more ideas in my head than room to fit them all.
After I did the rough stage, what I normally did was go over the stuff I was gonna keep in a felt tip marker of some sort (I'm known for being a 'whatever's in front of me' type of inker - I don't care, if it makes a mark I'll use it) and tighten up the rough. After that, on 11x17 Strathmore Bristol, later on smaller stuff, I'd lightbox the tighter roughs in blue col-erase pencil, and then ink it. I think for this strip I used all microns, and maybe some other stuff for the thick outlines. I'm not a huge Micron mark - I use brush nowadays just as easily as a techpen - it really depends on what kinda line I'm going for. Then I ruled out the panels.
The FINAL stage is doing the lettering, which I did as well in Photoshop. I know it's best to do the stuff in Illustrator, but doing a weekly strip for me was more about getting it done than how you did it. Photoshop is faster in this case. Now if this was for print and I was doing a book, then yeah I'd do the lettering in Illo, but this is just getting zapped to 72 DPI and it works good enough. BOOM.




Yo yo.





12:30-1:30 PM
Creating Art for Manga Panel at TOKYOPOP booth #1321
(Drew Rausch, Jamar Nicholas, James Barry, Joanna Estep, Lincy Chan, Maximo Lorenzo)
Moderated by Hope Donovan
Sunday April 20
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 PM
Humor and Manga Panel at TOKYOPOP booth #1321
(Amy Reeder Hadley, Jamar Nicholas, Maximo Lorenzo, Svetlana Chmakova, Steve Buccellato)
Moderated by Lillian Diaz-Przybl
>>
I'll be in some other spots as well, but I gotta stretch these posts out somehow. Come back soon!



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JAMAR NICHOLAS RETURNS AS HOST OF THE GLYPH COMICS AWARDS
The Glyph Comics Awards Committee is proud to announce that Jamar Nicholas will return to host this year's awards ceremony at the East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC) in Philadelphia. Nicholas, a Philly native, is best known for his hip hop comic strip Detective Boogaloo, as well as his autobiographical series The Jamar Chronicles. In 2007 he hosted the Awards for the first time, delighting the audience with his unique brand of humor while serving as emcee of the evening's entertainment, which also included performances by spoken word/rap artists Grayson Board, Randy Moore, and Brother G.
"I'm very excited about having the opportunity to host the 2008 Glyph awards, and am honored to be asked," says Nicholas. "I had a great time hosting last year's awards, and to have it take place in such a historic institution as the African American Museum makes it even greater."
"We really couldn't ask for a better host," says Committee Chair Rich Watson. "Jamar's local, he's a cartoonist himself, and he's funnier than anybody hosting this thing has a right to be, so we hope to have him as our go-to guy for a long, long time."
The Awards ceremony will be held Friday, May 16 at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the night before ECBACC, which will be held the next day, Saturday, May 17, at Temple University's Anderson Hall.
The Committee also wishes to remind everyone that the poll for the Fan Award remains open until March 31. Everyone is encouraged to head over to the ECBACC website (http://ecbacc.com/wordpress/
About the Glyph Comics Awards:
The Glyph Comics Awards recognize the best in comics made by, for, and about people of color from the preceding calendar year. While it is not exclusive to black creators, it does strive to honor those who have made the greatest contributions to the comics medium in terms of both critical and commercial impact. By doing so, the goal is to encourage more diverse and high quality work across the board and to inspire new creators to add their voices to the field.
The awards are named for the blog Glyphs: The Language of the Black Comics Community at Pop Culture Shock (http://glyphs.popcultureshock
About ECBACC:
The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention (ECBACC), in association with the Temple University Pan-African Studies Community Education Program, is an annual gathering of comic book creators and retailers who create and sell material that caters to black readers of all ages. In addition to selling their work, they also take part in panel discussions and self-publishing workshops for aspiring creators. The convention is held on the Temple University campus in Philadelphia each May. ECBACC is an outgrowth of the original Black Age of Comics Convention in Chicago, founded by Turtel Onli.
For more information about ECBACC, contact event coordinator Maurice Waters at maurice.waters@ecbacc.com, or visit the official website (www.ecbacc.com).
That's What's Up!
