New and Improved... and Old

I'm still plugging away at the website, and I think I should be able to launch the new layout and integrate it with this blog in a few days! Meanwhile, I was looking through some of the illustrations and studies I've done this year, and I came across this pinup of Pogo that I did a few months before I started roughing out "Demon of the Underground." It's the first illustration I did of him in the underground and at this slightly younger age.



For a long time, I wasn't particularly pleased with the image, but then I realized that it was just very dark overall and thus none of the details were visible. So I fiddled with it, lightened it up, and now I think it's fit to be seen again!

I'm going to release it as a limited edition print when I start up the comic. More details soon!

Oh yeah, and I also did this portrait of Annie!

Web Design, Part 2

I designed the preliminary layout for the "Demon of the Underground" website. What I wanted for this layout was (1) something that didn't look like just another Wordpress/Comicpress page, and (2) something that's directly related to the story itself. I figured if I'm going to do these pages all as pencils, I'm really going to embrace the medium from start to finish -- so I incorporated it into the web design. I've also drawn and added in various Gothic motifs here and there. I'm really looking forward to designing the "characters" page, because that's where I'll go the craziest with the Gothic motifs.

The basic template and menu are coded and ready to go. Now it's just a matter of filling the center area with the actual content of the site. I also need to test it in various different browsers, because so far I've only used Firefox.

Ahh, the joys of web design...

It's been so long since I've put together a website that I'm suddenly behind the times in terms of current technology. I prefer simple websites with simple layouts, that let the content do the talking rather than disguising it behind Flash animations and so on. But all of a sudden, even a simple website seems difficult to create.

I've always gotten by on self-taught HTML, and limited knowledge of CSS and Javascript. Now I'm venturing into XHTML/CSS for the first time, and it's like a completely different world! Luckily I'm picking it up pretty fast; I'm thankful for my Indian brain that seems predisposed to such things as computer programming... (gotta love stereotypes!) But the idea of using CSS for layout is still kind of blowing my mind. I'm old school, all I know is building tables in HTML.

The webcomics world in general is new to me, to be honest. I don't even really know how RSS feeds work, so I'm going to have to study up on that as well...

I'm planning a really cool layout for the "Demon" website, inspired by the pseudo-Gothic architecture that's used in the story's Underground. Exciting! Right now, it's just a matter of learning the code.

And I'm still waffling back and forth on the matter of whether to use Comicpress or to build it all from scratch. Decisions, decisions...

In other news, I went to the Ren Faire today with some work buddies. It was colorful as always. Yay for hard cider! ^_^ And about 1/4 of a turkey leg. We practically had a team of people eating that thing.

Color Character Designs

I wanted to do "finished" concept illustrations for the two most important characters of "Demon of the Underground," so here they are! (click images to view larger)

Our "hero," Pogo!


And Samsid, king of the East Sphere!


Man, these were so fun! It's been so long since I last did character illustrations, so I had a very good time with these...

About "Demon of the Underground"

A bit of background for the many many people who aren't familiar with this project...

"Demon of the Underground" is a story about a small-framed but big-mouthed dude named Pogo who falls through a hole in the ground and finds himself stuck in an underground society where survival is based on strength and intimidation.

This story is the sister comic to "Unholy," another comic that I've been working on (very slowly) for several years. They share the same main character, except that "Demon" takes place roughly five years before "Unholy." However, one does not have to read either of the comics in order to understand the other. "Demon" deals with a portion of Pogo's back story that isn't covered throughout the course of "Unholy."

I first started working on "Demon" as part of the June 2010 round of Nanomango, a challenge to draw 30 comic pages in 30 days. After completing the challenge, I decided that I wanted to continue the story and share it with readers on a regular basis. What I publish on a weekly basis will be a slightly cleaner version of what I did for Nanomango.

Here's some of the concept art I put together at the beginning of the project (click to view larger):