New Website!

GO TO THE NEW SITE! If you have bookmarked this site then you may need to recreate your bookmark. www.GrieforGlory.com has now moved to my own server.

Soccer Kid

My drawing looks like a traditional illustration huh? Amazing what you can do with photoshop. If anyone wants to know how to get this watercolor and ink look I could post a tutorial or something. Just let me know.

Does anyone know of any good soccer manga? I'd like to see the Japanese take on telling a story involving soccer.

Character Ref

Now that I've experimented with some different rendering styles and done some strips, I'm now trying to create a more consistent design. Ultimately I may end up redoing a lot of what is above so that it can be solid and consistent from the very beginning. Many of the strips were redrawn two or three times as you can see by looking at some of my older posts below. Must do it perfectly and completely!

3D Samuel

I had almost forgotten about this model that David Liu built for me back in school. It's been awhile since I opened up Maya. My school, The Art Institute of CA in Santa Monica mainly focused on 3D. So we were trying to figure out Maya all the time. It gave me a lot of headaches and I basically focused on developing my storytelling skills while everyone else around me tried to improve their technical proficiency in Maya. That seems so long ago although I really only graduated about a year and a half ago. I'm creating some character reference so that I can keep consistency in my character designs. Enjoy.

New Obey Style Poster

Here's the new obey style poster. I'm a big fan of the obey designs. If anyone wants a copy, let me know, shaundmcmillan@gmail.com

Halloween

Me and ol' Jesus on Halloween night. He makes a great date.

To be continued

I'm still working on this comic. I'm finishing up part two right now. I know it's confusing but the comic I'm working on now is number 12 and is actually BEFORE the the most current strip that is up right now. I apologize for getting ahead of myself.

Like a Girl

New Strip. This is one of two.

Oh Wow, Color!

My apologies to all the creationists out there. I also apologize to all the geocentrists and anyone who still believes the world is flat. I'd love to take credit for the color design but I in fact just copied the color pallette from one of Kazu's strips at www.BoltCity.com . His work is a great inspiration.

New Strips, Now with Dotted Patterns!

I'm still trying to loosen up my linework. Although here it looks like I just put less effort into the cleanup work. mmm... Hard to say honestly. I like the patterns and dot shading.

The Digital Quill Pen

I added a couple new comics, enjoy.

I'm a big fan of the old school quill pen and the loose look of inking with a brush. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just look at any of the traditional comics like those by Charles Schultz (Peanuts - Snoopy) or Bill Waterson (Calivin & Hobbes). But I don't work traditionally, I work strictly on my tablet pc.

For all the artists out there I highly reccomend the tablet pc if you can get one. If not then at least get a wacom tablet. In case you didn't get the memo, you should know that inking and even drawing your roughs on paper has recently become obselete. We all love the feel of drawing on paper, but it's just not time effective. To keep the look of the old style of drawing I use special brushes in photoshop and check the setting, "Shape Dynamics."

So to get my digital ink style I use the following method in photoshop

THE DIGITAL QUILL PEN

1. Make a black rectangle

2. Select it

3. Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset

4. Check "Shape Dynamics"

5. Find 3 or 4 different sizes you like and save them into your brush presets.

Perfectly and Completely

If you have seen the video I produced when I drew this comic the first time then you may have noticed that I completely redid this comic strip. I'm really proud of this strip for many reasons.

First of all, I feel like it was really good writing. I feel like God really inspired me and I realized something very profound. That realization is in the first panel of the strip.

Secondly, I learned from my teacher and pastor Joshua Jung that we should do things perfectly and completely even if we have to do it 100 times or 1,000 times. I liked the writing but I felt that the quality of layout and drawing in the first version did not do it justice. It took a long time to draw it the first time, but as you can tell from the video I was drawing at a very quick pace. In the end I still wasn't happy with it. You can see the first version below.



I kept the original version as a rough draft but I completly changed the spacing of the strip. I edited out the last panel. I completely redrew several of the characters and redid all the linework as well as all the text balloons. I'm still getting used to the comic strip layout which is much different than your wider animation layouts.

Since I was already investing so many hours to make it perfect I figured I might as well go the final step and add color. Painting with color is one of the funnest stages anyways and I've been learning some great techniques including masking and adjustment layers (photoshop). Unfortunately the color came out terrible so I desaturated (turned to black and white) all the layers. I may redo the color yet again later on, but I need to learn color theory first.

Do things perfectly and completely. It's very rewarding. ~Shaun

New Character, Julie

Here's the newest addition to the cast of "Almost There." This is Jake's little sister, Julie. She can see and talk to Jesus but no one else can which you can see in strip 6. Poor Jesus, if only we were more spiritual maybe we would see him more often.

Crossing the Line - Basic Staging

Here is a perfect example of what not to do. Here I broke one of the most fundamental rules in visual storytelling.

CROSSING THE LINE

In film making, storyboarding, and any form of sequential storytelling there is a rule called "Crossing the Line" or "The 180 degree rule." It's a little hard to find good examples because even though it's the most common mistake made among storyboarders it is always fixed before the story hits the final edit. I always wanted to have an example of how confusing it is to the viewer when you cross the line to show an angle on the characters that should not be shown. I ran into the problem in my first attempt at the above strip.

Staging Lesson

Let me explain the rule in case you've never heard of it. First of all I'll give the technical explanation -- the one you usually find in books. If you have a hard time following don't worry, my strip at the beginning and end of this post should help you understand... If two characters' are talking then you draw an imaginary line from one character's body to the other character's body. You may now place your camera in any place on one side of that line. You can change to any angle on that side of the characters but you CANNOT show the characters from their other side. If you do then the characters will suddenly switch sides on the screen. For example character A might be on the left side of the screen and character B would be on the right side of the screen. As long as you stay on one side of the imaginary line character A will remain screen left and character B screen right. But as soon as you choose to show them from the other side Character B will suddenly jump to screen left and Character A screen right. This is confusing to the viewer. It also shows an entirely different background. This confusion takes place in the subconscience of the viewer and they get confused real quick. They have no ideas why they are getting confused and it kills their viewing experience. The background and the items contained within it has a way of telling the viewer where he is in the scene. But when you move the camera too far all the background's elements that the viewer has gotten used to seeing disappear and a whole new set of background items appear. There are many tempations to cross the line. Whether you just love showing a certain angle or you've already done a drawing you already like and don't want to discard it. No matter what the case, please, Do not cross that Line!

Is the character A, character B a little too confusing? Take a look at the comic strip I drew at the top of this post. There you will see my first attempt to make a readable layout. In the second panel I crossed the line in order to show the characters from behind. Then Josue, who in the first panel is screen left, suddenly jumps to screen right placing him on Jacob's opposite screen direction. Then in panel 3 he jumps back to his original position. It's confusing to the viewer.

At times you may need the characters to switch screen direction. The easiest fix is to have one character walk from one side of the screen to the other crossing in front of or behind the other character. This is also good because it gives you a chance to do some acting as you move the characters. As long as the characters just sit around talking your scene can quickly become flat and borring. Actions allow them to act and become dynamic. Avoid Talking Heads.

Another tool that may help you is you can cut from a shot of two character to a shot that gets more close up on one of the characters. By doing this you are showing the point of view of the other character. If you switch to a closeup on the other character then you are rotating the camera 180 degrees. The other common angle is use an, "Over the Shoulder" shot which you could also switch 180 degrees. But be careful which shoulder you show. Make sure the screen right character stays screen right. Do not spin the camera more than 180 degrees!

Don't do what I did. They say that all rules are meant to be broken but don't break it for no reason. They say there are times when you can break the rule but I havn't come across any good examples. Some people like to break the rules just to break them, but that's retarded because the rule is there to help improve the visual readability of your work.

Every choice you make should be motivated by the story. I could argue that breaking the rule in the above example is motivated by the story and even helps express the story. The argument would be that by confusing the viewer I make the smack on the back of Jake's head more unexpected. The viewer then feels the same way as the character. I also tried to make it work by staging Jake at a certain height vertically and Josue on a different plane. Josue remains further down in both panel 1 and 2. But as you can see the strip still doesn't read well. It could read better which is the point. To fix the problem I drew in a closeup on Jacob and then cut to a two shot of Josue and Jacob, and finally in panel 4 I pulled out to reveal Samuel hitting Jake upside the head.

There is another common problem truly unique to comic strips in that you usually want to show the character who speaks first in a panel to be on the left side. Especially if both of the characters have something to say in that panel. Otherwise you have to cross their speech balloons. I also ran into this problem on this particuliar strip. You can see how I resolved the issues by taking a look at my final version of the strip.

New Comic Viewer

How do you like my fancy comic viewer at the top? Thanks to God the thing finally works correctly. I've been pondering how to view more than one comic in the flash part at the top of this page on and off for more than half a year now. I'm so happy to see it finally work. I used the very little knowledge of flash actionscripting that I accumulated over the years. I know just enough code to try and do something basic and then give myself a headache trying to problem solve it. It was painful trying to figure this thing out even though it is so simple. But now that it's up and running I'm that much more thankful. For anyone who wants to create something like this for their own comic strip please don't ask me. I'm terrible at setting stuff like this up. Make nice with one of your friends who happens to be a web design guru and beg them to help you out. Or you could do like me and teach yourself just enough flash to give yourself a headache. I feel special. Both because of my cool comic viewer that no one else has and because when it comes to flash I earned a seat on the short bus.

Eventually I'll make it more usable and friendly by adding some more components to it. I'd like it to tell you how many comics there are and a rewind feature wold be nice. If there are any flash gurus out there who'd like to make this thing work better please let me know.

Shaun McMillan
ShaunDmcMillan@gmail.com

The Jesus Strip

Here's the latest. I hope everyone can catch the point of this image. The joke isn't in the dialogue like most comic strips. It's in what's showing and what's not showing. I didn't write this strip to be funny but actually it is to express a deep realization I had about God from the point of view of being a storyteller. The first line is the most important one, but you have to look at the entire strip to understand the first line.

I also created a time lapse while I worked on this piece. Comics are easy to read but very difficult to create. The video is 9 minutes long so you might want to skip ahead if it begins to get borring. If the fast version is 9 minutes then can you imagine how long it took to draw it out in real time? The thought scares me.

Feel free to leave some feedback whether good or bad by leaving a comment.

Thanks!

~SM

Animated Comic!

Here is the latest comic strip. You can also check out the animated version...


To see a much better and clearer version in flash player you can Click Here.

Check out my newly Animated Comic! This is the future of comics. I created the artwork in Adobe Photoshop like usual and then animated the different layers in Adobe AfterEffects. I've been wanting to do something like this ever since I first discovered the Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel for the PSP by Konami (which I posted below). Their DGN is awesome. Mine doesn't hold a candle to theirs, but at least it's a start.

To see more of these done by my students visit my Online Training Website, www.PathoftheArtist.com .

More Comic Strips

These are some strips I did in the past. I've been experimenting with different blogs and I had a lot of server problems so I got backed up a little in drawing the comics.

Digital Graphic Novel

"Almost There" Shaun D. McMillan The above interactive illustration is the first draft of my new prototype for a new digital graphic novel. I've already created 4 more strips but I'm experimenting with different formats and different types of interaction. I probably won't upload the rest of the comic until I'm fully satisfied with the end result. In the above draft you just click on "next panel" and it slides the the open ended transitions from right to left. I'm not very happy with the outcome so far so please excuse the fact that it is unfinished and unrefined.

Dark Chica, and White Devil

DARK CHICA WHITE DEVIL Here are two volleyball players that will be in one of the next strips. Maybe one day I'll give them real names.