#comics jam

sorry for the late post!!! zine club next week, july 14th 5-7PM!!! artfight definitely killing me…

this month we’ll be attempting COMICS JAMMING!! examples and supplies will be provided — no drawing experience is needed! come on over, i’d love to create with yall!

My second collaboration with the Mystic Moor starts with us referencing both our previous comic together and our proclivity for playing Guilty Gear Xrd and fighting as Slayer vs Johnny.  

The rules are the same as always: one page each alternating. Production value is whatever you feel like doing, and the plot is not pre-planned: we make the whole thing up as we go.

When referencing Skeletor, I found some truly fabulous fan art. Google him. you’ll find it too lol. When The Mystic Moor introduced a character from Sekiro, I actually bought the game so I could appropriately depict the character in our comic (I was going to buy it any way, since I like Dark Souls games). Sekiro went on sale, I grabbed that shit and the rest is history.

We stopped at the perfect place. Frieza is going to get God-murdered. No one can draw the next page and adequately portray the end of his life XD

I do notice that having a one page limit does make me try to fit quite a lot into one page. Also, the bit where Skeletor takes off his hood to reveal himself (and another hood) reminds me of memes where a character who always wears shades, takes of his shades to reveal a second pair of shades underneath. I love that shit lol

Before ‘Stigmata’, before Booze and Blood, before Holy Crapola, there was: Onikage Tennis! This is what I showed to Adam and James to show them how fun and cool a collaborative comic could be. 

I stole the idea from a school friend a decade prior but it wasn’t until I talked to long time illustrator and good friend, the Mystic Moor that I actually did one. As always, there was no plan, just the concept: we create a comic by producing alternate pages. Some people call it a comics jam. You could call it an exquisite corpse too. I’m talking about when one person draws a head on a piece of paper, folds it so that bit is hidden, hands it to the next person, who draws a torso, which is then hidden and another person draws the legs. You always end up with something crazy and entertaining. Try it out. It’s good times.

But any way, me and the Mystic Moor share a large range of influences, so when we decided to give this thing a go, all he said to me was. ‘Onikage walks into a shoe shop’. Onikage is one of the bad guys from PlayStation game Tenchu.

So that’s what I did. We went back and forth a few times before the inevitable happened and other commitments got in the way. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when someone hands you a page and takes the story in a crazy direction, it fills you with joy and energy. What will you do next? 

Page 1, 3 and 5 were drawn by me. Mystic Moor drew pages 2 and 4

The final page was draw years after the first I think. I really like Heihachi’s face in the background. It’s a glimpse into a future where I can deliver the goods and be proud of my silly antics on a higher level. Rikimaru also looks quite intense and may or may not be looking at YOU! The final page was also done in clip studio paint whereas all other pages were done in Photoshop.

Mystic Moor’s a super busy dude so it’s always hard to find the time to collab, but always a good time if we have the time!

‘Stigmata’ pages 17 - 21 by me

After Holy Crapola and Booze and Blood, me and my university friends Adam and James started another collaborative comic. Ironically, even though this comic is the most recent one we did, I can’t remember much about doing it. :/

The same ground rules were in place as with the previous collaborative comics: we go in a rotation: me then Adam, then James, then me again. One page minimum per submission. Don’t worry about production value, just enjoy the creative process. Do as little or as much as you want to make your point/advance the plot.

All characters are original and we have not agreed on any plot points at all before or during the run. We use software of our choosing, with all of us having used Photoshop prior until I made the change to Clip Studio Paint during Booze and Blood.

Pages 17 - 21 by me

I tried to tie as many plot threads to each other as I could to give us a place to work from if we ever came back to this. Agent Carmine is like a pastiche of Revolver Ocelot and Nick Fury. She’s got the answers, she’s got the moves and she’s gonna give everything the kick up the ass it needs! 

Page 19 with the greyscale image of Carmine is a composition I’m really happy with. She went and talked to Hellboy’s guys at the BPRD, as well as John Constantine, Raiden from Mortal Kombat, and Dr Strange. I tried to not get bogged down in the details much, but, I reckon if you knew who those guys were, you’d at least guess 2 of them from looking. And a four panel vertical page with a fifth image breaking up the borders? That’s dangerously close to innovative for a guy like me who almost never focuses on page layouts!

There are still a lot of questions about where the plot goes, who the bad guys are and how the good guys fight them, but, after forcing something of a conclusion like in Booze and Blood, the focus in narrower, so if we come back, we don’t have to flounder...so much. 

Altogether, I think we got some good stuff going. As usual, we underestimated the effort required to keep the thing moving forward. I still believe comics jams are a modestly pain-free way of getting some work done. I found it extremely motivating when Adam or James sent me their pages for me to continue. Collectively, we all want to see what happens next and there’s positive feedback and reinforcement worked into the communication process.

Try it out for your self. Or don’t. There are places you can team up with people online if you don’t know anyone who wants in. I really need to look into that myself, actually...

You can catch Adam on Instagram: adam.m.r.hayes

You can catch James on Instagram: _jnotorianni

‘Stigmata’ page 16 by Adam

After Holy Crapola and Booze and Blood, me and my university friends Adam and James started another collaborative comic. Ironically, even though this comic is the most recent one we did, I can’t remember much about doing it. :/

The same ground rules were in place as with the previous collaborative comics: we go in a rotation: me then Adam, then James, then me again. One page minimum per submission. Don’t worry about production value, just enjoy the creative process. Do as little or as much as you want to make your point/advance the plot.

All characters are original and we have not agreed on any plot points at all before or during the run. We use software of our choosing, with all of us having used Photoshop prior until I made the change to Clip Studio Paint during Booze and Blood.

Page 16 by Adam

I think at this point either uncertainty on how to progress the plot or a lack of desire to do the heavy lifting had combined with all our real world issues like work, or tying to find work, so, basically, Adam did his one page, James quit out and I wrapped up with my next batch. 

Adam’s introduced a new character: Alice Carmine to the mix. She will bring with her a new set of questions like, what does she look like? What is she after? Is she a side character or vital to the plot? What is the plot anyway? And so on... 

I was looking forward to what James would do, but little did I realise I would be answering those questions. Well, sort of... I did end up producing one of my favourite pages I’ve ever made, so that’s nice ;p

You can catch Adam on Instagram: adam.m.r.hayes

You can catch James on Instagram: _jnotorianni

‘Stigmata’ pages 12-15

After Holy Crapola and Booze and Blood, me and my university friends Adam and James started another collaborative comic. Ironically, even though this comic is the most recent one we did, I can’t remember much about doing it. :/

The same ground rules were in place as with the previous collaborative comics: we go in a rotation: me then Adam, then James, then me again. One page minimum per submission. Don’t worry about production value, just enjoy the creative process. Do as little or as much as you want to make your point/advance the plot.

All characters are original and we have not agreed on any plot points at all before or during the run. We use software of our choosing, with all of us having used Photoshop prior until I made the change to Clip Studio Paint during Booze and Blood.

Pages 12- 15 by me

I couldn’t think of any good explanation for how Stafford got his shirt, so in the end I said ‘fuck it’. I enjoyed using negatives when Stafford got hit by the pain. I’d stumbled across how to turn an image negative years prior when faffing around in Photoshop, but never really found the opportunity to use it. I find Lazarus’ callous response to Stafford’s agony amusing to this day ;p

I’m not a fan of typography, really, but credit where credit’s due; using an olde English type font thing makes it quite clear Stafford is hearing ‘the voice of God’ or something intended to be interpreted by both Stafford and the reader as such a thing.

I feel like it took me several weeks to do these pages, as motivation was low. That’s a problem I suffer from pretty much all the time. I wasn’t the only one in the same boat however. We were losing steam at this point. We’d set up some loft parameters in which we could operate, but when you have lots of options, its pretty hard to pick just one. And harder still to do it justice.

You can catch Adam on Instagram: adam.m.r.hayes

You can catch James on Instagram: _jnotorianni

‘Stigmata’ pages 9-11

After Holy Crapola and Booze and Blood, me and my university friends Adam and James started another collaborative comic. Ironically, even though this comic is the most recent one we did, I can’t remember much about doing it. :/

The same ground rules were in place as with the previous collaborative comics: we go in a rotation: me then Adam, then James, then me again. One page minimum per submission. Don’t worry about production value, just enjoy the creative process. Do as little or as much as you want to make your point/advance the plot.

All characters are original and we have not agreed on any plot points at all before or during the run. We use software of our choosing, with all of us having used Photoshop prior until I made the change to Clip Studio Paint during Booze and Blood.

Pages 9-11 by James

If I thought Adam had moved things in an unexpected and delightful way, James took it one step forward. His composition and story telling are strong. You can tell this is a guy who appreciates the medium. So now, the texture I used because I was too lazy to draw my own Hawaiian shirt has become a major plot point! Da fuq?!? lol 

We’ve now got mystical/magical influences coming up against science fiction time travel and we still don’t really have anything happening except for exposition. You can either advance the plot or define your characters. It’s hard to do both at the same time. We’re pretty much still defining Lazarus and Stafford.

It takes it’s toll on you as a creator to make this stuff hoping to get it going somewhere only to realise it’s going to take you 10 straight pages to say the thing you want without cheaping-out on the story telling. That’s what happens when you make your own characters: you have to explain who they are, or no one will care what happens in the plot anyway...

I don’t recall how quickly we were outputting our pages, but I can assure you, it wasn’t in any reasonable time frame. Kind of like Rick and Morty these days ;p

You can catch Adam on Instagram: adam.m.r.hayes

You can catch James on Instagram: _jnotorianni

‘Stigmata’ pages 6-8

After Holy Crapola and Booze and Blood, me and my university friends Adam and James started another collaborative comic. Ironically, even though this comic is the most recent one we did, I can’t remember much about doing it. :/

The same ground rules were in place as with the previous collaborative comics: we go in a rotation: me then Adam, then James, then me again. One page minimum per submission. Don’t worry about production value, just enjoy the creative process. Do as little or as much as you want to make your point/advance the plot.

All characters are original and we have not agreed on any plot points at all before or during the run. We use software of our choosing, with all of us having used Photoshop prior until I made the change to Clip Studio Paint during Booze and Blood.

Pages 6-8 by Adam

So Adam’s just gone for it and given us our mysterious event and an even more enigmatic present. I had considered what the most likely options were for a follow up to my pages were and I don’t think I could ever have guessed Adam was going to throw stigmata in there! XD My favourite part of this entire collaboration process is when one of my co-creators comes up with something so entertaining and original. There was a lot of that with Holy Crapola and I don’t think we realised how valuable the shock plus the comedy value were, when combined.

The shirt Stafford wears comes from a floral print I found randomly off the internet. Clip studio paint lets you turn a jpeg into a pattern by repeating it. I then basically applied it to Stafford and added an orange tint on top of it. I gave Adam and James the jpeg I’d found, but never clarified how I’d used it, or even if they needed to.

And so now James has to decide what happens when a strange man leads another strange man into a Chinese restaurant that wasn’t there in the first place...

Adam tells me the sign of the restaurant read as ‘limbo’ if you translate it, or at least that’s what Google told him lol

You can catch Adam on Instagram: adam.m.r.hayes

You can catch James on Instagram: _jnotorianni