Tapas Web Comics

 Hello Everyone, 

Guess what? You can now read several of Pretty Weird Art's comics on the web comic platform TAPAS! Check out the link below and you can see three series that we've uploaded to the site. 

prettyweirdart | Tapas

Our Demarcus Williams and SkullGunBunnies comics are available in their entirety. Our Divorced Penguin comic is an ongoing comic where we are uploading one installment each week. 

Youtube Video Update

 

Hello Everyone, 

Now that the weather has gotten better, Pretty Weird Art is spending the weekend exploring new hiking trails in the NC area. We've found inspiration in a lot of the gnarled trees that we've seen during our walks, so we made a few quick videos of sketches inspired by our walks. 

PrettyWeirdArt - YouTube

Ethan's Divorced Penguin comic is at the printer, so he's added two more installments in his process videos walking through his soon to be printed graphic novel!

Pattern Monster and Divorced Penguin process videos on Youtube

 

Hello Everyone! I wanted to share the thumbnails for all of our Youtube vidoes from the last week. 

I've been alternating between speed draw videos of my pattern monsters for the cryptid themed coloring book I'm working and process videos for my Divorced Penguin comic book.

Check out our You Tube page to watch the videos and get caught up on what Pretty Weird Art has been up to!

PrettyWeirdArt - YouTube

Let's Make a Comic Process Videos Now on Youtube

Hello everyone, I wanted to let you know that Pretty Weird Art is posting a walk-through video series on our Youtube channel that shows how we're converting a web comic into a print-ready manga!

We're taking a 22-part web comic that Ethan posted to our Instagram page during the Covid lock downs and reduxing the artwork into a 155-page manga format comic. 

Ethan's currently making a 4–5 minute video for each installment of the comic, walking you through the original creative process of making the initial web comic and through the edits he's made to prep the artwork for print. 

Our goal is to post a new installment each weekday for the next 22 days. 

Afterwards, Ethan will share the print proof of the comic and we'll eventually post the entire completed comic to our Tapas web page for easy reading. 

Making a comic book: Making the "Divorced Penguin" web comic cover - YouTube

A look at old college artwork #2

 

Old College Artwork: Part 2 - YouTube

Youtube Video: A look at old college artwork

 

Ethan found a stack of his old college artwork from the early 2000's and gives you a quick and dirty tour of his artwork from 20 years ago...

Monster Inking Demo

Today's Youtube video is Ethan demonstrating inking a comic book character design. 

Monster Inking Demo - YouTube

 

Sea Horse Speed Draw

 

Today was a long day at work. I decided to detox by drawing a pretty weird sea horse after work. 

Sea Horse Speed Draw - YouTube

Youtube Channel!

 Hello Everyone!

This is Ethan from Pretty Weird Art. I wanted everyone to know that starting in August of last year, Rachel and I are now posting art-related videos on Youtube. 

We've posted a "Comic in a Month" playlist that documents how we made our latest comic, "Crognar: Kitten Barbarian". 

We've also recorded a studio tour, sketchbook tours, and some quick draws. 

We upload at least one video in the midpart of the week (usually Wednesday night / Thursday morning). On weeks where the sky isn't falling, we hope to post daily content on our channel each weekday. 

Come join and interact with us on Youtube!

PrettyWeirdArt - YouTube

Pretty Weird State of the Union: April

 Hey Everyone! Pretty Weird Art has been slaving away at the artistic grindstone for the last two weeks. We've been so busy we haven't had time to post our weekly update for a little while. 

Here's a short rundown of what we've accomplished in our recent online "radio-silence"....

1. Rachel storyboarded 50 pages (the first chapter) of the 2nd Death Elf and Woose Graphic novel between teaching all her online art and ESL classes!

2. Ethan thumbnailed a 160 page graphic novel that will be the first in a series of three fantasy graphic novels modeled after the manga format. We're going to make it manga sized and black and white so our fans with smaller budgets can enjoy it!

3. Both Rachel and Ethan have been making character designs for our future graphic novel projects (Rachel's been drawing ugly mermen and Ethan's been drawing dragon turtles).

4. Ethan took his 2020 experimental Instagram web comic about a Divorced Penguin and formatted it into a 40 page one-shot comic...and just because he's an artistic masochist, he plotted out two more 40 page one-shots that follow the family as their kids react to the divorce in their teenage and college years. 

5. Rachel edited our first Youtube video!!!

So as you can see....we've been busy busy busy....

Here's the cover for the Divorced Penguin one-shot. 

And here's page one of the comic gridded out for print. 

Pretty Weird Weekly Update

 Hey Everyone, This is Ethan from Pretty Weird....I really dropped the ball on my Monday state of the union address this week...Oh well! I'm getting to it now on Saturday.

Pretty Weird had a busy week this week. We both focused our efforts on script writing. Rachel worked on the 2nd Death Elf and Woose graphic novel while I plotted out three other stories we have in the works. We've separated the upcoming D&E graphic novel into 4 parts and Rachel's just about completed the thumbnails for the 1st part. Our next step will be to start doing large page roughs followed by pencils. 

Here's photographic proof of Rachel working on the scripts!

We received the first hard copies of our Skull Gun Bunnies graphic novel this week.

Getting that in the mail and seeing it in it's full 200 page glory triggered a story-telling bug in my brain so I've spent my drawing time for the week refining script ideas for several other projects. 

I usually type up a one page story synopsis of my script ideas, then I'll do a bullet list of plot points and character descriptions. Once I'm happy with the basic ideas, I'll then break down the story on a page by page basis, followed by pencil thumbnails for the page layouts. I've made some really messy pencil sketches for character designs for several of these scripts as well. When they are more refined, I may post a few of them to show off as the story development progresses. 

Another project I've worked on this week is back patches for metal vests. I submitted several of my band posters from our pre-covid concert days to a printer so that I can have 11 x16 back patches to add to my jean jacket and vests. It looks like we might be able to go back to concerts again later this year, so I hope to go to several wearing my own artwork. 

That's the recap for this week's progress in the Pretty Weird Art World. 

Pretty Weird Art now has a Deviant Art Page!

                                                 Pretty Weird Art now has a Deviant Art Page! 

Check it out at prettyweirdart User Profile | DeviantArt

  Pretty Weird just spent the last hour or so setting up our page and uploading our "The Tragic Tale of Big Fist the Bigfoot" mini comic to the site. 

We plan to make some galleries for our music related artwork, mini comics, and illustration work. We'll make a point to upload some new content to it each Monday when we add our Pretty Weird State of the Union blogpost to the blog. 

Pretty Weird State of the Union #3

 

 

Hey Everyone, 

This is Ethan from Pretty Weird Art coming at you with this week's update on all things Pretty Weird.

Last week we had a death in the family which flat-tired all of our creative projects, but this week we've re-inflated all our tires and are ready to go. 

Rachel is planning her summer teaching schedule for the Outschool platform. She's got a bunch of really fun art summer camps all plotted out. She's schemed some water color and role playing projects, so stay tuned. She's also working on thumbnails for our 2nd Death Elf and Woose graphic novel. 

Today I finished the lettering for three of our backlogged Death Elf and Woose mini comics. I plan to make web banners for our new Deviant Art page and Youtube pages over the next couple of days. 

I plotted out another 6 page mini comic for this week featuring Death Elf and Woose that I can't wait to start drawing. I had some free time this afternoon to work on a cover concept for my Big D mini comic from last year.

It's shaping up to be busy week in the Pretty Weird studios. With any luck, this time next week you'll be seeing the fruit of all our artistic labors. 

 

 

    

Pretty Weird Art: State of the Union #2

 Hi everyone, this is Ethan from Pretty Weird Art.

My weekly state of the artistic union post is obviously delayed this week....

We had an unexpected death in the family, so our artistic plans for the week all took a backseat to handling funeral arrangements and spending time with family members. 

Last weekend we setup our lights and camera and filmed the welcome video for our Youtube channel. Next week we hope to edit and post it. 

Rachel's comic book class students asked us to make a Deviant Art page, so I've made one for Pretty Weird Art. I've not posted anything to it yet, but we hope to start uploading artwork to it this next week. 

I found myself with some free time on Saturday so I added text to our 3-4 back logged Death Elf and Woose weekly comics. I hope to post several of them next week. 

I also had the opportunity to work on a small illustration project for a family friend. She requested a social media friendly comic to illustrate some topics she's discussing online. In a week or so, that project should be completed. 

Here's the first draft of the comic that friend requested. She wanted something that illustrated abusive relationships...

She asked that is be made more subtle...so it could show that even "nice-looking" people could demonstrate abusive relationships...so I redrew the comic below. I based the abuser character after Ned Flanders from the Simpsons. 

March - Pretty Weird State of the Union

Hi, everyone!

 

This is Ethan from Pretty Weird Art speaking.

 I’ve decided to flex my blog-muscles and commit to posting a Pretty Weird progress report at the beginning of each week. I’ll post a few work in progress shots of what we’re working on. If there’s any questions you have about what it’s like to be a comic artist, feel free to shoot us your questions and I’ll do my best to answer them!

So…what’s cooking for Pretty Weird Art for the week of 3/15? Well, we’ve got a LOT on the burner this week.

 This weekend I just submitted the 200 page Skull Gun Bunnies graphic novel to our printer. I spent the weekend editing the final print files. I expect to have the first 25 copies of my graphic novel within the next three weeks. Words cannot express how excited I am to have this project nearly completed. I’ve worked on this comic for the last 5 years and cannot wait to have it in hand. It is seriously the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’m really proud of my gun-fighting bunnies and all the monsters they blast into oblivion.

 

The other thing I’m working on this week is adding the text to the last two weeks’ worth of Death Elf and Woose mini comics. I have the comics completely inked and scanned into the computer. I just need to add some gnarly text balloons and indy pimp font and we’re good to go. Can’t wait to share them with ya’ll.

 

Another big thing that happened this weekend….we finally have a camera so we can record VIDEO! We’ve got all our equipment ready to start our Pretty Weird Youtube channel!!!!! This weekend we hope to break out all the equipment and film an intro video to our Youtube channel.

 

Bird is spending her art time this week roughing out thumbnails for the follow up to last year’s Death Elf and Woose graphic novel. She’s been hard at work on it for the last month. Can’t wait to see what weirdness she has in store for us!

 

As you can tell, we’ve got our hands full this week. With any luck, this time next week we’ll have our first video recorded and posted to our Youtube channel