The DriveThru family of websites has been a staple of independent (and mainstream) tabletop gaming for years now with their flagship site, DriveThru RPG. In short, it’s a place where designers can post their games, expansions, and other assorted materials to the DriveThru marketplace for people to buy. What’s also cool about them is that they are also a print-on-demand service, so you aren’t only limited to pdfs.
They’ve expanded their offerings over the last few years, branching beyond tabletop RPGs into collectible card games, fiction, and, of course, comics.
The DriveThru community and their reach is huge, and I’ve been asked about hosting the books on DriveThru Comics for awhile, but have been wary for no good reason.
For now, I’m using DriveThru Comics only as a place to host the ebook versions of the comics––especially if you want an alternative to Gumroad. It’s also cool because built into the website are places where readers can discuss the book and leave reviews (which I highly encourage you to do)!
I’m excited to see what the response is and am happy to say that Long John is even more accessible online than before thanks to DriveThru Comics!
The premise is as follows: Xob (pronounced SAW) is an ancient lightning entity, that has been passed from person to person throughout the centuries. The power originally was used to protect the Hmong people of Southeast Asia. Tracy Lor, the current emissary of the Xob power, has decided to buck tradition and use these abilities to protect the world.
Think “if Buffy were in the Marvel Cinematic Universe” and you’ll have a good place to step into this original and fun story. The first three issues made up the first arc, showcasing Kyrun’s incredible imagination and love of the medium; coupled with incredible artists, these opening issues got enough attention that they were republished by the storied Antarctic Press in their anthology series, Exciting Comics from issues 25 through 30. Antarctic Press has been an indie publisher since the ’80s and are partially (nay, very) responsible for the introduction of manga and Japanese-styled comics into the western market. Exciting Comics is a their anthology series aimed at a more youth-focused market, a place where Kyrun’s Xob fits right in (he even got to draw the cover for issue 29!).
But that first arc is done and Xob has more to do, so with the fantastic new artist on the series, Dino Agor, Kyrun is launching Xob and her crew into a new adventure in a series has already become quite well-known and adored in the indie comics community.
What’s better is that there is a tier on this campaign where you can also pick up the first three issues as well (digital or physical), so you can catch up with the story as well. Xob is an incredible book that has taken off in ways that are surprising for Kyrun and very well-deserved! It’s a celebration of superhero comics as well as the underrepresented Hmong culture, blended in a truly entertaining way that sits with or rivals any superhero comics being published by Marvel or DC. I encourage everyone to check it out for all the purchasing options and the goodies you can get, too! The campaign runs through the end of the August, so be sure to get in while you can.
A drawing I did of Xob a few years ago when the series launched. It’s such a great design.
Sketch Friday #94 – Hilary Swank (click for larger version)
I never really pushed my skills with digital art. Generally, the art I’ve madedigitally––to me at least––looks like it was drawn digitally. However, the digital art I’ve seen on the various corners of the internet that I frequent tends to look quite tangible, fooling me to think it was created with traditional media. In these moments, an inner art snob I keep hidden in the back of my brain always pops out to let me know what a fraud I am as an artist. For years, I just quietly agreed.
My digital skills are atrophied for a few reasons. First, I don’t draw very often and, when I do, it’s for the comic which is pencil and ink on paper. Second, the majority of work I use digital art programs for is coloring, and with the comic I currently create it’s a very focused and limited use of these tools. Third, I’m not much of an experimental artist in general. The most adventurous I got was when I was a student, but even then it was mostly trial and error practice pieces. Only rarely do I get the nerve to try new things now on paper. To be fair, when I do it has been rewarding and additive (such as introducing more brush work to my toolset).
I have had the itch to stretch some artistic limbs recently, however. And I wanted to try my hand at working from reference to, first, see if I still could (I still use reference a lot while drawing comics, but it’s mostly small, focused details or posing the body) and, second, to branch out and see what I could do with some the very powerful tools at my disposal with things like the iPad Pro.
An experiment in actual ink wash of my dog. (click for larger version)
So, I decided to do some portraits. I tried thinking of some great faces that would be fun to draw. Out of sheer happenstance, one of the television shows our household was watching recently wasAlaska Daily, a wonderful (now cancelled) show starring Hilary Swank who, I must say, has a very expressive face, which is something I’m drawn to, artistically (pardon the pun). Specifically, her eyes are large and wide and, especially with her character in Alaska Daily, stab out at you from beneath her long dark hair and stone cold countenance.
So, through a Google image search, I found a thumbnail image that captured what I liked about her character and put that off to the side and, in Procreate (ugh; I still hate that name) on the iPad, I roughed out general shapes, shadows, and highlights over the course of a few nights until I felt satisfied enough to call it done.
Again, this kind of drawing is something I haven’t really done with any seriousness in a long while, so I wondered how soon I would get frustrated and call it quits. While it was a process, it was ultimately rewarding to see, bit by bit, a drawing that resembled an actual person emerge. And she emerged not through my usual tools; in fact, I felt that the resemblance really started to pop when I brought in brushes and textures that I either had never used before or rarely so––things like (digital) charcoal and (digital) watercolor for ink wash. It fascinated me to see that I still have a bit of those traditional art skills deep in me somewhere. It is also rewarding on a more superficial level to create a piece of digital art that, to me, doesn’t look like it was necessarily drawn on a tablet. Finally, I appealed to that inner art snob I keep somewhere deep down inside of my brain who, to my surprise, encouraged me to keep going.