The Uncanny Valley

Obsidian Sun on sale

2008-09-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

OBSIDIAN SUN can be purchased through the following link:

http://www.lulu.com/content/2357822

Putting Down the Dog

2008-04-27T15:35:00.001-07:00

So Mike finally got our test copy and is diligently spending precious summer hours ironing out all the minor kinks before we starting handing over the purchasing URL. Apparently it is quite a handsome volume. I've been meaning to post the cover image for quite some time now, but for some reason Blogger.com inverts the color every time I try to upload it, transforming its naturally luscious blue-green oceanic hues into a radioactive lime green abomination.

An omen? Perhaps.

Why do they live in a world where this happens?

It's Been A Great Seven Months...

2008-04-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

We. Are. Done.

Obsidian Sun
October 2007 - April 14 2008

RIP, comic. RIP. ... Until you rise from the dead to be properly promoted and sold next year, as well as sent to all the contacts we haven't talked to yet due to our fear of premature judgement. Next time, the word is ROBOTS. In colour, if all goes well. OS should be available on Lulu.com soon.

See you next year, space comic.

Progress Report, SIR!

2008-04-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a whole month since the last post and what have we got to show for it? Nothing we want to put on the blog, that's for sure, because it's all too awesome to contain here. Since we've been far too busy with the actual comic to update the blog, there's nothing to write here but our progress report:

-Currently finishing the inks on what we call "the fight scene" and "the ending"
-Finished dialogue balloons and filtering on the other 45 or so pages
-I thought there was more to add, but I pretty much summed it up, really.

We plan to wrap this up over the weekend. Where we go from there, nobody knows, but it's been a great experience and we'd like to do this again next year... Only shorter, and in colour.

Nobody says "to-mah-to".

Wheels Begin Turning

2008-03-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

Recently, we've been showing the comic around to people in order to get some preliminary feedback (and also to prove that we were actually doing something and not just talking about it). It felt odd because we hadn't really shown anything until after Reading Week; we'd been creating in a vacuum the entire time, so it was very enlightening to see what people thought of our progress. Reactions on the whole have been impressed, and we got a lot of encouraging advice. People seem genuinely interested in the final product, which is good because it only gives us more of an incentive to finish the thing.

Aside from our friends, some of the people we showed were Mike's Illustration professor, Julia Breckenreid; a couple of fourth year animators of his acquaintance; and most of the leaders from the Sheridan Christian Fellowship who happened to be around at the time. Breckenreid is giving us some leads to follow in regards to our self-publishing plan, including talking to Kagan McLeod, creator of Infinite KungFu. We had a good discussion with the animators about comic books and the advantage of having two people working on the same project. Hopefully we'll get around to meeting with an Animation instructor, as well.

Ben Hu did a hilarious cold reading that I wished we had recorded; there's no text in the panels yet, so he was forced to make up the story as he went along (he was also good enough to point out some minor anatomical and transitional issues). To our surprise, his version followed our original script very closely. Obviously animators are going to be more well-versed in reading sequentially than others, but in fact most people don't seem to have trouble getting the gist of what's going on. We take that as a very positive indicator.

The original army of two.

The Story So Far

2008-03-05T18:50:00.001-08:00

Gather round, kids. It's time for a story.

As we've mentioned, Obsidian Sun is set in an Aztec-inspired world. Almost every aspect of the story is heavily based on mythology or historical details from ancient Mesoamerica, and researching the various elements we've used will reveal exactly how much we made up and what we just plain stole. The plot of OS is stand-alone and is not part of a sequential series, although we are interested in developing other projects that take place within the larger story arc (what Sagan calls the "Fifth Age" series). The Fifth Age arc extends from the creation of the universes that came before ours, all the way to a robot-infested future; but before we try to get all Osamu Tezuka, we'll stick with OS for now.

Much of the background of OS is steeped in the ancient Aztec notion that humans and gods live in a cyclical universe, fueled by blood and shrouded in dualities: Light and dark, war and peace, death and rebirth. We were interested in developing the philosophical implications of a world in which powerful deities existed, but who were constantly struggling to define their relationship with mortals. There are two well-known gods in particular that we decided to focus on, but there are others- Ixtab, the Mayan goddess of suicide, for example- that we may explore later.

OS touches a little of this dark realm, but our main goal was to create something entertaining as first-year students while we still had the spare time. Hopefully the result will be coherent enough for readers to get a glimpse of the overall picture, or at least let them know there is an overall picture behind the madness.

An introduction to the most lyrical kind of fear and loathing.

Scanned Panel Details

2008-03-04T23:37:00.001-08:00

Some examples of artwork we scanned to see what it would look like. We plan on adding black masks and possibly a light grayscale for tonal value. If you are interested in the technical specs, we use blue Eno mechanical pencil lead on Blue Line Pro comic paper (11 x 17"). Then we ink over top using black Copic and Sakura Micron technical pens. We do the blue roughs together, but we split duties when inking for consistency's sake: Sagan inks characters and Mike inks backgrounds.

Everything will be shrunk by a good percentage, which means we might lose some of the finer detail but will end up gaining a lot of line stability. We printed these out at 8.5 x 11 and things looked mighty crisp.

Hey, it's that dagger-looking thing that keeps appearing everywhere. Could it be somehow related to the plot?
Architectural detail of the city of Tollan. I think we based it on a different historical model, but "Tollan" was easier to remember than "Teotihuacan".

NEXT: Story details, of what we can allow.

We can't stop here, this is bat country!

Qoncept Art #2

2008-03-04T19:13:00.001-08:00

We did some test scans of our pages yesterday and it's getting very tempting not to do the whole thing in color. Alas, our printing costs would most likely skyrocket. However, we're very pleased with the results we got in Photoshop and Illustrator, so grayscale will probably suffice.

More qoncept art:

Running plays an important role in this Aztec world, so we needed an appropriate special effect. Mike's design for what we ended up calling "fiesta lasers".
What you might call a chibi-Tez: Sagan's attempt to simplify the character design.

Another old picture of a rather inky Tezcatlipoca.

A leftover pin-up from when the script was 40 pages long and included a much bigger cast. Of the eight humanoid character designs, only four of them made it to the final cut. We realized we were better off without them.

NEXT: Possibly we stop posting old process work and show some of what we've been working on lately. Maybe.

This is how the West was won.

Qoncept Art #1

2008-03-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

This is the project home of Obsidian Sun, a one-shot comic book that we started halfway through first semester of 2007. You may have heard one of us in class talking about it; finally, we have something to show.

Without giving too much away plot-wise, OS is set in an Aztec-inspired world where the cosmic forces that once ruled human lives are slowly diminishing. As of this post, the project currently sits at 40 pages in the inking stage with an estimated 10-12 more being storyboarded. The Valley is uncomfortable with divulging too much information at this time, but here are some very early pieces that served as the inspiration for the final product:

The picture that started it all. In honor of Quetzalcoatl's importance in the story arc, we started referring to OS process work as "qoncept art".

Quetzalcoatl's rival, the jaguar god Tezcatlipoca. Between these two pictures, the rest of the story was laid bare. Both the above qoncepts were drawn and colored by Mike.

Jaguar research by Sagan.An older sketch of Tez in warrior mode. He looks substantially different today, though a few elements remain (most notably his missing right foot).
Quetzalcoatl, also in warrior garb. Sagan was looking at Metal Gear Solid art at the time, but didn't think the style could be sustained for the whole comic.Rough pin-up idea. Probably closest to the art style we ended up choosing for the final book.

To Be Posted:
-Podcast (audio files we recorded for posterity's sake, but we'll make them download-able in case anyone is interested in the process)
-Storyboards and more qoncept art
-Photos from the Reading Week that was consumed by our passion for sequential art
-We are also interested in collecting pin-up art from fellow Sheridan students, but we'll have more info on that later.

Black hole sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain?

Welcome to the Valley

2008-02-29T09:02:00.000-08:00

The Uncanny Valley is the artistic dumping grounds for Sagan Yee and Michael Janzen. We are currently studying at Sheridan College in the fields of Animation and Illustration, respectively. Between schoolwork and survival, the Valley is where we go to facilitate our devious projects with conceptual debris.

From October 2007 to present, we have been piecing together our first effort at a comic book with Frankenstein-ian aplomb. The working title is "Obsidian Sun" and following posts will further illuminate the scope of the thing. Being first-year students with diminishing extracurricular time, this has been no easy task. But the Valley assumes our inhuman disposition.

Come taste the delicious fruit of our labors. And by fruit, we mean comics.