Open Auditions: Fan Art for Print
Posted March 6th, 2007 by Howard TaylerI’ve been checking the pagination on the next Schlock book, and it turns out that it is going to have room for some margin art done by folks besides me.
This next book is the first 518 days of Schlock Mercenary. If you think you’ve got the chops, and would like to try your hand at my characters, I’m looking for artwork that topically fits those first 17 months of comics, and that outshines my own artwork by leaps and bounds.
This shouldn’t be hard. We’re talking about 2000-2001 here. I was still learning to hold a pencil.
What do I mean by “topically fits?” Well… you could give me your take on the Kitesfear, the original Doctor, the new Doctor, or maybe a cute-as-a-button diamond beetle. And obviously you can gimme some Schlock. But no General Xinchub, no Jevee Ceeta, and no Legs, Elizabeth, or Andy — these folks don’t show up until 2002. Also, I’m not looking for strips, or gags, per se. But if you think you’ve got a good one, run it past me and we can discuss it.
What do you get out of this? Name recognition and linkage — your name goes along with the picture, and your name and URL will go in the credits in the back of the book. Oh, and you get a free sketch-edition copy of the book, too.
If you’re interested, please email me (howard dot tayler on gmail) and say so as soon as possible. Space is limited, and time even more so. You probably have less than a month to do something shiny.
If you’ve already sent me fan art in the past (including photographs of sculptures, renderings of Schlockiverse spacecraft, etc) and you’re willing to see it in print, please re-send it. I can’t guarantee it’ll make the cut, but I will at least LOOK at it again.
SPECS: All images should be at least 4 inches by 4 inches at 300dpi or better. Usually the space that needs to be filled is 7 inches wide and 5 inches high, so landscape orientations are better, but there may be some portrait-oriented slots as well. If you REALLY shine, you may get a full page to yourself. If you’ve got flavor text for your image, like a title, or a brief description, please send that along as well.
Explore posts in the same categories: Books, Fan Art
March 6th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
For all that your art has “grown”, I find it amusing that Schlock’s gun still looks the same.
I guess you always knew how to draw guns?
March 6th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Neat! I am not an artist, but I wish I were. My line drawing makes strip #1 look like HD DVD. If only I had time to do something in metal… JewelSchlock.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Okay, so the next coupla books’ll be… um… prequels, with the original artwork so we can see how it developed over time.
So… after the books have caught up to the online edition, in order to keep cranking out revenue-producing books faster than a strip a day, I presume we’ll see supplementary material come out? Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates has been mentioned. But if the buffer gets big enough to allow Howard the time to redraw a thousand old strips, perhaps we might see a “Special Edition” of the prequels?
Speaking of buffer, I think Howard’s doing better than Scott Adams. According to item 5 of this Dilbert Blog entry he had a six month buffer when he first got syndicated, and it’s dropped to a week.
gregd: I think the plasgun has changed, but only slightly.
March 6th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
O… kay. Did that link trip the moderation thing or what? Sorry.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:10 am
Sam: you tripped it HARD for some reason. Your first post skipped the usual moderation queue and went straight into the Akismet queue, which means Akismet grabbed it for something suspicious.
But hey, I found it, and rescued it. Now Akismet has been told “this was not spam” and maybe it’ll be smarter next time.
March 7th, 2007 at 7:18 am
And now, clearing up some confusion re: Scott Adams’ buffer, vs how far ahead he is. He’s one week ahead of his submission deadline, which is in turn a month ahead of the publication date. So yeah, I guess he’s only a week ahead of deadline, but he’s still got 5 weeks finished ahead of what we’re reading.
Right now I’m fluctuating between 38 days (a local low today, but I’ve got a week of inking to do) and 45 days (assuming I ink the whole week today, which could happen.)
March 7th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Awesome. What sort of submission deadlines are we looking at here (or just “the sooner the better”)? The recruitment poster I did a couple years back isn’t suitable for book 1 - it contains Andy, IIRC - but maybe I can clean it up for book 2… I’ll definitely be considering some new art for book 1, but that depends on the deadlines. I’m trying to start a new comic project myself, too.
On that note, the only link to the fanart page I could find on the Schlock site was the one from the old Process page, and naturally that link doesn’t work.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:47 am
I am working on a pinup of Breya… I think you’ll like it - this it not going to be just a quick sketch! I’m even using real human references…
Yay me, I hope you like it!
March 7th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Well, you’re still a long long way ahead of every other webcomic I have come across. Most don’t start drawing it until a day before, two days at the earliest. Some wait until the very same day of their self imposed deadline/schedule. (And they only update a couple times a week, on the good weeks.)
What I think is most impressive, though, is that you never seem to be grasping for a plot, and (as far as I can recall) you always include some kind of punchline. A lot of other comics leave me with a sense of “Not only have I got no story today, I have no funny, either.”
If I can put together a passable drawing in time, I have an idea or two that might be funny. (Just to double check, the exploding chef and the bounty on partnership lawyer-snakes are both fair game, yes?)
March 7th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Darth: Sooner is better, yes. Next two weeks would be perfect. 30 days from now might be too late. Oh, and “Fan Art” can be linked from the “fan art” topic to the right. I don’t have nearly all of it posted, but it’s a start.
Rhonda: I’m excited to see it!
Nekokaburi: Yes, the exploding chef and the attorney bounty are fair game. But be warned, doing humor that’s right for the book is TOUGH. You might be better off going with a straight pin-up.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:26 am
I banged out a 3D model of the old “Kitesfear” today, but I need someone who knows their way around Photoshop or similar app to texture it. I can do the UV map with guidelines where all the edges are if your skillset doesn’t include 3D modeling software.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of model making in trueSpace lately, but not so much on texturing the models.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:36 am
And here’s a render of the un-textured Kitesfear. http://members.aceweb.com/gregg1/kitesfear.jpg
March 8th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I’m not at all an artist, but I can also think of a chef/partnership collective lawyer joke. (Hint: rrattlesnake is reported to taste like chicken, and then there’s the term “snake eaters” used to refer to special ops troops…)
March 8th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Add some skewers, a hungry amorph and a plasgun-turned-campfire and you more or less nailed my idea, maynard.
March 8th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
What impresses me is that Howard has never, so far as I know, missed an update in getting on for 7 years - and the first bit of that was doing it part-time, too. That’s pretty professional.
March 8th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
bizzybody, I’d be willing to at least look at doing some texturing. (The map would help - even when I was using Blender, I still relied on the UV map to do the textures. Email me at my username at gmail if you’re interested.
March 8th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
One month? Fantastic! I can spend a little more time than I did on the Splintered-Mind card of Tagon. In other words, I’m in.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Howard: After you “cleared up some confusion” I’m a little confused as to how you interpret the word “buffer”. I understand it to extend from completion to deadline - everything from completion to publication is in the pipeline, but a buffer smooths out irregularities in the rates of two different processes. I can’t tell from your comment whether what you mean by “buffer” is what I mean by “buffer” or “pipeline”.
Speaking of confusion: Kevyn’s triple negative in the last panel of today’s comic gave me a few seconds’ trouble - but then I am a bit short of sleep at the moment. I think it’s in character for him to say that; it just means I sometimes need to be properly awake to understand Kevyn.
Everyone talking about “pinups”: The thought of someone drawing Elf as she is in the current storyline crossed my mind - but then I thought:
Who wants to see cartoon nudity? Well, yeah, okay, some people. Weirdos.
I suspect Howard’s fanart policy might be similar to Lucasfilm’s (IIRC they don’t mind as long as it’s as family-friendly as the canon).
It’s not relevant to book, um, minus one. (Is there a roman numerals way to indicate negative numbers? Probably not, since they don’t have a zero.)
Nekokaburi: I think Howard’s technique for keeping the plot going is that his buffer for plot is WAY bigger than his buffer for art. I don’t know how he manages to nearly always have a punchline, but I suspect part of it is that the plot’s strong enough that he can sneak a weak punchline through occasionally.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Um… I meant to put a bulleted list in that. What tags are we allowed to use?
March 8th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Well Sam, if he draws it all in advance, and doesn’t have the plot planned out further in advance than the drawings, then occasionally we would have a strip that was generally plotless, wouldn’t we? :P
I guess I sort of left out what I felt was an intuitive leap when I posted that first comment.
And yes, I think the occasional weak punchline sneaks through, but I can’t recall any in particular offhand so they must be very sneaky punchlines. :P
Anyways, I actually had some free time at work today to get some sketching done, only to find out I left all my pencils and such at home somehow. I had my drawing paper all ready to go, but apparently forgot that I took my pencil case out of my backpack. I don’t even remember when it was or where I put it at the moment. >.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Heyo and I’m sorry if I’m crashing some… secret collective of foruming. I’m having some very irritating problems with my photoshop though and I was wondering if I could find out what file type would be best suited to a dpi of 300 and over, and/or which file Howard would most prefer to recieve files in? Please and thankyou ^_^
March 8th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Quick question: (take two, if there is the first post I did, somewhere… out there…) Is there a prefered file format for submissions?
March 9th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Not an artist, but freely offering up an idea, directly related to Howard’s guideline about folks not allowed who weren’t in the first strips. Pull a Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan stunt!
You know the scene!
Khan: I never forget a face, Mister… Chekov, is it?
Chekov: … But… I vasn’t *in* that episode!
Perhaps it didn’t go *quite* like that in the movie, but it sure should have! (Khan’s ep was season 1 and Chekov didn’t arrive until season 3. Whoopsie!)
My idea was some angry Creeth soldiers in their armor (Aug. 18, 2000), pointing guns at a confused Legs while they reenact the scene I just described. … Maybe?
…
…
*crickets*
Of course, I could just be off my rocker… Anyway, if Howard likes it and someone out there has the artistic chops to do it, knock thyselves out! If not, I did not say this. I was never here…
March 9th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Space Seed with Khan: 16 February 1967 (Season 1, Episode 22)
Chekov appeared: 29 December 1967 (Season 2, Episode 15)
And Ricardo is 87 fricking years old and still acting. He’s right up there with Christopher Lee…and you don’t want to fight either of them.
March 9th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Floneko: Under “image size” you should be able to quickly tell it to change the resolution without changing the size in pixels.
If you give me enough pixels *I* can do that part. But lots of people won’t know whether they’ve GOT enough pixels without looking at that image size tool.
TIFF is best. LZW compression only, please. No JPGs.
March 9th, 2007 at 9:15 am
I’m still in the “learning to hold a pencil” stage myself, so no art from me yet. But RE: weak punchlines, I can’t recall ever laughing uncontrollably at a Schlock punchline, but I also wouldn’t call any of them weak. They are exactly the punchlines that are needed. I don’t remember if I’ve ever posted anything on a Schlock blog/forum, so I’ll throw out an “OMG Schlock Mercenary is my favorite webcomic Howard is totally awesome” while I’m here. There may be a handful of comics I like as much as Schlock Mercenary, but certainly none I like more. And though it’s been two years or so since I finished reading the archive, it still causes physical pain when I try to click on the “next” button and nothing happens.
March 9th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Aaarrrgghhhh! That was _cruel_ Mr Tayler. I clicked the ” I was still learning to hold a pencil.” link…
200 strips later…
That _keeps_ happening!
March 10th, 2007 at 4:28 am
Hmmmm. After the first five appearances of the Kitesfear, Howard slipped in a refit of the ship with more turrets.
Bleargh. I can make the annie plant smaller to make room for them.
March 10th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Sam: Since when is a pinup nude? I am drawing her in her original green and burgundy uniform, just in a more realistic style, and an attractive “Classic Pinup” pose…
Howard would never put a nude image in his comic or his book (Well, with exception to the current storyline, but since they are all blobs in a tiny space pod, I don’t think that’s quite in the same vein). And I would never expect him to.
March 10th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Rhonda: Some aren’t and some are. (Gotta be careful *where* you pin those up.) I wasn’t suggesting that you were going to do a nude one, but the idea of Howard soliciting fan-art *while* Elf is nude got me thinking about the fan-base Elf acquired during Fashion Assault.
“All blobs in a tiny space pod”? If you count that, you should also count the Austin Powers type nudity and the silhouette nudity. Whatever.
And today’s comic (the first time I can recall seeing the permalink 404) shows Kevyn’s buttocks. I take that to mean Howard considers rear nudity okay, at least as long as you can’t see any orifices.
Howard, and the site maintainers: I still haven’t got an answer as to what tags are allowed.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Sam: Dunno. It’s WordPress with a heavily-tweaked stylesheet.
March 11th, 2007 at 1:01 am
Kitesfear with the extra turrets it wore in 7 of 14 appearances of the exterior or a schematic. (And some lousy textures, which will be replaced!) http://members.aceweb.com/gregg1/kitesfear2.jpg
March 12th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I had a look at the WordPress documentation, and according to this question which wasn’t what I was looking for, but close enough… there’s a bit near the top of wp-includes/kses.php (direction of slash may vary) which lists which tags are allowed. I don’t see a list anywhere of which tags are allowed by default, but now you know where to look you can tell us.
March 12th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Well, actually according to the answer to that question. Dang terminology.
March 13th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Sam: It sounds like you expect me to research this and give you an answer.
My answer is “no.” Honestly. Just post your comments and don’t worry about tags past bold, italic, and anchor. I don’t have time to research this, and don’t care regardless.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
At, least, not <ul> and <dl>-type lists.
So it’s just the ones you said, plus blockquote, then?
If you can’t be bothered to look, it’s probably the defaults, so maybe someday someone else who uses WordPress will tell us.
Or, I could make one post for research purposes…which will look really dreadful if
many of these tags work.March 13th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Bold, italic, anchor, blockquote, em, strong and strike all work. (You can’t see above that the <em> tags work because blockquotes are italics anyway.)
Underline, cite, lists (any type), pre, sup, sub, <font color=…>, tt and tables don’t work.
Ooh, I wonder if the “name” attribute on anchors works?
March 13th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
It doesn’t. Fair enough, you don’t want us stomping on the ids WordPress adds. But <a> without an href makes a fake link. It even underlines when you mouse over it, but the pointer doesn’t turn into a hand.
It’s a bit weird that <em> works but not <cite>. Oh, well, nice to know that strikeout works. I’ll stop this
off-topicityirrelevance now.