Hey guys,

So this week I thought I’d take a look back on the artwork of the comic and talk about the changes I’ve made since it began.  Mike and I were recently discussing how Lead Paint is relatively close to its one-year anniversary, ever since we re-launched some time in 2009. As some of you may know, we originally started back in 2007 or 2008, but we ended up taking a nearly year-long hiatus to reevaluate what we were doing and see what we could do to suck less. As a result, you’ll notice a pretty big shift in art between this strip and this one.

During this hiatus, my personal goal as the artist was to just make the art look not not-so-shitty.  I focused my energy on redesigning Colin and Avery, so that their look would basically dictate the style for the rest of the comic. After a few weeks  of struggling I came up with designs that I thought were okay, but I wasn’t entirely thrilled with them. I was stuck for a while after that, until I suddenly came up with these designs:

This is obviously the look that stuck, although the style continues to evolve as I draw more and more. One of the things that began to bother me after I overhauled the designs was Colin’s eyes, which were just too simple and not expressive enough for a main character of the comic. So I made a slight adjustment, and here’s a very rough sketch of what they look like now:

Not a huge change, but his eyes are much more expressive and you can actually see what direction he’s looking in.

Just for fun, here’s a visual timeline of Colin and Avery over the past couple of years (the last shots of Colin and Avery are a sneak peek at next Sunday’s comic):

(man, Avery is angry like all the time.)

Looking back at a lot of those older strips can sometimes be embarrassing and cringe-inducing, but on the other hand it’s nice to see the progression. It’ll be interesting to see what the comic looks like 5 years from now, especially since Mike and I have tons of ideas for both the short-term and long-term future. Hope you guys stick around!

-Dana

MUSIC TIME:

• “A Mighty Sparrow” –Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. The first song to Ted Leo’s new album “Brutalist Bricks.” Someone was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the album after reading my last blog post (Thanks again Todd, if you’re reading this), so it’s basically all I’ve been listening to since then.  I think it’s easily his best album yet.
• “Written in Reverse” –Spoon. From the new Spoon album, which I had been listening to prior to getting the new Ted Leo.  Nothing too different from what they had done previously, but I really like their minimalistic sound and this album’s rougher production quality.
• “Ex-Girl Collection” –The Wrens. The Wrens are notorious for taking an insanely long time to release albums. It’s been almost 8 years since they released “The Meadowlands,” and as far as I know they’re still actively working towards putting out another album. I’m sure they’re fully aware of how ridiculous this is, since the tagline on their website is “Keeping folks waiting since 1989.”

Well hey everybody, welcome to the late edition of the Lead Paint blog. This week, I have a favor to ask of our small-yet-mighty readership. It relates to a friend of mine who is going to be starting either a graphic-novel style webcomic or a huge collection of print comics (think like a thousand or so pages, at the minimum) sometime in the near future. He’s not super-familiar with webcomics, and wanted me to find a bunch of examples of novel-like webcomics for him to look at, in order to study their format, story structuring, paneling, etc. I have a few suggestions of my own, but I thought I would ask all of you for suggestions as well. If it helps, here are a few facts about his project:

• The project he’s working is fantasy-themed (as in goblins and knights, not in the general “head-in-the-clouds” sense), and also deals with multiple planes of reality
• While it’s going to have humor and action, I guess overall the best way to define the story would be “adventure epic”
• The paneling is going to be fairly cinematic and dynamic (as opposed to something like a standard nine-panel grid)
• The art is stylized, but pretty detailed. It is most likely going to be in black and white
• The story is is going to be structured in a continuous, novel-like way. As in “chapter 1, chapter 2,” etc.

Here are some of the suggestions I’m thinking of sending him:

• Dr. McNinja
• Girl Genius
• Gunnerkrigg Court
• The Abominable Charles Christopher
• Octopus Pie
• Great

I have a few others I’m thinking about, like Anders Loves Maria, but I need to read through them more first. So if you guys have any suggestions, even of print-only comics or regular, nongraphic fantasy novels, it would be much appreciated. Not only would you be helping out an artist-in-need, which should be reason enough, he’s also super-talented, so from a selfish perspective you’re making the smart move. The more you help my pal, the more you guarantee an awesome product coming your way in the future.

Thanks everybody, and see you on Sunday,
Mike!

Edit 3/4/10: Good lord dear readers, thank you so much for all the responses! See my full thank-you like 11 posts down.

I couldn’t really decide on what to write about this week, so I thought I’d cop out and give a list of 5 things I like instead.

1. Ted Leo

Mike mentioned this in last week’s blog about Pancake Mountain, and he wasn’t lying. Ted Leo is probably my favorite musician, and he’s got his first album in over 2 years coming out on March 9th. Matador Records released two of the new songs on their blog, which means that I’ve just been listening to them over and over again (and you can too).

His official website is currently down, but should be up soon with a fancy new design and everything. In the meantime, just watch that Pancake Mountain video again with the creepy kid who stares at him the whole time.

2. Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington

I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with Ricky Gervais at this point, but I personally think he’s much funnier when combined with Steve and Karl. Stephen Merchant is his writing partner on shows like The Office and Extras, while Karl is their old radio producer and one of the most hilarious and fascinating people I’ve ever heard.

They started out doing a show on XFM (which is now available on iTunes), but then moved on to do a series of podcasts and now audiobooks. Mostly they just make fun of Karl, probe his brain, and try to get him to do humiliating things like rub Ricky’s feet and break the world record for eating hamburgers, but Steve and Ricky will also occasionally tell some good stories as well.

I’m not doing a very good job of describing how amazing Karl is, but just listen to the free samples on iTunes and see for yourself. Oh, and if you have HBO you can also watch the new Ricky Gervais Show (which is just their podcast recordings made into a cartoon, but still pretty entertaining):

3. Knitting

Mike actually wanted me to write an entire blog entry about knitting, but I didn’t want to risk boring the shit out of most of our readers. As if I needed another reason to be compared to an old woman, I took up knitting a little over a year ago when I was visiting my good friend Sunny in New Zealand.

I honestly had no idea how insane people are when it comes to knitting, but now I can totally relate to it. It’s like some sort of (very sad) addiction. I haven’t started pawning off family heirlooms for yarn, so I guess it hasn’t reached the point of intervention yet.

If anyone’s really interested in knitting or learning how to, I can do a more in-depth talk like Mike suggested next time (I won’t hold my breath though).

4. Don Hertzfeldt

Yes I blogged about him last time, but Don Hertzfeldt is probably my favorite independent animator. His work is consistently hilarious, but his later films have become strangely moving as well. He also works with Mike Judge (you know, this guy) every year to curate the Animation Show. If you’re near any of the major cities it stops in, I would recommend checking it out.

5. Arrested Development

I know it’s been off the air for years now, but Arrested Development will always have a special place in my heart. Especially since I was one of the few people who watched it while it was still on TV, and I’m usually behind on that sort of shit.

Tell me this isn’t the best thing you’ve ever seen:

I hope the movie actually happens and it’s not just a huge tease like when they couldn’t reach a deal to have the show moved to Showtime. That had me depressed for weeks.

One of our readers brought this up in a comment thread of our latest comic, but what he was talking about really deserves more attention than that. Guys, you really need to know about Pancake Mountain.

I know, I know. You’re saying, “Mike. Pancake Mountain is a name that makes no sense. I’m pissed and confused!” Well listen:

Pancake Mountain is like punk-rock Sesame Street, except it’s made with vastly less money and is sort of inappropriate for children at times. It is awesome and wonderful and hilarious and rocking and adorable all at the same time. Here are some examples:

Ian MacKaye and some chick singing about vowels:

Kings of Leon just making all these kids flip out:

(the best part is the kid in the lime going nuts)

Ted Leo is there! Dana LOVES Ted Leo!

(there is a little boy in this video that just stares at Ted the whole time he play, bobbing his foot. That kid is going to kick so much ass someday.)

There is Fat Mike from NOFX too! He is the best!

(The little girl is Mike’s daughter!)

Now, compare this to what Sesame Street has: Lame-ass Feist singing about counting:

(Okay that was pretty awesome and I love it, but fuck you anyway Feist. I’m still pissed at you because I keep finding songs of yours I like and it’s really ruining my “Grrr Misfits!” street cred. That I never had.)

For more Pancake Mountain action, try Pancake Mountain dot com, or a YouTube search for “Pancake Mountain.” If you think this is at all cool, please thank reader Thomas for being awesome and bringing it to my attention.

<3 Mike (and thanks again Thomas)

Hi guys,

It’s Dana again. As you may or may not know, I’ve been working as an animator for several years now on a variety of different projects. It’s a pretty fun job, which makes the bouts of unemployment and total lack of job security almost worth it. But anyway, this week I thought I’d share some animated shorts by some very talented people. Most of these are rarely seen by the general public, but thankfully sites like YouTube now make them much more accessible.

“Simon’s Cat” by Simon Tofield

This is actually one of a series of shorts. If anyone has a cat I’m sure they can relate to this.

“Adventure Time” by Pendleton Ward

Ok this is a little long, but I swear it’s totally worth it. I think Mike was the one who introduced me to this, which pretty much explains why we’re such good friends.

I heard that they’re making this into a TV series, which is very exciting news for me (I don’t get out much).

Some people may already know Don Hertzfeldt from his “Rejected” short ( in HD!), so here’s one of his earliest films.  His more recent work is only available on DVD, and you can find them on his website.

And just for fun, here’s something I animated at work a few years back:

Thanks for reading/watching!