"Johnson & Sir"

“Johnson & Sir” has a long and interesting story behind its creation.

It originally started as a parody of sorts: anytime I watched my little sister, Kia, play “Jak II”, and she would ride past a Krimzon Guard (the police force of the game), we would both improvise comedic skits based on the guards. Eventually two characters emerged, Johnson and Sir. And it was Johnson’s goal to annoy Sir as much as possible: cross-dressing, talking to orange rats, etc.

A few years later, when I introduced the idea to my friend and then-roommate Katy, we went on a roll with it. As we improvised, I took on and developed the character of Johnson, and she took on the character of Sir. And we had a blast making Johnson tease Sir about his love life and Sir teased Johnson about his inadequacy as a police man.

After I graduated from school, I forgot about these guys on the surface. But they lurked in the back of my mind, waiting to spring.

Until one day, Kristen (my older sister), Marc (my boyfriend) and I were eating dinner at Cracker Barrel. And Kristen looked at me and said, “You should make a webcomic. Whatever happened to Johnson and Sir? I loved those guys!”

And so, with much planning, drawing, and giggling (a long with a few developing jokes involving T Rexes and possibly a sex-change arc), I released “Johnson & Sir” the webcomic on April 30th.

You can read it all here.

“Johnson & Sir” is a comedic little slice-of-fantasy-life, following the exploits of the two elfish cops as they keep the peace in Fantasyville, and between themselves.

Of course, Sir is the most serious of the two, and is the chief of the Police Force. Johnson is the new recruit under his wing. As much as Johnson loves being a cop (because he really does want to serve the better good), he enjoys breaking Sir’s cool and serious demeanor much more.

And there will be heinous shenanigans.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy making it!

Paper Wings and More on Character and Story

If you make comics (like I do) and really care about engaging your audience and making the most compelling characters you can, allow me to make a couple of recommendations.

First, you should listen to the Paper Wings Podcast that covers the topic. This episode I will link you to is called, “How to Write Comics That Engage Your Audience.” And the people on this podcast know what they are doing: Chris Oatley has worked for Disney and now runs his own art academy, and Lora Innes started and is still making her fabulous comic, “The Dreamer.”

Here it is, for your listening pleasure.

Second, I think you should, at the very least, read “Ink Spots” by Brian McDonald.

“Ink Spots” collects the essays he wrote on his blog “Invisible Ink” (I think you should read the book of the same title. I’ve heard good things about that one, too).

Not only did this book motivate me into writing again, but his advice on how to write characters kicked me in the proverbial pants and made me energized to work with my characters in “The Legend of Jamie Roberts” again.

This guy KNOWS what he is doing, and what he’s talking about. For Pete’s sake, he worked with Pixar on their stories!

To get your copy, you can go to Amazon. I receive no commission for this. I just think you should read it because it’s THAT important that you do.

Third, if you would like to try some new character-making exercises that don’t involve long cheat sheets to fill out with questions like what their favorite food is….

You should look at this and this. The first link is to a blog post about how you can use Character Allignments (a la Dungeons and Dragons) to create a variety of morals for characters. The second link is an in depth look at Jungian theory (remember those tests that say “You’re an ISTJ type”? Yeah. It’s that), how it’s partially inaccurate, and how to actually use it when developing characters.

These last two links I found exceptionally useful, and helped me to flesh out my characters even further.

Good luck, and Don’t Forget to Be Awesome. :D

Back on Blogger!

Wow!

It’s good to see everybody on Blogger again! All you fabulous artists and writers, I missed you.

I never thought I would miss this, but MY GOSH I do!

In my opinion, Blogspot is so much better than WordPress or any other kind of website format. Especially for artists.

So much has changed in the last six months since I left this site, but I came back. Blogger is so much cleaner, so much simpler, and so much nicer to use. Plus, most of my awesome friends and inspirations, like Jeff Laclede and Brian McDonald are here, so it’s good to be with a good crowd.

I’ll be updating this space with new art, new sketches, and new info soon. So stay tuned.

You are awesome!

New Year’s Is Upon Us…

Oh man, so much has happened this past year. Where do I begin?

Well, firstly, I graduated from college. That was marvelous and terrifying all at once. I thought I was ready to leave the school, and honestly, on my graduation day, I thought, “NO MORE FREAKING PAPERS!” But now…

After I graduated, I went straight to work at Cedar Point for caricatures. I did that all summer and even up through October. I thought I would stay with the caricature company and work with them in various parks after the season. But I realized I wasn’t exactly happy there: true, I got to draw everyday, and there was some flexibility with being myself more so than any other job I worked. However, it wasn’t as rewarding as it used to be. And when I tried to change the situation, it just got worse. Applying for promotion, changing work stations, it didn’t matter, because it didn’t help. Customers became ruder and ruder, the weather became worse and worse, things within the caricatures department and other departments fell apart. Then in September and October, our hours were cut when the manager promised huge benefits and didn’t deliver. So I left, and I don’t plan on going back.

I moved back home and picked up two part-time jobs: one working at Subway and the other working at customer service in the mall. And I thought vacationers at Cedar Point had entitlement issues…they still do. It’s a universal constant: people feel entitled to things they probably don’t deserve, and/or people are too stubborn to understand the other person’s point of view and want things done THEIR way.

But I appreciate being here: I get time to make art, MY art. Not caricatures, not anything else. Just my comics and my character designs and paintings. Things are getting better. I know I can’t stay here forever, and next year, I want to make strides to move forward.

That’s all we can do is keep moving forward. When things turn to shit or plans go awry, pick yourself up and keep moving. Something will come along, even if it’s two months or two years or whatever later.

AND DON’T DO THIS ALONE. Oh sweet zombie Jesus don’t do this alone. Keep talking to your friends and your family. Make new friends. If nothing else, they’ll listen to your ramblings about how you weren’t expecting this crap. Hopefully, though, if you have awesome friends and family like I do, they’ll give you ideas and suggestions that will help you keep moving. It’s thanks to Kia, my little sister, that I became inspired to revise (very deeply, mind you) a graphic novel I wrote a rough draft for this past July. I’m even planning to revise another graphic novel I scripted last year. With any luck I’ll get that one pitch-ready by the end of March.

So this next year, I want to, hope to, and plan to keep making art, get work ready for sale for conventions (because I’m planning on attending three of them next year), revise my graphic novels, and get one of them ready to pitch to publishers. Whether I move to a new town, get a new boyfriend, travel…well, I’ll leave that up to chance. My only big travel destinations this next year are Bowling Green, Columbus, and Sandusky, OH, and New York City for New York Comic Con.

And on a more tragic note, this will be my last post here on Blogger. I’m moving my blog over to Tumblr.

This is something I’ve been thinking of off and on for the last six months. This time, though, I’m making it official. I’m moving the blog to Tumblr. Why? Because I know FAR more artists on Tumblr than on Blogger, sharing posts on Tumblr is much easier, the layouts are simpler and easier to handle, and really, Tumblr is better suited for artists because it’s so visually simple, so it puts more focus on the actual posts you make than on its layouts.

Also, it’s easier and faster to update, and it’s more fun.

You are awesome for sticking with me this long. I hope we can stick together even as I move to a new blog. It’ll be at kelcidcrawford.tumblr.com

I’ll stick around on blogger still. It’ll be a while before I can convince myself to delete this. And besides, if you have comments to leave behind, I want to read those.

Thank you. Really, thank you. And good luck to you.

Posters and Portfolio Websites

Howdy! There’s a couple of things I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks that I’m now ready to share with you.

First, a secret project is now no longer secret: my portfolio website is now officially launched. This was designed by Mike Chizmar, a guy I drew a caricature for at the Black Swamp Arts Festival. We’ve been working together on this for a little over 3 months now, and it’s officially finished! You can now see all my most recent art, comics, and caricatures over at www.kelcidcrawford.com. Check it out and let me know what you think! I think this was Mike’s first website and I’m glad I could help him get a web design portfolio started.

Second, I’ve been drawing a new poster. The intent was to have it ready to sell as prints for Christmas, but that is just not happening. The goal this time is to have it finished by New Years at the latest, and get it to the printers before the end of the first week of January. In the meantime, you can see the finished sketch of it here, before I add color to it:

On the easel.

Edited in GIMP.

Now I’m going back to making Christmas art for friends and family, because I have A LOT of it to make.

Don’t Forget to Be Awesome!