webcomics – Page 43 – Kelci D Crawford

April 24, 2014

Jamie Roberts is…Postponed (Again)

I should really stop announcing when The Legend of Jamie Roberts will be up on the web, because every time I do, the fates overhear my plans and jump on me.

This story is going to be shelved for a bit as I work on other projects. Once those are done, I can edit the work and give it the proper treatment that it needs.

When will that be?

I’m not saying just in case the fates overhear my plans again. I’m going to keep them on their toes, just to spite them.

Does this mean I’ll stop drawing the characters/world/creatures of the story? NOPE.

Anytime I draw anything related to The Legend of Jamie Roberts, I’ll post it here on the blog.

Here’s what I have so far…

Developing worlds, including this underground city of Kinyaht…

Daniel, one of Jamie’s best friends and an excellent archer…

Qatool (or Queen) Norsa, Dragon Queen of the city of Dogona…

Thomas, another best friend of Jamie’s…

Creatures of darkness, called Mocktaw, who emerge from a spiritual realm called Dream…

And the deadliest character of them all…

Raguna Ranki, the banished Dragon King of the Sun.

Why are these Kings and Queens called Dragon Kings/Queens?

BECAUSE THEY CAN SHAPE SHIFT INTO DRAGONS. BOOYAH.

I should probably note right now that I’m very heavily inspired by African arts and history for this project (mostly history. It even shows in The Women Warriors Project because a LOT of African Queens are appearing on that list.). The myths and legends of many African groups stuck with me, as did their patterns and art…and it also helps that I took two semesters of African Art History in my undergrad years.

~~“But none of your characters are black”~~ I’m working on it. Why do you think it’s not ready to be published yet?

Jamie, Thomas, and Daniel are suppose to be culturally different from the rest of the cast because they’re Touloy pirates from the North. (I still need to change their skin tone a bit, though, if only to make it more red for all the years of sun-and-wind burn.) Most of the story takes place in the southern continent of Corith. I’m going to be doing character design tweaks to the other cast members I have so it’s not so white-washed. I’ll share as time comes.

And I want my African inspiration to be a bit more evident. Right now, it shows in the locations and the cities they visit (which I haven’t drawn yet). I want to add more patterns and art to the mix, though I have to be careful with that – different patterns from different groups are considered sacred and shouldn’t be replicated. I have to know which ones to avoid.

That’s all for now. Let me know in comments what you think!

April 18, 2014

Johnson & Sir’s New Book Cover

I finished the book cover for Johnson & Sir today!

With any luck, the first book of Johnson & Sir will be out in time for Phoenix Comicon in June!

The book will have the first 24 or so pages of the webcomic, as well as sketches and other behind-the-scenes bonus material, like the initial concept art and never-before-published pages.

I’ll announce when it’s ready to go, so keep checking back in.

P.S. I’m also thinking of redesigning this website. So brace thyself for any changes that may occur.

April 11, 2014April 4, 2014

The Story Behind Johnson & Sir

I love making Johnson & Sir.

And not just for the T-Rex Sissy Fights.

Or the Noodle Trees.

Or Sir’s Sirness.

Sir_What_Sorcery_Is_This — I REALLY want this to be a thing on Tumblr.

I love Johnson & Sir largely because of something that most readers don’t know about until today: the story behind why it exists.

Originally, Johnson & Sir started with my little sister and me hanging out and playing Jak II.

There are bad guys in that game called Krimzon Guards (which are pretty much elf police because everyone in that game was an elf or a talking beast). The fun part is, when you’re making Jak stand idle in the street or you’re just being bored, you can overhear the Krimzon Guards talking to each other and being bored.

My sister and I started to have fun with it and we spit-balled our own made-up dialogue between two Krimzon Guards, whom we called Johnson and Sir. And it was Johnson’s job to make Sir’s life as miserable and odd as possible. At that time, any time I drew them, it was a running gag that you would never see Johnson’s face (kind of like Wilson’s hidden face in the show Home Improvement).

Also Johnson cross-dressed. A LOT. And hit on Sir any chance he could.

For a few years, it stayed as an inside joke between my sister and me until I went to college. It was there that I shared the idea with my roommate, and then we went nuts with it and developed Johnson and Sir even more. There were insinuations of scandalous affairs, dry humor, the works.

Over time, my roommate moved out, college happened, and for a while I forgot about Johnson and Sir.

UNTIL ONE DAY…

It was in March of 2013. My older sister was in town for a few months until she could move to Arizona (long story). And by that time, I was dating Marc the Boyfriend for a bit. All three of us decided to go out to lunch together and just hang out.

While there, not only did I make Marc the Boyfriend giggle at the banter between my sister and me, but we both ended up talking about Johnson and Sir with him.

It happened a little like this:

Me: I’ve been thinking about getting into webcomics, but I don’t know what to make.

Sister: Dude, you should make a comic about Johnson and Sir. That shit cracked me up.

Marc: What’s that?

So afterward I sketched a few character designs, got a few ideas for strips from my sisters, and then Johnson & Sir was born.

JohnsonandSirPromo4 — Some new characters were added over time, too.

Although Johnson & Sir has gone through a lot of changes in art, the humor is always there, and I hope it stays that way.

If you would like to read it (and you should, because it’s ridiculous and fun), you can start reading it here.

And then you will be part of a wonderful, fantastic inside joke.

April 4, 2014April 2, 2014

Abandoned Projects: Julia

This is the start of a recurring feature I’m going to call “Abandoned Projects.”

These projects are all stories I shelved for one reason or another: whether the reasons be it was too cliche, I didn’t have the artistic expertise, I got older and lost interest, it didn’t have an end in sight, or any other reason.

Why am I sharing them? Because

I can, and
I want to know if you’re interested in seeing these ideas actually become stories.

The first abandoned project I want to bring up is actually one of my oldest. I started scripting this back in high school and actually convinced the art teacher (somehow) that I should do this as an assignment for an actual grade. It was a project I legit wanted to make at the time, and I wanted to send it to Yen Press when they started doing annual talent searches.

It’s called Julia, and it was my retelling of The Little Mermaid.

Julia was the youngest of seven sisters, and it was a right of passage among them that they go to the surface and see the world above.

Some saw dogs, others saw ships, the second youngest found a way to climb an iceberg and wave to passing ships, causing one of them to wreck, that kind of thing.

Julia’s first sight above the water is fireworks firing off from a ship. It’s the prince’s birthday, and she goes to investigate. And she falls in love with him at first fight.

Unfortunately, one of the fireworks catches the mast on fire and the prince falls overboard. As Julia goes to save the prince, the fire spreads even worse, eventually catching more gunpowder and causing the ship to burst. The survivors all swim to shore, which is where Julia drops him off (careful to not get spotted herself).

When she goes back to her sisters to tell about what she saw, they get angry at her – they have a rule that states that they don’t get directly involved in the affairs of humans, and Julia violated that rule by saving the poor boy from drowning.

Eventually there’s a falling out with her sisters, she sells her voice to a sea witch (who’s design is based more on an eel than a fish), she gets legs, and she gets to shore.

Unfortunately, the Prince doesn’t know who she is, and she is hired as an entertainer to dance for him in the great hall. Eventually she befriends one of the servants in the castle and slowly starts to develop a crush on him.

Her sisters find her and try to convince her to abandon the prince and come back to the sea. She refuses, even as her feelings intensify for both the prince and the servant boy.

The question is, who does she choose?

Well, I knew how it would end (which is a good sign for a project), but I shelved the project for a few reasons.

The first is that at the time, I didn’t have the artistic skill to pull this off. To be frank, my art at the time SUCKED. Also, I wanted to illustrate this in watercolors, but when I did a test page in the style, it was muddy and gross. At the time I didn’t know how to get my hands on Photoshop, so it was the traditional route or not at all.

The second reason I left it was because it was WAY TOO CLICHE. It was reading like a Shoujo Beat manga (which aren’t bad, but that wasn’t what I really wanted with the work at the time). Besides, the whole, “Who does she chose? The elegant, handsome prince, or the lowly servant boy with a heart of gold?” thing had been done to death. The only way I was going to make it unique was in the dynamic between the sisters.

Which, now that I think about it, the dynamic between the sisters was one of the best parts of that story.

The third reason? I missed the deadline to have pages finished and submitted to the Yen Press Talent Search at the time.

The fourth reason? The work was too long for the talent search anyway.

I MIGHT pick this up again in the future. What do you think?

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014

New Art Added, Library Visits, and Other Updates

Today’s post comes to you in THREE PARTS.

PART 1:

So I was going through the site and I realized I hadn’t put any new art up on here for a while. So I fixed that!

There is now new stuff in Illustrations, Sketches, and even a few updated links in Comics, including a link to an old preview I made of The Legend of Jamie Roberts.

You can also read the preview comic by clicking THIS PICTURE:

PART 2:

On Free Comic Book Day (May 3rd) this year, I will be speaking and showing off my work at the Apache Junction Public Library in Phoenix, AZ! It’s part of their celebration of Comic Book Day, so bring your family along! It’s an all-ages event featuring superheroes and local artists and lots and lots of books.

They asked me to make the flyer for this year, so start looking forward to some work-in-progress previews as I work on it.

PART 3:

The Legend of Jamie Roberts‘ script is almost finished. I was hoping to have it completely done two days ago, but no such luck. At least it’s 80% of the way there, so with much cracking of my fingers, I’m hoping to get it completely finished by April 14th.

With all of that said, The Legend of Jamie Roberts should be online by the end of June. I would launch at the beginning of June, but that’s Phoenix Comicon (another event I’m going to this year), so I’ll be doing convention-related work around that time.

Charlie & Clow is coming along pretty nicely, even though I need to change up the first few pages. It’ll be easy to tweak though.

There’s going to be a new story arc coming up in Johnson & Sir! And also, expect a new print sometime in the next month, inspired by this sketch:

You can also reblog the sketch on Tumblr if you want to show it off to your followers (which you totally should).

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I’m going to dare the biggest dare on myself and update my blog every day for the month of April. And no, none of the above is an April Fool’s Joke. I already pulled a joke on Johnson & Sir today. I’m joked out.

P.P.S. Actually I won’t be able to update everyday because for a few days in April I’m going to be in San Diego. Psych!