Arsenic Lullaby new issue cover- progress- illustration and animati...

Lemme tell you about comic book covers...

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There are a couple schools of thought on the purpose of a cover, beyond- it's there to sell the book-. That's obviously the main, pragmatic purpose. It's the "how" where in there are differing strategies.

There is 1- to show what is happening in the book

and/or 2- to make the reader wonder what is happening in the book, which if done right should be at odds with no.1. It's a matter of explaining or making them want an explanation.

Normally, since my book is comedy, the second is the way that I go, lest I give away any punchlines.

In the upcoming cover ( the one I showed first) with the strategy of visually explaining what's going on, because the story is weird enough that even in knowing, it's going to throw you for a loop. I have the villain "Abosmah" (well...pretty much every lead character in Arsenic Lullaby is a villain from one perspective or another) and I'm showing him as he first appears towering over a city with the citizens reacting in various ways. Indicating he has been there for long enough for them to not all be scattering in blind terror. He may be a threat, but he's not a action oriented "smash up the city" type of monster, there is a weird otherworldly story going on here.

And that's about as much as I could get across with a static image. Dccent amount of info gotten across. But it is a bit vague as to just what the hell he is...in a tangible physical sense. There are elements I'd have preferred where more clear. and that is where the benefit of making an NFT art piece comes in.

It is 2023 and things don't just exist in one medium anymore...not really. Every representation of a story in a medium is, in our heads, somewhat affected by how we've seen it in other mediums. For example, who among us could read a spider-man comic without hearing the voice of an actor or voice actor from a cartoon in or heads as we read it?

So for all those who may see read the Arsenic Lullaby comic book after being made aware of it by a post of mine...using the NFTart can be clued in to a greater degree. With just a few moments of animation I can show that the roots/vines that make up his core move independently, make sure it's clear that his eyes are also autonomous from each other, and that the smoke is an extension of his "body" and not the result of an explosion or something that he caused. AND give more of a mood that sort of feels as though the reality itself is a bit off.

That's a project that on my own, might take me the rest of my natural life...or at the very least use up the remaining sanity I have left. But THEN as I was getting ready to work on the cover, an animator by the name of RandomCat

https://twitter.com/satoshiblackcat

...FOOLISHLY...asked if I'd like to collaborate on something. Bwahahahahahaha....terrible, terrible timing on his part. I explained what I had in mind, and we put a game plan together that would merged my traditional art skills with his digital prowess, and it worked out quite well, I'd say..

It, as you might imagine, was not easy. It ended up being a hybrid of traditional animation (i.e. many frames drawn slightly differently to give the illusion of movement) and...whatever modern digital voodoo Randomcat uses.

Below is a gif that was short/small enough to load on Hive...a longer larger version is here-https://makersplace.com/product/arsenic-lullaby-enter-abosmah-red-cover-variant-1-of-1-479474/

Red Full optimised.gif

https://makersplace.com/product/arsenic-lullaby-enter-abosmah-red-cover-variant-1-of-1-479474/

To start off, everything, whether I'm making several frames hand drawn, or Randomcat is manipulating the linework...if it moves, it needs to be on it's own layer.

For those curious, the physical image as a whole is about 11x14 inches. And yes, just like always, it was done by hand with a brush and India ink.

starting with Abosmah

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And, as I said pretty much all of it needed it's own layer. Different groups of Buildings that moved together need thier own layer...

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The cop car, and all the people...some several times if they are to move...

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yeah...not that much fun inking that small, and you might ask "why not just drawink them big and reduce them?' well, the thickness or thinness of the lines also help to give depth, The lines on the people, smoke and such are thicker than lines of things directly behind them, you vary the thickness to give it all a feeling of depth, it's a subtle optical illusion to a degree. For example, the lines on Abosmah are thicker than the buildings behind him. The crowd in the foreground's lines are thicker than those of the crowd way in the back...

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Doing that properly kinda becomes a matter of artistic instinct, I need to see them all the size they'd be, while inking, or I'd just not be able to get my head around how thick to ink the lines.

and of course Abosmah and the smoke. I did say part of the point was showing the individual movement of the vines that make up the core "body", and so those need to have thier own moveable layers. sigh....

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For me the hard part was done. All that remained was to color it and hand the whole mess over to RandomCat, to layer out and stack as he sees fit. I don't know how many layers that all turned out to be, and I don't want to know. But after he worked his considerable skill and we discussed it and tweaked it and bounced ideas around and tweaked it, I'd say it turned out pretty darn good!

Leaving one minor heartbreak...all that cool original art separated from each other on 30 some odd pages of Bristol board. I was lamenting this when I saw a cool piece by the very talented @Geogeboya a collage artist, and thought "COLLAGE! where's my scissors?!"