Sample Sketch Pages

 Still plugging away at each page. I have almost finished drawing sketchy pages from the thumbnails. (I blow up the thumbnails and print them out lightly on regular paper. That is what I'm sketching on.) These are 3 of my favorite pages.

 Once I am done with these, I am going to print them on 11x17 paper and do the final pencil drawing on them. After that, I'm on to inking experiments!

6 Degrees of Separation

Is she "La Presidente" or "La Presidenta"?


For my Theory and Criticism class I was asked to take one thing from this weeks readings, look it up and then go 6 steps of links to see where it took me. For better or for worse I started with Wikipedia and stayed there the whole time. This is what I read about:

I took the term "Mountain Arapesh" which is a term for a group of people in New Guinea. The section from our readings was discussing study of cultures and contamination of those cultures. The Arapesh group was used as an example. So...

1. I looked up "Mountain Arapesh" and got this link on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arapesh
It briefly discussed the Arapesh languages.

2. I then went to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger-Congo_languages
This was a longer article about the many languages in the "Niger-Congo" group.

3. I was immediately interested in a short section about "Noun Class" so I went here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class
I learned that noun classes are varied and pretty odd in many languages.

4. Because I learned Spanish about 15 years ago, I am particularly interested in "Grammatical Gender" so I clicked on that link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
I was only vaguely aware that there were other ways to classify nouns than gender because the only other language I have learned was so heavily steeped in gender assignment to nouns.

5. So, of course I went right for the link about "Grammatical Gender" in Spanish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender_in_Spanish
I find it very interesting to read about the actual workings of Spanish. I learned it by speaking with natives so I often didn't learn the rules behind grammatical gender exceptions until much later. Often then rule comes from an old version of a word, or it's origin from another language.

6. Finally I ended up in "Gender Neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutrality_in_Spanish_and_Portuguese
Because Spanish (and Portuguese) have only 2 noun genders, male and female, they run into linguistic problems that other languages with a neuter gender (or some other system) don't ever face. In English, "Stewardess" has changed to "Flight Attendant" and "Mail Man" to "Mail Carrier". In Spanish, each word already has a gender, so they have tried different ways of making words gender neutral. One of the interesting ones I learned was an effort to use the "@" instead of "o" or "a" at the end of a word to keep it neutral. I find that really funny because I have no idea how it would be pronounced. I also find it interesting that some politicians are now saying using both the masculine and feminine forms (Señores and Señoras for example) when linguistically the plural masculine form also includes all females as well. Spanish already has one word that means both ladies and gentlemen, but might start using two words in order to sound fair and unbiased.

It was a pretty fun exercise that reminded me how much I loved learned Spanish and then using what I learned to communicate with native speakers. It would be great to do that again.

MFA Logo Slightly Animated

MFA Logo Slightly Animated from Mike Laughead on Vimeo.

As an exercise in my Digital Culture class. I used Animata to slightly animate my MFA Logo. I find it really creepy.

Working Out Style and Pencils

The thumbnails are all done on the first issue. The story ended up being 30 pages long. This is the first pencilled page. I am enjoying the drawing, but I still need to be aware of so many things while I'm drawing. Not only the layout of each panel, but the silhouette or each character and their line of action. It can be frustrating.

While drawing the pencils, I am also working on the inking and gray tone style of the final artwork. These were done with a brush pen. I have been told that "C" is the best version, but then I was advised by Andy Friz, my mentor, that all of the styles have appealing things about them and I can use all of them depending on the mood, emotion or layout of each panel. I'm pretty excited about finishing this!

Character Designs for Acornhead

These are 3 of the main characters in my graphic novel. I am happy with the character on the right, but not the other 2.


With the character on the left, I increased his hand and feet size to make him feel like an adolescent who was still growing into his limbs.





I have continued to work on the middle character. I'm still not sure how he will look. He is the initial antagonist.


Here is another main character who's design I haven't worked on as much.




I've also worked on some basic shapes for a few secondary characters (parents of the protagonists.)

QR Code and Google Image Search

I was introduced to QR Codes recently in my Digital Culture Class. For an explanation, just visit Wikipedia. Or to create your own go to Kaywa.com.

This is the QR Code to my website, MikeLaughead.com.

In order to incorporate it into the style of my image, I redrew my code with a brush pen.

And because I'm super original, I added the QR Code to a robot. It was fun, though.

In the same class, I learned that google has a new image search option. You can upload an image and it will find that same image on the web. I decided to search for a t-shirt design of mine that was printed at Threadless.com.

Of course I found the image at Threadless.com and at my site, but I found something amazing that I didn't even know existed!

Someone took the time to make my design into a cake! Amazing and really flattering. How awesome is that?

My First 3D Model

I used Google Sketchup to make this 3D model. I usually work in a very flat and graphic manner. It was really difficult to think 3 dimensionally. I would love to create a 3D model of any of my graphic novel characters, in order to prepare an animation.

Comic Book Examples

My main approach from the beginning of this program has been to make a graphic novel that is fun and interesting with some humor and heart. Here are 3 examples that I am working on emulating. We'll see how close I come this semester.

Bone is my most direct influence. I especially like the use of the comic panel and word balloons for comedic timing. I'll see how close my story ends up being like Jeff Smith's.

Dragonball is a Japanese comic by Akira Toriyama. It ends up being a huge fighting thing with lots of screaming and fireball shooting. But it starts out as an adventure comic that is very much in the mood and vein that I want to work.

Scott Pilgrim has awesome dialogue. The element of fun is really nice and something I want in my work.

We Made a Video Game!

We made this game as a class. GameSalad is pretty fun to play around with.

Play and Enjoy!

Sketches from Class!

When I was working from home I never seemed to have the time to just sketch. Now that I'm back in school, there are times when I am sitting and listening to a presenter and I can just draw and listen. It's really kind of nice. Here are 2 things I drew the other day.

I have done tons of work this week, but it was almost all story ideas and page thumbnails which I don't really want to show here. Next week I'll be focusing more on character design, so there should be more to show.

*Señor Conehead is a character from the artwork of one of my fellow grad students Andrew McCauley. Check out his gritty, yet vibrant artwork.

First Week of Work

These are the first thumbnails of done here at CCAD. Most of the work I've done this week has been story work and is words and not visually interesting at all. I'm purposely not showing these at a very high resolution because I want to work through the story before I really show it on the blog.

My mentor Andy Friz suggested that I keep working on the character designs for my main characters. This is my first attempt to kind of morph them into different body types in an effort to make them different looking. I don't want to make them totally cartoony proportions, I'll save that for other characters, so it's mostly subtle differences.

Little Intro

I just started my MFA at Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD). The first week was very exciting and I'm looking forward to the whole 2 years. Columbus has been a great place to live so far and I can't wait to judge it in winter.

Each MFA student is expected to keep a blog of their progress while working on their projects. Mine is a graphic novel, so I'll be putting a lot of character designs and sample pages but probably not the whole actual comic.

The tentative title is "The Legend of Acornhead" which may or may not be the name of the character above.

New Blog Logo

I just added the new blog logo today. I'm really into the red/pink, white, black and aqua/blue theme. I'm guessing I won't keep those colors for the whole 2 years.

New Blog

I'm starting this blog in addition to my regular blog in order to chronicle my time at Columbus College of Art and Design as an MFA student. I just started but I look forward to posting images of my progress on my project for my first semester.