Bagnas Creative Solutions

There comes a time in an author’s life when you want to mess with your characters a bit. Alas, the characters are on a sequel spanning plot arc that can not be disturbed. It will foul up the careful machinery of the meticulous plot development. Luckily, comic books have a simple solution, start a new book. To wit, Batman has his own comic book series plus he shows up in Justice League and teams up with other heroes in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I don’t have that kind of talent pool at my disposal. Some would venture to say I don’t have much talent pooling in my own hands.

A slight change of announcements has occurred. Originally, I planned to announce the release of my first issue. However, I’m a few pages short of that goal. Instead, I wish to announce the publishing of my failed attempt at a Sunday comic contest. I will begin to use that area of the website for my occasional funny gag and joke. Despite popular belief, my ability to be funny relies on me talking and doesn’t translate well into visual media.

As I toil and trouble over this new site set up, please bear with me. Pages may disappear. Comics may be missing. Weird messages may spew forth from the server. Please visit again. I should have it all figured out shortly. If anything lasts goes missing longer than a day, please send me a message. The site should be all ready by Friday 11-11-11.

After entering a local Sunday comic contest and having a web-comic, I still realize the most likely outcome of this comic endeavor. I will remain a struggling artist. If I won the newspaper contest, that would have exposed me to a huge crowd. Alas, it did not happen. I didn’t make the semifinals either. They had over 80 entries just in my city alone. That means there are 80 people just like me here in town. Obviously, my little web-comic is one itty-bitty page in a sea of thousands of online artists. It’s like finding a tan piece of straw in a hay stack – everything looks alike.

It has only been a year since I created the blog-based website. Its capabilities though impressive were not compatible with nice looking style templates so I had to suffer with the standard one. I didn’t have the time or patience to learn how to customize it. One a lighter note, I was able to install another app that is easier for me to format but is a bit over powered for my needs. Hopefully over the next few months I can incrementally make updates to the graphics, content and other features to make the comic (and my other art) more enjoyable to view online.

In my spare time, I’m trying to dress up the web site because it looks very plain-Jane. I literally just installed a quick app and put the pages in. There wasn’t much of a design process. I hope to rectify this situation by producing a much better looking web site and one that is more interactive. Right now the page doesn’t do what I want it to do especially in terms of blog and web-comic post. It just doesn’t look right. Also I’m not able to get the graphics where I want them. Never fear, I have a grand plan to get it all fixed up shortly.

The first issue is supposed to end with page 24 and I am approaching that milestone soon. To accelerate the process I have decided to draw rough sketches of the pages with the letter in place. Then I can go back and ink the drawings. If all goes well, at least the pages will be done but not colored and shaded. That’s alright for me. I’ve gotten a little faster with the coloring so that should take too long but I’d really like to finish the story first, which is why I decided to ink them all as a group rather than completing one page fully at a time.

I know I had a wonderful plan to finish several pages in September and October. But things come up dear fan. For one, a coworker hooked me with a cartoon contest. I HAD to enter that so that's what I've worked on the last week.

If I win, I'll post a link. If I lose, then I'll post the images here as a bonus. Either way, I'll get back to the regular Dungeon Knights on Friday. This means I'll start drawing and coloring then...not have anything done. Thanks for your patience.

Well, I fixed up coloring mistakes that drove me crazy on a few previous issues. However, they way I have my blog set up, I can’t update those images for some reason. If you want to see the improved images and such, you’ll just have to buy the comic book when it comes out. I didn’t want to do that but for some reason I just can’t explain what happened.

First, I’d like to report that I have all the artwork ready for Conjecture 2011. I have two non-contiguous panels at the art show. If you find one, keep looking for the other one. From the attic and dark corners of art show contributors, I heard a rumor that shows actually prefer original pieces done in traditional styles like charcoal, acrylic, or oils. They prefer not to see digital work. Well kind reader, let me tell you something about my style, I change my mind much too often for permanent traditional style tools.