Girlamatic Anniversary!

With our tongues in our cheeks and our eyes on the stars, GirlAMatic is proud to announce its fourth anniversary! This year's April foolish extravaganza will be as BIFF! BAM! SOCK-O! as any dyed-in-the-wool (or rather, spandex) comics fan could possibly wish for! March 31st through April 6th, GirlAMatic will see a DeCidedly Marvelous makeover, as all our characters gear up for a bit of genre-bending mischief.

Do join us!

Whoo! It's done! Website back up!

YAYAYAYAYAYA! My website is back up, I finished it last night, it looks about a thousand times better than it did before, all the animations and links work. Whoo!!!! I'm so happy! *Sniff*! Yay! Check it out! www.michellemauk.com

No VM update...it's filler...

Oi. So I've just been so busy redesigning my website, I couldn't do a VM page this week. So much to do, so little time. So for your (general amusement, I suppose)-is a little VM behind the scenes peek, and a little something for my fellow GAM creators.

I feel bad-but I think since next week won't be a regular update as well, I will have some time to think about where the story is going and start making some changes, and draw a couple of pages ahead. Because right now, I'm terribly behind.

I'm hoping my general flash skills will allow me to put the stupid new website up. I always have a lingering issue with flash. I REALLY hope this works.

Party on.

I'm slightly out of my mind today...new web design...

I'm a little weird today. I decided to just take my long hair in hand-take a pair of scissors, and chop myself some bangs. Straight across my forehead. Then, I had to have french toast, sausage and fruit for dinner. I had to have breakfast for dinner. (It's not like your stomach knows the difference anyways). Hmmm. Then I got a random email from another Michelle Mauk, who had googled her name and came across me instead, which was a little weird, but she's nice. And she bakes cookies. I can't bake cookies. Her cookies looked yummy too.

Anyways. This is the "new front page!" da duh duh duuuuh! Of my website. So far. I think I may change the buttons-make them fit into the design of the page more. The flowers cascade down the side of the screen continuously. I'm trying to think if I should have a winding theme throughout the thing. I dunno. I want to finally have someway of linking to people and having more artwork up. I've done a lot of artwork since I slapped the website up, and unfortunately, some of the pieces I had are gone forever now (computer hard drive crash!!! Brutal! Bad Ram sucks! Word of advice if you own a Mac, save yourself grief, fork out the extra $30 for apple ram. It'll save you from kernel panics in the future, TRUST ME.)

I'm going to go watch some new South Park. I was going to go into FLASH mode, but I decided not to.

Cats! And a day off! Whoo!!!

YESSSSSSSS! I got my day off. Ohmigoodness I'm tired. Whoo. But, I am going to take today, and get some art done, do some online searching (ahem), buy some paper, maybe buy a book, eat healthy today (yeah right, there's a Snickers bar in the fridge calling for me, and it's only 9 am.)

Maybe I'll watch bad daytime tv, I don't know, I don't care! All I know is-I don't have to work!

Here's a little illustrator piece-they're badly sewn cats (obviously, as they still have the needles stuck in them.) I thought I was going to go further than this, but I didn't. They are from left-the Patchwork kitty, the Goggles kitty, and then the Franken kitty. Aren't they, sort of, sadistically cute? Hmm.

I think the Patchwork one is my favorite. I even have stencils for them so I can spraypaint them wherever I want. The pic underneath is what one looks like when sprayed onto unprimed canvas. They look a lot better on cardboard and painted walls and such. Canvas sucks up spraypaint like it' no one's business. And that stuff isn't cheap. But, tt isn't like I go tagging them all over the place or aanything. I was thinking of maybe getting some of those spray paint markers, or paints and actually making some bags or t-shirts for friends... or something... I gotta think more about that.

DAY OFF! DAY OFF! DAY OFF! DAY OFF!

Page Update!

Here's the latest page from my webcomic. This one took me a little longer to finish again...look it's 2:12 AM! Whooo!!!! I was distracted watching Project A-Ko whilst I was working on this. I'd forgotten about how confusing that anime was. And the gratutious panty flashing. And how annoying C-ko is. But A-ko rocks. I wish they had just made a whole series about her and B-ko battling it out constantly. (A-ko has superhuman strength, and b-ko is her arch-nemesis who builds robots to try to destroy A-ko. C-ko is the one they both fight over because she's cute and a nice friend-but personally, if she were my friend, I would slap her silly all the time.)

It's weird, I got tired around midnight, and now I'm wide awake. But my hand is tired from coloring.
Maybe I'll look online for more stuff to buy.

Kids And Robots Three:R.A.S

So here is the third in the Kids and Robots series-and this girl is the owner of the R.A.S robot (Rain and Storm), hence the galoshes and umbrella...and teddy bear with rainbow...and barometer...and weird pink liquid...(don't ask me, I just felt it would be a little lively pinch of color).

I'm getting these down a little quicker. I have an issue with patience. I see the whole thing as I want it to be done, but it frustrates me that it takes time to get them done. I start coloring, and I wish I had a little magic wand to make the computer do what I want. The cool thing about computers though, is they save you the time of boring tedious things you would have had to do before, like tracing things. Thank goodness for the ability to have a program trace things for you. And color them in. Or remove stray lines, and what not.

Ohhhh....I can't wait for this week to be over with. I'm looking for the weekend...I'm looking for the weekend. I hope I get Monday off, I requested it because I'm just so exhausted. (Of course, that would give me ample time to color more stuff...and watch bad tv!)

And (in the event my readers of my commic make their way to this blog, or even glance at it-to hear me ramble like a silly one), thanks for the kind comments! Honestly! They make me happy.

Updated page

So here's the latest page from my webcomic, Voyage Moyen. Um...not my favorite page. Lots of mistakes. Boy. I don't know what it is, but I've been so off this week. Everything I've drawn has just felt so forced, and so difficult. It's like my hand doesn't want to do what my brain is telling it to do. This week has just been an off week.

In any event, we still have Death (as I'm calling him, though he doesn't actually have a name, he's beyond labels you see...though that is what he does...) pretty much messing with Nate. Which he's been doing, a lot. To me, it isn't important how or when Nate died-because Death doesn't view it as important. It's pretty much a means to an end. Everyone dies-they all end up in his place, he just gets to choose.

Hence, he gets bored, and therefore he's been messing with Nate. A lot. But-we'll soon see where it all goes. He just likes to talk.

Kids and Robots-Robot Two: MAD

So here's the second one in my little Kids and Robots series. So far-I have five drawn. 2 colored. It's fun, but coloring this way takes a llittle longer (plus the page sizes are larger). This is the MAD robot, which stands for Missiles and Deflection. Her owner is a punk rock Indian girl-so I did a mixture of English and Indian clothing influences (and color!). One of my best friends is Indian-and I always wondered what she would look like as a punk rock chick if I dressed her. Maybe something like this. The colors I tried to take from a lot of the saris and other garb I'd see her and her family wearing, and they're always these amazing oranges and pinks and greens.

The process of a VM page, part Three of Three

And then the last of it! The great thing about the digital age is that it is really easy to get your hands on all sorts of programs to make comics, and there is a plethora of free stuff out there on the big old internet. I'm always looking for new free stuff to
experiment with. When you buy a tablet, they give you a free trial version of painter. Some art magazines have dvds with free downloadable fonts and stock imagery. Adobe gives you a bunch of free stock photos and textures when you buy the suite. There are great free comic fonts, manga screentones online. And if you're not sure if a particular program is for you, you can always try a trial version. Well, that's provided it's available for your particular CPU format, I wish I could try Open Canvas, but it's only available on windows I think. And there's some other cool painting program... Ah! I can't remember right now-but it's only a japanese version downloadable on PC as well. What is it? Aqua something? Shoot.

I've heard mixed things about Manga Studio-I've never tried it-but it has screentones, and manga fonts and all that yummy stuff. I think there is an issue with layers in that program.

Okay! I'm done!

The Process of a VM page, part two of three

Okay, here's part two. This goes over the final coloring, and making of the panels and what not.
Oh-I forgot, as tools I highly, highly recommend a tablet. I honestly don't know how people do it with a mouse, some people are ultra experts at it-but I can't even tell you how difficult it is to color with a mouse. I think as artists, we're more comfortable with a pen/pencil/brush anyways-just the weird thing is using your hand at one place while watching what is produced on a screen. As you go along it gets easier. You can also always get the screen tablet-so you can draw directly on the screen.

Okay, part three-lettering will be up tomorrow.

The process of a VM page, Part One of Three

So here is how a VM page is made. This is a 3 part little blog, with screenshots. Basically each page takes anywhere between 5-8 hours to do. It depends on how complicated the page is. But usually it is spread out over the week. (And it actually takes
longer depending on what I'm watching at the same time, and how distracting it is!).

The first part covers the base scan in, clean up, and base colors of a panel. The second part is the fine-tuning, color completed, panels finished, and part 3 is the lettering and balloons.

I don't know if this is interesting to anyone, but hey, it was fun for me to do.

Outspoken!-Compass Interview

Yay Traci! A neat look into the mind of my fellow creator Traci Spencer over at the Girlamatic website. (Take the link on the right there) You can tell how much Traci loves her characters because you see them grow with her-both as an artist and as a person-and at the core-you have well defined characters and personalities, and that never changes even though the character's looks or styles change. Her characters have a lot of heart.

I've gotta say, since doing a comic online in itself is pretty solo work, it's great to have people to talk to that you've never met! It's pretty wild.

Ahhh-the week is almost over. (Yay!!!!) So quick work aside-I've now learned about how to outfit television production teams going international. And yes-they're the most stressful-because you never know what kind of natural elements they'll be going up against, and you see damages to thousands of dollars of equipment that you never see anywhere else. I mean-things like 98% humidity, flooding, rampaging monkeys, (I'm not kidding about that last one either). It sort of makes my head hurt. Therefore-I medicate myself with a constant supply of grande vanilla lattes and sweetarts. I can therefore pick up the phone when someone calls me at 11:00 at night from Africa asking me about camera operation. This also leeways into my need for a vacation-and I'm thinking SF-for sure! And maybe New York city! (Little New York and Big New York respectively!)

Okay, now I have to go get teams ready for Costa Rica and Florida. But, I'll be dreaming about my potential vacation as I do so.