Archcomix by Dan Archer » comic

Wrongful Conviction, part 4

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:51:00 +0000

To read from the start of this harrowing true story about one man’s wrongful incarceration on death row, click here.

Wrongful Conviction part 3

admin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:19:15 +0000

Ray Krone’s tragic true story continues. To read from the start, hit “previous” twice won’t you.

Wrongful Conviction Preview pt.2

admin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:18:29 +0000

Extract from my latest comic on the wrongful conviction of Ray Krone, who spent several years on death row for murder before being acquitted. To read the whole preview in page by page format, sign up for the latest Archcomix newsletter.

Hot off the Drawing Board

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:35:23 +0000

In the build-up to a bumper deadline December, it’s been all hands on deck at Archcomix HQ, as the inked bristol slowly piles up on my desk. So as a taster to hold you over until next month when I can reveal what I’ve been up to, here’s a pencil (run through an iphone filter) of John Giles, the (anti)hero of my Alcatraz comic for the National Parks Conservancy Trust. See the Alcatraz page for more details. If you’re interested in how the pencils turn miraculously into inks, then check out my new time-lapse video on you tube by scrolling down (new users to the site: news is below the “fold”, under this here header announcement, and free comics are accessible through the drop-down menus above and via the buttons in the sidebar to the right).

I’ve also added some recent sketches to my flickr stream – check them out and follow my photostream here. And just in time for the festive season, check out my prints section and order some original artwork for the art lover/comic artist/discerning aesthete in your life – all come signed (with dedications optional).

Inking at 800 times Faster than Usual

admin — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:21:05 +0000

A brief video intermission from the wishful thinking dept today – something to keep you sated until I can officially point you towards some of the myriad projects that have kept me busy for the past months. By busy, I mean manacled to my drawing board. This is from my upcoming comic on Alcatraz and will give you an idea of the new noir-ish style I’ve moved towards. Drybrush aplenty. Now if only I could speed up my inking process this easily…

Audio from the Comics Journalism Panel @APE and Alcatraz preview

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:52:47 +0000

Ok, so it’s been a while since my last update – I can happily report it’s because I’ve been juggling deadlines for the past few weeks. That, and being at San Franciso’s Alternative Press Expo and starting a new semester back at Stanford teaching the graphic novel project. For your aural delight here is the recording from the panel I moderated at APE on “Exploring Comics Journalism”. Thanks to Matt Bors, Susie Cagle and Jen Sorensen for their contributions.

As ever, the fruits of my recent labours will be posted soon, but you’ll have to wait a little longer for now. What better opportunity could you want for perusing the archived non-fiction comics waiting for you behind the tabs at the top of the screen? Hover over them and then choose a comic to read from the drop-down menu.

In the meantime, above are some panels from my current project in progress on Alcatraz – check out the Alcatraz page for more details and the story behind them.

Explaining the Financial Crisis on Marketplace: An animation and comic

admin — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:10:13 +0000

Pardon the brief hiatus, but I’ve spent the last little while with my head down working through the historical record with Paddy Hirsch, Senior Editor at Marketplace, on ways to make the financial crisis easier to understand and accessible to the general (ie. non-economically-minded) public. The fruits of our labour are now up online at Marketplace to coincide with the 3rd anniversary of Lehman Bros’ collapse - check out the 2 minute animation below and the rest of the comic here.

EPGY Comics Showcase: part 1

admin — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:02:00 +0000

As promised, see below for a brief sampler of the anthology produced by students in my recent graphic novel course at EPGY. This preview features work from Beiatrix Pedrasa and Heywood Ye – all the more impressive considering they only had 12 days to put their stories together. More previews will be posted shortly, so support this new generation of visual storytellers and come back/share the link/tweet/shout it from the rooftops etc.

Open publication – Free publishing – More comics

The Hardhat Challenge

admin — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:00:35 +0000

Now that spring break is here, I’m hunkering down (yes, old worlders, I’ve been in the US too long) to get the first part of my graphic novel, Hardhats, done once and for all. Problem is, the more me and Nikil revise it and check for edits/inconsistencies, the longer it seems to become. So now I’m on the last page – just wrapped up the penultimate page this afternoon (I’ll scan in a few pages for your viewing pleasure now), but I still have a redraw to do before I tackle minor edits. One of the stranger things about embarking on a project of this length is the fact that I have to rein in my drawing style to how it was when I originally started this, way back in 2009. I’ve come a long way since then, preferring my 0.3 micron to my once favourite Pentel brush pen, so I find myself straddling the older style so as not to disconcert the reader.

NB the meticulously clean work area

To mix things up, I’ve also finally got around to working on my mashup of Goya’s The Shooting of May 3 1808, which you can see to the right of the pic (experimenting with how well bristol board takes watercolour washes. Results thus far: not so well). My take, if you can make it out, swaps out the spanish and napaloenic troops for iraqis and private contractors – a precursor to my nisour square interactive piece (also in the works), which I’ve mentioned in previous posts.

End of Term Interactions

admin — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 02:52:42 +0000

There’s nothing quite like the race to the end of term to catalyse a depth-charge of creativity. The past few weeks have been busier than normal as I’ve spent hours hunched over final cut and flash (as opposed to the drawing board and scanner), busily hashing out my first mini-interactive documentary site (produced with fellow Knight Madhu Acharya), on Bhutanese refugees and their integration into the Oakland community. The screenshot above gives you an idea of the homepage layout, which in the final published version allows you to choose different chapters of the story to explore. I’m currently tying up loading/streaming issues with the FLV files, but aside from that I think it’s good to go.

Now that I’ve got to grips with Final Cut and Flash, I can move to phase 2 of my project, namely combining video and audio within comics pages to give online readers an interactive multimedia comics experience as they explore news events. Looking back at the “to do” list I put up at the end of January, I’m pleased to say that I’ve hit all the goals:

Seda’s Interview, Pulse Interview and the Bhutan Doc are now all done and dusted
I’ve finished my Bear Stearns Financial Crisis cartoon in Flash, just have to wrestle with pesky sound levels
I’m delighted to say that Cartoon Movement will be running my Blackwater interactive comic, probably around May
I’ve presented my interactive comic web app (using sample pages from the history of Pakistan piece) to the folks at Google news – more news on that front to come
I’ve inched closer to finishing Hardhats, but have hit upon the bizarre hurdle that the more I trim and edit it, the more new pages need drawing. The goal is to have part 1 wrapped up by the end of March.

I’ll next week with news of some future projects, as well as some previews of the above – including my first experiment with text animation in After Effects.