Art Soundoff this year has been an issue. My sleep cycle has been terrible and it’s trickled down to my various projects like this website and The Clutter Reports. I hope to at least finish out November but tonight I have plans, Unless I post whenever Sunday I won’t be back until Monday.
Every Art Soundoff I’ve posted the first video of others who took part in the Art Soundoff Challenge, but this year even Jerzy Drozd and Rob Stenzinger, the two comic creators who started this micropodcast challenge, didn’t contribute this year. Except for myself the only contributor has been Owen Jollands, comic colorist for Hi-Fi. He’s only posted four and he doesn’t know how long he’ll keep them up (technically one of the rules of Art Soundoff is you don’t have to post at all) so I thought I’d bring you his four offerings. And he even replied to one of the six (I’m still ahead, Owen!) I’ve posted this year. So let’s look at what a comics professional has to say about making comics before returning to the rank amateur (me).
First, let’s meet Owen.
Here’s a sample of his work since he can’t share his work with his current setup.
(from MacGyver: Fugitive Gauntlet #4)
Despite some technical issues, Jollands manages to make his second Art Soundoff, as he discusses issues with PhotoShop (I use Clip Studio Paint) before getting into the topic of depth of field in coloring.
This isn’t a cover he worked on, it was done by Franco Riesco. It is a good example of what Owen’s talking about. They’re in a green swamp, Shaggy is wearing green, Daphne has a bit of green, and Swamp Thing IS green.
I’m still getting a hand on shading myself, but I’ve improved quite a bit. I haven’t done anything yet with this kind of division necessary, but it’s good advice. In the third video Owen discusses learning Maya 3D before responding to one of my Art Soundoff entries on mental health breaks while discussing his physical health concerns after a recent injury. It seems needing one has coincided with Art Soundoff, which hasn’t benefited my participation this year, but it made for a good topic for both of us. I’ll take whatever wins I can, folks.
What will help my mental health is not needing any more surgeries…and maybe a good masseuse but I can’t afford that at the moment.
(the cover to MacGyver: Fugitive Gauntlet issue #3)
In his final (unless he does some more in the next week) entry for 2022 Owen goes over more Maya discoveries and talks about being a parent as well as a colorist.
You can catch more of Owen Jollands (if he posts more, but check out his channel because he also has video recommendations from around YouTube) on his YouTube channel. Hopefully he figures out how to share his second monitor so he can show off his coloring techniques as well. Also hopefully, I’ll have a few more before November ends.
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