ZX wins an award.

At this year's Comicdom Con, ZX was nominated for 'Best Fanzine'. You can see a video of the whole ceremony below. I'm the awkward person taking the award at around 8-9 minutes in and saying not very much to the microphone ("thank you very much" for you foreign barbarians). A few more thoughts after the video/jump.




The category was "Best Fanzine". In Greece, the term 'fanzine' is misused. What the term really means is a small (but not necessarily) print run publication, usually periodical (as in, there are more than one issues and they come out incrementally) whose subject is an examination of culture; Say, if I were a big fan of a football club (like AEK, or Olympiacos) and I put out 'Olympiacos Monthly' on a shoestring budget, that could classify as a fan-zine. Usually fanzines are about underground music, though. Most often punk and indie, and that's where we got the term from, as in Greece there is a tradition for the usual xerox'ed anarchopunk fanzine as there is all around the world.

Comics were gradually introduced in fanzine pages, and slowly comics-only fanzines started coming out. Again, it is valid to call something a fanzine if it's comics-only, but the comics in it deal with an item of culture. If let's say I were to put out a small run comic full of my own Superman stories, that's indeed a fanzine.

But ZX is not a fanzine in this respect. It is a privately funded small print comic book. I am not complaining or anything, in fact I am very grateful for the recognition. Just saying, for the future, the Greek scene should stop calling small press comics fanzines. Many 'proper' comics are small press as well. If the distinction is an economic one, then 'small press' is the proper term. If the distinction is a cultural one (subject matter and point of view related) then though I understand using 'fanzine' for historical reasons, there should be steps taken to use clearer terminology in the future. Self-published is a useful term.

There will be other, pertinent news in the next few weeks. This blog might be coming out of its hiatus soon.

All the best to you, readers. If there's any of you left.

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Helm is -evidently- taking some time off

Nothing after the jump.

Return here when it's time.

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Belated mixed bag

Life marches on. Here's a selection of recent illustration work, some personal scribbles and a small update of the goings on in Helmland.



(as usual, click twice for larger images)








I enjoyed some of these more than others, but I'm trying to keep my technique on a certain level regardless of the style of illustration. I'm getting faster, but I also get the feeling I should be going slower... more on this at some further point where my feelings have solidified some.

Turns out I wasn't done with Scribbler!










Some of these are lonely life-drawing studies, obviously. Others are from dream & imagination, as is more usual to me.

So I've settled in my new apartment and it's had a profound positive psychological effect on me. My distance from blogging as of late should not be interpreted as indicative of dire goings on, far the opposite, it seems I blog the most (and in the bitterest tone in Poetry of Subculture, I should add) the worse I'm feeling. Ultimately, my release from the blogosphere shall be the tolling of a new bell, yes. This blog is on the ebb because I'm not making a comic right now. The other blog is at high tide because I'm listening to Heavy Metal as much as I ever have, yet the silver key that is missing is entirely outside the artistic realm.

I've also done a very mediocre cover of Lordian Guard's 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God'. If you like this music (as well you should) and wondered how the lead voice is played, or perhaps you are a guitarist with time and ambition, you could do worse than watch this.



What else... I'm planning a short vacation to a greek island to meet up with friends I've sorely missed for the last couple of years, this is exciting. I won't be off for long, a mere four days, but it'll be revitalizing for sure.

I've been socializing a lot lately, trying to work myself into some sort of balance. This has been achieved, but I suspect it's a false balance for the weighs are uneven. I am currently single (though looking... in some fashion, I guess) and I've always done well to maintain pride and optimism when single (though my optimism manifests in dire declarations of darkest romance, such is the case with many self-important artists!) the real test is when there's common wellbeing at stake. We shall see. Studious introspection and therapeutic discourse seem to have some effect, at least. Aside from healing, self-awareness and a meta-narrative with explanational power, yes.

Today has been a very creative day. I shall try to fill the weekend either with breathing, talking faces, or with more artistry, let's not let it go to waste.

-Helm
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Move almost done, also, a few decent illustrations

Based on this illustration by Tabary. I never was the biggest fan of Iznogoud but it's one of these cases where after Goscinny stopped on it and Tabary kept going, the comic turned for the better (unlike Lucky Luke and Asterix). The more paranoiac-depressive Iznogoud gets, the best it is.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

More after the jump.




This one's actually one of the few I'm kind of pleased with, on the technical end. Again, it would stand to get another render/detail pass if I wanted it to look more convincing, but for what it is, I'm glad to have developed the skill and speed to do this sort of work.

In other news, I bought a bed and a desk and I'm moving out of here and in the new apartment, hopefully until Thursday max. I'm really looking forward to it, as we (roommate and I) have created quite a nice living space there and this is the sort of change that's good for me. I'll post a few pictures after we're done settling in.

-Helm
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Scribbled ends, more work, thoughts

As usual, click for intended sizes.



The color work is getting faster and more streamlined. I'm working under very tight deadlines. Eventually I'll become fast enough that I will be able to experiment more with formalist aspects even within those strict timeframes. I am enjoying my work more, at least. Some pieces are more painterly, others are more comic arty in their method, a good balance to keep me interested and the results relatively fresh. Now on to the last (? see below) batch of Scribbles.

Self portrait. This is probably my pick from the lot and my second favorite self-portrait on the whole. There's a slight psychoanalytical comment in this on how I use complexity as obfuscation, and therefore, as a shield. It's a reminder to untangle myself. That such a potent (for me) piece occurred through scribbling means the experiment was generally successful.


This is about details. Where the neck meets the jaw.

This is just cyberpunk faux-machinery stress relief inking. The last one I've made and the one that made me feel as if I'm done with Scribbler for now.

This isn't very good, but included for the soft approach. The program's not too suited for this.

This one was fun to do. It says "Thresholds" at the top. It's a re-imagining of a Heavy Metal album cover by the band Nocturnus, done from memory. I checked later to see how close it was. Not at all. This is also one of the rare pieces that I did where I started from a black base, hence the kind of chalky highlights and so on. Neat.

This is Roger Dean-esque stress relief. Enjoyable for me and a continuation from Scribbler_12b.png. Perhaps the ink hatching was a bit too harsh for the intended effect.

This is joyfully (or perhaps, morosely) subtitled "I am on the internet!". This little bird character has this wonderful landscape vantage from his treehouse and yet he browses.

The finality of the above theme. Trapped.

Scribbler helped in a very direct way with getting me back into drawing for pleasure. After ZX I've grown accustomed and perhaps dependent on 'perfect inking'. Great DPI, greater zoom strength, curve correction and other such OCD processes that make my inking perhaps a bit sterile. Once I got the critique "Helm, now that you ink digitally your stuff is worse" to which I replied "this is how I always wanted to ink so uh, bad luck for us both I guess". My aspiration for 'perfect lines' will never be satiated.

However this is akin to writing a book and never going on page two until the syntax and grammar (not to say the notions and thoughts) are absolutely as perfect as they can be. This is how I made ZX (more or less, nothing perfect there, but surely a struggle towards this direction) and I believe someone can write such a book if it a very important book to write, for their psychological well being.

However for faster, simpler, stress-relief work, this obsession with perfection is counter-intuitive. Scribbler helped in that it has no zoom and its mechanic for rendering is just a tad unpredictable. There has been a reconciliation with roughness in ink through it. I wonder if it'll impact my high-purpose work as well. I don't really know if I'm done with Scribbler completely, but I know that I'm done with using it every day for a while, at least. It's been therapeutic, but there's further steps to take now. I'm in the middle of moving out, life is happening!

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Scribble me that

The scribbling never ends.






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Scribble me this

This little program is really enjoyable.


More after the jump










I like it because it forces me to work directly in ink without much - non messy - method for correction, and of course because of how it behaves where closeby lines are introduced. These are chronological, so you can see how I increasingly tried to get it to behave like a regular inking tool (culminating in the image of the virginal goddess of hunt, Dianna) and how the one I did right after it (person reading book on vacation) I tried to let the capacity of the program dictate the style again. I might do more of these!

And if any of you draw anything with it, please show me.
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