January 2012
10 posts
3 tags
Benign Kingdom
The Kickstarter just launched for BENIGN KINGDOM, a publishing project I’m starting with fellow webcomics artists Yuko Ota, Becky Dreistadt, and KC Green. Four art books (the cover of mine above), one hardcover collecting the set, and the foundation of something that could be really big and exciting.
More details over here!
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More idle scifi character design
I had an idea for something about a person who has some weird interdimensional parasite take over her body bit by bit. Have a very clear idea in my head of what her arm is supposed to look like, and couldn’t quite get it right on paper…
Postcards from Space: Why Black March Is a Really... →
postcardsfromspace:
To the people proposing this:
You dumb bastards. You know who this’ll hurt? Not big media. Not on any significant scale.
No, the people this will really fuck over are the EXACT same people SOPA and PIPA would fuck: Creative professionals; small publishers; independent businesses.
If you…
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Vattu promo
One of a few new postcards I am getting printed! Need to make more of an effort to represent and brand Vattu as its own thing. And the first book is a while away from being printed, but I kind of like something like this as the cover, without text: just her in a big indistinct field of grass.
Hey I would love it if you’d read it.
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Adventurer with magic arms
Dunno about this guy or why he looks so concerned. He’s got arms made of the magic-stuff like those golem dudes.
1 tag
exile-vilify asked: Are you gonna turn your adventurer series into a new ip separate from the tales of over//underside?
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Shoveler
Another in the Adventurer series, which I guess I haven’t touched in a month. This guy is some kind of important figure or aristocrat among the ferret-people. Also I guess they often paint their nails.
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December 2011
12 posts
2 tags
Putting books together
Continuing my trend of wordless front covers for big Overside books. Will probably do that with the Vattu books too!
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Kickstarted
12 hours left on the Kickstarter to raise the printing cost of the Order of Tales one-volume book. The $14,200 printing cost is covered, and the percentage Kickstarter itself takes, and now we’re well into the territory of paying in advance for shipping out everybody’s books. Thanks everybody.
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bluebear
Quick thing, part of a proof-of-concept to myself for a thing that may or may not materialize.
4 tags
Public Domain Monster
Let’s try something! I made the above image and the intellectual property it represents: a weird turtle-monster thing. I, Evan Dahm, am putting this particular image and this monster thing into the PUBLIC DOMAIN. YOU are free to use it, copy it, claim it as your own, rework it, or do whatever you like with it. I encourage you to do so. I relinquish my ownership of this little turtle...
Anonymous asked: Hope this is the right place to ask this. I do a webcomic. My current scene is confusing some of my readers (though not all of them). Do people ever ask you to explain your comics? I'm especially thinking of Rice Boy, "Why did the rice-people cut off their heads?" and that sort of thing. How you respond? I don't want to talk down to my readers, nor do I want to appear snobbish...
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Another Golem guy
Another take on the glowy-energy-golem thing; maybe some of the fancier ones would walk around in suits that are made to look like actual people, or be slightly more ornamental?
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Guard Ferret
I drew another ferret guy he is the toughest.
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Vance the Puppet
The Best Show on WFMU is one of my favorite things and you should listen to it! It’s propelled me through some hundreds of hours of work over the past couple of years.
Vance the Puppet is a recent addition and goodness what a charmer.
Questions
Ok I’m not going to accept questions on Tumblr anymore because that ain’t what I want to use this thing for! If you want to ask questions check out my Formspring.
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Almost there...
The Order of Tales Kickstarter is over 10,000! At this rate we’ll make goal pretty soon, and if it goes over that means less out of pocket for me. Thanks everybody for your support and helping me tell everybody about this thing.
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Adventurer 4
This one is maybe a former nobleperson from a big cosmopolitan city, in self-imposed exile or something. Or maybe she’s a fugitive.
Last one for a while; I promise I got a lot of real work done today too.
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Adventurer ferret
This guy goes with the previous two; they are in the same setting or proto-story or whatever. I really like the conceit of invented-world fantasy wherein there’s several coexistent intelligent species that are archetypal and distinct… it’s the strict adherence to the Human-Dwarf-Elf system that is frustrating and tired. So maybe there is a species of little ferret-people like...
November 2011
10 posts
4 tags
Order of Tales Kickstarter
I started a Kickstarter project for the Order of Tales book a few days ago, and forgot to mention it here! It’s about halfway funded already, which is VERY EXCITING.
There will be 2,000 books and it will cost around 12,000 dollars. There’s an awkward video you can watch at the link for more details. Thanks so much for supporting the book and helping me spread the word! You are all...
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Another Adventurer
This guy is some weird energy-golem. I had an idea that some sort of glowy magic stuff could interact physically with only a certain sort of material, so suits could be made of that material for the stuff to wear to assume a sort of person-shape.
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Adventurer
This is an adventurer; I drew him.
‘BEST’ WEBCOMICS OF 2011: An Open Call for Your... →
spx:
Make your vote, guys!
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Captain Ahab
He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His whole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an unalterable mould, like Cellini’s cast Perseus. Threading its way out from among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one...
American Censorship Day
http://americancensorship.org/
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Some monsters
These are monsters I drew
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A Tiny Preview
That thing I’ve been doing preliminary work on for two years; I am finally drawing it now. This is a tiny preview of it, and I am proud of the fact I have let little to nothing else slip about it yet.
I would love it if you’d read Vattu if you hadn’t; we’re at kind of a turning point so now might be a good spot to pick it up.
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Blue Lacuna
This has been sitting on my computer half-colored for months and months! It’s a bit of fanart for Blue Lacuna, an interactive novel I really enjoyed… still the only one I’ve read/played though.
You can download the game for free right here and I recommend it! Very engrossing and well-written.
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Robot Arms
This guy has robot arms; just trying to get down a vague costume idea basically. Maybe his name is Trundle.
There is a correlate of NaNoWriMo wherein participants make one character every day through November; maybe this is that, or maybe I will give up on it within a week. I have drawn a second one but it is not colored yet.
WHATEVER at least my thousands-of-pages-long comic book will get...
October 2011
5 posts
1 tag
Future Person
Saw a lady on the subway who looked like somebody from some cyberpunk future. And Ananth has been playing the new Deus Ex game which has a black-and-gold thing going on, so I guess I was channeling that too.
5 tags
Link
Started Twilight Princess recently; I had forgotten how much I loved Zelda games! I also had forgotten how much doing warmup ink drawings helps me get into The Groove.
Twilight Princess is fun and gorgeous but also enjoys bringing to my attention how much better Wind Waker was at every turn. Wind Waker came out for the Gamecube like 3 years earlier and it holds up visually a whole lot better...
Stop making those noises.
Conventions for 2011 are over and done with and I have a whole ton of stuff to work on! Let me tell you about it:
- Get quotes for the one-volume Order of Tales book, to start production Decemberish… To receive in time for Wondercon 2012, hopefully.
- Start Kickstarter to help pay for same; finish all Kickstarter incentive stuff.
- Organize a signing/book release thing in NYC for March...
5 tags
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Starkness again
Redo, maybe, of that earlier drawing of a setting from A Voyage to Arcturus. Feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing working in grayscale!
September 2011
15 posts
3 tags
Maskull and Joiwind
God what a weird book.
Another illo for A Voyage to Arcturus, after Maskull’s arrival on Tormance and his discovery that he’s grown a bunch of weird new sensory organs. I think I’ve worked out how the art for this hypothetical illustrated book will work: gray tone over dense, textural inks, printed full bleed.
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Starkness
I few years ago I got really into the idea of illustrating and publishing an edition of the 1920 fantasy novel A Voyage to Arcturus. Just got a bit interested in working on that again, for some reason. This is a quick thing; maybe a chapter title page for “Chapter 3: Starkness.”
The entire book is available as a free audiobook through Librivox, and is in public domain.
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More Achewoods
Magnolia is drawing 50 Achewood characters in 50 days and that is very admirable but unfortunately I can only manage to put out King Philippe and Leon Sumbitches before giving up.
Anonymous asked: What will you be bringing to APE? I'm really hoping to get a copy of Making Rice Boy and maybe some prints!
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More Thinker, more Vattu
Part 2 of three of my longish shortish Overside story, the Thinker, just went online. It’s the most overtly science-fictionish Overside thing I’ve done, I think, and I’m happy with how it’s turning out.
Also there’s is a panel from Vattu lately that I think is pretty rad. Very nice to hear that people are enjoying this comic, as I am constantly consumed by...
jmcarlyle asked: My friend and I just launched our very first webcomic. Any "I wish somebody had told me this when I first started" pieces of advice?
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Angel Eye
This is the last one I am showing anybody until they’re all done I promise!
oneto1000 asked: The Fluters seem to have quite large craniums when compared to the soldiers from Sahta - does this denote a higher level of intelligence, or does the skull have a higher bone/cavity ratio?
agovernmentman asked: What is the typeface you use for the Vattu preview images?
2 tags
T-O-E on black
Have been working on some new portrait things (like these from a few months ago).
DEAL WITH IT
I just finished laying out the Order of Tales book and it is 792 pages long.
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Allosaurus
Went to the DC Natural History Museum before SPX and drew this Allosaurus skull. Spent a long time in the dinosaur section remembering that feeling I had all the time around age 8 to 12 where I could not believe how awesome it was that dinosaurs ever existed.
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Order of Tales color cover
Possible cover for the Order of Tales one-volume book, without the text at bottom of course. I love the Rice Boy book having no text on the cover, so I think this would work too? I think this would be pretty striking on the front of a 6 by 9 inch, 800-page book. And its shape suggests the nib-icon on the front of Koark’s book, which I like.
I’ve been laying out the book for a while...