Our abbreviations so far:

LT = Lady Tanya
aka :superpower-pnut:
Member of the Apple Corps.

CW = Cattleworks aka uh, Me!

AC = The Apple Corps.
An informal group of artists who try to meet weekly in Western New York (WNY) to work on:
1: Their drawing skills.
2. Personal art projects.
3. Ultimate goal, to produce and self-publish a joint comic book of their work.
Currently, membership consists only of LT and Cattleworks (uh, still me!), and is a splinter group of the CBC — actually, not so much a rebel force but actually remaining “survivors” for various reasons.
NOTE: Correct pronunciation is the “Apple (CORE)”, which is actually the correct pronunciation of the word “corps,” anyway, not (CORPSE), which some may think. I bring this up because the name was intended partially as a pun, since LT and I were also remaining members ("core," get it?) of a larger group, the CBC.

CBC = The Comic Book Club
aka The Crabapple Club, the Crabapples, the Crabapplers
An informal group of artists who used to work together at GAG: Dan, Josh, Will, Lady Tanya and Cattleworks. Since its inception, they attempted to meet weekly to discuss and work on their goal of self-publishing a joint comic book together, with a minimum goal of 10 pages per story.
Dan (artist) and Josh (writer) were co-creating a story together.
Will, LT and CW were each writing and drawing their own stories.
Eventually, circumstances kept affecting the consistency of the whole group meeting together, including some transportation issues and some life issues (for instance, Will moved away, Dan started a T-shirt business from home and things got too busy for him, and several times CW had some conflicts schedule-wise, so he (er, I... dammit!) was just a no-show, etc.).
Eventually, we met less and less, and eventually, it just evolved that LT and CW started meeting a couple times together when the others couldn’t, and then that became the norm, and finally, the CBC just fell to the wayside and the AC was formally running on its own.
But, this was was mostly an evolution due circumstantial developments rather than a personality/idea clash or break-up.
Note: Since the CBC’s inception, only two members still work at GAG as of this writing (uh, I’m pretty sure…: Dan and Josh. Also, Josh got married and Dan just announced his engagement.

GAG = Great Arrow Graphics
A hand silkscreened greeting card company in WNY, where all the original members of the CBC worked and met. Some would say the unintentional acronym of “GAG” is appropriate.

ADAD = A Drawing a Day
My attempt to improve my drawing skills by doing, well, a drawing a day.

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The Apple Corps! ISSUE 0: “A New Beginning or the Same Old Same Old?”

Last night, LT and I had our weekly AC meeting at Wegman’s café.
As usual I was dog tired by the end of the meeting. Part of it is because I start work earlier at 7:00am, so without a nap or anything in between work and the meeting, the day usually catches up with me.
But the last couple days I’ve been particularly juvenile in my approach to my sleeping schedule.
Monday and Tuesday night, I was up ridiculously late, supposedly “doing stuff” on the net, but really, I was mostly staying up late, and man, I was in crappy shape Tuesday, but I was REALLY hurting by last night.
So, my apologies to LT for being less than animated, or even conscious, last night towards the end of the meeting.

I was working on this drawing I started last week, that I originally hoped to finish in a day (in fact it was supposed to be ADAD No. 2, but of course, it’s just dragging on and on like everything else I start.
Well, I tried to rectify some things when I came home last night, by pretty much trying to go to bed immediately.
I went to bed before midnight (much better than 4 in the morning, that’s for damn sure).
I had to wake up to switch cars in the driveway at 6:45am when my wife was leaving for work, but I have the night shift tonight, so after I did the car switchy thingy, I went back to sleep. This is also unusual, because usually for some reason or another, I get up when my wife goes to work anyway, but even when I need more sleep, I have a bad habit of going on the net and staying up. So, I’m just a juvenile jerk all-day-round.
But this time, I actually went back to sleep again. Go responsible me!
I finally got up around 10:30, 10:45am.

My one cat, Kody, was sleeping with me.
As I lay there, wondering if I was actually getting up, I picked up an old issue of The Savage Dragon lying on the table beside me. I recently picked up three more back issues in my recent goal to pick up the whole SD collection: issues 24, 25 and 82.
I happened to be reading issue 25 this morning ( a“Double Issue!” which actually looked like two issues inside, not just one big issue. The second issue was written by Erik Larsen, but Keith Giffen gets "plotter/storyteller" credits and Jeff Matsuda did pencils and Terry Austin did inks. Matsuda and Austin also did the cover.
I’m curious if the original intention by Larsen was to print this particular issue as one double issue or he originally was going to have (what would have been) #26 just be done by Matsuda and Austin.
I’m wondering this because as I read these old issues, when I go to the letters pages in back, I get a sense that deadlines were still an issue, that sometimes the books still came out late. So, I wonder if Larsen tried to appease his fans by saying, okay, this book was late, but look, it’s a double issue, so at least it’s well worth the wait!
There have been a few larger issues during the run that I’ve seen in my haphazard acquisition of SD back issues, and I always thought that Larsen was always conscious of trying to keep the fans happy with either production consistency (getting the books out on time) or if circumstances undermined those plans, trying to compensate with a little something extra.
Plus, the fact that the second “issue” in this Issue #25 is not drawn by Larsen, I’m wondering if he felt that some fans may be turned off by that. So, he came up with this compromise/game plan. Because sometimes, I know one of the things that comics publishers do is print a book with one cover artist and then have a different art team inside. Sometimes it feels like a bait and switch.
But, I don’t think that was the case here. Especially since the cover is by Matsuda and Austin, as well. So, I think it may have been just a “cool idea” by Larsen to work with some other fellow cartoonists, but the double issue deal was a secondary development.

Oh, hey.
It just occurred to me: maybe he actually talks about this in the letters pages.
I’ll have to check out the issue more thoroughly and I’ll get back to you later if I find any new pertinent information.

Jeez, that was a rambling detour from the Apple Corps update, sorry.
Although, actually (and eventually), it does sort of get back to the subject intentionally.

LT was still doing inking exercises, working off some scans she did of penciled pages by Steve (Nexus, The Moth) Rude from Gary Martin’s book on inking that I lent her a few weeks ago.
She then started inking a fan art version of Yugioh (sp?) she did, which was pretty neat, actually, and not in the style she usually draws (part of that because the subject wasn’t the usual thing I see her draw, like chibis, etc.).
But her inking of her own drawing looked pretty good, too.
So, I think all this inking she’s been doing has been doing some good, simply by constant practice.
Since neither of us know what we’re doing here, regarding inking, “our” philosophy towards our attempts at applied inking techniques seems to be making it up as we go along. I say “our" in quotes because, really, LT has been the only one doing any real steady inking exercises, while I was just offering lame and ineffectual feedback to her efforts.
But, her questions pointed out how little I really know about the subject myself. I personally ink the way I ink because that’s the way I ink, not based on any instruction, so that really only takes me as far as my own instincts and very limited experience can go, which really ain’t much to sneeze at.

Meanwhile, I’m focused on just trying to draw more.
And that idea is, simply an idea, so far, it seems.
Part of that is circumstantial, but really, simply, I just don’t draw as much as I say I’m going to. And when I do, I really plod along because sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing.
One of my weaknesses (and areas I need to address) is not quickly roughing out a pose.
I've known this for a while, and its been pointed out to me in the early meetings of the CBC. I agree, but I just don't seem to agree enough to deliberately attempt to improve that situation.
As I worked on ADAD No. 2 ([link]), I thought I was improving the figure of Jheena, but then I really hated the pose/composition. Which is pretty much the foundation to a drawing, isn’t it?
So, I was wrassling with both of those issues last night.
I thought I was making anatomical and (slight) “character design” progress, but it was just very slow, and then, the whole pose seemed lame ([link]).

So, really, I HAVE to make a point of composing my figures/drawings roughly at first before investing more time into filling in and working on finishing the drawing.
Practice, practice, practice.

Also, since my compositions are coming slowly, I may alternate my “original” drawings with inking "practice drawings." LT gave me a couple extra scans of the Rude pencils she’s been working on in order to give me an opportunity at inking something.
Also, considering my recent fascination with SD, I might just redraw some panels of an old issue and ink that as an exercise, and also, to get this superhero genre out of my system.
Every time I read SD, I think I should do some superhero story, but, really, my ideas, although genre related (like exploitation, horror, lucha libre, sci-fi, etc.) don’t really involve the basic American comic superhero.
I’m just FREAKIN’ IMPRESSIONABLE.

Alright, that’s kind of where my brain is at.
Trying to follow through on my ADAD gameplan and now, supplementing it with some inking practice.
Let’s see what happens.

Oh, by the way, why the whole “Issue 0” deal?
Well, I figured the Apple Corps’ exploits earned their own “book”. But, starting with “Issue 1” seemed weird, since I’ve been discussing the club for a while already, so it seemed "misleading", like, I was saying I was STARTING here. So, starting with Issue 0 seemed like it implied a certain arbitrariness to my start. But, that’s probably just me. Anyways, next week’s (most likely) “issue”, will be No. 1, for those who clamor for such things.
But I thought I should differentiate between AC's exploits and my own , although, really, I guess they all are mixed in one larger, overlapping "Cattleworks Universe."

Heh... Cattleworks Universe.

DAMN YOU IMAGE COMICS! (Although, really, they weren’t the first, were they…

PS.
Okay, I just read a little bit more of the letters page in SD #25 and it looks like they intended the double issue all along.
Also, there is an Erik Larsen alternative cover, which is included as an interior back cover.
They shipped them out split with both covers and the alternative covers on the interior back, so no one HAD to buy both copies of the issue to get each cover.
So, cool move by Erik Larsen to do that.
This issue is actually the second in a 3-issue story arc called "Gang War". The second story in issue 25 ties in but also seems like a humorous detour as Dragon and Superpatriot fight a splinter gang of bad guys calling themselves the Body Functions. With the villains' monikers being: Cesspool, Nasal Ned, Backfire, and Belcher, you have an idea what their "super" powers might be.

Yeah.
And eww...

So, Larsen calls this issue "part 2 and a half" in his story arc, and the double issue is a nod to fans saying he should do something special for his 25th issue.
So there.

And maybe I should read a whole comic book BEFORE yakking on and on about it.

Hmmm.

Nyah.