Puppets: A Graphic Novel

Puppets Comic Series

2012-01-18T21:01:00.001-08:00


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War Cry

2011-11-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hi-yo, Paul Schmitt here. This web comic started as my October 2011 24 Hour Comic Challenge pencils. They are also over also at WAR Cry on Smack Jeeves. I've made and uploaded post-Challenge color pages. Five of these newer versions with these Star Trek setting/colors.

This material is 18+ Mature Horror. Rated R for boobage and blood.

The flat color layers. For five pages of inked and colored art the art still doesn't have - and lacks - lighting or shadows.

As the print editions of Roaches and Puppets are getting printed in black-and-white books it's great to use color in a story.


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Puppets: Cover Art

2011-03-30T03:17:00.000-07:00

The cover for the first edition of Puppets by Schmitt and Edwards.

Puppets is a graphic novel that revolves around a strange 9-year-old girl named Miette and the vengeance she seeks in the form of a giant concrete monster named Cement. As for production, the art is getting sorted out as inks. I plan on getting the book done for Spring of 2012.

Above is a detail of Miette. Miette, prior to being attacked by a druggie mugger in her grandfather's magic shop, was an accomplished puppeteer and built her own marionettes.

I've based Miette on two people: pre-Catalyst technical genius Norma Cenva from the new Dune books and a very young girl who was brutally murdered in the city of Cincinnati in 2009, God rest her soul.

The plan is to animate this book project after the book is released. I'm currently planning the audio elements for the animation as I complete art for the book. This is going more smoothly thanks to the writer on book Mr. Derrick Edwards of White Rabbit Books. Derrick has re-written the book into 6 chapters for this edition.

The cover for the first edition of Puppets by Schmitt and Edwards.

You read that last part correctly. The plan is to animate this book project after the book is released.

In this part of the book - Cement is surprised by another monster, the massive Blob. The Blob busily dissolves people and buildings then is confronted by the ARC equipped military forces. It/they are smashed up into smaller parts by Cement. The scene features Cement, Miette and ARC troopers and the Blob.


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Puppets: Raw Inks

2011-03-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Cement crosses the Mittman Street Bridge.

Inks are fun. I'm trying to get more of the central pieces of art, which have a lot of expressive action in them, inked after the first coloring phase which is a twist in my process which usually goes from pencil to ink to color. This time the process is pencil to color and back to inks. There's another color pass comin' as well.

Ratso is kinda psyched about stuff. Rat stuff.

Currently, I'm inking digitally over 120+ pencils. I'm finding a few tight little compositions like these, including the silhouetted hero shot for the graphic novel and animation. Yep, I did say 120+ panels. That's about 17 pages.

ART FYI: Adobe Illustrator accepts Photoshop PSD Layers when the PSD is imported with the "individual objects" setting checked in AI. PSD Layers for color/detail/lighting can be sent from PS into AI while keeping a sharp vector line.

My vectors/inks AND the PSD are saved in two docs: INKS.ai (illustrator) and LAYOUT.psd (the photoshop layers). The PSD started out as 9 panels then was split into 1-2 pages, saved as a "clean" PSD and Placed in a new IA file called "INKS".


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Character Sheets

2011-02-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

Miette is the main character Puppets and always in some kind of bad trouble.

These raw colors are a few steps removed from finalized panels but hey, buddies, they contain the art basics. Above, Miette is getting swarmed by giant sewer rats, the rabid followers of Ratso The Rat Man.

This charming fella is Ratso the main baddie from Puppets.

Adding hordes of small rats and having them move in a massive wave is admittedly pretty fun. Ratso rides along like Ice Man as the rat wave moves beneath his feet like a mobile escalator.

I'm having a lot of fun with Ratso and his pals.


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Blob v. Downtown

2011-02-28T02:06:00.000-08:00

The Blob, merrily eating it's way through Midtown Central City.

Cement is surprised by another monster, the massive Blob. The Blob busily dissolves people and buildings then is confronted by the ARC equipped military forces. It/they are smashed up into smaller parts by Cement. The scene features Cement, Miette and ARC troopers and the Blob.

There's two principles (Miette, Cement) plus 1 Kaiju (Blob) plus misc. ARC soldiers (7-12 of them firing ARC's) and tanks (3-4) to animate here. That's a total of like 14-19 plates spinning around at once, minus the flames and smoke!

In the script, the Blob bellows when hit by small arms fire or by Cement - like a heavy bass meant to rock small film fest theaters. Each time one of the blobs are hit they sound off as a herd with the bass's pitch and volume relative to the size of each blob. The "central" and largest "main" blob would always be the deepest sounding bass with the smaller blobs sounding different.


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Cement and Miette

2010-06-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

Early production art from Puppets with Cement and Miette.

Early production art for Puppets blocking out the basics of form, grayscale tone and scale. Cement is 6 stories/65 feet tall and Miette is barely 4 feet tall so getting them into the same shot/frame was one of the first challenges.

Reviewing Godzilla, King Kong and Gamera movies (which I somehow have all of which on VHS and VCD) saved me a great deal of time. Looking at the composition of the screaming crowds or Faye Wray and Naomi Watts has helped me structure my shots and lay out.

On the Mittman Street Bridge Cement faces off against Ratso and his horde.

Looking at my own unlikely combination of very large and very small characters make me feel like there is a unique "middle ground" created by this combination as if the two would be radically different w/out each other's company. Miette alone would be an vague, indie Ghost World rip-off. Cement alone would be a Concrete/Godzilla clone. Together they are better.


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Miette Sheet

2010-06-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

The central character from Puppets is 9-year-old Miette.

This is a character sheet for Miette. Miette is the co-hero of the Puppets graphic novel and is a very strange, little 9-year-old girl who seeks her vengeance in the cold, cruel city of Centropolis.

In the book she is mostly frowning, dejected and unhappy due to the events that surround her. I thought it would be a would be a good change to have her happy in this character sheet.

9-year-old Miette meets up with Cement for the first time.

This book is tentatively scheduled for a frist edition print in Spring of 2012 and will be in local book and comic stores in the Greater Indianapolis area.


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Cement Art

2010-06-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

On the Mittman Street Bridge Cement moves Miette to safety.

Cement the Giant Monster belongs to Miette for reasons revealed in the graphic novel. From an art standpoint, the gray goliath has gone through some recent re-tooling into something closer to a 60's era Mole Man Monster.


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Pencils and Sketches

2010-06-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

Great Caesar's Ghost, man - this sketch is 3 years old!

Working from pages of some seriously scrubby lookin' pencils I've managed to sketch out a few key scenes in the graphic novel. These scenes revolve around a giant named Cement and a little girl named Miette as they stomp downtown area into rubble.

This book started a big pile of rats and kaiju. The characters are all sketched out.

Also, is it uncool to say "mon" a lot? I mean, if I am a white, middle-class cartoonist from Indiana? No? Ok, then. Fasten them selt-belts, pards. It's on like Cheech Marin said. Bad-ass galore and a inverse mohawk. Some fella, hear tell. "Mondo" bizarro. Internet viewing audience.


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