Base14 » Comics

Happy Third Birthday, Rightfield!

Tyler — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:24:31 +0000

Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary of the debut of the comic strip Rightfield, the most ambitious comic franchise that Base14 has ever undertaken. Featuring the comedic exploits of Sam the Human, Phil the Platypus and Glitch the Robot, Rightfield was designed to follow well-developed characters through a major story arc, giving readers more than just a daily chuckle. On August 21st, 2006, the following three-panel cartoon was published in nearly 20,000 copies of the Purdue Exponent Newspaper.

This was at best a crude beginning, and as a comic artist, I was still feeling my way into the art form. But working to publish five hand-drawn strips a week meant that I would rack up experience quickly, and the quality of the strip steadily improved. By the end of the Fall Semester, the strip was consistently demonstrating solid craftsmanship and concepts.

The story continues after the break.
By the beginning of 2007, I had progressed from pencil-drawn strips to full inking, and also began implementing additional line weight and stroke variations. During this time, between January and March, Rightfield entered what could be considered its “Golden Era.” Following is one of the most memorable strips from that time.

Halfway through the second season, however, the attention of the company began to shift from Rightfield the comic to Rightfield the movie. Indeed, our ambitions were set on capturing the top prize for an animated film at the local Purdue Digital Cinema Contest. So, piggybacking off the success of Rightfield, Base14 decided to make an animated prequel, chronicling Phil’s first attempt to take over the world. The result took over 150 man-hours to make and successfully reached its goal of First Prize in Animation at the Purdue Digital Cinema Contest and First Prize in Animation at the Indiana University Iris Film Festival!

Unfortunately, the promotion of Biological Warfare Ain’t Easy led to the eventual downfall of Rightfield the comic. Two weeks before the film was set to premiere, we (somewhat unwisely) decided to publish this comic to get fans excited about the upcoming movie. Of course, this led to controversy surrounding the advertisement-like nature of the strip; since the movie was getting advertising it wasn’t paying for. An apology apparently wasn’t good enough, and the newspaper staff canceled the comic and terminated any associated Exponent staff. (i.e. I got fired.)

But this story does have a happy ending. Creating the movie sparked my fascination with digital animation, which led to the production of Ara, which led to the production of Duck ♥ Teslacoil. And that’s been going pretty well. So as we celebrate three years since Rightfield began its ambitious run, we also celebrate what was to be the catalyst for a new direction of storytelling for Base14. And hopefully one day, I’ll get around to actually making the entirety of Rightfield available in a published book form. Until then, pay a visit to the Rightfield website and remember what once was between and man and a platypus.

Magic’s In The Air

Tyler — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:33:55 +0000

I’ve been kicking this idea around in my head for some time now, so with the Half-Blood Price out in theaters as of 12:01am yesterday, I thought I’d be a good time to finally draw it. Actually, if already you’ve seen the movie, this should look pretty familiar. If you haven’t, reading the comic should sum up about half the movie’s plot. No, seriously.

This was the first time I’ve drawn Base14 characters on a Wacom Cintiq. I think the sketching phase went really well, as I expanded on what design elements were successful in last week’s comic. The third panel has especially nice depth and forms. But something went wrong in the clean-up phase. The line quality isn’t effective and the color palette isn’t very cohesive. I’m working with source art that’s now 16 times as big as the final web comic (for eventual book printing), so I haven’t fully adjusted to the best brush sizes to use when inking. I’ll work on that.

Happy Birthday, America!

Tyler — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:09:06 +0000

I hope everyone had a good Fourth! Here at Base14 we wanted to celebrate the holiday by tossing our hat into the ring of recent political activity. The result is the comic below.

Today’s comic probably took longer to make than any other Base14 comic prior, but the extra effort shows! What also shows is the effect my 2D animation classes are having on my drawing abilities. Compare today’s comic to that of the typical comic from last season. There’s a very noticeable improvement in character aesthetics, line quality and three-dimensional forms.

This comic also marks the first time I’ve used Photoshop CS4 to produce a strip. Already I’m finding a few new time-saving features to be well worth the upgrade:

Canvas Rotation – Allows me to draw from angle angle I like. For example, I tilted the canvas 15° to draw the birthday cake. From my point of view it was level, but when the canvas was righted again, the cake was tilted. Nice!
Brush Resize – There’s a new, super slick way to resize brushes on the fly. Now with the brush tool selected, all I need to do is hold down Alt/Option and drag horizontally with my right mouse button. And if that wasn’t handy enough, I can also adjust the hardness of my brush by holding down Alt/Option+Shift and dragging. It’s way faster than the old bracket keys.
Birds-Eye View - Several tools in Photoshop CS4 now are spring-loaded, meaning if you hold down a shortcut key, you will switch to that tool only as long as the key stays down. Then you switch back to you previous tool. This is how panning has worked with the space bar forever, so Adobe added an extra function when you hold down the “P” key. It switches to a “Birds-Eye View” of the entire document, allowing you to reposition your screen like on the navigation panel. This is very useful when I’m colorizing, and need to jump around to different parts of the document to sample colors.

Certainly Photoshop CS4 will be a boon to drawing Base14 Comics in the future. Now I just have to wait for SCAD to put it on all the lab machines, so I can utilize it on those lovely Cintiqs!

So Long, Vista

Tyler — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:34:42 +0000

Microsoft made some interesting moves earlier this week, first by offering free upgrades for consumers buying Vista-equipped computers from now until the Oct. 22nd Windows 7 release, and then by slashing the price of Windows 7 upgrade pre-orders on Amazon.com in half. Apparently it has generated a bit of excitement, as Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional surged to the top one and two software spots on Amazon, respectively.

Anyhow, now that Windows Vista is living out its final days, I thought it was a good time to publish this comic. I’d like to think this is the start of a very nice series of summer comics, since they were so neglected all Spring as I finished Duck ♥ Teslacoil. If my classes stay as mellow as they’ve been going, it probably will be.

This program has performed an illegal operation.

Drawn in 260 Seconds

Tyler — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:08:46 +0000

While drawing last week’s comic, I decided to turn on my screen recording software and crank it down to capture one image of my screen every second. Then I brought it into Premiere, set it to play at a standard 30 frames per second, added some music and cut out a few lull periods where I was fiddling around with dialog boxes. The resulting video is a time-lapse of the full creation process for a Base14 comic, at 30 times the actual speed! I have to admit, it kinda makes me want to start time-lapsing everything I do. Enjoy!

On The Origin Of Theories

Tyler — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 02:10:24 +0000

Alright, I admit, this comic is a day too late. But I just couldn’t give up the idea so easily. The public must be aware of this suspicious coincidence — and what it might mean to all mankind!

Oh, and did you know today was the last day to pre-order a kite shirt from Base14? Heck, if you hurry up and email Alysha right now, I bet she’ll still take it. If I can be a bit late, you can too!

For score and seven government conspiracies ago…

First Impressions

Tyler — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:16:23 +0000

Happy New Year everybody! I hope you’ve been enjoying Alysha’s posts as of late, she’s done an excellent job featuring some of her recent projects and taking some pressure off me as I work feverishly to finish up the animation on Duck ♥ Teslacoil. Things are going well, with more on that later.

But back to today’s post – let’s face it, we’re long overdue for a new comic! So for everyone trudging back to class this week, I offer what may be some familiar insight.

“Shall I begin with you hideous appearance or sobering ignorance?”

A Dangerous Combination

Tyler — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:09:53 +0000

While posting today’s comic, I would just like to remind everyone that Base14 now has our own Twitter feed! If you love tweeting about, be sure to take follow of every new move the company makes. Oh, and watch out there, Midwest. I understand something called snow is whirling about. We’ve never heard of that here in Savannah.

Clueless as we came?

The Gauntlet

Tyler — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 06:00:49 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’ve been trying to release new comics on Fridays, but since this one is holiday-related, I thought I could deliver it a day earlier. In hindsight, I find it odd I wrote a Thanksgiving comic with no reference to turkeys… because those are dang funny birds. Ah, well… enjoy!

“Look at you, you’re nothing but skin and bones! Better make that four.”

Bailout, Please!

Tyler — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:34:57 +0000

I can’t stop reading the news these days. It’s just too readily available. So naturally many of my ideas pop out of what’s going down in Washington. This comic has a lot of Rightfield in it… in the character’s poses and expressions. That and the kid looks an awful like a young version of “The Guy Who Comes to Every Meeting but Never Contributes Anything” from this Rightfield strip. Haha, I love that.

Looks like no enchiritos today.