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Jeysie — Outro Mosaic Original artwork
Published: 2008-07-09 23:57:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 1092; Favourites: 6; Downloads: 43
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Description
This is the original artwork by for the Outro for the Anniversary Project.We ended up not being able to use it for "editorial reasons", but I hate seeing good artwork not being able to get shown, so with Tramp's permission I gave it one of my amateur lettering jobs (eheh) and uploaded it. Hope you enjoy seeing what might've been...
Edit: OK, hopefully that's a little better. Smaller lettering placed more in the panels, swapped the credits around, cropped off the bottom a bit since there's nothing to put in the empty space there without the Mosaic logo being used.
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Comments: 39
I thought the art style looked familiar. I'm a fan of Tramp-Graphics' female Autobot art -- I like how he actually makes them look like they Transform into something.
Good job on the lettering. Word bubbles are a lot harder to organize than people realize, believe me, I know. I'm just beginning to try toy comics myself, but I think I should probably wait until I have not just a better art program, but an actual art program peroid, before I try again. Word just doesn't cut it.
One little thing got to me about this strip -- I just can't picture Soundwave, of all 'Cons, EVER attacking sparklings, since he has a family of sorts himself. Also, why do these stories always assume that femmes and sparklings will automatically be Autobots or Neutrals? It doesn't seem to occur to anyone that Decepticons might have femmes among their ranks as well, and might have sparklings of their own to protect. No offence or anything. That's just something I've noticed.
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Thankee for the kind words on the lettering! It is tricky... mainly trying to balance placement and letter size/readability. I've been using a weird combination of Paint, Irfanview, and an old version of iPhoto Express. You could try GIMP , which is free and fairly powerful, though seriously tricky to figure out.
I've lately tried premaking my own speech bubbles and doing a lot of copy and pasting, and it looks decent enough on my recent photocomics... I've been tempted to go back and re-letter some of these old ones. You could try that route, too.
As for the theme of the strip... I certainly don't have any problems with Decepticons having femmes and sparklings. But the general idea intended was that these are civilians. Not Autobots or even Neutrals (who always seemed implied to me to have left the war as a deliberate choice but are not necessarily unwilling to be trained to fight if threatened), but simply people who have no business being in the war at all even as protectors, and were looking to just live their own lives.
That was really the intention of my script... the idea that in this burgeoning civil war where the rest of the Mosaic project dealt with all the named characters choosing their sides, these are the people left over having their lives torn apart by both sides choosing to fight each other with them trapped in the middle. And I've always seen the media/news journalists as being the bridge between a war and the civilians.
And as stereotypical as it is... the sight of femmes and sparklings does say "non-combatants" more readily than the sight of mechs does (especially since with TFs you can't distinguish with civilian-looking clothing the way you could a crowd of male humans, say).
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Well, putting the credits in the bottom margin is fine, that was what I intended. Only the title was supposed to go in the panel. The large bottom margin is proper. That's actually how the Blue Line comic book pages I use are designed. Having a top margin larger than the sides, does not balance the image. It makes it bottom heavy, and that is poor design. I intended the art to have the stock margins. At full 11x17 inches, that means 1/5 on the top and sides, with 1-1/2 inches on bottom. The original margins are necessary for proper balance.
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Well, most comics I've seen have the layout designed to have even borders all around, even at the bottom.
In this case, the art was balanced upward to leave room for the Mosaic logo. Since that's not being used, it makes sense to compensate somehow so it still looks good as a finished product viewed on the web. (As opposed to it being obvious there's something missing.)
But, your call, I guess.
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They do that by having longer panels, taking the artwork down to the 16" mark rather than 15". While you can do that even with the Blueline sheets, the main type still remains within the 10x15 image area. The lettering does look much better.
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Thanks. 
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For lettering, I use Adobe InDesign. It's one of the best page layout programs there is. That, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator are the key programs I use in my work as a graphic designer, and illustrator, and even for comic pages. They're expensive, but well worth every penny.
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Yeah, I've gotten to tinker with all of those before at my old graphic design shop, since the artists used them constantly. They're good programs.
Just in my case... well, heck, go look at the few drawings I have here in my gallery. My style looks like it belongs in a kindergarden coloring book. 
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*types guiltily* i hadn't even given moonracer's appearance a second thought as to its being a potential source of content-dispute. sorry for unwittingly adding to any frustration for this piece, madam and sir. hopefully, it was just a case of their paying closer editorial attention one day and less so the next, due to sheer volume.
thank you for the kind words, tramp. i agree with you that fembots really were in origin (twice over), even if just in cameo-form, and should've been allowed to remain. their presence here makes for more impactful drama, as there is now the families-in-peril situation to consider, et cetera.
this piece would've worked well as the closer.
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See, I didn't want you to feel bad. *gives friendly poke* It's not your fault, and you didn't know, so you don't need to apologize.
But, yeah, Tramp pretty much summed up why I wanted to have fembots in there. Although I left it open in my script, in the back of my head I too thought that the idea of "couples" was a good way to instantly mark the civilians as being such.
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Thanks for the kind words Pietre. That was exactly the reason why I did include families because it does add more emotional impact and firmly establishes those characters as CIVILIANS. The "replacement" piece does not really show that. The "civilian" characters look just like the Autobots or Decepticons. There's no way to really tell them apart from the combatants. They don't say "helpless civilian".
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Ah, the fembot issue causes you yet more trouble, eh Tramp?!
Just for the record, I think that this would've been absolutely fine as the Outro piece. The artwork is great, and I don't see what the big problem is with including female bots - I agree with what you say, that having them in there adds a whole extra emotional dimension to the story.
Anyway, thanks for posting this here, Jeysie - it's always fascinating to see how different artists interpret the same source material, and I think that Tramp's work deserves to be seen
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You're welcome. 
And it was kind of interesting seeing how different people interpreted the same script, I admit, though I wouldn't have gone through the whole thing by choice. Casey Coller was originally supposed to be the second artist picked, and I ended up seeing a rough layout from him, too (he got tied up with getting some comic work in, though, so then they picked Ivan).
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Much better, but I would have left the larger margin at the bottom. It keeps the proper proportions of a comic book page that way.
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Well, admittedly, that's confused me about the new Mosaic dimensions. I mean, 850x1300 already doesn't conform to standard paper sizes, does it? If you go by the 96 DPI screen standard, you end up with something like 8.8 inches by 13.5 inches. And 72 DPI nets you 11.8 inches by 18 inches. So... I don't get it.
I remember people complaining during the cover contest because drawing on standard-sized paper netted them scans that didn't fit properly into the 850x1300 guidelines...
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The proportions are proper for the Mosaics, the size isn't. It's actually larger than standard comic book size. The full page size is 11x17 with a 10x15 image area. The final printed size is 60% of that size in that proportion. The final printed size is 6-5/8" x 10-1/4". The Mosaics are 8.5" X 13". Same proportions just bigger overall.
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Aah, OK, that makes a little more sense. Well, hrm. I guess I could add the extra space back in... just that having lopsided empty space looks... well... lopsided.
Admittedly, I always tend to think of the Mosaics as web-only things... printing is more a potential nicety than something you worry about.
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As long as the large margin is on bottom, it's good layout. The top margin is always the smallest and should never be large than the side margins or bottom margin. If you look at a lot of matted paintings, the bottom margin of the matte is larger than the top and sides. You'll often find the artist's credits there too on occasion. As a rule, for vertical pieces, either all margins are the same size, image area allowing, or the the top and sides are the same size with the bottom margin being larger. It's better for the image to be raised higher on the page than be low on the page.
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Addendum: I could tell that the top margin ought to be the same size as the sides, but the large empty space at the bottom made me go "ugh" looking at it. Part of why I initially put the credits in it, since I can't use the Mosaic logo (which would solve the problem visually).
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I suppose it's that I'm a dull neatnik... I like balance/symmetry. Unevenness looks wonky/inelegant to my eye unless the entire piece purposefully has a off-kilter style.
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One thing on the lettering and layout Jeysie, the title and credits were intended to go inside the first panel, not above it. either over Rewind's head or inside the view screen.You'll never see me lay out a page with a large top margin. The Mirage Mosaic was changed against my will using a low resolution copy I had sent. It's not the original lettering and layout. The lettering in panel four should also be completely within the panel. There has to be at least a .25 inch margin around the image area. All type must remain within those margins. Otherwise, when a piece is printed and trimmed to size, the type can get cut off. As a rule, you never take type all the way to the edge of a page and the bottom margin is always the largest.
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I should say I will swap the credits if I end up having the fonts to redo it. That's a better wording.
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I had considered putting the credits in the first panel, but decided to treat it as if it were a "real" Mosaic and go by what seems to be the new standard with the credits and title at the top. If I can redo it, I might swap it, though.
And yeah, I know ideally the text shouldn't "bleed" out like that, but since I don't have a small enough font it was either arrange it like it is now or cover up most of the art, since the panel is really a bit too small for the amount of text that needs to go in it.
Hopefully I can find a more suitable font on a repository I found that's smaller and try redoing it... although Rewind's dialogue still likely is going to have to not quite fit within the top and bottom of the panel (the rest will hopefully fit better on the sides, though).
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Fonts can be resized. They aren't set to a particular size. For my comic page body copy, I tend to set my point size at about 9 points. It's a definitely good first try though.
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Well, this font was set to 10 pts... if I set it down to 8 it started getting into "magnifying glass" range, especially with the lowercase text for the "background" dialogue. And 9 pts wasn't enough of a size savings to be worth it.
But, I should have phrased it that I don't currently have any fonts still clearly readable at 8 pts or smaller that aren't boring-looking (Arial and such).
I used to work as a secretary in a graphics design shop a few years back, so I absorbed a tiny bit of basic knowledge on illustration stuff. (I also can do random things like apply vinyl to signs and bind books that are pretty much useless in any other environment... XP )
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Have you tried adjusting the horizontal scaling?
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Nah, I don't have any image program that lets me adjust the kerning/spacing/etc. Well, not one I can figure out how to use, anyway. (I have Paint Shop Pro 7, but the interface and menu options all kind of make me go "WTF"?)
Doesn't matter, though, I think I figured something else out.
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Jeysie pretty much nailed the "editorial problems". The issues mainly stemmed from the Intro piece which was written by Neko, and which had Neko's approval. The issue stemmed from my refusing to remove the female Autobots because they are part of Megatron: Origin, and do belong in these Mosaics. Given that Pietrestan's Powerglide piece included Moonracer, and it made it through, makes the issue even more of a slap in the face.
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Yeah. I didn't want to say anything because it's not Pietre's fault and I didn't want him to feel bad, but I did kind of think that myself too about Moonracer. I felt like, "So what on earth was all the fuss about us, then?"
I wouldn't have cared about taking out Optimus, really, if we'd known ahead of time, but I liked having the fembots in the piece.
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I don't blame Pietre. He did exceptional work.
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hey Jey...
*beats long-expired equine*
what was the editorial problem with this artwork again? no sweat if rehashing the story for my sieve-like memory is too much. i can also sort through old e-mail.
funny also that you say "amateur-lettering,"
thought you were going for a type-writer / newsprint thing here, no ?
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Forgot to address the lettering, heh.
Yeah, that's more or less what I was going for, trying to find a newsprinty-type font (plus, admittedly I don't have any comic-book-y fonts anyway...) I put a fake paper-texture under the dialogue and tried to make the narration boxes look like "news tickers", borrowing from Tramp's gradients.
Mainly, I just wish I had some fonts that were smaller but still readable. But I did find a repository of fonts to look through today, so maybe I can find something more suitable and redo it. (I like the effect of the font I used for the credits, but it doesn't look good at tiny sizes.)
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I'm not 100% certain, since most of the discussion happened out of my "earshot", but the gist, I think:
1. They didn't like seeing Optronix/Optimus portrayed as fighting since it conflicted with someone else's script in some way they didn't specify.
2. They didn't like the idea of seeing fembots as Autobots or normal civilians because they interpreted Arcee as being the only one - or at least the others also being experiments of some sort - and wanted to ignore the cameos in Origin.
So, in short, we had to match continuity to stuff we weren't allowed to know about beforehand, and write/draw to someone else's personal canon that we also didn't know about beforehand. Bleh.
It's not that I mind matching up to other people's personal creative stuff, it's that, if there's other things to consider besides just canon, I'd rather know before I spend my time, y'know?
And seeing as how Robot1979 had his own issues (he told me recently there actually was other problems than just the colors), well, I don't know how Jamie felt about it all, but most of the people who worked on this didn't come away very happy.
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Interpreting Arcee as the only female doesn't even make a lot of sense. Her words to Jetfire and Fort Max in her Spotlight was that she was Jhiaxus' "first" attempt to introduce gender into the race, not the only. It's entirely possible Jhiaxus made further attempts that integrated more successfully. Thus, fembot appearances in this Mosaic and Megatron Origin don't have to be an error.
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Oh, I definitely did disagree with the Mosaic Head Guys' take that the fembots should be taken out, and had quite the discussion regards it, before finally deciding that a project I wasn't getting paid for just wasn't worth all the crap and just said, "Fine, whatever".
But their take is entirely possible, and it was their project. I just want to know about restrictions like that before I start writing/developing, not afterwards. The fact that they changed their minds and were OK with fembots in another Mosaic didn't help my mood regards them and the matter any.
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It looks awesome with that artwork. Shame it could not be included.
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Yeah, as much as I like and very much appreciate what ~Robot1979 eventually did for the Mosaic... I really was perfectly content with this original art and would have rather been able to use it. It would have made life a lot more simple at the very least... :/
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I thought I had seen the story with different art. There it is!
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Yeah, sorry to be confusing. It was this art that couldn't get used, but the story itself got in, just redrawn.
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