It’s been one hectic half year, we’ve had to move twice, and my work load from classes has increased a large amount. Not to mention that all the computers in our home seemed to being caught in an endless cycle of breaking….

anyway. new site on the horizon. stay tuned or something.

Think of what you’ve seen thus far of JUSTITIA, as a pilot episode.

Starting on July 15th, JUSTITIA begins airing normally. First to be presented will be a very slightly retooled and recut version of JUSTITIA’s “pilot.” This will be released in larger chunks rather than the normal “three-screens-a-week” release schedule, since the content in it has been seen previously.

Week One – Screens 000a-012

Week Two – Screens 013-022

Week Three – Screens 023-030

Then, on the first Wednesday of August (August 5th), the first new arc of JUSTITIA will launch. From there on out, three new screens will premiere every Wednesday. For the time being every fourth Wednesday will be a break week, though I may get rid of this depending on how useful it is. When a month has five Wednesdays instead of four, there will be no new content on the fifth Wednesday.

Right now I’m hard at work getting several months ahead on JUSTITIA, and hopefully will have achieved that goal by the end of this month. This way, when the new arc begins in August, I’ll have a large amount of space between me and the current arc in case something prevents me from doing work on JUSTITIA within a certain week.

-Amedeo

here’s a brief look at what’s in front of me right now, and what will be in front of you some time in the next month.

stay tuned.

Playing around, trying to get a Kirby-esque look from the new brushes.

We have internet.

***

A day or so before I set up my computer, I flipped through Siviva’s copy of Making Comics (which I’ve never read before) and was very interested to read about Scott McCloud’s use of Photoshop. So a day or so later, when we got my computer all set up, I began to play around with new types of brushes in the program. As you might be aware of I’ve spent the past half year or so, playing around with just using a mouse in photoshop. And in the same way that I found using JUST a mouse very invigorating, I am finding the small paragraph of information about brushes in that book along with my Wacom tablet, to be reinvigorating in the same way.

The wonderful thing about photoshop, is it is a program which is almost naively versatile. I don’t know what the tools I use are intended to do in the context of photo correction, but I do know what I use them for. And it’s because of this, that reading a few lines of text in a book, or on someone’s website, can open up tons of new pathways in my brain. Suddenly I see new ways to use the program to achieve things new and old, in ways that yesterday would have never occurred to me.

So here are the first three things I turned out as I have played with these new Photoshop concepts.

Here I was just getting used to the brush, nothing special, just a quick doodle that wound up being of Killer Croc.

Here I began to realize that I could actually do a much better job at replicating a pencil in Photoshop than I have ever been able to in Painter.

Here I wound up with a kind of H.R. Giger-esque Two-Face, which I tried to make a Giger-y tube filled background for…but that didn’t go over so well, so I wound up doing the very boring background that you see above.

So, you may be wondering just what the hell is going on with JUSTITIA. I made that big speech about doing it no matter what and then…no, JUSTITIA.

The past few months have been extremely important, packed, ones. Every week seemed like I had too much to do on every level of life. Looking at apartments, classes, work, signing a lease for our apartment while one of us was in a completely different state… doctors, moving, computer problems, More work, more classes, my temporary computer literally breaking apart…

A lot of stuff…

It all made me remember, that originally, way back when, I was going to make a release schedule for JUSTITIA, which would allow me to build up a backlog of strips, in case I had a week or two of stuff like this. Of course, I forgot about that idea as soon as the comic began, and rather than having a “week or two” of madness, I had over two months of it, and barely got out the last few updates of JUSTITIA at all.

So, here’s what I’m doing. As of tomorrow I’m going to be without internet for a while. Instead of following all the internet shananigans, once Siviva and I have gotten everything set up at home, I’ll begin building up a month’s worth (hopefully more) of JUSTITIA screens. Then, come this July (*ahem*in July), JUSTITIA will be starting up again. I’m thinking of the first period almost like a pilot for a tv series and now that it’s out of the way, the complete series can begin (I tend to dislike the tv metaphors with regards to how comics are released ie. “season two of XXXX,” but in this case it seemed fitting!).

Thank you for hanging in there. I’m going to go set up some posts for my 0-internet access period of time now, so Ill “talk” to you all later.

-Amedeo

The other night I found myself stuck in G.I. JOE mode, and wound up doing a bunch of loose GI JOE head sketches. Since I was doing them much quicker than I usually work, they aren’t as finished looking/detailed, but I thought it was worth sharing a few of them. So, for right now, here’s Destro.

Another one of these head sketches I’ve been doing in Photoshop. They’re becoming a very helpful tool for testing out new things in the program, while drawing the things that are lingering in my head, demanding to be drawn. Today’s one is of the Green Lantern villain, Black Hand, who really doesn’t lend himself that much to a headsketch, since one of the coolest elements of his costume is his PHANTOM LIMB which becomes not-so-phantom limby as he kills folks with it…. DON’T QUESTION MY POOR EXPLINATIONS! THEY ARE FLAWLESS.

Anyway, Black Hand.

Time to get things rolling once more. Here’s a sketch of the character, Sweet Tooth, from the Twisted Metal game series. Though I don’t really play video games anymore, that series definitely left a mark on my brain….

One more tease, whilst I prepare to type out my news…. (this time, a look at the early stages of a panel from the thing which the news pertains to)

Seeing as I no longer lack a computer, there is a bit of news coming your way internet….. in the mean time…. what?! what is this???!

Those of you keeping track may have noticed that JUSTITIA has been MIA for two weeks now. I’m here to offer an explanation.

Basically, I was rather sick for the last week and a half. While I WAS able to complete what are currently the latest screens of JUSTITIA, as time progressed I was spending more and more time resting in bed, ergo no JUSTITIA last week. Then, this week I ran into some personal things which rendered me unable to complete what would have been LAST WEEK’S screens.

I’ve been a little shaky getting things up by my self-imposed deadline for the past few updates, and the last two delays have made me rethink and then rethink how I was putting work out. JUSTITIA is something that I do, because I feel like I have to do. It’s something that I’ve wanted to for several years. And while, one day it’d be nice to maybe make some money from it, as of now I make no money on JUSTITIA. I do it in my own free time, out of my own free will. And while some pessimistic/fearful part of my brain tried to interpret these delays as signs that I should take a break from doing the project at all, my heart/gut/the rest of my brain/me said ‘fuck it. let’s do this.’

I won’t lie, it’s very hard for me to stay on a weekly release schedule when I only have myself to yell at me for being slow. But I know that if I wound up taking more time, if I slowed done, if I didn’t release it EVERY week, I would slowly lose my focus and perhaps stop producing screens altogether. And I won’t allow that. Not for this, JUSTITIA is (as I stated way back when I announced it) something very important to me, and it demands and deserves the best that I can offer. That’s why I’m here right now- to apologize and more importantly to make a commitment.

The reality of the situation is this: sure, at some points along the way unforeseen events will cause the strip to be late, but I Will Not delay it when I am capable of doing work. These are my words, and I refuse to compromise them.

Thank You,
Amedeo

….it’s a secret! For now!

I was going to post the Anti-Life equation as my subject line, but I thought better of it. Better to not help spread the total and complete submission of all life to all that is DARKSEID.

Anyway, hey, here’s an actual sketch (remember those?). I’ve somehow actually managed to find time somewhere between going about my actual life and doing the SIX screens of JUSTITIA that’ll be going up this week (that’s right, it’s my project, and I’ll plug it where ever I damn well please) to do an actual, honset-to-god sketch.

My one regret with this, is that I did not manage to fit in the wonderful Ω insignia somewhere into this sketch of the recently re-designed DARKSEID.

FIRST OFF, this week’s JUSTITA…

If you’ve noticed a slight difference in the way the new panels look, well buddy, have I got news for you. That’s because they ARE new.  Actually, it’s because I’m playing around with some new stuff within photoshop. I know it’s kind of a sudden shift, but it was a very last minute discovery… one that in hindsight, I really should have eased the comic into….but what’s done is done… until I decide to go back and redraw EVERY SINGLE PANEL, AND ADD CGI ALIENS IN THE BACKGROUND OF EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.

Good day,
Amedeo

Oh…. right, the blog part.

Well, now that we’ve gotten through all the panels contained on my first “Script/Layout Page” I thought it’d be interesting to share it (along with my somewhat-horrible hand writing) with you, the internet. I’ll go into detail on the scripting phase here, and if it proves interesting, outline the rest of the comic’s process, down the line.

Since (as I’ve said before) I already have a pretty clear idea of the comic’s story, “scripting” is really more a matter of me thumbnailing out each panel while writing down it’s corresponding dialog. Of course, the format that I’ve developed for this wasn’t really….developed until the end of this page, soooo you’ll notice that I note the first three panels of the comic with just their sound effects.

Some eagle-eyed (actually, it’s not THAT hard to notice) viewers may notice that there are a set of screens here, which never made it in to the comic. Thus far, those three have been THE only screens that I’ve cut out of the entire comic. However, even more eagle-eyed viewers might notice that in the final versions on the site, one of these cut panels is contained within an existing one…. I’ll leave finding that up to you, internet…..

Tomorrow will mark the beginning of the first arc of Justitia, which will be released on the all new fully-functioning site:

I hope to see you there. Regular updates here will now resume.

Just wanted to pop in and say that thanks to my good friend Dan “Ginchy” Getleman and his mystic internet gnomes, the new JUSTITIA site is pretty much ready to go. I’m currently touching up this week’s panels, which hopefully will be premiering on the new site. I hope everyone will bare with us if something goes wrong when we move all the files over to the new server, we’re doing our best to make this as seemless as possible.

Also, once all this is worked out, I can put my attention back on setting up the new sections of THIS site, meaning you and your friends and THEIR friends will be able to sort through all the sketches from the blog here, along with a selection of other stuff I’ve done in my free time aaaaaand a selection of finished *ahem* work-work stuff.

-Amedeo

Just a few words on the JUSTITIA site….. A new much easier to use version of the website will be premiering in a few weeks (which, if all goes well, will coincide with the conclusion of the “opening” of JUSTITIA).

I’m not going to promote the comic that much more until the new site launches, but I wanted to thank everyone who has already put the word out. The site got something like 117 hits within the first hour…..which, frankly was far more than I thought it’d get in a whole day.

Anyway, thanks for reading it thus far, putting up with the temperamental site, and continuing to make it more worth doing every week.

-Justice No Matter What-

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you…….