Untold Tales of Bigfoot by Vince Dorse wins a Reuben Award!

Fantastic news: Untold Tales of Bigfoot has won A Reuben Divisional Award for Best Online Comic Long Form! The Divisional Awards are given for "outstanding achievement and excellence in the category." So this is a nice shot in the arm for a comic that started out as an experiment to improve my drawing and storytelling skills. I'm still working hard to get better at this stuff, but a Reuben is a very nice pat on the back along the way. 

The Reuben Awards -- often described as "the Oscars of Cartooning"  -- have been held annually for the past 67 years with awards going to creators in all branches of the cartooning industry from newspaper strips, to comic books to animation and, now, webcomics. The award is given by the National Cartoonists Society.

Last year was the first appearance of the Online Comics category at the Reubens. That first time winner was Jon Rosenberg for Scenes From A Multiverse. This year that category was expanded into two: Online Comics Long-Form and Short Form.

With my win this year, I suppose I’m the Inaugural Winner of the Online Comics Long-Form category with Untold Tales of Bigfoot and Graham Harrop is the first winner of the Short-Form category with his comic, Ten Cats. So in 10 years when someone wins the Online Comic Long Form Reuben you can all look back and say, "ah, yes…that award was first given to Vince Dorse for his heartwarming, all-ages comic, Untold Tales of Bigfoot…upon which they based the cartoons, movies, fashion line, theme park and energy drink."

Thanks to everyone who has supported Untold Tales of Bigfoot from the beginning as well as any new readers who have jumped on since the publicity from the award hit the web. I hope you continue to come back and enjoy the comic and follow the adventures of Bigfoot and Scout every week as I post updates. Here's the link to the comic in case you haven't given it a tumble yet. -v

Cpt. Wayne Fan Art Process

I tried a little experiment with my fan art exchange this week over at Untold Tales of Bigfoot. First, out of the blue, Wouter Goedkoop generously sent me some Bigfoot fan art that incorporated the characters from his comic, Cpt. Wayne & The Unexplained Dimension. And then, in response, I decided to "reverse the camera" on the whole scene and do a flipped version of the same moment in time. It was fun. I posted some of the steps below.

The pencils. Wouter's characters are very futuristic -- polar opposites to my earthy Bigfoot and Scout. So it was nice to step outside my comfort zone and sketch something streamlined and high-tech.

Once the pencils are scanned into Photoshop, I ink them. Wouter doesn't employ the traditional black outline/filled-with-color that many comic artists use. His is a more painterly style. I could've played around with that, but I really wanted to see Wouter's characters done in a classic comic book style.

In Photoshop, I drop flat colors behind the inks. Again, Wouter's characters stand apart from my own comic in that he uses very bright, very saturated colors that explode off the screen. I wanted to honor that so I didn't dull down his palette too much when I colored his figures. It makes for a nice contrast with the organic background. After this step, I just add highlights and shadows (image up top).

If Captain Wayne and Gina intrigue you, head over to Cpt. Wayne & The Unexplained Dimension to check out the work of Wouter Goedkoop. -v

Mighty Monocle Fan Art Process

This week's fan art exchange over at my award-nominated (never get tired of saying that) webcomic, Untold Tales of Bigfoot was with D.M. Rolfe, a cartoonist who resides in the U.K. Rolfe is the creator behind The Mighty Monocle, a comic about a humorous superhero who protects Great Britain. Rolfe did this awesome Bigfoot gag for me. In response, I created this fan art tribute to Rolfe's character, made to look like an old, worn comic magazine from the '70s. To see how I put it together, you can scroll through the steps below.  

The pencils. Rolfe's comic is done in the classic 3 panel format. But I wanted to take his heroes and re-envision them as caped crusaders of the silver age. So there they are, leaping before they look, in a classic superhero pose. 

Once the pencils are scanned into Photoshop, I ink them. Since I want this to look like the splash page from a comic book, I use some traditional comic book fonts to create a masthead and title blurb. Rolfe's comic is mostly a black-and-white affair, and I wanted to continue that tradition with my fan art. So, next step, toning.  

Here I used just a few greyscale values to give a sense of depth, and also drop in a few subtle textures to dress it up. One more thing I did was to run a halftone filter over the whole thing to make it look like it was run off on a traditional press. Beyond that, in order to age it, I ended up tinting the whole thing with a stale yellow and, finally, overlaying a photo texture of an old comic book binding (image up top). And that's that! It looks so vintage you can almost smell it!

After you're done smelling your computer screen, point your noses over to Rolfe's webcomic, The Mighty Monocle, and enjoy his classic cartooning and silly sense of humor. -v

Scaredemy Fan Art Process

Another fan art exchange over at my award-nominated (what? yes!) webcomic, Untold Tales of Bigfoot. This time, I exchanged mash-ups with Jack Slade, the creator of Scaredemy, a funk family-friendly webcomic about a school for monsters. To see Jack's impression of how my Bigfoot character would look in a Scaredemy school uniform, check this out. And if you'd like to see the process behind the above image (Scaredemy's Wolfric howling at the moon with Untold Tales of Bigfoot's Scout) then just keep reading. 

The pencils. The concept behind this wasn't hard to come up with. Scaredemy's Wolfric character is a young werewolf. So having him howl at the moon seemed natural. And tossing in my lost, little dog Scout was the next logical step. 

 Once the pencils are scanned into Photoshop, I ink them.  

The flat colors are also dropped in with Photoshop. I normally don't use gradients or blurs in my own webcomic, but the moon needed a glow and since this was a mash-up I figured, meh, why not? Gradient with a blur for that eerie moonlight effect.

I use some custom brushes to create the grass/leaves and also paint in the highlights and shadows. This is the next to the last step. After this I used a chalk brush to create the rings of moonlight, and threw a bit of texture down on top of the whole thing to complete it (top image). 

Wolfric's a great character and fun to draw. But there's a whole cast of great characters in Jack Slade's Scaredemy. So check it out when you get a chance. And don't forget to stop in and visit Untold Tales of Bigfoot on your way. -v

Gem of Atlantis Fan Art Process

The fan art exchanges continue over at Untold Tales of Bigfoot. This time, in exchange for some Bigfoot art, I tried my hand at Michael Dambold's Peter the Pterodactyl, a pivotal character in his cosmic time/space sage, Gem of Atlantis. This is the finished piece, but I posted some steps in my process below for those that are interested. 

The pencils. My illustrations normally lean toward kid-friendly, but I'm pretty sure actual pterodactyls were just this cute during adolescence. 

Once the pencils are scanned into Photoshop, I ink it. There are no background elements inked in because I wanted to experiment with some different methods for the backdrop.

The pterodactyl will progress as my normal comic art does -- with flat colors first. But I wanted to do something more "spacey" and "cosmic" for the background. I did a quick search on the internet and found a few tutorials that fit the bill. Basically, create a star field with some "planets" made of sampled textures.

As Peter gets his highlights and shadows (all in Photoshop with a soft brush) so the planets get their shadows. A few of the space tutorials I found used texture overlays to emulate nebulae in the background, so I gave that a shot and it didn't look half bad. 

The next step on the pterodactyl is to intensify his highlights and shadows, building them up slowly with transparent brushes, and painting in some mottled textures on the wings. As for deep space, that's all about glow effects to give the appearance of an atmospheric bubble around each planet. Another great trick I learned was the use of a lens flare to simulate the sun coming over the horizon. After that (as you can see in the top image) it was just a matter of blasting every single thing in the image with varying degrees of glow to give it that cosmic effect. 

It was weird not actually drawing those space elements, but I think this method served the piece better, and that's the whole point. And don't forget, if you like Peter the Pterodactyl, don't forget to give Michael Dambold's Gem of Atlantis a try. -v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot Nominated for an NCS Award!

Hey, here's some fantastic news --  Untold Tales of Bigfoot has been nominated for another award! This time it’s National Cartoonists Society 2012 Divisional Award for Best Online Comic (Long-Form). The National Cartoonists Society is the world's largest and most prestigious organization of professional cartoonists. Each year, during the NCS Annual Reuben Awards Weekend, the Society honors the year’s outstanding achievements in all walks of the profession.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled. It's a fantastic honor just to be nominated. And while winning the award would be the cherry on the sundae, I'm up against some pretty stiff competition. One is my friend and fellow-Pittsburgh artist, Pat Lewis and his webcomic Muscles Diablo. The other is Meredith Gran and her wildly popular, long-running strip, Octopus Pie. See? That's a lot of talent right there. Nice to have Untold Tales of Bigfoot included in that group.

Not sure how it'll all end up, but whichever way it goes, I'm already happy to say the nomination has brought more readers to my comic and a lot of nice compliments. If you haven't had a chance to check out the comic, why not head on over to the deep, dark woods of Untold Tales of Bigfoot and say hello. -v

Rare, hand-drawn Bigfoot and Scout (process)

I work dawn to dusk every day cranking out Untold Tales of Bigfoot pages so I can meet my weekly deadline. But it's all done on the computer, mostly in Photoshop. But I recently finished a commission for an image of Bigfoot and Scout done in brush pens and marker. I don't often draw these guys the old-fashioned way, and it was both fun and frustrating (no "undo"). Here's a quick rundown of the process.

I always start my Bigfoot comic pages with pencil. So that's nothing new. But the inks? Normally I do them on my Wacom Tablet in Photoshop. Easy to fix a bad line, no mess, just the way I like it. But this inking was done with pens, a brush pen for the thicker outlines and various fine point pens for the smaller details.

In the color stage, instead of dropping in fills on a different layer with the paintbucket tool, I had to bust out the Prismacolor markers. I was pretty careful, but I still got a little smear from the ink once in a while when the wet marker hit it (precisely the reason I left the fine fur detail for after the colors). I wanted the sky to be a bit more subtle than a big block of blue, so I Van Gogh'd that sucker. Or Seurat'd it. Whatever. Anyway, I was pretty happy with the outcome but even happier with getting back to the natural media process. So I'll be doing more of these for sure.-v

My Sometime After fan-art process

I did another fan art exchange with yet another webcomic creator this past week. This time it was Ryan Fisher, creator of Sometime After, an ongoing comic that explores what happens to storybook/fairy tale characters after they've outlived their relevance. Ryan sent me some Untold Tales of Bigfoot fan art (posted under this week's comic) and here I've posted the process steps for the fan art I sent him.

Ryan's characters are distinctly his own design, so for fun I decided I'd try to draw them in my style rather than ape Ryan's.  These are the pencils. I ran them by Ryan before I continued and he loved them, so I moved on to the next step.

I inked the pencils in Photoshop. Ryan's comic takes place in a woodland, so it was comfortable using some of the same visual shorthand I use with Untold Tales of Bigfoot.

Ryan's comic is done in brushed inks and tones of grey. I wanted to honor that, so I used a few different custom brushes in Photoshop to build up some soft, layered brushstrokes. I was aiming for a gentle, ink-wash feel. After that, I toned the piece with a little yellow (see top image) to match the old-timey feel of the Sometime After homepage. 

Ryan posted my fan art on his site and said some very nice things about it. Thanks, Ryan. If you like my take on Twitch, Rupert and Wesley, then you might enjoy the comic that inspired it. So take some time to stop by Ryan Fisher's Sometime After. -v

My PC Weenies fan-art process

Every so often, at my webcomic site, Untold Tales of Bigfoot, I do a fan-art swap with another cartoonist. Partly, it's to introduce different webcomics to different readers, but mostly it's for fun. This week, I exchanged fan art with Krishna Sadasivam, creator of the long-running, tech-based gag strip, PC Weenies. Krishna sent me some awesome Untold Tales of Bigfoot Fan Art (posted under this week's comic) and here I've posted the process steps for the fan art I sent him.

These are the pencils for Krishna's main characters, Bob and Pamela. Bob's a tech-freak and Pam is his long-suffering wife. How did Bob land such a statuesque redhead? Ask Krishna.

These are the inks. After penciling the characters, I scan in the drawing and ink it in Photoshop.

Krishna's comic has a very sharp, digital feel to it (perfect for a comic about technology) so I decided to create the background in Illustrator to give it that "techy" feel. Then I flatted in the figures in Photoshop.

Almost done. Here I painted in some shadows and highlights. Instead of continuing with the sharp, tech-look, I thought it might be fun to play with contrasts. So I used soft brushstrokes in Photoshop, trying to emulate the feel of watercolors. Up top, in the final image, you can see I added some watercolor texture to complete the effect. 

If you like this image, you might enjoy the comic that inspired it. So please take the time to check out Krishna Sadasivam's PC Weenies where he also blogs about technology and art. And tell Krishna I said hi. -v 

Untold Tales of Bigfoot Nominated for Best Webcomic of 2012!

Well, this was a really nice way to start the year. Apparently, Untold Tales of Bigfoot made the short list of the Cartoonist Studio Prize for best webcomic of 2012. The award is a collaboration between Slate and the Center for Cartoon Studies. It came as a huge surprise to me since I hadn’t entered UTOB in any sort of competition. There are just ten webcomics on the list and winners will be announced March 1, 2013. I don’t know if Bigfoot and Scout will get any further in the competition, but all three of us are very honored to be considered, proud to be on the list with so many talented creators and thankful to whoever thought we were good enough to put us up for nomination.

That said, if you're not already following the story, this would be a great time for you to jump in and start reading Untold Tales of Bigfoot. Even if we don't win the big prize, I promise to keep delivering pages filled with lovably cute characters dealing with heartbreaking loss and mysterious adventure. -v

My Fan Art for Pat Lewis' Muscles Diablo!

Hey, I realized I never posted my process steps for this piece! This is fan art for the thrilling, gangsters vs. monsters webcomic Muscles Diablo in : Where Terror Lurks by talented illustrator, Pat Lewis. He's just finished chapter 7 of the online comic, and you can read the whole thing so far if you click this link ri 'chere!  Down below are my steps.

Pencils. Self-explanatory, really. I took a pencil and drew this. I chose a scene from Muscles Diablo where he gets in a bar fight with a Bigfoot. You'll note Pat Lewis' Bigfoots are a lot scarier than my Bigfoot. On to the next step!

Inks. Digital inks, to be exact. Done, I believe, in Photoshop. Ok, move to the next step!

Flat colors. Basically just filling the shapes with flat color in Photoshop. Done. Go!

Final colors. Here I added in all the shadows, highlights and cooled down the bar a bit to give it a dark, grimy look. The piece is basically done here, but if you look at the image at the top of this post, you'll see I ran a halftone filter over it and yellowed it up a bit to make it look worn. That's all. Now if you haven't already done it, go check out Pat Lewis' awesome webcomic Muscles Diablo in: Where Terror Lurks! -v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot: Page 15 and a New Sketch Card Giveaway!

Things come to a head in this week's Untold Tales of Bigfoot. Plus, I'm running another Sketch Card Giveaway. This time it's a holiday-themed Bigfoot and Scout card. The process steps are posted below. If you wanna win it, just head on over to the giveaway page to see the rules. To everyone in the states, have a great Thanksgiving this week. For everyone else, Happy Thursday! -v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot: Page 14 is up.

If you've been following the adventures of Scout, the lost dog, as he tries to find his way home through unfamiliar territory, then you don't want to abandon him this week as he lands hip-deep in danger. Check it out at my webcomic, Untold Tales of Bigfoot.-v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot: Page 13 is up.

Lucky Thirteen! There's something fishy going on this week at Untold Tales of Bigfoot. Also, stop by the Bigfoot webcomic site to see a very special tribute to a fallen friend.-v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot: Page 12 (again with more fan art!)

This week, in his quest for food, Scout employs his Olympic diving skills. See how things shake out at Untold Tales of Bigfoot. 

And, to celebrate Halloween, I have a giant sack of fan art for you to see. 

First, I had fun doing a Bigfoot/Checkered Man mash-up for Denver Brubaker's Trick-or-Treat Fan-Art series over at The Checkered Man webcomic. Denver had a bunch of webcomic artists dress their characters up as his Checkered Man character.

Then, I exchanged fan-art with Jeff Crowther, creator of Yeti 4 Hire. My Yeti fan-art is displayed proudly over at his site. While his amazing Bigfoot fan-art is just a short scroll down below the latest page at Untold Tales of Bigfoot.

Quick! Go look at all of that then come back and tell me how cool it is. -v

Here's my Bigfoot/Checkered Man mash-up at this link.

And you can see my Yeti 4 Hire fan art at this link. 

My Fan Art for Tom Dell'Aringa's Marooned

This is some fan art I did for fellow webcomic writer/illustrator, Tom Dell'Aringa. Tom's got a long-running webcomic called Marooned about a space captain and his robot co-pilot stranded on Mars. You should check it out. Maybe you've seen the Untold Tales of Bigfoot fan art Tom sent me. This was my response and it was a blast to do. Here's a quick process breakdown. 

This is the original pencil sketch and the basic inks. The inks were done in Photoshop. The lettering in Illustrator. 

Here are the inks with the starry sky, then the flat colors done in Photoshop. After the flats were in, I painted in simple highlights and shadows, then aged the piece with some yellow to give it a classic, sci-fi feel (image up top).-v

Untold Tales of Bigfoot: Page 11 is up!

This week on Untold Tales of Bigfoot, Scout's got something to say. If I'd been abandoned in the woods overnight, I'd have a few things to get off my chest too. If you want to know what's on Scout's mind, head over to my webcomic, Untold Tales of Bigfoot. 

And this week, Twitter users get a chance to enter a drawing for the hand-drawn, Halloween Bigfoot sketch card. -v