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Here ye here ye! Announcing a new contest where the winner will get ONE OF EACH OF OUR TUNA CARPACCIO P.I. SHIRTS!!
And it’s SO easy! Just answer this one question with three simple sentences:
“What did Jose Maria De Jesus do for Halloween this year?”
Post your answers as a comment to this blog and we’ll announce the winners on Halloween! You should know his habits pretty well by now. Best answer wins… GO!
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You’ve already seen a sneak preview of Malta’s prowess with a gun, but she’s about to get herself into a situation she might not be ready to handle with two small handguns. Or maybe she’ll encounter a room a cuddly children. Either or.
So click on the artwork and watch Josh’s preliminary sketch for panel 2 of this week GROW! (also, feel free to drop by his blog occasionally to check out what other stuff he’s in the mood to show off! he’s got the talent of a million artists, wrapped in his pinky finger. In fact, he draws Tuna Carpaccio P.I. with his toes each week. Fun fact.)
More to come, as you should expect by now.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! Our pals at Eben07 gave Josh and I the amazing opportunity of putting a 1-page advertisement in the recent publication of their strip anthology “Operation: Mongoose” and there’s no way I’m going to post it on this site. Ever. It’s actually something you’ve never seen before and actually something you need to check out when you pick up your copy of their book! It’s only $4.99, which is practically stealing it if you ask us. So get on it!
Clearly Malta was able to figure out where Rows 4 through 6 were, relative to the clues she put together with Pam’s help… but what she finds there you’ll just have to see for yourself (unless you’ve gotten so used to the way our comic flows that you can pick up on the details and hints already). Have we gotten that predictable? Maybe. Or maybe you have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’m hoping for the latter. Anyway, click on this ink of panel 1 from this week’s strip!
More to come? Sure, why not?
Anyway, here are some leftover sketches that are always cool to check out from the recent strip “Devilish…” where Egg-Devil rose from the ashes of wimpiness to the high mountaintops of steroid-induced muscle mania.
More to come… as promised.
This is the second post in a row where the title ended with the letter “x.” I’m going to find a way to fit it into the next post also, just for continuity.
Anyway, here’re some fight sketches from the strip “Devilish…” Yes, they are also devilish sketches.
And there’s more madness where that came from, let me tell ya.
Here are some more process sketches from Josh… from blue penciling to more affirmed images as the forms start to take shape in his head. You don’t read anything I write here anyway, so click on the images to enlarge them.
More sketches, after this commercial break!
Here’re a few rough pencils of this past week’s catch and more Egg-Devil madness. Honestly, I feel a little ashamed that we didn’t name him “Deviled Egg” because that would better fit the pun scheme we put together for this comic. But on the other hand, having him thrown in as the first gimmicky villain sorta does set the tone for our comic. What say you?
And what say you about these sketches, which you can click to enlarge?
Plenty more where that came from.
This past week’s strip was tough because I (Tony) got the sketches for it before I left on a whirlwind trip to London and then Beirut, so the image below of a beefed-up Egg Devil catching Tuna’s famous right jab (the same right jab that took him out so easily the first time they tangoed) has been sitting in my mail inbox for almost 2 weeks. I know I know, you’re probably thinking “Tony, just because you decide to go on vacation you’re not off the hook for Tuna Carpaccio strips!” and you’d totally be right. So in the future, I shall take my laptop and work work work on all of my vacations. Promise, cross my heart.
Anyway, here’s the ink… purty, ain’t it? Click on it to enlarge, by the way.
More comin’… and, of course, more strips!
http://webcomicweek.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-tuna-carpaccio-pi.html
Tuna Carpaccio is well worth your time to check out, and it’s going to be well worth my time to follow in the future. It’s a comedy comic with a quirky sense of humor (I can guarantee you’ve never seen a comic with as bizarre a beginning as this), and it’s very slickly executed. For all his vices, Tuna is hilarious and his misadventures are entertaining.
This was a particularly nice surprise for several reasons. First, because This Week in Webcomics had actually already heard of our comic from Mr. Bengo Gordon of The Floating Lightbulb (which we want to thank him for the mention, as well). Second, once we were up on the chopping block and needed the votes we found that our pals (but competitors in the review competition) Eben07 & Dan Bethel decided to actually switch their votes up and promote our comic. Thirdly, the breadth and depth of the review was surprising… and more than three of his posts actually linked and directly referred to our comic, with two of which being positive mentions like the one above! Overall, it was great to know that his audience took the time to read the review and read through our entire comic… our stats can prove it.
Thanks again Mr. Jackson Ferrell of This Week in Webcomics… your awesome review is definitely appreciated!
Let me begin by saying that Josh and I attempted to first approach marketing our comic in a way that we figured would work best for what we were trying to achieve. You see, I originally wrote the entire first year in a furious blaze based on simple descriptions of Tuna, Pam and De Jesus. But we knew that we weren’t going to bait anyone into reading 20-strips into Tuna Carpaccio P.I. without amazing artwork, and I can’t say enough how grateful I am that Josh stuck to this online comic for this long. I feel that my writing has generally been the same since we’ve started, but as you click through from the beginning to the most recent strip, Josh’s art has not only improved dramatically but he’s actually chosen to take some extra time on top of that to make backgrounds, character details or action sequences more intricate. I actually try to keep most strips at around 4 to 5 panels, but once Josh is done they seem to average around 6 to 8. And they only serve to accent the storytelling, make the images more dramatic and force me to come up with more dialog on the fly.
In the beginning, we knew that no one would care about the larger, more intricate noir storyline, the plethora or wacky, pun-filled characters or the greater motivations of Tuna Carpaccio’s higher-tier villains (some of which you’ve yet to meet), so we knew that we’d have to depend more heavily on Josh’s amazing art to draw viewers. The way we both saw it originally, this comic would be “Josh’s portfolio, with a storyline,” and in a lot of ways it still feels like it is. The way I see it, each strip is a series of mini-paintings and sometimes I feel like I’m ruining everything when I add dialogue that blocks even a small portion of his artwork, so I try to make sure the bubbles and sound effects lean further and further off-panel on purpose to keep from obstructing any of his details.
This being said, I wanted to make the larger point that I have a great deal of respect for what Josh does and, in turn, what online comic illustrators all over the internet do every week. There are some amazing comics out there with mind-boggling art work, but for some reason comics online are seen as almost a younger brother in the greater comic industry web-sphere, and seemingly passé to the greater community of high art and design online community.
But why is that exactly? Aren’t all online comics living, breathing and consistently-updating artist portfolios? Doesn’t the design acumen of online comic developers count to the wider design community? Didn’t Andy Warhol rupture society’s outlook from the notion that high art had unnecessary intrinsic value? Or are online comics meant to be dismissed, simply by virtue of their statuses as both ‘free’ and ‘not part of a larger organization’? Hypothetically, were Tuna Carpaccio P.I. to be the official comic of “FunnyorDie.com” or “Juxtapoz.com” would we somehow seem to have more legitimacy (however the concept of legitimacy is determined) than we do now? If you say ‘yes,’ why is that? Because FunnyorDie.com and Juxtapoz.com somehow seem more official than developing your own website?
Really though, there’s no correct answer and we could debate that issue forever. You just have to enjoy doing what you’re doing, whether you’re making godzillions of dollars doing it or not (not that we’d reject a godzillion dollars though, except maybe to be sure that it was a real number). Regardless, we knew when we jumped into this that we were taking a shot at something that might not be for everyone, and that’s just fine. It may be a comic full of inside jokes and stupid one-liners, but it’s our comic full of inside jokes and stupid one-liners. As I go back over it, I sometimes can’t believe how far along we are and how long Josh has been willing to keep this up without coming to his senses and finally saying “This is totally ridiculous” and “I’m outta here, jerk!” So I want to thank Josh for working tirelessly on his days off to make sure that our comic looks the way it does. Because seriously, I’m even in awe of the guys sketches… it’s pretty much the reason I slap them up here on the blog.
And all rhetoric aside, it’s really nice hearing from people out there that appreciate what we’re trying to do with the story, the infinite canvas, the jokes and the detail of Josh’s art. We’re not stopping any time soon, but I just wanted to personally thank everyone who have taken the time to read all the way through the comic and somehow still want to stick around to find out what happens next in the Tuna Carpaccio P.I. online saga.
So to be as direct as I could ever possibly be, thank you so much for reading.
Okay that enough talk! Back to posting wacky sketches!