Better Pontiac Comic Book Workshop

For the last few years I have been teaching comic book illustration and writing under the auspices of the Metro Detroit artists group Detroit Trade Craft. I trained many artists under that group who have gone on to do some outstanding work. However it was decided that Detroit Tradecraft wasn't in the business of training any longer, so I had a dilemma...

If I wanted to keep training artists I would need some support. It just so happens that my long-time buddies Sean Kammer and Chris Gratten had started a not-for-profit organization dedicated to making my hometown of Pontiac, Michigan a better place. So ultimately I thought maybe I could do some things together with their non profit Better Pontiac. So I took the workshop to them to help me facilitate.

It has worked out wonderfully so far. Last year's class put out an anthology comic showcasing the writing and drawing skills of the group. This year our goal is to do the same. I teach a Wednesday night workshop at our local university. I teach 3 Saturday classes (1 in Pontiac, 1 in Downtown Detroit and a late night Skype Class). I have met some outstanding people teaching this class and many of the students self-publish.

Sean, his wife Megan, and Chris, along with our liaison and fellow board member Alexa are outstanding people. Their belief in the program makes me want to work even harder to produce an outstanding crop of creators.

For More Information go to
https://www.facebook.com/pontiaccomics/

The Honeycomb Hideout Episode 23: The Midwest Media Expo Day 1

Alright, gang! It's been awhile coming but it's finally here, the first day of the guys and girls of Imaginos Workshop at the Midwest Media Expo. It was a really fun show with a lot of interesting happenings, so give it a listen and check out all the fun we had. Also, stay tuned for Day 2 next week!

Download this episode (right click and save)

And once again, sorry to those of you that prefer to listen to our show while on the blog, but feel free to download it and listen to it anytime. Also, don't forget that the podcast is also available on iTunes the next day after it's posted here. :)

Kickstarter Update: New Artwork, Prizes Coming Very Soon!

No professional and creative endeavor that's worth a damn ever goes off exactly according to plan. While we were thrilled to have our Imaginos Plus comic book fully funded on Kickstarter, that was just the beginning of one helluva process. Despite some bumps in the road and production changes, we are moving forward nicely.

Custom-designed Juda Fist and Imaginos Team T-Shirt prizes will be shipping out to backers as soon as the end of next week, and we have more prizes (sketchbooks, posters) in the pipeline after that. We've said it before and we can't say it enough: thank you again to everyone that has supported us, financially and otherwise, during this process. We are thrilled to be in a position to produce something real and awesome - hopefully something that we ourselves would want to experience as fans of the medium.

Here's a sneak peak of the superhero action-comedy Candy Coated, which will appear in Imaginos Plus. Hopefully you like the results we're getting as much as we do. Don't forget to click on the link at the bottom of this post: our Kickstarter Update will give even more details and sneak peaks of the colored pages!

Imaginos Plus: Kickstarter Update #20

Work Updates and First Event of the Year

So far 2014 has been off to a great start. We've been hard at work on the Imaginos Workshop Anthology - drawing, flatting, inking and lettering are all part of the process and so far we love the results. There will be prizes coming out for our wonderful Kickstarter backers in the first quarter of the year, as we continue to put this comic book together.

We're proud to show a sneak peak: Requiem Page 1, now fully inked and looking sweet!

We're also about to kick off Black History Month with our first event of the year: Black Comic Book Day 2014 (#bcbd2014). The event is taking place at the Detroit Public Library from 11 am - 5 pm on Saturday, Feb 1. We will be there selling sketchbooks and posters, and chatting with the good people of Detroit. Come down and see us there!

And here's a glance of Candy Coated the way it was always meant to be: in full color.

Don't forget to Like our Facebook Page, follow us on Twitter and check for Kickstarter updates. 

The Honeycomb Hideout Episode 19: Youmadness Day 1!

Alright, 'Combies! You heard about throughout 2013 and some of you even got to meet us there. Now you get to hear about Imaginos Workshop's adventures during Youmacon 2013! That's right, we recorded live during the entire weekend and we aren't just talking about the boys (Joe, Mark and Nik), the entire workshop membership was in attendence and on the mic. Now that the holidays and kickstarter madness has died down, you all get to hear about the 'Nos-ian hijinks that ensued. So sit back and enjoy "Day 1"!

CAUTION: Prepare to be waylaid by hilarity!!

Listen to this episode
Download this episode (right click and save)

And for all you Apple users, don't forget that you can listen to and download episodes of the Honeycomb Hideout on itunes!

Crowdsourcing Comics: A Trial By Fire

In October of last year, we cancelled our first Kickstarter campaign before its deadline was up. Our "Imaginos Plus" comic book project received generous contributions from some friends, family and supporters, but it wasn't enough to meet our financial goal. After an encouraging opening push, the donations to our comic book anthology slowed to an ever-decreasing trickle. The campaign stalled at just over $2,000, not nearly close enough to our $8,300 goal. Our first attempt at crowdsourcing our artistic ventures was time-consuming, emotional and ultimately disappointing.

It was also a learning experience; it forced us to take stock of our own work and think practically about what it meant to produce a creative, collaborative project. It forced us to explain the value of our work to other people - a surprisingly challenging and rewarding task. There wasn't a clear-cut reason why our first attempt at crowdsourcing failed. Were we explaining our project well enough? Was our financial goal too high? Did we offer the right kinds of incentives to potential backers? Did we fail to market ourselves properly? Maybe it was just timing. Most likely it was some combination of these factors. And while no one wants to fall short, we learned a lot through the process.

Fast forward to November 2013: our fledgling company Imaginos Workshop is now a registered LLC, and new artists and writers have been brought into the fold. We have a couple extra conventions under the belt, and we've made real progress on our comics. Our new Kickstarter campaign has a financial goal of $5,800 (well under our original asking price from the year before), without sacrificing any of the content. 

This time, the contributions didn't stop after the initial opening volley. People watched our Kickstarter video over 500 times and pledged an average of $46. They shared our project on Facebook, Twitter, Palladium Books and other websites. Veteran writer and columnist Bill Baker interviewed Mark Dudley on The Morton Report, and we provided our own Kickstarter updates every step of the way.

In the end, we finished at 114% of our goal. Our second try at crowdsourcing was an unequivocal success, made possible by the wonderfully generous contributions of all our backers. Perhaps it was important that we fell short on our first Kickstarter. It reminded us that some amount of failure and rejection is an inevitability in this business, and that it does not necessarily mean you're doing the wrong things. We were also reminded of the inspiring generosity of others ... an important lesson during the holidays. Our backers gave us the best Christmas gift we could have asked for. It means more work for us in the new year, but we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you.

Jon

Jay Anthony White's PAWN. The Joseph Cain Review.

At one point Michigan (and hopefully again soon) was an incredibly fertile ground for the film industry. Between the various films and television series that have been filmed here, the metro Detroit area has been getting a lot of great exposure, and a film was just released by a local talent that might help increase it even more.

Pawn, written by Michigan-born writer and friend of Imaginos Workshop Jay Anthony White, is a suspenseful crime drama centering on a diner robbery that escalates into an intense hostage situation. With an involving plot and an impressive list of stars (Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta and Michael Chiklis, who also produced the film), the film definitely sneaks up on you in surprising ways.

The plot is very involving and filled with interesting story-telling techniques to both establish the world and keep the audience on their toes. As is necessary from any suspense drama, there are plot twists and turns throughout the film that will keep you guessing for the majority of it. But there is also a relatable quality to the plot that will make you wonder what you would do in the given situation.

As it was the actual Red Carpet Premiere myself and Mark were able to attend at the Royal Oak Emagine theater, there were numerous local talents in attendance, as well as news coverage. It was a new experience for me and Mark, but a good one, as it was obvious that making sure this film got a Detroit premiere was very important to everyone involved.

Pawn was most definitely an entertaining film and it was also a great bonus to have been written by a local talent, so I was happy to be able to support it. As entertaining as it was, I got the impression that it didn't get a very wide release, so I’m anxious to see how it will do on DVD (because of the nature of the film, I predict it will do VERY well). If you get the chance, whether it be in theaters or on DVD, give Pawn a viewing. If you are a fan of crime dramas/thrillers, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

-Joe

Youmacon Wrap-Up 2012

Youmacon 2012 gave Imaginos Workshop another awesome opportunity to spread the word about our work and talk with fans of comics, anime, manga and storytelling. Youmacon, a relatively young anime convention in downtown Detroit, attracts an enthusiastic crowd of die-hard fans and creative cosplayers. I was impressed with the huge number of people cosplaying in Detroit for the weekend. I'm new to the world of anime and manga, so a lot of the costumes went over my head. But I could appreciate the time, money and creativity of the cosplayers, and there was some crossover: I saw characters from movies and video games as well, along with several Doctor Who's and Walter Whites. The con itself showed some serious growing pains. Registration for many was a lengthy and confusing process, and one that involved waiting in lines, wandering various floors of registration, and walking back and forth between Cobo and the Ren Cen. These are organizational problems that will hopefully get worked out as the convention grows and perfects itself. Despite these issues, the overall attitude at the convention was one of conciliatory excitement.

Star Wars maintained a presence amid the anime and manga cosplayers.

Imaginos Workshop handed out posters, flyers, business cards, stickers and our new "Dirty Weaponry" sketch book. We talked as much as we could with people, and tried to make inroads with a crowd that wasn't our normal demographic: an anime convention is not the same thing as a comic convention, but people still seemed encouraging of our work. This convention also marked our first official, public collaboration with the girls producing the webcomic Mutare Ludum. Their names are Danielle Todd and April Cox, and they've evolved from Mark's students to peers and promising young artists. They are developing a webcomic that is parts fantasy and horror; you can check out their blog here.

Probably the most encouraging part of the whole weekend for me was Imaginos Workshop's public panel How To Create Comics, led by our own Mark Dudley. He led a panel that quickly turned into a fun, interactive discussion on constructing, writing and drawing comics from start to finish. We had good attendance and the people there were enthusiastic and engaged. Nick and Joe also contributed to the panel by leading some of the discussion and answering questions. Even Danielle and April were able to add some words of wisdom. Unfortunately the panel was cut shorter due to an oversight on the part of the convention planners (not the last time that happened over the weekend) but it was still a good experience. After the panel ended, a group of artists, fans and writers hung out and talked with us about creating stories and drawing. It was fun and informative, and it gave us all some great connections and interactions with people that are all part of the wide web of creative industries in Michigan.

Mark Dudley leads the How To Create Comics panel.

We are still working on our Imaginos Plus comic book, part of which will be sent to Image Comics on completion so hopefully we can get a publisher for our work. We also have movie scripts and video projects in the works, and we want to continue pushing our online presence and interacting with what we hope will be a growing and loyal fan base.

Jon

Youmacon 2012: Day 2 Update

It's Friday night at 2 AM and the arcade in the Ontario Room of the Renaissance Center is humming. The lights are dim and groups of people crowd around the glow of flat screen TV's or stand, mashing buttons at old-school arcade kiosks. Here, after the main events of Youmacon's second day have ended, people show no signs of sleep just yet. There is a truly eclectic mix of games present, creating a hybrid sort of arcade that sits old school and new school side by side. Players can get a heavy dose of nostalgia with classics like TMNT, Captain America: and The Avengers and the 6-player X-Men arcade. These occupy the same space as popular newer series like Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War. Gamers crowd around several TV's of Super Smash Bros, both on the GameCube and the Wii. For gamers and curious cosplayers, the Ontario room arcade represents an intoxicating and unique time warp, representing decades of gaming all in one room.

The Renaissance Center shares hosting duties with Detroit's Cobo Hall.

Youmacon, Detroit's fastest growing anime convention also attracts fans of manga, comics, video games and movies. 10,000 people attended the convention last year and the event has been growing since its inception in 2004. The event held in downtown Detroit brings out passionate fans and a remarkably high number of cosplayers: the variety, quality and uniqueness of the costumes are impressive. After the convention's normal hours wrap up and artists' alley closes down for the day, many attendees are just getting started. There are panels and events well into the night, and places like the arcade room never close down. It is a four day, 24-hour long event, and the Renaissance Center is completely booked for it.

Friday was a busy and eventful day at the event, and we spent the first part of the day at our Imaginos Workshop tables, talking with people, taking pictures and handing out swag like posters, stickers and sketch books. We recorded an interview with veteran anime voice actor Sonny Strait, who is most known for his work on Dragon Ball Z, Fullmetal Alchemist and One Piece. He has also done voice acting for video games including Splosion Man and Borderlands 2. Later, we held a panel on creating comics and stories: the process from beginning to end. By that point in the night it was time for many to get some much needed rest. For many others roaming the halls and rooms of the Renaissance Center, and sitting down to play some of their favorite games of yesterday and today, the night was still very young.

Jon

Kickstarter Update: Proposal Delayed, Work Continues

As you probably know, we have recently been promoting our Kickstarter bid as a way to help fund our comic book Imaginos Plus. As of last week however we have decided to cancel our Kickstarter bid for now. We were not on track to meet our financial goal, and we decided to postpone the crowd-sourcing project so we could retool our proposal, as well as continue working on our project. Just because we have postponed our Kickstarter bid does not mean we've stopped working on the project itself. On the contrary, we are working harder than ever on our comic book and the artwork is coming along great. While we're disappointed that our first Kickstarter bid didn't make it, we feel confident in our work and we will definitely try again in the future. In the meantime, we keep working.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated and shared our project while we were promoting it. You people are amazing, and we're going to need your encouragement and support while we keep doing our thing. The cool thing about Kickstarter is all the money is automatically returned - so nobody lost anything except a little bit of time and effort. We are sincerely grateful for those of you that showed your belief in us and our work. Stay tuned, because we haven't slowed down and we haven't given up on crowd-sourcing our projects. Despite not making the goal, it was a great learning experience.

And just so you know, we are going to be at this year's Youmacon 2012 in Detroit! Look for our table there where we will be selling copies of The Door and showing off some of Mark's awesome artwork! The event is this Thursday-Sunday, Nov. 1-4. Find out more info at their official site. Thank you, hopefully we will see you there.

Jon

Imaginos Plus: A 3-part Comic Adventure - And You Can Help

Everyone knows that Detroit has fallen on hard times. This is nothing new. It is and has been suffering from financial crisis, joblessness, urban dilapidation and political scandal. It has become something of a warning sign for a nation feeling the pangs of unemployment and political stalemate. Detroit has also become something else in the meantime: a symbol of pride for the entire state. There’s something about its working-class, damaged goods persona that appeals to a certain crowd. People in this country can’t help but root for the underdog. Young, college-educated people are actually moving into Detroit, and the city is experiencing something of a mini-Renaissance, even amidst some of its darkest hours. A product of this professional influx is an export that will be very important if Detroit is to come back: The Arts. Detroit has some very real and ongoing problems, just as it is experiencing a resurgence in cultural pride and artistic output.

Somewhere out of this imperfect love comes Imaginos Workshop, but one of many professional and artistic endeavors owing to the history and people of Michigan and the Detroit area. There’s nothing special about us except that we love comics and movies and just about anything that tells a story. Imaginos Workshop is just the name we decided to give ourselves when we decided we wanted to write movie scripts and produce comic books. We recently became a Limited Liability Company, and our first stab at a self-produced comic book, Imaginos Plus, is in the works (as you’ve probably read on here by now). It is three storylines in one – kind of ambitious for a first project, but we just really like these properties.

The first is called Requiem, and I can use the word “epic” here without feeling too hyperbolic. Joe and Mark have been crafting this storyline for a long time, and it has evolved accordingly. What we’ve written for Imaginos Plus is just the tip of a very big iceberg: they’ve written millions of years of bloody history for the multiverse that holds the story. Despite all this grandiosity, the story lives and dies by its character development, as a group of “black-bag” agents provide our key-hole into a mysterious and dangerous world. There’s almost too much to summarize here, but let’s just say it involves brutal action, multiple dimensions, the occult and corporate corruption.

The second property is the ridiculously-titled Candy Coated, a unique and truly spontaneous action adventure that employs an interesting writing style. The basis of the comic comes from Palladium Books’ Heroes Unlimited pen-and-paper RPG franchise. In case you haven’t reached the level of monumental geek that we have, RPG stands for role-playing-game, and it involves a group of people sitting around together using characters they created to explore a world that exists as dictated by their GM, or game-master. They use their imaginations to move through the world, and usually a set of books or rules to give shape and stats to the world and what they can do in it. Dungeons & Dragons is the most famous example of this, and only partly deserves the stigma it has gathered over the years. Candy Coated is written as it happened during these gaming sessions: it is truly spontaneous and organic. We “wrote” the story insofar that we experienced it in-game and responded to the events in Mark’s story with a disturbing lack of forward thinking. The story itself is about a group of damaged superheroes who mostly attempt to do good but almost always end up damaging things in the process. They are dysfunctional, confused and selfish, and their powers mostly the result of dangerously irresponsible experimentation that they don’t understand. This was a fun comic to play through, and we hope it’s just as fun to read.

The third and final property is called Juda Fist: 7 Deaths of the Yobi, and it is a story truly many years in the making. It is the brainchild of Mark Dudley, and it is a truly cool mix of genres. It is a sci-fi dystopian action-epic, with heavy doses of hip hop culture and blaxploitation, influenced by Hong Kong cinema and inspired by the books of Octavia Butler. It is stylish, dark and violent, and always gets a great reaction from people checking out Mark’s artwork. The story centers on a group of antihero mercenaries living one day at a time in futuristic Detroit. Their journey intertwines with an ancient conflict that threatens not just their lives but the fate of the solar system.

So there’s Imaginos Plus – and here comes the pitch. We have recently put the project up on the crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter in an attempt to get the thing funded. We are going to get the book done at some point either way, but if we could get some funds from Kickstarter it would happen a whole lot sooner and we could afford to pay the awesome inkers, artists and colorists that would help us finish the project. So if you feel so inclined, we would absolutely appreciate any contribution you could make to our book. We also really appreciate you telling others about the project: friends, family and fans sharing the project are the only way we’ll reach our goal. Thanks to all of you that have supported us and worked with us. Hopefully we can reward you with some cool stories and art in the future. We’re enjoying the process.

Author's Note: As of October 2012 we were unable to reach our monetary goal for our Kickstarter project. While this is disappointing, it does not mean that we've stopped working on our projects. Work on the comic book and scripts continues just as before, and we look forward to showing you more and more and trying again with crowd-sourcing in the future. A sincere and heart-felt thank you to everyone who donated to our project - your encouragement and donations help keep us creating.

Jon

The future of Imaginos Workshop

Imaginos Workshop is a name we have given to a group of friends that came together through fate, or coincidence, or whatever you choose to call it. We are very different in age, race and personal history but the one thing that ties us together is a common appreciation of the arts. We are just a small chunk of a generation (or two generations, really) that grew up on some form of comic books, movies, television and every other form of storytelling out there. Since we were quite little we gained an appreciation for storytelling no matter what form it was packaged in. For me it was having my father read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to me and my younger brother before we fell asleep at night. At that time I decided I wanted to be a movie director and make an exhaustive, line-by-line adaptation of the books and put it on the silver screen. Now I'm older and I do a lot more writing than I do directing, and some scruffy Hobbit-looking guy beat me to the task. Regardless, I have never lost my fascination with faraway worlds, and how they help to open my eyes to the world around me.

Mark Dudley, Founder and Head Artist at Imaginos Workshop

Sitting down and writing a comic book and a movie script is just the beginning. I do not know what the future holds, but I don't see myself ever losing my interest in these various storytelling mediums. What I would like to see Imaginos Workshop become is a community; a wide-spreading network of people that grew up, like us, listening to stories. If we get enough people together willing to produce those stories together there is no limit to what we can accomplish. I've grown up in the metro Detroit area and this has always been home to me. It is a city that's gotten a bad rap for a long time, and it is still hard to count the number of derelict buildings; forlorn husks of dried-out memories. But there is also an attitude of hope now that has been gone for a long time. People can feel instinctively that Detroit is coming back, and Imaginos Workshop wants to be there when it does. By then we want to be not just a group of friends, or a even a company. We want to start a Revolution. It starts with anyone who's ever picked up a paintbrush or written a short story, or feels like they could make a kick-ass movie about a giant monster attacking Manhattan. 


In the meantime, we are content to fly under the radar and work towards our goal. You can help us get there by reading our blog, or by "Liking" the stuff we post to facebook. If you see something here you like, please comment and start a dialogue. See that group of members to the right? Click on "Join this Site" and you can get updates on our activity. We need people like you to get to that place I've been telling you about. (For me, it culminates in holding a surprisingly heavy gold statue of a man in my hand). Ultimately, we want to blur the line between "fan" and "creator." If you have skill with writing, drawing, coloring or editing shoot us a line and we will get back to you. After all, we are still fans ourselves, making a go at doing what we love most.


Jon

"Conventional" views

Well, I'll be honest this is a post that's been long overdue.

As some of you may know, Mark, Nik and I were at Youmacon back in November to get some material and impression of the show for "The Honeycomb Hideout". For those that don't know it, Youmacon is Metro-Detroit's premier anime convention, truthfully it's likely one of the fastest growing anime conventions in the country. And as if the journey getting there wasn't interesting enough (just ask Mark and Nik LOL), actually being there was another thing entirely.

Now, this wasn't my first time being at Youmacon and it's always been a cool and interesting convention, but it was the first time that it was held at the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit and I've gotta admit, it doesn't need to be anywhere else for this year. For those of you that have never been to an anime convention, they differ greatly from comic book conventions. There's an entirely different atmosphere that can't be denied; things are extremely loose (sometimes that also applies to the dress code for cosplayer's sake, it is an anime con after all), very friendly and pretty much bursting with enthusiasm.

We got the chance to talk to numerous attendees while we were there and, even though the day was winding down, the energy was still high. Not only that, but one of the coolest aspects of it is the kind of attention that it gives Detroit because there were anime fans from various parts of the country attending (exact locations elude me at the moment, but trust me, there were a lot) and all of them were shocked at how cool the city really was. They didn't believe the hype or buy the bad rap that Detroit always seems to get from the rest of the country.

Checking the Youmacon web page today, I see that they're having the show at the Renaissance Center again this year which is a great decision but they're also extending it to the Cobo Center as well. Kinda crazy but something tells me that they aren't going to have much difficulty filling both venues, considering that Youmacon's attendance in November actually beat out Detroit's Super Bowl attendance record. If that doesn't speak for it, I don't know what will.

Now, the interesting thing about meeting all of the different types at Youmacon, you could see the sprinklings of Sci-Fi and comic book fans in the crowds as well. This prompted me to inquire many attendees about whether or not they do read comics (american comic, not just manga, but I was surprised at the number of manga readers too, smaller than I thought it'd be) and I was a little surprised at how many actually did (that number was bigger than I thought it'd be).

Anyway, with the advent of conventions springing up that actually do blend the variety of fandoms in counter culture (Sci-Fi, Comics, Anime and Horror would be considered the figure heads), I'm curious to see how their numbers would stack up against Youmacon and other anime conventions. But surprisingly, certain other observations were brought to my attention as well and having been a convention-goer for over 15 years now, I'm shocked that I didn't realize it myself.

With comic book conventions, while there is an emphasis on fun (as there should be), there's also this sobering level of seriousness that tends to permeate comic con atmospheres. It's not a bad thing necessarily, but it's definitely different than what you'd find at an anime convention. I have a lot of fun at both, and personally, I don't quite see why the shows tend to be so different from each other. Some might say that it has to do with the significant age-gaps within the audience as well as the collector-centric nature of comics culture, but that's a discussion for another time.

Either way, with the wealth of conventions that the Metro-Detroit area has to offer throughout the year, there's plenty for everybody, ranging from Motor City Comic Con in the summer to Detroit Fanfare and Youmacon in the fall. So do yourself a favor and do a quick google search and find out when the next bit of fun kicks off! -Joe