Tammy Stellanova

First installment of my new comic published in Oakbook magazine!

Now that the jewelry/holiday mayhem has settled down a little bit, I'm hoping to have time to post about some of the other interesting things I've been doing, work-wise, over the last few months besides the jewelry stuff.

I've mentioned in some earlier posts that I've been doing illustrations for an awesome new free Oakland arts and culture magazine, Oakbook. I am the regular illustrator for their astrology page, and at this point I've done 5 zodiac-related images for them (year of the rat, mid-summer zodiac.) This fall, however, the editor contacted me with an idea that he'd been mulling over -- he thought it would be really cool if Oakbook had a serialized comic in it, not a strip, but more like a graphic novel that tells a story a few pages at a time in each issue. Someone mentioned to this editor that I do comics, and after exploring the 'comics' section of my website, he decided I would be just the person to do this job. How AWESOME is that?

So, after some back-and-forth, we decided that I should write as well as draw the story, which for me is just ideal. The only parameters/constrains I need to work within are that the story needs to be: fictional, an ongoing, serialized sort of adventure tale (rather than a "slice-of-life" style comic,) and that it take place in Oakland. We determined that the story would be told in installments of one two-page (full-color!) spread in each issue.
Fast forward a few months. The first issue hit the stands around Thanksgiving with the first two-page installment of the comic, called "An Oakland Ghost Story". Each installment will have its own title, in typical serial fashion. This one is called "The Night Heron." See an excerpt below the cut!

I am pretty excited about how this first installment came out! I'm excited about the story and how the drawing is going. I've actually never done a comic in full-color before, and I'm still learning/figuring out how I want to do it, but I feel like this is a good first attempt. I would prefer to do color with some kind of real-live paint/colored pencil/whatever, but the whole thing is time consuming enough as it is, so I decided to go with digital. I will probably continue in this vein, and keep learning more about how to make it do what I want and give it more interesting textures. Totally exciting discovery coloring this time though: gradients RULE!

Where can you get Oakbook magazine? Well, their site seems to be having trouble right now, but when it's working again, they have a list of places in Oakland and Alameda where Oakbook is available, to pick up for FREE! I'm sorry I didn't post sooner, because some places may be out by now, but if you really really want a copy and can't find one, email me and I'll see what I can do.

Posted by tammy at January 3, 2009 4:06 PM