The online home of Adventure Cartoonist Lucy Bellwood
Slogging ever onward through the deluge of orders. Custom prints wrapped up today, limited posters signed and numbered, offset print run in the works…it never ends! Just put in orders for t-shirts this morning as well, so if you’re excited to get some True Believer swag you’re in for a treat. To keep the blog active in the meantime, here’s the latest commission I churned out for a backer who happens to be both a doctor and violinist! What strange and wonderful times we live in.
Busy times, everyone! I’ve got a recap of the last couple weeks (including the awesomeness that was VanCAF) up over on the Kickstarter blog, and since I’ll be bum deep in fulfilling rewards for the next lifetime I’m going to let that speak for itself for now.
In the meantime I’ve been buzzing around Portland getting my draw on — most recently with the excellent folks at Live Wire! Radio, who were kind enough to invite me over to live sketch one of their shows. For those of you unfamiliar with Live Wire!, they make audio-based delights to enrich the mind and tickle the fancy of any discerning radio listener. I strongly suggest you check them out. This particular taping featured rock star guests like Lizz Winstead, Ted Rall, Daniel H. Wilson, Mike Russell, Star Anna, and Kasey Anderson, as well as Faces For Radio Theater, the house team of actors and entertainers responsible for keeping things real on stage. And here, in all their messy glory from my much-the-worse-for-wear sketchbook, they are!
Sadly, this was the last show of the season, but I’m looking forward to more of these in September. Keep an eye out!
I’ll leave you all with a couple Vancouver-themed pages from my sketchbook…
Until next time!
News Item #1: I’M IN CANADA! As promised, I’ll be tabling at the first ever Vancouver Comic Arts Festival tomorrow and Sunday at the Roundhouse Mews in downtown Vancouver, B.C. I’ve made a handy map so none of you is in the least bit confused about where I’ll be located.
My fabulous tablemates are Sam Alden and Ryan Dirks, and we’ll be flanked by The Shanahan Siblings and Tony Cliff! I’m super thrilled to be seated next to such a bundle of talent. There are a load of other exhibitors (90 in total) and several panels to check out, so stop by and say “Hello.”
Did I mention it’s FREE?
New Item #2: I have been seriously rubbish at making sure this blog stays updated with all the Kickstarter news of the last few weeks, but I promise there’s a big post coming up with all the juicy gossip. In brief, I managed to graduate without falling on my face, I’ve spent the past week addressing and shipping HUNDREDS of envelopes, and I’ll be reprinting True Believer (already?!) next week!
That’s all for now! I’ll leave you with this extremely attractive portrait of me stapling the first limited edition copy at Gann Brothers printing last week.
You guys remember when I was all excited about having hit $3,000 on the Kickstarter? Well, I’ve been remiss in not posting on the blog these past weeks, so things have gotten a little out of control.
The campaign closes in 24 hours, right before I receive my diploma and graduate from college. Currently, the figures stand as follows:
– $11,000 in pledges
– 300 backers
– 730% funded
I’m kind of speechless at the moment, but I hope you can glean some sense of my mood from the following sequence of images:
Thank you all for chipping in and making this such an extraordinary experience. I’ll be sure to post something a little more eloquent after things settle down next week, but for now I am full of gratitude and sunshine. Keep being your amazing selves.
Guess what was the incredible Ryan Dirks picked up for me yesterday?
What does this mean? I’ll have copies of True Believer at table B-20 tomorrow from 12pm-6pm, and I would love it if you guys came by to say hello and check them out!
The semester is almost over, which means it’s time to throw the fruits of my classtime labor up on the Internet for all to see. I was feeling frustrated with my ability to capture good likenesses of people, so for the last three months I’ve been drawing students from two of my conferences at Reed. Here’s the compiled batch of them.
In other news, for those of you following the progress of the Kickstarter campaign, things have gone through the roof. We hit our fundraising goal in just FIVE HOURS, and then kept on climbing.
With such extraordinary results, I’ve had to rethink my goals for the campaign. It’s looking like the excess funds will go towards a brand new, long-form project, which is really thrilling. Expect an update on that soon.
For now, to everyone who has spread the word, chipped in, and helped fuel the stratospheric success of this project:
I can’t thank you enough. Let’s make the remaining time even more amazing.
Ladies and Gents, the True Believer Kickstarter Page is Officially LIVE!
I have been overwhelmed by the support and enthusiasm I’ve received from you all so far, and now it’s time to translate that hype into action. Check out the campaign, make a pledge (even $1 helps, and nets you a shoutout right here on the blog!), or, if you’re down and out, simply share the project with friends. You can talk about it, Tweet it, Tumblr it — whatever floats your boat. The more people we can reach, the less everyone needs to chip in in order for us to make it over the $1,500 mark.
Thank you all so much. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
At 8am on Monday, April 23rd, the True Believer Kickstarter Campaign goes live. I know the video says Friday, but we were alerted to the fact that people have these things called “weekends” where they’re generally off enjoying the sunshine rather than trawling the web for worthy new projects to back. This makes sense to me now that I think about it.
So while we wait, a little about the campaign: I’ll be trying to raise $1,500 to print 200 copies of True Believer. The comic will be 36-pages, with full-color covers and interiors. 100 of those copies will feature limited edition two-color screen printed covers with French flaps by Matt Davison of Dueltone Printing. Aside from pre-ordering copies of the comic, I’ve included a number of Kickstarter-exclusive rewards that include handwritten postcards, custom sketches, limited edition prints, and even dinners and studio tours with yours truly.
So what does this mean? We’ve got two days to get the word out as widely as possible. You can share posts about the project with friends on Facebook, point people to the Facebook fan page so they can stay in the loop (facebook.com/Baggywrinkles), plug the project on Twitter as #truebeliever (you can find me under @Lubellwoo), follow me on Tumblr (tumblr.com/lucybellwood), or let me know if you have suggestions for media sources to contact with the press release.
I’m so thankful to all of you who have expressed your enthusiasm and support for this project so far. I can’t tell you how excited I am to get this thing into your hands.
Now let’s DO THIS!
Oh man, dudes. Things are heating up.
In the final few weeks before True Believer hits the printers, I’ll be coloring up a storm, making buttons, designing business cards, investigating screen printing, and also trying to format that other weird written thesis thing I was supposed to have written by now. Just kidding. I wrote it. Mostly. But that guy needs to go into LaTeX and boy howdy I do not know how to work that program yet. Still, baby steps.
I thought I’d drop a few images in here from the next stage in the process. You can see the whole beast on the wall here:
Which I will now proceed to color using this completely delightful Indigo I picked up at the art store this week.
Here are a few tests:
And here’s a page of ink lines printed at 10% grey with watercolor shading:
I’ll be scanning these in and merging them with the digitized line art to create the final images, which should look something like this:
I can’t tell you how excited I am to pull all this stuff together. The coloring will go much MUCH faster than the inking (thank God), so hopefully I’ll blow through 31 pages in the next week and get this thing printed! In the meantime, I’ve got a few illustrations to stick up in the coming days, as well as a requested post about my perspective on the art/writing divide in comics.
Stay tuned!
