#nathan bacsal

[blairaptor]

Happy Oct 1st! Ten years ago today, I created the character Nathan Bacsal, who became one of the primary characters in my comic Monster Trail.

He's been with me through a lot, and I put a lot of myself into him, so it's rewarding to still be drawing him after all these years. :)

[gadzooksgalore]

Go buy my bestie’s comic if you want to understand this image.

(My bestie is @blairaptor, go follow her as well)

[toothpaste-dragon]

Gosh, it’s been too long since I’ve drawn these cuties! Nathan and Kara are relationship goals 😭❤️

Merry Christmas @blairaptor!

[monster-trail-dev]

Cover reveal for Monster Trail issue #3! This time highlighting Nathan and Veronica. Details about printing and sales to follow.

Monster Trail is about a secret Blue Ridge summer camp for monsters. Once-dormant magic has reawakened on the mountain, creating new challenges for the counselors and campers as they also navigate their relationships with one another.

6/22/2020

[toothpaste-sketches]

8/24/19

My friend @blairaptor visited my hometown this summer, so I drew her cinnamon roll vampire son while she was here! His name’s Nathan Bacsal and he runs a summer camp for monster kids <3

[roadbread]

Happy Birthday, @blairaptor !

Well, Happy Belated Birthday, anyway, a few days late, but who cares?

[blairaptor]

Flat colors are now done on Monster Trail #4! Thanks so much to my pal @ihavebeencalled for all the help with flatting!

Now it’s time for me to do some basic shading and then finish painting all the setpieces. Shading can be a bit tedious, but it’s still a great feeling to be on this stage of the process.

[monster-trail-dev]

Monster Trail issue #3 is now underway!

I’ve sketched about half the pages now. Here’s a fun panel of Nathan.

4/3/2020

[blairaptor]

Nathan meets Nate!

Here’s a little collab I did with the wonderful @ihavebeencalled! We recently discovered that we both have a character named Nathan who loves coffee, so she came up with this cute crossover idea. She did the sketch and flats, I did the inks and shading.

Nathan is from my comic Monster Trail and Nate is from @ihavebeencalled‘s work-in-progress story called Weather or Not.

[monster-trail-dev]

Nearly done with inks on issue #2! Here’s Nathan and Kara just hangin’ out.

7/24/19

[monster-trail-dev]

20 days until my senior exhibition and the official release of Monster Trail! 

3/20/19

[monster-trail-dev]

Halfway through sketches/pencils for issue 2. Still getting used to drawing Nathan in short sleeves! 

6/17/19

[monster-trail-dev]

Half of the Monster Trail pilot has now been inked! It feels good to realize how far I’ve come! But I have 23 pages left to ink, plus a wraparound cover... not to mention all the coloring/shading/rendering that has to be done. Still, it’s an accomplishment!

To celebrate, here are some sneak-peeks from pages 33 and 39.

12/25/18

[toothpaste-dragon]

Merry Christmas @blairaptor!

We’ve never really drawn any of our characters interacting, so the idea of our married couples going on a double date was too cute to pass up! I think Martha and Kara would instantly become friends, whereas William and Nathan would bond over their non-human similarities. And I’m sure they’d have a lot of fun together - there’s no doubt they’d have a snowball fight immediately after leaving a fancy restaurant! I hope you like this <3

[monster-trail-dev]

Crop from page 42. I like how this sketch came out and I’m excited to draw this little moment between Nathan and Kara.

Also, tonight I finished the tighter sketches for pages 33-42! I’ll be lining this weekend and then pages should go out to flatters in the middle of next week.

12/7/18

[monster-trail-dev]

Progress report 4! Featuring a crop from the first page. More under the cut.

Two weeks ago we had our big midterm critique (I presented my progress on Oct 18). I got a lot done that week - in part because of the pressure of a deadline, and in part because of my other classes suddenly getting lighter for a week. I was in the studio for 2-3 hours at least each night, which if what I hope to do for the rest of the semester.

Anyway, for my critique I emailed the MT script to everyone for them to read, and I presented a storyboard of the whole comic as well as layout thumbnails for all 48 pages. I even got a stick and ran through the storyboard frame by frame like the pros do it (I think). Pretty nerve-wracking, but I’m thankful I care so much about these characters and I could really get into it.

Above: All my work on the wall for the critique. (Left to right) The 48 thumbnail sketches (scanned from my sketchbook), a test illustration from act 3, my test page from early on, and some layouts with text blown up to print size.

Below: Closeup of the storyboard I used to run through the story. Some of those images will be pasted into the pages themselves and traced to become part of the final art.

Main feedback from the critique: I’m on pace and need to continue working at this speed. The story only needs a few tweaks - I’m trying to edit the dialogue in several scenes to bring out the theme of the kids discovering what they’re capable of and remembering who they are. The lore of the Tajar unexpectedly created a thematic connection that I’m trying to emphasize a bit more; you forgot what the Tajar looks like, and next time you remember - just as the campers sometimes forget who they are, before they remember at the right moment.

As for the image at the top of this post - as of today I’ve finished drawing page one! That’s a crop of it. It’s slow going (I have more pages in progress and want to have 5 done by Mon/Tues) but it should get faster as I go since I can copy and paste background materials as I create them. Also, the opening scene involves a car, which took time and heavy reference to get right.

I feel like I’ve been shot out of a cannon - getting the script right and then doing layout and text formatting was so much technical work I had to get through before I could just start drawing. But now it’s time to draw, and that’s exciting!

10/28/18