More sneek peeks into Ion Bunny 4

I previously wrote about Ion Bunny 4 and how he will square off against the Mad Hatter once more, but what I failed to mention was that unlike our previous issues of Ion Bunny, which have all been penciled and inked by Steve Surine, this one will be penciled and inked by our new artist, Brittany Bankert. To the side is a concept sketch she did of Ion Bunny and his alter-ego, Ian Bunay. We're excited about this new style for Ion Bunny since it lends itself really well to the "cute, yet not cuddly" nature of the "hare raising" electro-phile.

Stay tuned for periodic updates on all things 3twins...

-Jason

Story Creations

A lot of thought goes into writing a story for 3twins.net. Whether it’s an issue of Hatman & Indigo or an episode of one of our cartoons, it all has to start with an idea. Often times, we will come up with the silliest ideas, and try to form a story around that. Sometimes, the end result has little or nothing to do with the initial idea.

Take “Meet the Damsels” for example. We had discussed Blonde having a family, and we thought it would be funny if all the members of her family were named for their hair color. This concept led us to create Brunette, and Bruno as a funny paring, as well as the other family members.

This was back when we were using classic story concepts as a jumping point for our creativity (like "Freaky Friday" influenced "Heroic and Incredible"). I wanted to loosely parody Sherlock Holmes and write a mystery where Hatman & Indigo finally meet Blonde’s family, and then the dad (Grey) comes up missing. This was going to lead to the discovery of Bald, the black sheep of the family. We dropped the mystery idea and went with a more zany approach, that the family just didn’t like Bald. You can see how the story unfolded in last year’s issues of “Meet the Damsels”, or read more about the concept to story process in Jason’s earlier blog. ~Andy

PART 2: Parody Covers

Previously, I briefly wrote about the process of choosing a cover to parody for a specific Hatman issue. I will go into more detail on that now.

Many times we have to really work on what covers would fit best with what stories. Granted, we could just arbitrarily pick something recognizable and go with that. However, I have tried to implement a few rules into our parody covers.

My first rule is that only characters that appear in that story can appear on the cover. For instance if its not a story featuring the Terrible Trio, you won't see Zapman on the cover. Now I say in the "story" meaning that if for instance the cover is for part 3 of a story and Leppy appeared in part 2 but isn't in part 3 its okay to have him on that cover. Because we look at each story as a whole and the parts just help break them up into manageable pieces.

My second rule is that it has to make sense somehow in relation to the source material we are parodying. Take "The Terrible Trio part 2" for example, we wanted to parody "The Avengers issue #4". It was an obvious choice to put Super Cold Frozen Man in the place of Captain America, because he has a shield (which was originally designed to feel some what like an icy version of Cap's shield). And then, because Indigo and Glomo can both fly we put them in the spots for Wasp and Iron Man, Indigo in the Wasp position because he has wings. Then looking at what was left, we decided since Hatman has a cape, he should be where Thor is and why not have him swinging a hammer as well. Finally, Zapman was put in the place of Giant Man.

My third rule is that any text that appears on the source material should be closely parodied if at all possible. Again, if we look at the above covers, you'll see "Captain America Lives Again!" and in the story previous to this, we had led our audience to believe that Hatman & Indigo had killed Super Cold Frozen Man, so we put "Super Cold Frozen Man Lives Again!" Also, a good reason this cover worked so well with this particular story was that the part 3 was the very first Ion Bunny so putting Ion Bunny in the box where Sub-Mariner is on the original was also a no brainer. Then we looked at the text for "Avengers" and decided to make ours say "Adventures" and we squeezed our Hatman & Indigo logo in after that.

I still have a lot to say about parody covers, so we'll continue this another time.

-Jason

Parody Covers

Many of our comics have parody covers (to understand what this is, just compare the images to the left and right). In fact, we actually have more parody covers than original covers. The pattern usually is that issue one of a multi-issue story is an original cover and the subsequent issues have parody covers. We have broken this pattern a couple of times, (technically only once on the one part Christmas Carol issue, but the following issues "Omniscient" weren't parody covers, however, the part 2 cover could arguably be a parody of the part 1 cover, and at this point your probably saying "who cares") but we try to have that be the pattern.

Anyhow, a lot of thought is put into the parody covers that we do. I spend a lot of time searching cover databases (coverbrowser is a great one) looking for covers to possibly parody. We are usually working about six months to a year ahead, so I am constantly jumping around the different stories and issues thinking of what would best portray the comic issue at the time. Some comics lend themselves to a specific cover naturally. Like "Back to the Beginning", as I mentioned in a previous post, the part 2 cover is going to be a parody of the "Back To The Future part 1" box cover (refer to that post for the reference image). However, some comics don't so easily lend themselves to a parody cover, so we have to put a little thought into it.

Our first few parody covers were specifically parodying "first" issues. Like Action Comics #1 (shown on the above left), which is the first appearance of Superman, Incredible Hulk #1 (you can guess who that featured) and so on. We still have a few "first" issues in mind for future covers, but we have expanded to include other interesting covers as well as ones you might recognize right off the bat and some that may be a little more obscure.

I will continue more on this topic later.

-Jason

50 for the 50th - Some Tips

Back in 2005 when we first began the process of creating The Adventures of Hatman & Indigo as a comic, I don't think I would have guessed that four years later we'd have 35 issues on-line. But here we are with our 36th issue well on the way.

In a few months we should be ready to publish our 50th Hatman & Indigo comic, and to commemorate this milestone we're going to feature 50 covers for the issue - that's more than all of the covers and variant covers we have on the site right now combined! So understandably, we're looking for a little help from our fans. As mentioned in the last post, we would like people to submit covers to us, and if we like them, we'll use them as part of the 50 covers (read the last post for more details). But for anyone who's never drawn a comic cover before, I'm sure there are a lot of questions about where to start and what it takes to make a good cover.

From the fall of 2006 through the end of 2008, I was the primary Hatman & Indigo artist. If you include Ion Bunny, I've actually drawn 24 comics for 3Twins.net, plus 11 original covers, 9 parody covers, and one variant cover. I'll be the first to admit that the work being done by our new artists is leaps and bounds beyond what I did for 3Twins, but if you look at my earlier work and compare it to my later stuff I think you'll agree that I've come a long away. So I think I can offer some tips for our would-be cover artists.

1) Make it dramatic: Covers are intended to be eye-catching and draw the reader in, so you don't want to put your characters in hum-drum poses. Spice it up a bit with a nice action shot.

2) Fill the frame: In some of my earlier covers I made the mistake of drawing the characters too small and filling a lot of the space with background images. Again, you want the cover to be catchy, so let your characters dominate the page, but...

3) Keep it simple: You don't want there to be too much going on or the drawing will become too cluttered. Pick a focal point and make sure everything else in the drawing is used to enhance that point. If it doesn't add to the piece, take it away!

4) Experiment: If you don't know where to start, just draw the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how weird it seems. My favorite original cover was the cover I did for issue #29 Origin: Remastered. The image is of Hatman wearing a Superman-esque costume, flying over the city. The idea came to me and initially I didn't want to draw it because Hatman can't fly! But I went with it and it worked. The lesson - just draw. It might end up great, it might be terrible, but you'll never really know until you try.

-Steve

Issue 50 cover contest

Depending on exactly how our release schedule works out, our 50th issue of Hatman & Indigo is scheduled to come out this winter (probably somewhere between November and January).

We would like to have 50 unique covers for this, these would be randomly generated at a 2% chance each. Several of our artists from issues past, present and future are working on some, but I'd like to present the option for you, the fans, to submit something as well.

Depending on how many covers we get from our artists will depend on how many of your entries we can display. You will be notified if you get in and we will be looking for things that stand out.

The rules are as follows:

1. The cover must have something to do with Hatman comics

2. No, profanity or vulgarities will be accepted (just remember that we try to keep our website acceptable for families, so aim for a G or PG rating, however, mild cartoon violence akin to what has already appeared in Hatman will be considered)

3. No parody covers will be accepted (we want these to be original)

4. Entries are due by 11:59pm eastern time October 31st 2009 (you may email entries to board@3twins.net or if you wish to use snail mail, please email us for mailing information. Snail mail entries must be postmarked by no later than October 31st 2009)

5. Providing rules 1-4 are followed, feel free to express yourself and be creative, we will not divulge the plot of issue 50 (which, if we did would blow your mind) so any and/or all of our characters are free game. (All Hatman & Indigo character's likenesses and logos are trademarks and copyrights of 3twins.net, LLC, and may only be used for the purpose of this contest.)

6. All submissions become the property of 3twins.net, LLC, however the artist will be credited.

Shortly after the issue is released we will provide a gallery page displaying the 50 different covers.

Any questions can be posted as comments to this blog or if you would rather you can email board@3twins.net.