Well, you might have noticed that we've been taking a bit of a break from the website after we finished the camping trip. We're sorry about that but it's for a very good reason. We're finally getting to work on the art for what will be the first MCFC book release, and the first in a series called "Oraculous Tales." Each book in the series will find the gang being transported to a different time and place in history to have an adventure and meet Rhetorical at the age he was then. Here is a sneak peek at the very first illustration that kicks off the first Oraculous Tale called, "Sword of the Ramurai!"

So, please bear with us for a few more weeks of scant updates while we continue to work on the book. We'll keep you informed about our progress on the book as we work on it, and of course we'll let you know when it is finally done.

Our last night of camping was perfect. We had a beautiful sunset, a good fire, a perfectly clear night, and we even convinced Rhetorical to finally tell a scary campfire story (a little too scary for me).

We packed up early the next morning and all piled back into the car to head home. Not far from our campsite we saw this little turtle trying to make his way across the road.

 

Moo-Cow had us stop so he could provide the turtle with ferry service to the other side.

Thanks for coming camping with us, we hope you enjoyed it! Why don't you leave us some comments telling us about some of your past camping adventures, we'd love to hear about them!  

Just last weekend we here at MCFC helped organize, and had a table at, broke: Affordable Arts Fair! It was a huge success with hundreds of people coming out to buy art from 50 different artists. The best part about it was that most of the artwork was 50 dollars or under!

It was also the first time we've ever sold any original Moo-Cow Fan Club art! We've always just kept our original artwork because we found it hard to part with, but we think it's time to give the MCFC fans out there a chance to own their own piece of Moo-Cow history. We only offered a few pieces for sale there, but we will be preparing some more for the store.

We pre-made some felties to sell as well as the feltie kits.

And we had one more new thing for sale there. Something Ramses whipped up at the last moment . He was pretty proud when he sold some of these.

That's right, Ramses' Comic now in print! A longer version of this (with lots of bonus content and a new cover) will be available in the MCFC store next week!

We had a great time organizing and attending broke and we'll probably be doing it again in November. We'll let you know.

The Forbidden City is not actually a city, but a grand palace that was given the imposing name because entrance to the inner chambers were forbidden to anyone except the emperor, his family and their servants. 24 Emperors lived in this palace from the 1400s to 1924, when the new Kuomintang government forced the last emperor out. The Forbidden City is located right in the heart Beijing, the capitol of China.

The Forbidden City is a huge complex covering 177 acres. It is broken up into two main parts, the inner court and the outer court. The outer court is where large ceremonies and official meetings were held. The inner court was reserved exclusively to house and entertain the emperor’s family and concubines.

The palace took 14 years to build, and was finished in 1420. It is said that it took one million workers to build the Forbidden City. An astounding 100,000 artisans were responsible for creating all the beautiful carvings, paintings, tapestries and details that decorate much of the ornate palace.

There are many incredible pieces of artwork in the Forbidden City but one of the greatest is also the largest stone sculpture on the grounds. Despite being so large, it is worked right into the middle of a grand stone staircase. The sculpture depicts 9 dragons soaring through clouds and it weighs 250 tons! The stone used in the carving was from a town located 45 miles away from the palace, and it took 25,000 workers to pull it that distance. On cold days, the workers would dig wells, and pour water on the roadway to make it icy, and therefore easier to slide the heavy stone over.

There are supposedly 9,999 rooms in the Forbidden City, because in China the number nine is considered lucky. The number nine is repeated all through the art and design of the buildings. Can you see where the number nine is used in this picture?

The sloping roofs of all the buildings have protective statues at the corners. The more statues on the roof, the more important the building was. Minor buildings have three or four at each corner, while major buildings have up to ten protective statues.

There are five main gates in the Forbidden City with great poetic names like Gate of Supreme Harmony, Gate of Heavenly Purity, and Gate of Loyal Obedience to name a few. Each gate is the entrance to a different key area of the palace. For instance, if you want to go to the stunning imperial gardens (which was my favorite part of the palace), you have to walk through the Gate of Heavenly Unity.

The Communist Government of China still keeps the famous painting of Chairman Mao, the controversial leader who began communism in the country, over the Meridian Gate entrance across from Tiananmen Square. There are also statues of lions in front of the gate. In China, lions represent bravery, good luck and power. There are lion sculptures all throughout the Forbidden City, and at entrances to buildings all over China.

Today, I’m doing a second installment about how comics for Moo-Cow (and comics in general) are made. This installment is Starring Eleanor Davis and the Bug Brigade.

Eleanor is a incredibly excellent artist living in Athens, GA with her also extremely talented comic artist boyfriend Drew Weing. Both Drew and Eleanor have done really fantastic illustrations for us in past issues (Scotland, Forests, Aztecs, Egypt) but Eleanor’s comic for our Insect issue’s Final Funnies page really raised the bar! She packed a ton of jokes, information and really appealing art into a 7”x 9” spot, which is really hard if you’ve ever tried it! Go ahead click on it and see for yourself.

Eleanor was nice enough to send us the gift of the original artwork for this comic. When I saw how clean and well crafted the original page looked I immediately wanted to put it on this blog as a peek at a comic that is perfectly done in a more traditional way of crafting comics (as opposed to my method of cobbling a comic together from parts using the computer). So Eleanor e-mailed me her sketches that led up to her final comic.

These are some of her preliminary character sketches for the Bug Brigade. Here you can see Eleanor working out the look of characters. Also you can see a couple of names and sketches for characters that didn’t make it into the final comic. When you are developing new characters this sketching part of the process is key to helping you understand them. I only learned that too recently, and therefore over the years I’ve introduced some clunky characters into the Moo-Cow world that then quietly disappeared (poor Bargain Bob). So remember to get to know your characters in your sketchpad before you go putting them in your comics.

These are the rough pencils for the comic. This is the stage at which you use pencils map out and draw the comic to extent you need to plan it. Some artist’s rough pages look almost as perfect and clean as their final inked pages and some just draw basic shapes to convey the images. Really it's just key to get all your major parts down so you can figure out your pace and spacing.

Here you can see the final inked page (isn’t it nice!) and how all the elements came together. Drew did the lettering on this comic and want to make sure he gets credit for it because he’s a real lettering pro! What you can really see from this picture is the use of white correction fluid (or white paint) on the page. This is common in hand inked comics because no mater how talented you are you will always make mistakes or want to make things look even better. Also, it can be used as a more controlled way to create white spaces after the inking is done.

I love when I see a comic fully realized on the page like this! To me it’s an awesome talent and one that is becoming more rare as more people (like me) start their comic careers in the computer age.

In all fairness this comic is not completely computer free though. We did ask Eleanor to color it with our 2 colors for that issue (we used a different 2 colors every issue), and the method in which we need that done requires the use of computer coloring. But normally Eleanor even does cool stuff with watercolors or inks that make her stuff completely done by hand. I’ll leave you with one of those images.

If you have read any of the Moo-Cow Fan Club Print Editions or visited our comics page then you are probably familiar with the comics I do about the MCFC gang. I thought I would share some of the process of how I create one of those comics. For an example I'll use the Toll Tale comic from the Pioneers edition.

Look at how much that row changed!

Oh, and have you noticed we have a fan comics section now? This means we need all of you to send in the comics you do so we can put them in there!

This blog entry is all about you. You, the Moo-Cow Fan Club fans. MCFC might not be a household name with millions of fans around the world (yet), but the fans we do have are the greatest! You guys never fail to surprise us, and in turn make us extremely happy we do what we do. So, to give you your proper credit we are adding a new section to our site called the MCFC Fan Photo Album. This is where you get your recognition as an MCFC fan. All you have to do is send us a photo (or drawing) of yourself and we'll add you to the photo album.

This whole idea was inspired by the great card we recently got from one of our biggest moocowfanclub.com fans, Rebecca S. With her card she included two excellent pictures of herself that we really wanted to share with all of you out there.

Rebecca posing with the Moo-Cow feltie she recently made (and she did a great job on it!).

Rebecca showing off her Ramses style cape! I almost didn't want to post this one because it will just fuel Ramses' ego, but it is too great not to share with you.

Thank you Rebecca, we love having you as a fan!

If you would like to have your pictures added the MCFC Fan Photo Album send them to P.O. Box 165 Peterborough NH 03458. Or, to e-mail pictures, contact us here, and we will send you an e-mail address to use.

Please be sure to get permission from your parents before doing this. We will not post any pictures that do not have an attached note giving us permission to do so. We are not obligated to post all photos submitted, and we will not return any photos physically sent in unless a self-addressed stamped envelope accompanies them.