Ultraman Saves the Day!

Phew! What a weekend! It's Wednesday and I'm still exhausted. Hopefully a few of you wandered over here from there! We have one last post of goodies to polish out the month. Use this to be suddenly inspired to get all your friends to vote The Rejects way!

Firstly, as you might guess from the title post, Wally and I put together a short Ultra-man comic. For those of you who like your bad guys bad, and not empathetic, this should be right up your alley.



If you had half as much fun reading it as I had writing it, then I had twice as much fun writing it as you had reading it. ;)

But that's not all! Just to make your collection of The Rejects promo memorabilia complete there is one more thing. Wally just did this weird and awesome promo piece.

I don't know if I'm going to have another blog post for you guys. The month is drawing to a close. Unless, of course, you give me a REASON to post more blogs! Vote your heads off! Blackmail others to vote! The Rejects on Zuda! It's better than sex!

Titanium Rex Energy Boost

I couldn't make Wally do all the heavy lifting here. Just like other universes there are A-list superheros (like ultra-man and black talon) and there are D-list superheroes. Titanium Rex is the Mark McGrath of The Rejects universe. I put together this ad for Titanium Rex's energy drink. Maybe I'll try to put all this all together for free comic book day or something. That would be pretty fun.

Everything seems to be slowing down over at Zuda, so now is the time to strike! If you haven't voted yet go do so and if you have, get a friend or two to vote. I still think this is doable with one big push.

If you see me at Webcomics Weekend on the 21st be sure to say hey. I'll be the stocky guy with the goatee handing out fliers... hmm... that'll probably describe a lot of people at a webcomic convention... maybe I should wear a corsage or something.

The Black Talon: There Was a Crooked Man...

I wanted to get this up yesterday, but it took most of the night to do the lettering because my computer was being a jerk. Apparently watching Hulu and manipulating large files at the same time is a no go. Anyway, instead of a 'my birthday present to you' this is, I guess, our St. Patrick's Day present to you. So if you're not Irish you can't read it. Luckily today everyone is Irish, and also I have no way to enforce that rule. Below is a short three page supplemental comic for The Black Talon. It's unrelated to The Rejects, excepting that it takes place in the same universe. I hope to give a little more insite into their universe whenever I can. One of the guys over at Digital Strips didn't like how the thugs in the comic were too much like geeks. I do see where he's coming from, but from my position: in a world where are the comic book stereotropes they talk about actually happen, they're not being geeks. To them, these are real life scenarios. The Rejects is a story that poses the question "What would a superhero universe look like to the civilians." It takes place in a town that's big enough for crime, but small enough that there are no other superheroes around. The criminals are small-time and the heroes (Chris and Eric) are even smaller. I'm hoping sheding a little more light on the universe will bring that more starkly to the light. The Black Talon is played for serious. The only real joke is in treating such an utterly ridiculous villain with a serious sinister tone. Enjoy



Wally did an awesome job whipping these up in the last week. Again bringing what I wrote on the page to life in a much more dynamic way than it was in my head.

Also, Paul Mckinney did a cool poster for the Zuda March contest that features Chris and Eric that everyone should totally see.

Please remember to go vote!

The Black Talon

There's a lot about Ultra-man in the eight page submission, but nothing about the Black Talon. The Black Talon is the hero Eric dressed up as, the one that's clearly analogous to Batman.
We do have some cool stuff planned soon that incorporates this character and helps flesh out the universe they're in a little. So stay tuned.

Also there's a new Crit link that everyone should go read and enjoy ;)

Concept Characters

I've updated another review in the Rejects Crits gadget, and I created a gadget linking to other webcomics who've voted for Rejects. If you have a review (good or bad, we'll post it either way) or a webcomic and you've voted for us, please email me an I'll add you to the list. I urge everyone to take a look at all of the comics I've linked to, because they're comics I enjoy as well.

Today's post includes alot of the original concept sketches for our main characters: Chris, Eric and Derrick. This first sketch is my concept sketch that I sent over to Wally when we were first starting to work together, so he could see what I was thinking of for the characters. I was trying to channel more Bruce Timm than I can handle. While I'm a competant cartoonist, I'm clearly very limited so I was glad to have Wally sign on, he has alot more ability than I do.

As you can see I hadn't progressed so far as to take Chris and Eric out of Batman and Superman costumes and put them in the clearly congruous Black Talon and Ultra-man costumes. Derrick I took pretty much straight out of a drawing manual, I wanted to feel very much like a "random thug." Wally's first pass at concept art was pretty decent. His rough sketches usually are.

He added some color, and did a good job with the characterization. My only complaint really was that Eric was far too skinny. I love the addition of red hair on Chris, it was never on paper but if fit well. His hair is slightly more brown in the finished product, but there really are a lot of red headed kids in comics.

This is the last character concept page before we started getting to actual page layouts. You see Wally testing out some new costume designs based on the updated scripts. They would change quite a bit before the final costumes, but the three villains are pretty close to where they'd be at the final product.

In other news Wally and I are both on twitter now: http://twitter.com/kingofsnake13 and http://twitter.com/slidestudios. And also I plan to be down at Webcomic weekend on the Saturday on the 21st, begging votes, so if you see me say "hey'

Vote on Zuda!

The Promo Flier

You may have seen this flier around if you happen to be in the same internet circles as Wally or me. It's the promo piece Wally did for The Rejects. I've been handing them out as flyers and I would not be adverse to anyone else doing so as well. If you need a high-def version of the image, just email me.

This was the second composition Wally pitched for the promo. Here's a rough sketch of the first:

What's happening here is Chris and Eric are being caught by surprise. Eric is trying to pull his pant's up and Chris is tripping over his shoelaces. Yet their poses actually throw heroic looking shadows on the wall. It's a good concept, but I thought there was a little too much going on for a one shot and something simple might work better.

Support the Rejects!

The Rejects is a competitor in this month's Zuda competition. It's a superhero/parody story of two young social misfits living in a world full of superheros, who find their lives much more complicated when they discover their own, albeit flawed, superpowers. I'm setting this up as a production blog for the comic. There is just tons of stuff we're working on, you can expect the first stuff to go up this weekend when I have a good chuck of time to working on posting, designing, and writing.

The Rejects is written by myself (Nate Frisoli) and drawn by Walter Ostlie. Please go vote for us over at Zuda. It also helps if you add us as a favorite and give us five stars. It looks like it's going to be a tough competition this month, and if we want a fighting chance, we're going to need all the help we can get!