new visual identity and title cards imminent for the podcasts

Drawings ready to be inked, one already done

Yup, it's this again. So, this week I admitted to myself that the podcasts don't really have a distinct visual identity. Worse, some of them look pretty terrible. Also, I've been using scans of already existing media, which is a little questionable from a copyright point of view.

As a result yesterday I planned and made up some template title cards. There may be more later but for the time being they cover the main show, santiago's dead waspcast, which will launch in January; santiago's dead media, the shows so far; santiago's dead media Art, a set of original art pieces (sound, visual and language) coming soon; and santiago's dead media/waspcast livestream, coming some time in 2017 unless I crack and do something on Periscope before then.

Which brings me to the three images I drew and inked today. From right to left they're for: The Black Connection (this one's traced), Shakespeare, and Dr Strange. Both Shakespeare and Strange are freehand btw.

Drawings completed - sorta. See below for details

Now I just need to remove the pencil-marks, scan the page, chop it into three files, drop the images into the title-card templates, re-edit the videos, reupload them and I'm done.  The reuploading takes forever though, so I'll start with Dr Strange (which isn't uploaded at all yet) to make sure that's ready for this coming Monday (7 November 2016) for Patreon supporters, and the Monday after for everyone else.

Dr Strange is reviewed by Richard Barrett, one of the regular contributors on the waspcast, and an excellent poet you should totally read. I've taken the likeness from a Frank Brunner image rather than a Steve Ditko one, purely because Brunner's faces seem to work better in this context than Ditko's. But respect due to Steve Ditko for creating Dr Strange and his universe*.

But man, who knew doing a fortnightly podcast would be so much work?  And just wait until January when I have waspcast alternating with dead media on a weekly basis through until June.

Plus I have some drawings to do for title cards where there isn't a clear single image I can use. Evening by the Mersey? Translating thought into art? Sunderland Point? Confusions in half-light? I hate myself sometimes. But I have a couple of weeks, and once the backlog's out of the way it's all good.

I'm considering giving these title card pictures as rewards at a later stage, I just want to work out the logistics of that.

See you soon.

*Slightly fewer props to Steve Ditko for being a libertarian Ayn Rand fanboi. Although even then, without Question and Mr A we wouldn't have Alan Moore's Rorschach in Watchmen, so I guess it works out.