[ikonimation]

Hello everyone,

My name is Nicholas. I just joined Comic Book Plus Pro. Just thought I'd introduce myself. Well, I've always loved drawing and comic books since as far as I can remember. I think my first comic book was Mighty Mouse way back in the early 80s. My parents bought it for my brother, but he didn't care for it so he gave it to me, and even though I couldn't read it, I looked at the pictures over and over again. Since then my love of comics grew into an obsession when I was a teenager and in my early 20s. I read everything from Marvel, DC and independent comics. Back then I had my heart set on becoming a comic book illustrator, and while I did have a couple of small gigs, my career as a comic book illustrator never took off.

Now in my 40s, in the past few years I have gotten back into comic book reading as well as illustrating (mostly for fun). Although I have to confess that I have been very disappointed with modern comic books. So that's why I have been searching and reading comics of the past. Since around here comic book shops are an extinct species, I have had to look online and so I stumbled upon this treasure trove of a website! LOL! I've already started reading a couple of comics (mostly the Christian comics) and so far I'm loving them so much! I have been downloading the cbr files to my phone and just reading in my spare time. Such a joy!

There are so many wonderful comics on this website that's it a challenge where to start, so I'm first starting with the Christian comics and will eventually move to the adventure, sci fi, western and even romance 

But so far, loving this website!

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and introduce myself.

[The Australian Panther]

even though I couldn't read it, I looked at the pictures over and over again. Since then my love of comics grew into an obsession 

ikonimation, that's a great story. A real testimonial to the power of comics. Welcome from the other side of the Pacific. 
Your mindset is not unlike many of us here.

I've already started reading a couple of comics (mostly the Christian comics)   

Not a bad place to start. A lot of people don't look too closely at those, but they then miss quite a lot of very interesting work. Not all the stories are specificity Biblical in Narrative.
Little hint. Search the Threads as well as the comics. There is a lot of priceless information in them.

Please check out the Reading Group and join in. All the threads there are open, so feel free to comment on any of the choices.
New choice on Monday!   
https://comicbookplus.com/forum/?board=26.0

And a question, is your Avatar photo, Christopher Lambert?
And 'Iconimation' ? very creative name. Excellent! 

Cheers!

[Andrew999]

Welcome Nicholas - you are amongst friends here>

I'm guessing you are the creator of Father Gabriel? Terrific work if you don't mind me saying - great depth in frame and composition. The in-proportion characters have  a rotoscope feel to them - such talent:

https://ikonimation.com

Feel free to post your work here if you wish - there's a space for it

[paw broon]

Hello Nicholas and a warm welcome to CB+.  As Andrew says, you're among friends here.
You are not alone in being disappointed with modern comics.  While there are some gems, especially translations of French/Belgian albums and some books from lesser known publishers, a lot of modern mainstream stuff is, imo, unreadable.
As for religious comics, I admit to being wary of religion, but one of my comicbook heroes, a giant of the genre, Dudley D Watkins, drew a series of small landscape comics for "Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade" in the '60's:-
http://www.christiancomicsinternational.org/series_warrior.html
Apologies but I can't find any scans of these rarities which decades ago were highly prized in certain quarters.
Watkins was responsible for The Broons; Oor Wullie and many, many strips in DC Thomson comics.  A wonderful artist.
Enjoy your visits here, join in the conversions, and dig around in the sections.  So much to discover and read.

[narfstar]

Welcome, welcome Nicolas from a fellow Christian. Cute stuff you make. If you are interested in comics for fun drop on over to www.indelliblecomics.com we can always use more artists.

[ikonimation]

ikonimation, that's a great story. A real testimonial to the power of comics. Welcome from the other side of the Pacific. 
Your mindset is not unlike many of us here.

Not a bad place to start. A lot of people don't look too closely at those, but they then miss quite a lot of very interesting work. Not all the stories are specificity Biblical in Narrative.
Little hint. Search the Threads as well as the comics. There is a lot of priceless information in them.

Please check out the Reading Group and join in. All the threads there are open, so feel free to comment on any of the choices.
New choice on Monday!   
https://comicbookplus.com/forum/?board=26.0

And a question, is your Avatar photo, Christopher Lambert?
And 'Iconimation' ? very creative name. Excellent! 

Cheers!

Hi Panther, thanks for the reply and the warm welcome! Ikonimation is a name I came up with a few years ago when I started getting into reading and illustrating comics again. Besides comics and animation, I also love Orthodox Christian art and iconography, so I combined the greek spelling of icon (ikon) with animation and voila , Ikonimation was born. I created the website to display my comics and animations.

I am currently reading the Life of Christ Visualized 1, and have downloaded it on my phone to read. My wife and I were out of town yesterday and every chance I got I would pull out my phone and start reading one or two pages. I adore printed comics of course, but I also love the convenience of reading comics on my phone. I really, really love the art on this book. I have no problem with computer drawn and colored art (I do it myself) but there is something so magical about hand drawn and colored that you just can't get on a computer.

And yes my avatar is Christopher Lambert. I'm not a huge fan of his, I have seen a couple of his movies which were really good (Greystoke and Highlander). But I just randomly chose his avatar out of the selection because his was the only one that kind of fit and stood out to me. I may change my avatar again though.

I will definitely take part in the reading groups. Thanks for the suggestions. I will also check out the other forums, already I can see so many wonderful posts and information.

Thanks again!

[ikonimation]

Welcome Nicholas - you are amongst friends here>

I'm guessing you are the creator of Father Gabriel? Terrific work if you don't mind me saying - great depth in frame and composition. The in-proportion characters have  a rotoscope feel to them - such talent:

https://ikonimation.com

Feel free to post your work here if you wish - there's a space for it

Hello Andrew,

Thanks for welcoming me here! Yes I am the creator of Father Gabriel. Thank you for checking out my website and I'm very happy you liked them. I created Father Gabriel a few years back when I started creating comics and animations again. Even though I wanted to create Christian stories, I didn't want them based solely on Biblical events or on saints. I wanted to create my own characters and stories that were Christian based but not being preachy at the same time, if that makes sense. So it made sense to me to create an original character who was a monk and kind of traveled the world spreading the love and faith of Christ. And I didn't want my stories to be based on any time period either. So in one story Father Gabriel may be in the 50s, and in another he may be in the present day.

I first started creating a couple of short animations on Father Gabriel, then started drawing one panel comic strips and then eventually web comics with their own self contained stories. For the most part, all the artwork in the comic strips and web comics were done on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phone. At first I thought it was a dumb idea drawing comics on my phone, but the more I was doing it the better I was getting and became so much fun and convenient. For reference, I used photos of myself that my wife took of me. That's where the rotoscope feel comes from.

And thanks for the suggestion, that's a great idea! I will create a post in the Self Promote forum with my comics.

[ikonimation]

Hello Nicholas and a warm welcome to CB+.  As Andrew says, you're among friends here.
You are not alone in being disappointed with modern comics.  While there are some gems, especially translations of French/Belgian albums and some books from lesser known publishers, a lot of modern mainstream stuff is, imo, unreadable.
As for religious comics, I admit to being wary of religion, but one of my comicbook heroes, a giant of the genre, Dudley D Watkins, drew a series of small landscape comics for "Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade" in the '60's:-
http://www.christiancomicsinternational.org/series_warrior.html
Apologies but I can't find any scans of these rarities which decades ago were highly prized in certain quarters.
Watkins was responsible for The Broons; Oor Wullie and many, many strips in DC Thomson comics.  A wonderful artist.
Enjoy your visits here, join in the conversions, and dig around in the sections.  So much to discover and read.

Hello Paw. Thanks for welcoming me! I think most of the comics I used to read back in the day were mainstream super hero comics (Marvel, DC). Although I did also read many comics from independent publishers (Image, Dark Horse, Valiant, etc), but I guess those would be considered mainstream as well. That's probably my own fault since I either never bothered or just wasn't aware of anything beyond the norm when it came to comics. These days when I look at comics from the same publishers, for the most part it's extremely disappointing and sad the state that it's in.

My wife is Japanese, and she tells me that in Japan there are comics for everyone and every age. There are comics on sports, westerns, romance, sci fi, and every category you can think of. I have read a number of Japanese comics that are absolutely wonderful, unfortunately many that are translated and brought to the US are for kids/teenagers and don't appeal to me much.

But that's okay, because now I have this website! 

Thanks for the suggestion on Watkins. I did a search on him and his books look wonderful! I found this online thrift store that sells his books. I'm going to try out a few of them! Here is the link if anyone else is interested:

https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/dudley-d-watkins/403635/

[ikonimation]

Welcome, welcome Nicolas from a fellow Christian. Cute stuff you make. If you are interested in comics for fun drop on over to www.indelliblecomics.com we can always use more artists.

Hello narfstar,

Thanks for sharing the link to your website. Your comics look really nice, love the art! I really love seeing Independent comics and publishers! I just joined your Facebook group and will pick up the first issue of InDELLiprose on my next Amazon order. Looks like a great read! Out of curiosity, is the art hand drawn/colored?

Thanks again for sharing!

[paw broon]

Nicholas, I should warn you before you buy The Broons etc.  They are written in quite broad Scots and you might struggle with some of the words and phrases. I am still digging around to see if I can find any of his religious comics. No luck so far.

[narfstar]

Our InDELLible comics are anthologies by a variety of artists with a variety of styles. We have those who draw on paper and those who draw digital. The coloring is all digital. I have some features that are photoshop manipulations of public domain images.