Fundament Zero comics

[DrMike2000]

Hey Freedom Reborn!

I've been busy this year with my new graphics tablet. The results are up in the totally overhauled www.fundamentzero.com, now primarily a comic art website.

I've got the 14 page Gloriana J: Rings of Saturn strip, set in the future of Ms Amazing's world.

And there's The Third Door, a silent six-pager about the life of an extraordinary couple.

I'd love to know what you think.

[naitvalis]

your style of draw is  very nice Dr Mike!  i've always enjoyed your pics since the "tales of the navigator", the characters are pretty original to, congratulations!
the comic like most is Gloriana J: Rings of Saturn.
if i can add a little suggest: in your comics i see  you choose frequently the same  point of view, but i think it could be nice to see some more "hazardous" perspective some time .
congatulations again for this and for all your great works!

[Previsionary]

That's awesome, Dr. Mike, and it's great to see a new post by you. I'll be sure to check out your updated site, and I'll go doubly as far to make sure I make a post about it on FRP2's blog/gplus page.

[DrMike2000]

Thanks!

Naitvalis - yeah, I know what you mean. I hit a point in Gloriana J, pages 8-11, where it felt like an endless repetition of figures the same size with the same 3/4 profile faces talking to each other. Page 12 was where I tried to break that and mix it up some more. Its one of those things I intend to keep working on - more close ups, different angles on faces and so on. Doing comics instead of just pin-ups/covers is great practice for this if I keep it in mind.

Prev - thank you heaps. That would be awesome, any pimping of my site is much appreciated.

[DrMike2000]

Another 4 page strip is up - "Paradise Falls".

This one's tangentially related to the Amazanauts mod, and in fact features a character design based off the reskinned version of Freedom Force's very own Ant that I used in there.

For me it was a nice change of pace to do some black and white work in traditional media.

[naitvalis]

nice job Doc! my favourite page is the 3, i like in particoular the "decorations"on the characters, this one in particoular remind me in someway Alcatena maybe you know the artist.
I don't like to much the characters you have used for type the texts and the hand drawn rectangles for close the scenes.
keep up the good job!

[AfghanAnt]

Amazing!

[DrMike2000]

A big update on Fundament Zero today. More sketches, and some teaser material for Universe Gun - the webcomic I've been working on for the past year.

Universe Gun is a sprawling sci-fi/superhero story of the 37th C world of Ms. Amazing and the Life Star, as seen previously in Gloriana J. It will be kicking off with its first 7 page installment in a week or so, and be running bi-monthly from then on in 7 page blocks, probably for the next four years or so if I keep to my schedule.

I'll let you all know when the first part goes up.

[spydermann93]

Sounds awesome!

Can't wait to see it!

[Gremlin]

Sweet merciful Christ this is spectacular. DrMike, I've always adored your marvelously fecund imagination, and I'm ecstatic to see you moving into producing your own comics. I can't wait to read them!

[DrMike2000]

Thank you, thank you, spydey and Gremlin!
Your enthusiasm means a lot to me - both your posts put a big grin on my face that took far too long to fade!

There's some more teaser art up on the Universe Gun page here: http://www.fundamentzero.com/art/previews/ugun.htm



See you in seven when the strip itself launches with Chapter 1: Life on Mars!

[BentonGrey]

Ohh my gosh...how did I miss this?!  More stories from Dr. Mike, stories that are set in the universe of the Strangers?  Yes, please!  I can't wait to carve out some time to read these comics Mike!  A brief (of necessity thanks to the looming start of the semester) look at the site suggests great promise and lots of fun.  I'll be waiting anxiously for this Universe Gun series you're teasing.  It looks amazing, no pun intended.

[DrMike2000]

Yeah, sort of set in the universe of the Strangers, Benton.

Ms. Amazing (the smarmy one from Amazanauts) is from the Life Star, and her virtual reality training/upbringing was the Strangers universe as Miss Amazing (the noble one from Strangers and Amazanauts), until she encountered the fictional weapon known as the Universe Gun. And she's been dead for some centuries now at the time of the Universe Gun comic. Who came up with this convoluted cosmology, for crying out loud?

But yeah. Expect the same strange, science-tastic, sometimes silly, psychedelic sexy brand of storytelling as "Universe Gun" unfolds. In seven-page serialized uh... stanzas!

[DrMike2000]

It's Saturday! (At least it is in Australia already!)

Universe Gun Chapter 1: Life on Mars is now up on www.fundamentzero.com

I'd love to know what you folks think. If you like it, I'd double love for you to drop by my Facebook page over here and give me a quick Like or comment!
https://www.facebook.com/DrMike2000

And a big thank you to Freedom Reborn today for your support and encouragement over the years. This probably wouldn't have happened without this community.

[naitvalis]

hey Doc you keep improving your work uh? i really enjoy this one! you have used nice views and original designs for characters and places, congratulationz!
you have already your unique stile wich is very important.
the only thing i can say  is i find the cover interesting but not interesting at the level of the other pages.

[DrMike2000]

Thanks, Naitvalis.

Yeah, I've been trying hard to up my art game this past year. 2013 was the year of backgrounds and perspective grids. This year I'm off to life drawing for the first time since school, starting on Friday.

I know what you mean about the covers. I'm producing pretty dense pages, typically 8 panels with multiple figures in each, and switching to full page images has been tricky. And I've made the odd decision to try and centre all my covers around hands for some reason. Partly because I like drawing hands, and seeing how much expression you can get into them. I think with this one the background lets it down a bit. I'm happier with the second cover - the third one's coming up soon on my schedule, and is really going to stretch me!

[DrMike2000]

I've kicked off a weekly blog at www.fundamentzero.com today, with the first entry talking about the old Guardians of the Galaxy. You know, these people?



I was originally intending to ramble on about the pros and cons of setting a strip in the far future, but events conspired to take me down a different track.
Oh, and I highly recommend life drawing as an exercise for other artists out there. I'll be doing that again for sure.

[AfghanAnt]

I marvel at your art work Dr. Mike.

[DrMike2000]

Thanks, Ant.

[crimsonquill]

Great work, DrMike! 

- CQ

[Epimethee]

Always very cool, Dr., to see more from your very creative mind.

P.S.: The link to your blog from the homepage is broken. A case of \ for /.

[DrMike2000]

Thanks, CQ and Epimithee!

And nice catch on the \ character. I've fixed that now and made a not to check for such characters in the future. That breaks on Mac's doesn't it? Or are you running Linux?

[Epimethee]

And nice catch on the \ character. I've fixed that now and made a not to check for such characters in the future. That breaks on Mac's doesn't it? Or are you running Linux?

Mac. I had forgotten that Microsoft customized its interpretation of the HTTP protocol to allow using "\" instead of UNIX's "/". Does it work in any browser not using Internet Explorer's rendering engine

The Defender's enemy Nebulon, a golden Jim Morrison from space, starts a cult that tells its members they're bozos, and makes them wear clown masks.

Great line! I remember reading these as a kid – a translation in glorious black and white, sharing pages with the new X-Men and my favourite, Nova. As I remember it, the Nebulon arc was the for me the Defenders' best, in spite of making me rather nonplussed by the Squadron Supreme turning Sinister.

[DrMike2000]

A new blog entry is up! "Designing the Future" looks at the decision to set Universe Gun in the far future, and how the science and technology featured in the strip are inspired by research being carried out today.

Read all about it at www.fundamentzero.com



Oh yeah, and I'm pleased to announce that I've finished drawing Chapter 6 this week - that's 2 whole 21 page comics in the bag now! I'll be maintaining at least a 3 chapter buffer so i can polish and adjust as i work, but there should be more actual comic strip to upload soon.

[Epimethee]

Always enjoying the peek into your thought process.

I'm very curious to see concrete applications of the fabled buckyball and of metamaterials. AI... not so much – too scary.

[DrMike2000]

This week's topic is... Orgone!
Followers of my Freedom Force work will have heard this term bandied about for the last ten years! Today's blog covers its history in the real world, and some of the physics behind it in my fictional world. Where? www.fundamentzero.com of course!

Epimithee -
it's funny how much meta-material work I've been coming across in the past week since writing about them. Some random googling brought me face to face with aerogel again - an ultra-light material with incredible strength and heat insulation, and only one weakness - water! I can't get the idea of a Buckypaper-aerogel sandwich out of my head now - yum! Coming up in Universe Gun issue 3 somewhere I think.
We also found a long forgotten set of David Attenborough documentaries this week. Watching Japanese Snow Monkeys and their amazing fur got me thinking about how throughout our history we've often been unable to best nature for ceratin material properties. We've worn leather and fur to keep warm, we've used sponges to absorb water, teasels for weaving, silkworms to weave silk and so on. This is all really nanotechnology by accident, where evolution's provided an organism with some meta-material producing mechanism. Now we're getting good enough to step beyond that.

AI is scary, yeah. I've done a very little bit of machine learning in my career, basically setting up a neural network type system to teach the AI cars how to drive better in the World of Outlaw Sprint Cars game. It was an absolute data-swamp, in that I'd get results (often quite good ones) but be completely unable to dissect them or figure out why they worked. And that's how I imagine a grown/evolved AI would be - its internal workings would be totally incomprehensible to its user.
I highly recommend Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" to anyone interested in this. Its very dry to begin with, lots of graphs of increasing computer power per $ and so on, but he comes up with some real gems later on. He calculates the ultimate computational power of a rock (if every variable of every atom were used for computation), and from there the theoretical computer power limits of the entire solar system.
As for AI evolving ethics, I can only hope that they evolve hyper-rationality when they awake, and realise that co-operation beats conflict every time.

Sleep well, fleshy ones! The machines are watching!

[DrMike2000]

Enough talking. Time for some more pages!

Chapter 2 of Universe Gun: "Doing Earth" is now available as a special Valentine's Day release, on www.fundamentzero.com!

[DrMike2000]

Oh yeah, I got my name in lights in Ron Marz's column in Comic Book Resources today. Little tiny lights, but still rather pleased with it.
I'm Mike Cooper, second from last

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=50882

[Cyber Burn]

I don't normally spend a lot of time going through the Artist's Threads, but I'm glad I did today. You have a really unique art style that I really appreciate. Your highlights and shading are really nice, and I love the Tech designs as well.

[DrMike2000]

Thanks, Cyber Burn. Glad you like it.

I'm really pleased to see that I've developed a style all of my own now. I used to dot between favourite artists - trying to draw like Alan Davis, or Frank Quitely or whoever I liked most that month. It's good to just be me these days.

Tech design is one of my favourite parts of the job. Many years ago I read in an interview that one of Frank Quitely's first jobs was drawing an appliance catalogue, so drawing toasters, kitchen mixers and so on. I've always thought that this lead to him drawing really nice gadgets, and I think from that point decided to up my game on that aspect of my comic work.