Hey everyone welcome back to the channel, I'm Michael D'Nacola, it's today's video I'm going to be talking about the web series Urban Animal. It's my friend's series, it's incredible, it's amazing, it's awesome, and it's free. So watch me draw the spider lady, stick around. Alright, first of all, I should probably explain that this comic book is illustrated and co-created by my friend John Amor. A dear friend who I speak to you just about every day. So my opinion about this comic is going to be super biased, I feel like I should let you guys know right off the bat, that's what I'm coming in here with. I'm going to now talk about some of my favorite parts of Urban Animal. Before I forget, let me stay clearly that this is going to be fraught with spoilers. Every time I do one of these videos I forget and then I have to go in posts and add a spoiler alert because I forgot, so this is me well remembering to do that. There are so many awesome aspects to this comic book. So you don't let just start off with Joe. Joe is the protagonist of the story, he is as we find out, pretty early on, a chimera. He's not just any old chimera, he's a super super powerful one. I mean really, like there are some chimera who are, well, they're kind of shitty. They can only turn into one animal, it's not even necessarily a great animal, you know, some of these chimera when you think about it, they got kind of the shit end of the stick. It's like hey, you got this ability, kid. Really, what can I do, can I fly? No, no, no. Oh, can I, um, can I go invisible? No. Can I shoot laser beams out of my, am I, am I moral? Nope. Invincible and vulnerable. Nope, nope. What can I do? You can change into a rat. You can change into a squirrel. Well, you can change into a lot of rats and a lot of squirrels. Joe is mixed ethnically. I don't know if that is a thing that you're into, but there are a couple mixed race characters in here. Joe, Joe is part Filipino, sorry, part Filipino, part something else. This one. Charlotte. Charlotte is part some kind of Japanese. She's a half Japanese and half I'm assuming white. Also, her parents are lesbians. They toss that in there. So if you're, I mean, if that's a selling point, then you have that now. This, I believe, is technically a YA series. You know, it's not as raunchy as something that I would make. There isn't a whole lot of titties, but there is a whole lot of nudity, oddly enough. I feel like I've seen Joe Gomez's bear ass between him and his mentor. I've seen, I've seen lots of booty, young and old man booty. John Moore and I met a little bit before he started working on this series. So that was way back 2018. Come November 24th. Think about there. 2018 is when he started working on this series. So I can't believe he's been already two years because I met John right as he was beginning to work on this and he was super pumped about it and he's such a good friend. He threw me into his comic. I am seen. It's like the open, it's the opener, which is so cool. My doppelganger in the series is immediately murdered. Take from that what you will. I'm just pumped out as included. Let me talk about the artwork for a little bit in his artwork. It's incredible. It's compelling. It's riveting. It's colorful. He does the whole shebang and he's damn good at it. Pencils, line work, composition, boom, boom, boom, quite the experience and I can't recommend it more. Let me talk to you a little bit about what I'm drawing now. John and Justin have created some amazing unforgettable characters. This one I'm drawing here, she was teased long ago. This image John used to promote the first series before it even launched. So she's been in their back pocket for a long time. We first got to see her on the comic book page interacting with characters in season three, season three, which is running right now. Again, go check it out. Query. Her name is Rackney and she is both sexy and terrifying. Now knowing John and knowing webtoons, sexy and terrifying is a theme. It's a running theme. It's a running theme. They're a man and woman. You get a lot of these femme fatale types. That's what they're called. There are a lot of women who are sexy and super deadly. You have Rackney home drawing right now. You have those one, two, three witches. Let's also not forget Kagan. I'm going to pretend like this is an advertisement except a really bad one because I'm no get at marketing. But here's some of the offerings. Here's some of the worthwhile things that I have found within the pages of urban animal. He had amazing characters. The aforementioned Kagan, his mentor, Corcundale, who's naked a whole bunch who can turn into rats. He's a rat king, if you will, and at least in my eyes. And there's a whole bunch of extra stuff there that I don't want to spoil if you haven't read already. They're a samurai. There's like these wolf samurai. So cool. So fucking cool. Well, she got dinosaurs. Hey, you like dinosaurs? You're going to see a whole lot of John. Oh, China source. You're going to see a whole lot of dinosaurs courtesy of John and more ancient sexy babes. Like Kagan, like these gnarly witches, dude, scary sexy witches. Also a pretty sure one of them isn't wearing underwear to dive into that a little bit further. I'm pretty sure Kagan is also not wearing underwear. That may or may not be confirmed. What else? Teens, dude. This is YA. Teens. You like teenage things? You like watching things like anything on the f***ing CW, Riverdale, or any of that kind of stuff. The chilling adventures of Sabrina, which includes teen romance, teen angst, teen facial piercing, kisses, maybe kisses, death, death, death everywhere. But again, nudity. Hey, now there's a trans person in the mix. How about that for the representation people? Concerned parents. Parents that have been put into a medical facility. You know, parents, parents who took a real beating. Your jocks, your nerds. One of my personal favorite characters, maybe my favorite of all time, Monkey Man. I call them. I call Monkey Man. I think Monkey King. Look at this. Check out this GI Joe character. Who the hell is he? We still don't know. Uh, movie posters. Do you like seeing nerd Easter eggs? Weird D&D references. Check out this half pipe. Check out this. Check out these punches. All f***ery aside. John and Justin. JJ. Big sweet JJ. They leave you on a cliffhanger. I've spent cold hard cash in order to unlock future episodes in order to consume them because I could not wait for them to be released for free. Oh yeah. Did I mention this comic book is f***ing free? Free. It's free 99 with a 99 cent rebate. Yet you've got no reason not to read it. Unless you can't read. And you know what? If you can't read, not reading urban animal is the least of your worries. But for those of you who are listening that can read, go check that thing out. Also, I cannot put this YouTube video out without mentioning that the Kickstarter is on the horizon. It's not out at the time of this recording, but it may very well be out now. I want to leave a link in the description. It's so good. They're printing season one or they're attempting to get funding to print season one. I'm going to be one of the first backers. I can't wait. I want to have this in my hand and I just, I literally can't wait for it. Okay, let's go back to the drawing that I'm working on right now. There's very specific reason why I chose the camera angle that I did. And it's because when you were looking up at something generally, you know, these rules can be bent, but generally speaking of the camera is at a worms' eye view is what they call it. And the horizons at the very bottom of the frame, it promotes a feeling of power as a thing that you're looking at. So looking, well, the thing that's looking upon you almost. So she's way higher than us and it looks like she's jumping at us, you know, her spider legs are coming right at the damn screen and they've, they've definitely killed this dude. What I'm adding now is, well, I'm doing the flattened layer, you know, every colorist's favorite. Now that I'm done flattening it, I need to make sure that she works with the image, with the background, with the foreground, make sure that those tentacles don't get lost because I've added so much detail, the image is running the risk of being busy. And I had a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine once reminded me that above all else, the composition should be clear. Legibility. Readability. The audience shouldn't have to pick up your image and have to decipher it like a puzzle. Like Nick Cage trying to read the back of the declaration of independence. So what I'm doing to combat that busyness is I'm making the lines in the foreground of the image, I'm making them bolder, I'm making them sharper. You'll see outlining her, I was going to say tentacles, you'll see outlining her spider legs, not tentacles. Hey, this isn't that kind of YouTube channel. You'll see this white border and that's to help make her pop. I'm also going to be increasing the lighting. The light is going to be hitting her from the back as is some of the rain and that's going to make her pop. So increasing legibility. I'm also tinkering with the layers. I'm tinking with the layer settings, I'm tinkering with the, the coloring that I did, messing with the curves and messing with the saturation. I'm adding in lightning effects to help give it that contrast to make it so that when you're looking at this image, first your eyes lock onto her and then you're free to explore the rest of the image. You know what you're also free to explore my Patreon. Thank you to the patrons out there. Thank you to people who are picking up my t-shirts and merch. I see your posts. Thank you. Thank you. If you want to print a commission, the link for all that is down below. And if you really want to hang out, I stream live on Twitch four days a week. Hey, I want to thank you for sticking around this long for liking, sharing, commenting, subscribing, all that good stuff for checking out my other videos. I want you to know I appreciate you and I'll see you in the next one. Thank you. Thank you.