Archive for April, 2008
13 items.
Wow. Big thanks to Tracy Butler of
http://www.lackadaisycats.com/
. She`s got a series of art process pages which don`t go into great detail but have helped me tremendously. Seriously, setting my linework layer mode to “multiply” instead of “normal” has made a huge difference. Oh, and her art just simply blows me away. Plus, I like the era and the story style. I can`t recommend her work enough — It has helped me realize quite a few things, which I will be working on improving. Go today. Send her an e-mail and tell her that her work is awesome.
I originally wanted to take this to the female character feeling like she was trapped in the house playing games all day, so work was to give her purpose beyond the house. It was a tie-in to a few days back when I pulled that Thoreau quote (one of maybe half a dozen out-of-context quotes I use) out of my…brown paper bag of out-of-context quotes. I couldn`t tie it together, so I went this way. Hopefully it was a cheap laugh. It`s not what I wanted, and I set this arc up for this, but it`ll work. I hope I covered up my lack of writing ability pretty well.
I like the “He Said / She Said” style comics, but I wanted to do something I hadn`t seen before. I hope this is a new, or at least uncommon, style for you as well. It was a lot of fun to do, but I`m still getting the hang of basic brush work and I had a bit too much ink for this one.
I`m actually glad the first panel came out this well. I am kind of surprised, honestly, I wasn`t expecting to really nail what I had imagined. I guess I should start dreaming bigger. The rest of the coloring, I`ll admit, was a bit phoned in. I also messed up on the guy`s shirt on paper — It was long-sleeved in the first shot and short-sleeved in the second. If his arm looks a bit off, I fudged a fix in digital. Neat, huh?
By the way, 150!
Thoreau also said our houses have become so unwieldy we are often imprisoned by them rather than sheltered.
Honestly? I really phoned this one in. I was going to make the couch panel really dramatic, but I`m so far behind on so many things I just gave in to the path of least resistance. I hope its minimalist flavor pleases you.
On another note, I noticed that I`ve actually developed a story arc in the middle of an “interestitial” run. I figured I`d have a few throwaways, but this story took on a life of its own and ran off. I`ll have to correct that in the archives. Oh, yeah, and update my archive page.
The face paint on the lobster for this strip and yesterday cracked me up. People seem to have noticed other things (Joelle “poking” the lobster yesterday, for example) but the face paint was my favorite. I like the khakhi uniform and corncob pipe on Macarthurette, too.
I had a lot of fun drawing this one. The story line is fun, it`s a new (to me) take on an old saw, and I get to bring some other characters into the mix. I want to see the other characters more often.
Also, I`ve been using the lobster as a background character more often, and I will continue to do so. He`s a lot of fun, very expressive despite the fact that he doesn`t talk, and gives a sense of depth to the characters` lives. Something is going on while they live their lives, which makes the world seem more populated.
Or maybe I overthink everything.
