I’m back! I have done a lot with sketching, and I only realized tonight as I sat down to ink that I haven’t picked up an ink tool in nearly two months. All the work I’ve done probably doesn’t show up at all in this strip, because it’s the inking that always shows through. The Pentel pocket brush is still proving to be more than I can handle (first panel), but I’m trying, darn it! I like how my fountain pen rendered the third and fourth panels, though, so I’m not terribly displeased with the results.
The third panel had a lot going on today. I started with some perspective lines from a point that was too close to the paper. I was going to redraw them, but really liked how they made the buildings almost explode upwards. I threw the antenna tower on the building in as a free-hand curve, which I later regretted but was too lazy to fix. I’m pretty happy with it, especially compared to my last rendering of the Sonny building. I also wanted to have a “HI-FIVE!” in the upper-left portion. I wanted to somehow visually throw it in as a “Hi-Fi” pun. I couldn’t figure out how to make the pun visually work and fit in with the panel as a whole, though, so that got cut. Every time I tried, it robbed from the explosive upward movement. It wasn’t that funny anyway.
This was scripted as a three-panel comic. I added the fourth panel when I sat down to pencil it. I didn’t have a punch line, but I figured this way I could tie in new readers (and remind old readers). For those who don’t know or remember, Lance and Vance are two RIAA lawyers who work closely with the Sonny corporation to come up with all sorts of crazy revenue-generating schemes. They’re some of my favorite side characters, and they usually drag in another side character I like even more.
I hope you guys get back in to the swing of things, I hope I do as well. Who knows…if my readership grows out of the dozens and in to the hundreds, I might even consider picking up the pace and looking at things like books. I do have 353 comics and lots of “bonus content” scattered across my drawing table. To a better comic, every day!