Commuter Barnacle

Further.

This needs a few touch-ups but: This is what it looks like when you switch from using a tablet laptop and GIMP to using a Cintiq and MangaStudio. And also when you put in a little effort.

I’m doing this comic as practice for when I redo Fight Like a Girl. So far I’m pretty encouraged.

Just so’s you don’t think I died or fell off the face of the earth or whatever. Here’s page nine of chapter three - I haven’t added any of the gray tones or done the lettering yet, but I’m starting to be pretty proud of how the art’s coming along. The statue in particular.

Don’t worry, more True Bloude is on the way. Two more at least. In the meantime here’s a preview image, because I like talking about the creative process.

This is basically what the layout of a comic page looks like for me. I learned a lot of lessons from the first chapter which were really valuable and in retrospect a little obvious, but that’s how it goes. As an aside, I really think I’ll probably redraw most of chapter one when I have the time. And maybe a Cintiq. A guy can dream.

At this point, pretty much all of the drawing is done on my tablet laptop. Given that it wasn’t really designed to do what I’m doing with it, it’s all turning out pretty nicely. What this means is that I can scribble out a quick thumbnail sketch and then just zoom that and start drawing on top of the thumbnail

The step you’re looking at now is basically analogous to the penciling stage of a comic, more or less, and one thing I’ve learned about my own art is that tighter pencils mean a much, much better-looking finished product. Some areas still look like they did during the loose thumbnailing part - the background in panel three and pretty much all the art in the next-to-last panel. I’ll be penciling those the next time I’m drawing.

Another part of this process that I didn’t use much for chapter one is making the speech balloons part of the layout. I did this a little in the first chapter but now it’s something I do in every panel. If the specific dialogue isn’t important but I have a sense of what I want to convey and how much room it’s going to take, it’ll look more like Devon’s dialogue in panel three, where the balloons are present and the actual words are just shorthand to convey an idea. If I have a definite sense of the specific words, they go in there first and the balloon comes second, which looks like Adam’s dialogue in the same panel. Ultimately I’ll probably play with the words a bit to make them look better and whatnot, so this is just to give myself a general sense of what I’m going to be working with and where it is.

This newfound fastidiousness is a result of some of the dialogue layout in chapter one - there’s one page in particular, where Devon and Adam are talking in the stockroom (“I was joking, and yes”) where it just looks awful to me. I’ll fix it when I can and move on in the meantime.

I’m still not sure if I want to include translations of the smattering of other languages spoken in the comic, because I kind of like the fact that you can basically gather from context what Devon’s saying in the fourth panel.

I’ve been running with the idea that color is very sparse in this comic - rather than coloring everything, only one thing on each page will be in color to denote importance (and sometimes nothing at all). If I’m suddenly struck by a good way to use that and I think I might forget it later I’ll put a note to myself in the layout. In panel two this means making it clear that the hole you’re looking at used to be a stained-glass window.

Something that is probably a good habit to get into is saving the work and then looking at it again later on a different computer. I’m doing that right now and it’s enabling me to spot a few things I will probably want to change when I’m next at my laptop. In this case the statue in panel one needs a smaller head, and in panel three, Devon’s chest needs better definition and I could probably stand to fix Adam’s hair so it looks more like his head is tilted back. Probably add some more shadows to the church exterior as well. That sort of thing.

Anyway. That’s all for now.

them’ƒ ye ruleƒ

Okay, full disclosure: I know I said I was writing a book, but I’ve actually only been editing it. It was written by this guy Tad Haber, who’s a terrible genre author. And I haven’t really gotten to do much editing. The upside is, they let me draw the cover. So here it is. Details coming soonish on how to buy the book! Hooray!

A sketchbook selection! Concept sketches for a thing I might do. Mostly I just wanted to share the Turkish wrestler with you.

I was showing these dopey comics to someone who loves True Blood and they saw this one and knew it was Eric’s ass, so either I’m pretty good at this sort of thing or Eric’s ass is just that distinctive. Either way, there are now four True Bloude comics and two of them feature Eric’s ass prominently. I’m starting to think his ass will become a recurring character in this. Not him - just his ass.

This scanned all funny but you get the idea. Pretty much it was just an excuse to draw the second-to-last panel. Possibly I will redraw it at some point.

A self-portrait. I like drawing popes.

You can tell True Blood is an HBO series because of its tendency to find absolutely any excuse to remove the clothes of its characters. Maybe it’s just that it has more well-put-together dudes than your average HBO series but I kind of love the way it keeps finding situations to show off guys’ washboard abs and/or sculpted butts. Given how often Tales from the Crypt (and Game of Thrones, come to think of it) would drop tits into the story, I’d say fair’s fair.

Wandinja!

I don’t know if I’ll use this; I may redraw it. Wandinja are creatures from Australian aboriginal folklore. They’re space-helmet fertility spirits. That’s pretty boss, if you ask me.