I have finally done some actual work on the comic that wasn’t “prep”.  Here is a sneak peak at page 1, panel 1. Tip for aspiring comic creators, don’t make the first panel you draw a big detailed establishing shot that’s going to take forever to ink.

It still needs color as I plan on doing a full color comic, and some of my inking decisions were based on that fact, for example the trees in the background will be more numerous but the furthest ones will just be light shades of gray and won’t actually get ink lines.

I struggled with the tree. The sun is right behind it and I’m not really satisfied with how I inked it, but I need to move on, I’ve spent enough time on this panel and want to get the rest of the page done!

Update: To answer the question below, the “ink” in this instance is digital ink.  I am completely digital at this point doing both my rough drawings to final inks completely inside Photoshop.

An update to the update I previously updated: I fixed the ground shadow of the tree and did some work to ground the trees in the background, sorry for getting rid of the older version of the image, but I was rushing a bit. To those who saw it, lucky you.

In the process of planning out the comic I’ve been working on, I have been trying to commit to a medium to actually produce the comic in.  When I first thought of doing a comic, I wanted to do it all in traditional media, Bristol, pencils, inks, etc.  Then, after reading about so many artists digital workflows I thought, “hey, lets try to do it digital”, at least for the inks.  So I whipped out Photoshop, scanned in some pencils I had done for character designs and started doing some tests, with less than stellar results.  I think some of those early failures was simply me not having the experience necessary to “ink” in Photoshop.

I didn’t realize it then, so I went to something else and tried “inking” in Illustrator.  I got better results mostly because Illustrator smoothed out my shaky lines.  I thought “great, I can ink in Illustrator and I’ll have easy to scale line art!”.  Only problem is, Illustrator is the most artist unfriendly piece of software on the planet.  It’s interface just doesn’t make sense (don’t believe me, without looking in the manual or using the help, or Googling, find the toggle that will make a brush stroke maintain it’s transparency setting, go ahead, I’ll wait). Plus the more I worked with it, the more I realized it made my stuff too clean.  I did get to the point where I was even sketching in Illustrator, but I just wasn’t happy with the final product.

I thought about going completely traditional again.  Then I gave Photoshop another chance just the other day.  I started just doing some pencils in it, using some of the lessons I learned from Illustrator (zooming in close is your best friend).  Wonder of wonders, I was enjoying myself and more importantly, getting results I like.  I haven’t tried inking yet but I think I’ll have better luck this time.  I’m even thinking of doing the comic in a more painterly style rather than the traditional black lines and shiny color.

Then again… maybe I’ll just draw it all on bristol and ink it with a brush.

There are a few podcasts out there that I listen to regularly that I’d like to give some linky love to, because frankly, I love listening to them, they have turned lights on if not outright taught me something and most of all, they are entertaining.

Art & Story:  A great podcast by Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph where they talk about their process of making comics and telling stories.  Just about every time I listen I want to get back to work on my comic.  This podcast more than any of the others has really greased the wheels about story telling for me.

Webcomics Weekly: This podcast is hilariously funny due to the characters involved in making it, but within all the yucks and guffaws is a ton of knowledge about the business side of creating comics.  Great podcast even if you never plan on making a comic, they are just that funny.

Chris Oatley’s Artcast: This is one I just recently started watching.  I can’t honestly say I’ve listened to his audio only episodes, but the video podcasts are fantastic.  I love watching other artists work to glean how someone else does something or find a new way of doing things.  Plus, he has a lovely set of Photoshop brushes you can download for free off his site, well worth a visit.

Sorry for the lack of updates, day job has kept me busy, but speaking of, here is a peak at a piece I’m currently working on for the campus’ 50th anniversary (the day job is at a university).

Digital painting, done in Adobe Photoshop

UPDATE:

Some progress made on the portraits and a bit of the background.  This will eventually be part of a banner for a website.