Sketchy Job

I've been at my new job for about two and a half months now and am only finally starting to get enough work to keep me busy. It's not that it's slow at work, just the opposite in fact. The shop is operating on a skeleton staff and there really hasn't been time to show me the ropes, so I don't have much to do.

I also have a small, crowded desk, right next to two of the tech work stations and no cubicle walls to block their view of what I'm doing, so I cannot blatantly do my own stuff. I do a lot of clipboard held Sudoku (with official looking paperwork as the top level) and sneak sketches.

I have almost enough clear space on my desk to hold a half sheet of paper. And only because I have my computer pushed back. Half a sheet also easily slips under the keyboard for a quick hide. I have been doing sketching on half sheets of paper to keep myself from getting too bored.

Below are a few examples of these. I started with just random whatever and then went to themes. I tried my hand at practicing drawing characters by the late Luisa Felix to post on her remembrance Facebook page. I worked on designs for a couple of my own characters, Athena, Big Bug and Atlas, and this past week started doing scenes from the Untold Tales of Atlas.

Kreation Stories

 Today I will run down exactly how I did one particular Samurai Slate story.

 First I decided I wanted to try using musical instruments for a theme. I listed as many as I could think of. Then I started jotting down puns I could think of using them. Eventually a plot came out of the different ideas and I wrote that out. I have done enough scripts for Sam that I have a pretty good idea how long they can be without having to break it down. The turning point is when I have both a starting and an ending point.

 For this story I decided to use the computer to draw my panel borders, so I did roughly equal sized panels, but then adjusted them for variety and to better fit the dialog. I also used the computer to do the lettering. I usually have at least a rough sketch in place before I do the lettering, but I somehow decided to letter first, then do the rough layout pencils. Next step was to tighten the pencils and try to get a consistent look to the secondary character.

 

More tightening and background details go in, then inking, and finally, with pencils erased, it's ready to publish.

Click on any of the pics and run through the whole process in larger, easier to see sizes.

Kreation Stories

A Samurai Slate adventure starts with an idea for the theme of the puns. It often starts with a pun I've read or one Carrie or I have said. It might be one that I'd like to build a story around, or just one that makes me think that there's a good theme lurking there. Although it has also been that one of us tosses out an idea for a theme and I try to figure out if there's enough pun potential afterward. 

For this particular script, I had long ago thought of creating a private eye character for my funny animal universe. He would, of course, be an insect, a private fly. (I've never actually written any stories in this funny animal universe, but I have a big cast ready for it.)

 The next step in creating Sam's adventure, is to start listing out all potential puns under the theme. I do this by listing down all the related words I know to have pun usage, sometimes noting ideas for them, but I also list a lot of words that don't immediately lend themselves to puns in hopes of future inspiration, which often comes. As I write and contemplate I start seeing how different puns fit together in a cohesive sequence until I get a core scenario. Some come easier than others. But I have to make sure I have some sort of conflict and resolution. Depending on the ideas generated while writing down puns, either one can come first, but usually it's the punch line that takes the longest time to come up with.         

Once I have a pretty solid outline, I start to break it down to fit the format I use of a six panel page. The first panel is the title, which I tend to come up with after I've finalized the script, using a decent leftover pun. I vary the panel sizes and try to have some flow of text to fit appropriately. I may decide it's too light on puns in some place or another, or too heavily laden making it an uneven trip, so I do some polishing until I'm happy with it. Once in a while I will do some sketches on the script to help me picture how want the text to fit in context.

The start of the art is penciling the panel borders. I ink them and then do the lettering (straight to ink for that) in what I hope will be a good spot for the art. I usually have some idea of what I'm going to draw in each panel having stared at the script in all its stages for so long, and it sometimes comes out exactly as I planned. 

After the lettering I see if my pencils will actually fit in the allotted space. Generally fairly rough pencils. I start tightening them up, and try to get the characters to look consistent throughout. Then final tightening with the inks. I let the ink dry at least overnight before erasing the pencils. I do touch up on the inks I messed up with my erasing.

 

Finally, I scan the art and do some more touch up on the computer. Mostly getting rid of the incompletely erased pencils. And I add the title.

Just so you're not too confused, this was a two page episode.

Kreation Stories

WannaBeatles

Creations are like rivers. A lot of different tributaries combine to form it. Lots of contributaries.

I like improv shows, like Whose Line Is It Anyway? And jam comics are a form of improv where each artist has to make the story up on the fly. Mulling over the possible variations in this theme, I thought a fun idea would be to do a jam comic under one of Whose Line's games of Song Titles. All text and dialogue has to be actual song titles. Of course, given that going from artist to artist over the course of time you could dip into the vast array of songs that exist right now, researching quickly online, to get just about anything you wanted to have happen in your panel. Where's the challenge in that? So maybe limiting it to one artist or group. A well known classic with a decent discography. Maybe the Rolling Stones or the Beatles.

Although we've never met, I've known Luisa Felix since she contributed to my funny animal tarot project, KARDZ. I like her retro animation style character designs. They are very well crafted and unique. I've thought a long time about trying my hand at actually drawing some of them.

At some point I thought of both of these ideas in close enough proximity that I combined them. Not really a jam comic, but still using only song titles in a story using Luisa's characters. I have more Beatle records than Stones, so I looked through them to see if I could construct a story, and the ideas came through quite easily. I asked Luisa for permission and she was excited by the idea.

I took my rough script and started tweaking it as I worked on a pacing layout. How many pages would I need, shape size and placement of panels on the page to fit the storyline, etc. I asked Luisa which of her characters she wanted me to use. Continuity isn't a problem for her as she views her characters as actors, so they can be put into any scenario. It's usually just a question of finding the right character for the role.

First and obvious choice for one was Candy Blondell. Luisa's primary character. But I also needed a male. First suggestion was Nicholas Neurotic. You can see him in the first pencils. With the characters chosen, I could start doing more detailed pencils. In figuring out how I wanted the people placed, I realized I didn't have enough references to full body shots or non-frontal views and I asked Luisa for some material to draw from.

She sent character studies of Candy and a different male lead, Tom London. So I changed all Nick's sketches to Tom. Then I carefully went in to try and tighten up the art and get it as "on model" as possible. Then went in and inked them.

I had concentrated on the characters only, not the setting at all, because I figured that's how I usually drew. I was thinking vaguely of having them be in a city setting, but gave it no further thought. Until I had to draw backgrounds. It took me forever. Well, about a year.

I actually don't just draw the backgrounds in afterward. I tend to think of the characters in setting as I am composing the page and while my first thumbnails usually only have stick figures and no background, the set is in my head. When I start to do the actual drawing in the panel, I do concentrate on the character(s) but always know where they are and always have at least a sketch of their background in place. I rarely ink the people before I have most, if not all, the rest of the panel drawn so that I can make changes in the figures if needed.

I didn't do that this time, so I had a big blank spot in my head as to where they were.

I had to study what I had drawn, try to figure out what angles would show what and it which panels. I decided they were on a sidewalk, so from one angle they would see the buildings close up, from another, far away. The far away ones were easiest and most of them got done relatively early on. Relative being a key term. I went with a cartoony representation of buildings I had used before. I had a couple of full body shots at that angle that meant I had to draw the street as well. Those were the last done.

The closer buildings I just had to get past a drawing block and get it done. Looking back, there are things I would have done different at each step, though the further I go back, the more I would have had different, starting with doing the art more as a whole, tweaking the character designs as the last step of the process.

Still, for what it is, I like it.

If you don't have a copy of the mini-comic and want one, let me know your address.

For a larger view of any picture, click on Candy's lips.

Kreation Stories

A recent post on his blog from Dale Martin about enjoying reading fellow creators' creative process along with something similar in some emails we've exchanged has prompted me to write a little bit about mine.

You can break down what I do into two parts. The art and the writing. Sometimes one begets the other and sometimes they have nothing to do with each other.

I was making some envelopes with Tarzan wrestling a tiger in anticipation of the upcoming Edgar Rice Burroughs postage stamp release. This led to my thinking about if I were wrestling with a big cat, it would be for play. I then wrote some thoughts about it.

Carrie and I are constantly doing various wordplay with each other: punning, rhyming, alliteration, etc. Doing something like this in the middle of the night does happen. I wrote about it. The art had to go along with the text to really work. I was reading a collection of Secret Agent X-9 comic strips and admiring Al Williamson's skill in doing more than just talking heads (panel 3) in the small panels allowed in newspapers. He often will focus on active hands (I did feet) and he can have more than one plane in the panel (Qwill in foreground, bedroom in back.)

Most of the time what I want to write and what I want to draw have nothing to do with each other. In my first kard of last year I felt like drawing a cavern, but had other things to say. Still, I try to do some tie in anyway, even if it's only symbolic. In this case I had me carrying a lantern as if in search of something. the text ended with "if I can find the time..."


If you have some of my other postkards handy, take a look at them and try to guess which category they fall under.

click between the panel borders to enlarge a kard