Page two inked

Finished the inks on page two last night. I have to work today so I'm not sure how much more I'll be able to get done this weekend.

Still Inking Page Two

Still inking page two. I worked today and have to work tomorrow and possibly Sunday so we'll see how much inking and coloring I can squeeze in between all that.

 

Inking Page Two

Started inking page two yesterday. Got another early deadline at work, but hopefully I can get a lot done it this week/weekend. 

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone is having a good holiday and that Santa brought you something nice. I'll be beginning work on page two today and enjoying an actual day off from work.

 

First page of the second story done!

Page one for story two is done!

I wrote and penciled it 13 years ago. It's amazing to see it finished after all these years. Like the first story, I'm not altering anything unless it was really screwed up. The only exception is the "Sometime in the late 90s" line I added, as I did in the first story, since so many years have passed.

First Panel!

It was completely digitally inked, which took awhile but looks pretty great for something I inked.
 Intended as a black and white comic like the first story, it was fun finding the right background colors.

My old notes intended for this story to have a greater reliance on doing things digitally since I'd discovered computers can do repetition and precession better than my meager human talents. So I took a slightly altered registered from issue one to put on Dino's counter and digitally created the slightly unnerving uniform cereal box covers in panel one. 

And I took the digital further than my younger self could've dreamed of. I used carbon paper copying to create as close to identical positions, bodies, etc. for the characters as I could when I penciled it 13 years ago. Because of that, when I digitally inked and colored it I could just transfer the identical parts between panels.

This was lettered in Photoshop Elements 10, which is great for background elements and just laying down text. The word balloons...are a different story. I used generic shapes I'd made in Illustrator and tried to resize them. It made it a far more difficult and convoluted process, but after a bit of work I think they look alright at least. I'll probably try to use Illustrator for the dialog when I have access to the program.

The first page here sets up our setting and characters. This is set in the College Follies equivalent of Super Walmart. This was back when the super stores were brand new and people were still in awe (or bewilderment) of combining a grocery store and department store into one massive behemoth of shopping. The story is based on real life events but exaggerated for humor (it didn't take THAT long for my ex to turn in her till, nor did I have a full bag of potato chips with me to comically illustrate the passage of time). So anyway enjoy the page below, the first unpublished College Follies material completed in 13 years!

Page One colored!

Coloring is finished on page one. I'll be lettering it and, if all goes well, finishing it today.

 

Still coloring page one...

Still working on page one's colors. I should have them wrapped up tonight so I can letter it tomorrow.

Coloring page one

I started coloring page one last night. Because of the holidays we've got an early deadline at work so I'll be working all day/night today but that should free up the weekend to finish the page.

Page One Inks Done

Just finished the inks for page one of the second story. This is the first actual story page that I've inked in 13 years and the first story page I've ever digitally inked! Hopefully I'll be able to get the colors and letters for the page done later in the week. 

 

Inking continues on page one...

Still digitally inking page one. I hope to have the inks done tonight or tomorrow morning. To tide you over, here's the inks on Dino's first appearance in panel two...

Inking Page One

Inked my first actual panel in 13 years last night. Still getting used to digital inking, but using the stylus is starting to feel a bit more natural.

Back Cover Done!

I finished up the back cover last night.

A vintage Star Wars
figure I used as reference.

The gags on there were part of the reason I did the action figure gag on the front cover. Of course, this is still the old school style of figures with limited articulation. I used a Lando Calrissian figure (one of the last survivors of my original Star Wars collection) to model the figures of Dino and capture the hand position common in those old toys.                                                       

The Masters of the
Universe card back I
used for reference. 

While the front cover wasn't based on any toy packaging in particular, the back one is inspired by Masters of the Universe packaging. I thought the gags I dreamed up for it would be exaggerated and funny. But when I looked at the Masters card backs I had in storage for reference, I found the gags I had for the "action" features weren't all that far off from the real thing. Still funny though. 

There's a lot going on here and this took almost as much work to produce as an actual interior page, so this was a pretty good dry run for the comic itself. I used carbon paper to create uniformity among the Dino figures when I drew them and then was able to just digitally ink and color one and transfer the identical parts to the other figures, which helped cut down the workload. Having a character wearing white on a white background also cuts down on extra coloring. The cereal boxes in the background of the top image were a little distracting when they were located right behind a character's head so I took a couple of them out.

The top image and different Dino variants here are references to the story. All the text on the last Dino figure has been obscured so as not to spoil the story's ending. The nice thing about a digital comic is that you know there's no way anyone will be looking at the back first, so you can put spoilers on there with no worries.

I hope readers will bother zooming in on the back cover to see the gags when the comic is released. If not, it was still a lot of fun to do and good practice. Next up...page one!

Back Cover Colors

The back cover is colored but I ran out of time to letter it this weekend. I won't have time to touch it again until at least Wednesday, when I can finish it up before I begin inking page one.

Back Cover Inks

Finished the inks on the back cover last night. I'll color (and hopefully letter) it today.

 

Inking the Back Cover

I'm currently inking the back cover...

Back Cover Pencils done

Pencils for the back cover of issue two are done.

Cover for the Second Story Done!

Below is the cover for the second issue of College Follies. Wow. Just the idea of a cover having the words "College Follies" and "No. 2" on it is pretty amazing.

 

So since this is just a five page short that was originally meant as a backup in 2000, I never thought about a cover for the second story until I decided to finish it and turn it into it's own digital issue. The story is essentially a series of conversations in a department store about Dino's dating life. There are artists who could probably turn that into something dramatic and eye catching, but I haven't reached that level of talent.

 

So I wanted something vague that would introduce the character and setting for the story, which is Super Happy-Mart, the College Follies version of Wal-Mart. I kept racking my brain for things I associate with Wal-Mart. Some of the exclusive action figures I got there came to mind, and then immediately the cover and back cover popped into my head. I had to do it if only to have the words "Dino, The Ex-Girlfriend" on an action figure package.

 

There were a lot of different figure packages I was looking at to make this. Originally I wanted it to be a cover with some visual element of packaging. It ended becoming the opposite, so by the time I ended up putting the price on the cover, it became a store price sticker (poor Dino is apparently on discount).

 

I decided to not use any of the tricks I did on the inside cover to give the package an illusion of realism, since I might could pull that off with the packaging, but then I'd have a cartoon action figure in there and it would just look way off. I'd be like dropping Bart Simpson in the middle of an Alex Ross painting. Art needs to have a consistent style. So this is a package and a figure drawn in the style of the series.

 

The cover gives me with a tremendous sense of nostalgia. It definitely brings back memories of toys I grew up with. It's not Uncle Sam with an uzi but I thinks it's a big, attention grabbing image in its own way.

 

Next up, the back cover, in which you get to see Dino's exciting action features!

 

Cover Colored

And here's the cover colors for the second story...

 

Cover inks done

Inks are done on the cover for the second story!

 

Inking the cover

Because of the holiday, instead of working into the wee hours of the morning like usual on Tuesday, I was actually able to get off in the evening so I could get a jump start on digitally inking the cover for the second story.

YouTube video I did of a cool broken Street Fighter II arcade machine

This video isn't comic related, but it is on my YouTube Channel so I thought I'd mention it.

I stumbled on this particular Street Fighter II arcade cabinet at a discount movie theatre in Greensboro. The game was extremely broken. The graphics have turned into glowing black and white lines with occasional flashes or touches of color. It looks like a cross between old school Tron and a photographic negative. Despite that, people were still playing it.

And I can see the draw. Suddenly a background you've literally seen thousands of times before has glowing water dripping from the ceiling or flashing neon lights on the elephant's dressing. It made them fresh, like a new edition of the game. I wanted to stand there and see what the next opponent would look like or how the next stage would be transformed.

What struck was me that people weren't playing this game in spite of it being broken. They were playing because it was broken. And there's something beautiful about that.

Title Page Done!

So the first bit of original art I've done for a comic in 13 years is complete. Because I'm breaking in the new Wacom tablet and Photoshop Elements, I'm doing this a bit out of order, taking some of the easier stuff on the second story first to get used to this new way of working. Working from home takes some adjustments. The screen's smaller and I'm trying to figure out the best work space for my lap top.

 

I'm still getting used to the Wacom. I was pretty comfortable using it for coloring and erasing. I think that's because I'm used to editing existing images on a computer. It's one of the things I do for a living. Creating something whole cloth on a computer is something I haven't done since college so I'm not as comfortable with digital inking (which is essentially redrawing the comic, if you think about it). I think I'll get there, though.

 

Originally I was just going to do a couple face shots with the title in big letters like on issue one for the title page. But then I was looking at some of the romance comic covers posted by a friend on Google+ and the idea popped in my head to turn it into a parody of romance comics.

 

So at first it was just going to be Dino crying with some text. But when I researched it, I found those covers tended to have the guy that the girl was crying over on the cover too. Fine, I'll throw in a portrait of Stickboy. But I couldn't have it just floating, so I had to do a background, so that became a gag in itself with the Kleenex. After drawing it, I realized I needed space at the bottom for the copyright information, so I came up with the idea that this would be a faux comic laying on a table or desk. I combined the image with a shot of a blank comic cover I laid on my desk to give the illusion of depth in the final page below.    

 

The cover itself is inspired by a variety of covers I saw of romance comics from the 40s-70s. The heart logo is taken from what DC did on their romance comics in the 70s. Believe or not, they had a pink heart with the letters "DC" in it as the logo on those issues. What some comic companies won't do for love!

 

So next up will be finishing the actual cover and back cover of the issue!

 

Inside Cover Colored!

Just finished coloring the inside cover for the second story with the Wacom and Photoshop Elements. It's still missing a background color because I'll add that in when I letter it, based on what looks good with the colors I choose for the fonts.

 

Cover Pencils!

So here's the pencils for the cover of issue two, modeled after action figure packaging from the 1990s. The back cover (which I'll be drawing within the next week) will be the back of the package, which will be a lot of fun.

Inside cover digitally inked with the new Wacom!

I know I said I was tentatively going to do all the pencils needed for the issue before inking, but when I was testing out digital inking on the inside cover with the new Wacom tablet and Photoshop Elements, it ended up becoming "Oh I can actually finish this tonight." So there you go. Below is my first digitally inked piece ever and my first inks on actual art for a comic in 13 years.

It took awhile. Inking digitally takes some getting used to. There is something about moving a pen on a tablet while looking at the results on the screen that was just awkward at first. By the end I was getting kinda comfortable with it. If my hand can get used to what my eyes are seeing I think it's doable.

I inked on layers that were over a scan of the original pencils (having background and foreground inks on different layers is actually kinda handy). Most lines took umpteen tries but being able to use an eraser and  hit Control Z (undoing the last thing I did) makes for a much, much better outcome. I'm very happy with the results. I think it's as good as the cleaned up inks on issue one.

So hopefully if I can get comfortable with it and am able to do it with reasonable speed, this is how I can ink the second issue. I'll be testing the digital inking further before I make any decisions. I may also see if I can completely finish the inside cover (doing the colors and letters) with the Wacom and Elements.

Page five and inside cover pencils done

I finished the pencils on the incomplete final page of story two last night. I only had one fourth of the page done back in 2000 when I abandoned it. So it took a little work, but boy does it feel good to have the pencils done after 13 years! You can see one of the new panels I did to the left. My tentative plans are to do the pencils for everything before I start on inking, etc. and finish any pages.

I also did the pencils for an image for the inside cover. Once I put the words and colors to it, it'll be an awesome parody of old romance comic covers. I promise  no scene like this appears in the actual story or, heck, in the entire series. No real Kleenex was harmed in the making of the image below.

My first penciled panel in 13 years!

So if you want to get over fear of drawing a comic, just pick the hardest panel you can and start from there.

And that's what I did last night. I drew a couple panels on the unfinished last page of the second story starting with the one below. Most of the story was pretty easy to draw back in the day. But for the "Lunch Break Dino" panel, I wanted at it at this weird, close up angle with more complex hand positions than I'd done up to that point. I struggled with it in 2000 and it was probably one of the factors in why the page didn't get finished. Perhaps it was simply too ambitious for a novice artist.

So I contemplated simplifying the panel, but. instead, decided to tackle it head on with the exact layout I sketched back in 2000. I took it piece by piece, finding reference photos online for the soda and fries. I took pictures of myself imitating Dino's position and gestures in the panel and drew from that. Working from models is very important when trying to draw something unfamiliar.

So I'm pretty happy with the result and the rest of the page should be a relative breeze that I'll get done this weekend.

Sketching and Breaking in the Wacom

Spent last night trying to get used to drawing again. I did some practice sketches, mainly of the second story's main character Dino, trying to get comfortable drawing her again after 13 years.

I'm also breaking in my new Wacom tablet and Photoshop Elements on my home computer. It's taking some getting used to.

I didn't have time to do much beyond sketches because of work, but I should be able to get more done this weekend. I'm going to do the pencils that need to be done on the first story (completing the last page, the cover, ect) while breaking in the Wacom, deciding if I'm comfortable enough with it to digitally ink the story.

Below is a sketch I digitally inked while struggling with glitches in the tablet (which I mercifully figured out how to fix this morning). 

Chiggy says "It tastes great!"

In an earlier blog, I said I'd post more Chiggy art if  I got around to scanning it in. Well here's one I had to scan in to get another image I needed. This is the one that was at the top left corner of my student web page's title logo. It's inspired by the same gag that Garfield would do at the beginning of every Garfield and Friends episode, saying a random funny one liner as he appeared in a box next to his show's logo (it's a brilliant show, which is on Netflix and Hulu currently, by the way). I wanted Chiggy to say different things, but I don't know if I ever got the chance to switch up his saying. I apologize for the image's size and quality since web graphics back then tended to be much lower rez to accommodate the slower dial up internet speeds of the time

Social Media on Parade! Stickboy wins...himself?

So it's going slower than I'd liked but I finally was able to update the main image on the College Follies Google+ main page so that someone actually got a doll. I plan to switch it up every month or so with different dolls and maybe different characters playing. It's a little touch, but I smile every time I scroll up to see Stickboy looking at me with that bewildered look. It's the little things in life...

Political Cartoon-Palooza! One for Veterans Day...

This is a political cartoon I did for my college newspaper back in 2004 when the country was fighting in civil wars raging in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it's still relevant today...

 

The "It's Done!" Video!

 First off, definitely watch the video before you read the commentary below...



So this video is basically me summarizing  my recent blog posts on submitting the comic. It's a continuing effort to show my progress on the series across all the different social media sites. I used the same techniques to make it as I did in my other videos.

Well, until you get to the after-credits scene, that is. This is me eating Shawarma at Mooney's Mediterian Café, which I blogged about yesterday. And obviously this is a homage to the Shawarma scene from Avengers.

I had to go out and buy a camera for it. I'll occasionally have use for motion video and it's always good to a camera handy. So I got a Samsung HMX-W300 for $100. It shoots quality 1080p with great sound and doubles as a high resolution digital camera, so I felt like it's a good investment.

I've only shot one other short video in my life so I'm pretty new at this. So what did I learn from the whole 11 seconds of video footage here? Well, preparation is important if you're shooting yourself. It's easy when you can just move around the subject and look through the view finder or screen on the camera to see what you're capturing. But in my case I had to put the camera in one place and didn't know what I'm shooting until I stopped recording and played it back.

So I did test shoots in my kitchen and discovered I needed to get the camera really damn high. If I just laid it on the table it would cut my head off. So I went out and bought a tiny, cheap 8 inch tripod on the way to Mooney's. It turned out to still be too short for this particular shot, but I came prepared with a box to put it on and finally got just enough height to pull it off.

It also took several tries and a several minutes of footage to get those 11 seconds. Even though I'm sitting there really eating it, my chewing didn't look right. I was moving my mouth too much. But after a few takes I got it right.

The raw footage has sound, which was "Don't Worry Baby" from the Beach Boys playing in the background because that's what was playing over Mooney's sound system.  I'm unsure if I could have used it without dispute from YouTube, but the scene really didn't work unless it was silent (like in the movie) so I guess it worked out.

Adding this ending to the rest of the video was a bit different since I didn't have access to imovies at home. The software that came with the camera wasn't fully compatible with my computer so it made putting it together with the existing slideshow video (which was already in MP4 format) difficult. I ended up using YouTube's video editor. It glitched out the first time and so I had to redo it (thank God, it was just putting two videos together!) but I'm super happy with the results!

Shawarma Time!

If there's any lesson to be learned from The Avengers movie, it's that shawarma is how you celebrate major accomplishments, whether it's saving the world from alien invasion or, in my case, completing the first issue of a comic series. I had mine at Mooney's Mediterranean Cafe in downtown Winston-Salem. And to answer one of the movie's great unsolved mysteries, yeah, shawarma is pretty darn good!

 

Up Next, the Second Story!

With the first story done, I'll soon begin working on the second story for the series.

The stories were usually conceived of and plotted in no particular order. When I was pitching the series to comic publishers in 2000, I had to plan out what would be in the first few issues. The first completed story "Natural Wanna Bes" actually ended up being the second issue in the planned series. The plan was to introduce the college cast in the first issue, and then in the second I'd introduce the "at home" cast that Stickboy would hang with when not in school. "Wanna Bes" would introduce his best bud Psychoboy and a back-up story would introduce Stick's ex-girlfriend, Dino.

After I ended up completing "Wanna Bes" for my senior project and submitting it to publishers in 2000, I decided to go ahead and do the planned back-up story that would accompany it. Entitled "Everyone Says I Love You (Even Though I Really Wish They Wouldn't)," it's the complete opposite of  "Wanna Bes," which is a grandiose story dealing with the current events of the time. This is a more grounded. slice-of-life story about Stickboy walking his ex-girlfriend to her car and the strangeness that ensues from it. It's semi-autobiographical, based on something that happened to me and it's a lot of fun. I think it really shows the range of the series, how every story is different.

The story, which is five pages long, was mostly penciled with several panels left to draw on the last page. I'll be adding a new cover, title page and back cover since this little short will have its own release as a .99 cent digital comic.

So there you have it! Next up is an anti-romantic comedy 13 years in the making!

First issue: The Lessons Learned

First off, I'm very pleased to say that all the technical issues with the Amusedom version of the first issue have been ironed out. It's good and ready to go. I'll be waiting on a response back from Comixology before I schedule a release date, but it feels great to have it done.

And now, here's what I learned from making issue one:

Pencils- It's hard to draw when you haven't done it in awhile and I've lost a lot of years I could've been honing and improving my skills. That's my mistake. I should have never stopped making comics. Now I got to play catch up.

Inks- Similar to drawing, very hard to get used to doing again. Inks are especially hard because of the precision required. No erasing, no backsies. Wite-Out can only help so much. You really have to be a surgeon with an ink pin to create lines precise enough to hold up at the size Comixology wants it to. Lines that look fine in full size print required major work for digital.

I was pretty comfortable doing the computer touch ups and I'm going to experiment with the Wacom tablet I just got today to see if I can ink the pages digitally.

Color- This was really interesting since I've never worked extensively in color. The first thing I discovered is that color is sometimes relative and defined by the colors around it. A specific color may look dark on one panel and faded the next depending on the colors around it.

I also learned that color can tell as much of the story as any word or line can. It can have its own meaning, themes and humor just like any other part of storytelling.

Letters- I relearned how to use Illustrator to letter. Didn't really discover too much new about lettering itself other than how awesome it is to drop out the lines on logos since it'll show up on a color background (like I did with the CNBC and NIN logos).

I'm hoping I can figure out a way to do lettering in Photoshop so I don't have to buy Illustrator at home but that remains to be seen.

Submitting to digital comic sites- Read up. Do your research and be prepared for half of it to go out the window at some point. Be ready for anything and don't be shy about asking for help.

With issue one behind me, I'm taking few a days off of work to rest and recuperate before I get started on story two. I'll still be blogging during that time, so keep your eyes on this spot.

First Issue Submitted!!! Part 2

I can already say that within  a couple months you will definitely be able to buy the first issue on at least one site. No one is more surprised at that than I am.

The second site I submitted to was Amusedom. It's a smaller, less streamlined site, but I'm in good company on there with Moebius and Joe Jusko galleries, Asylum Press, Heroic Publishing, Elephant Men and the amazing M3. I heard about the site at Heroes Con in Charlotte from the creator/writer of M3, Erica Schultz. I thought it was just a site you could submit for free and it would just give you a bigger cut of the sales than Comixology.

After getting around technical difficulties (thanks to some Twitter advice from Mrs. Shultz) I was able to finally upload my pages last night...and much to my surprise they just automatically became a digital comic! There is no review process. You just upload your comic, set the price and your portion of the sales go to your Paypal account.

I was amazed! Now it's not ready to go just yet. There are some technical issues that will require me to re-save and re-upload the files. In theory I should be able to iron those out this weekend, if not, definitely in the next few weeks. 

An early release like this wasn't planned. I'm taking time off for some recuperation starting the later half of next week. I'll be breaking in a new Wacom tablet and Photoshop Elements on my personal laptop that will hopefully make the whole creative process easier. And I'll be starting on the second story very soon. 

So in the middle of all that, I'll need to figure out what the best way to let everyone know when the first issue is out and how to link you guys to it. I'm still deciding when the best time to release it will be.

Amusedom's digital comics are similar to Comixology just without the guided view and I don't think they have a mobile app. The site is relatively small and a bit dated (they've got MySpace and AIM on the share options). It's no substitute for a larger Comixology release but it definitely is a good way to get it into the hands of readers.

 

Right now I'm thinking about waiting to hear back from Comixology. If they reject me I can use just hit a button and the comic goes online anyway. If they accept me, I might go ahead and go live with the Amusedom version to give people who want it early access.

So give just give me a little more time and the first issue will be to you guys in all its digital glory soon! 

First Issue Submitted!!! Part 1

Movies aren't released, they escape. The same holds true for comics. 

I've looked over the comic several times. I made a last round of corrections on things that, honestly, are so small they probably won't even be seen by readers. I could touch up it forever, but at some point you got to say "done" and release it, knowing it's a good comic and that it's far, far better than it's ever looked before.

The comic has been submitted to Comixology, the biggest digital comic site there is and the industry standard for digital comics. It'll take months for them to review it, and then convert it for their site and app if they accept my submission. If they take it, it'll be converted into guided view, which will givers viewers the option of seeing the comic one panel at a time and lets you navigate between panels with the press of a button (or a swipe of your finger or stylus). Though not designed for guided view, the comic should be pretty much perfect for that with its panel layout.

So submitting to Comixology was a long, but easy process. I'd been making the comic all along with Comixology's requirements in mind, so the pages were already in the right format. I had to include square images of my company logo and of myself, but since I already made both images specifically with Comixiology in my mind, that was a cinch.

I also had to make a new square image for the series itself. You can see some of the images I considered on the side. The group shot from the College Follies Facebook page looks good, but just wasn't legible when shrunk down the to the size viewers might see it at on Comixology (it may appear at roughly the size of an avatar when listed with other titles). The yelling Stickboy one I also liked, but I didn't think it was as immediately, unambiguously readable as the one I went with below.  

I'm also submitting to one other site, but I'll deal with that in a later post as I'm trying to figure out what's going on with it at the moment.

NEXT: Submitting to Amusedom!

The official series image I submitted.

The College Follies "Get Them To Like Me On Facebook" Challenge

So I've been working on the comic for a little over three months now and I'm pretty much done with the first issue (and getting ready to submit it). During that time, I've been on social media interacting with potential readers, trying to get followers.

I've had a good response on Google+, which I'm enjoying a lot. I've met some really great people through the communities there.

On Twitter, I'm doing okay. I'm still figuring out Twitter out as I go.

But Facebook, it's a problem. I'm getting very few likes no matter what I try.

Which is a little discouraging.

But I've got an idea.

I'm going to let you guys figure it out for me in my first contest:

The College Follies "Get Them To Like Me On Facebook" Challenge

Whoever comes up with the best way to get people to like the College Follies Facebook page wins.

The prize will be a printed copy of the first and only College Follies issue printed in 2000. This is the comic I'm currently touching up, coloring and turning into a digital comic. Only 50 copies were printed and the orginal files for it have been lost, so if this story ever goes to press again, it'll be using the touched up files I'm working on now. So this is a rare chance to get the issue as originally done, unedited, warts and all.

The rules are simple:

1. Like the College Follies Facebook page at facebook.com/collegefollies

2. Do something to get people to like the page.

This can be anything you want.

In my Facebook and Google+ posts for this contest, I'm going to include some art from the comic you can add text to and turn into promotional images, but there's plenty of  other art on both pages and this blog you can use to create images to plug the Facebook page.

You can also create your own images or you don't even have to use images at all. It could be some text you post, a verbal plug, a video you make, a yard sign, sky writing...anything that gets people to like the page.

3) Document what you do and share it to the College Follies Facebook page.

For images, text or video you post online somewhere, sharing a link or post should be easy. If it's something in the "real world" just document it in some fashion to prove you did it and share it to the Facebook page.

The contest will run until the College Follies Facebook page gets one hundred likes. That may take a week. That may take a year. However long that takes is how long the contest lasts.

Since it'll be hard to tell how many likes I get from a specific entry, I'll be judging them subjectively based on what I think is best, in other words what I think is the most creative, appealing and effective entry.

The winner will be announced via this blog and all the other College Follies social media pages, including Facebook, so be sure to check my updates for the winner.

And that's it. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Good luck to everyone.

Back Cover Done! Issue One Finished!!!

It ain't over the til the fat lady sings or the skinny boy begs you to follow him on social media!

The original stand from 2000

The filler ad for the back cover is done! For the image of Stickboy, I took the original inks I used for a tiny promotional stand I did back in 2000. Little Stickboy (shown on the right) actually did sell a few copies of the comic at Heroes Con in Charlotte back in the day. 

Here I've repurposed the image for an ad begging for followers on my social media sites. The "Begging Stickboy" image was done quickly and sloppily back in the day so he required some clean up before he got blown up.

Filler ads, especially on back covers, are pretty common in comics as advertisers have gone elsewhere to promote their products (and, heck, Comixology doesn't even allow paid ads in their comics). This one I plan to reuse for the back cover or inside back cover of future issues (it's one less page I have to make for future comics).

So at long last the entire comic is done, cover to cover! Issue one is finished! I've still got to look it over and submit it, which I'll be doing in the next few days...

Inside Back Cover Finished!

The inside back cover is done!

This is the inside back cover as it existed in 2000, just colored with inking touchups. This is inspired by the back cover (or sometimes inside covers) of books or trade paperbacks. I used artwork I had laying around and wrote a couple paragraphs. It was a quick way to fill space but, man, I love this page! The top has a disclaimer in it that's a great gag, but I won't show it here since it would spoil the ending of the story.

The big image is the initial Dark Knight Returns homage image I did back in the day. It was nice to get it in there. Of course, I have a much better version up on my personal Facebook page, which I've already detailed in a prior post.

For the author shot, I think that's a reworked self portrait I made for my student website. That bio is of course, circa 2000. I'm no longer a college student and, sadly, I also no longer have a nifty girlfriend. I do, however, still have a cool comic collection. 

Just got to do the back cover and I'm done!