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.