Issue Three: The Lessons Learned

With issue three, it's the first comic I've done from scratch in 14 years and a very different sort of story for the series, so I learned a few things...

Writing- Planning is key. Designing the characters before the story helped me visualize the scenes. Penciling in rough layouts for pages as I scripted was vital for a story with this complex of a panel layout. That way I knew the page layout, panel composition and word balloon placement would work for what I'm writing.

Pencils- Again, tight pencils are key. Sloppy pencils might be quick, but you'll end up losing more time than you gain when you get to the inks.

Inks- Replicating  repeated parts of a panel, whether it's a face, part of a character's body, etc. really helped cut down the time on this one, especially with all the little inset panels inside the Bots.

Colors- Being my first color action comic, I got to learn a lot about how to color explosions and crackling energy effects. Brushes with feathered edges and multi-layered gradients can look really cool and it turns out I have a totally irrational love for coloring lightening effects.

Letters- Having been a huge fan of Jim Shooter's comics in the 1990s, which used practically no sound effects, I almost never used them in mine. But since sound effects were part of the DNA of Power Rangers, I used a lot of them here and I think they really do add to the story and humor. 

I also got to experiment with show text over the panels and singing overlapping the action in certain scenes. This was a ton of fun and pretty effective. A rule of thumb I discovered for all non-dialog lettering overlapping the action is to remember the reader will probably read it where it falls in the panel so you don't want to break up dialog in a bad way. You can never read over your panels enough for stuff like that.

So that's it until September for issue three when it'll be early released. There is the matter of doing a variant cover for it, which if all goes well, I'll be doing just before the release. Once you see it, you'll know why I waited to do it.

Anyway, next up, issue four in which Psychoboy runs for office! Start feeling dread...now!