Page Five Colored!

Page five is colored! Almost done with the story, just got to letter it. 

Page Four Colored!

Finished coloring page four last night. I'll be lettering it today.

Coloring Page Four

I'm in the middle of coloring page four for the second story. It's going quickly and I should be able to finish the colors tonight and wrap up the page tomorrow if my work schedule permits.

Page Three Colored!

Finished coloring page three and did some of background lettering on it. Still got to find a good alarm clock font for panel one. I'll be lettering and wrapping up the page on Wednesday or Thursday.

 

Currently Coloring Page Three...

Currently coloring page three...

 

Page Two Colored!

Finished the colors on page two. I went ahead and did the background text too. I'll hopefully be lettering dialog today and wrapping up the page!

Coloring Page Two

Creating the video and the Happy New Year's image slowed me down a bit, but I'm chipping away at the colors on page two. I'm hoping to finish the colors tonight after work.

Look Ma, I'm On Camera! It's My Latest YouTube Video!

This video was done on the fly. I saw James Rolfe's end of the year video on Cinemassacre on New Year's Eve and was like "Cool, I should try doing that." I've been thinking about trying to turn the camera on myself ever since getting the new digital recorder and this seemed like a good opportunity.

It took longer than one would think. I had to find someplace where the shadows weren't too harsh. And I had to place the covers in the background  just right so they didn't look crooked. I only have a little tripod so it took a ridiculous looking tower of boxes and books on an end table to get the height needed to shoot. It took awhile to get the camera positioned just the right way to frame the video correctly. And once recorded, it literally took the rest of the night (4 hours) just to upload and for YouTube to process the edits (2+ hours) because of the massive size, since it's a lengthy HD video.

I'm just talking off the top of my head here. I was hoping to be able to cut it to make it a little shorter and tighter, but unfortunately YouTube's video editor was the only choice I had, and I couldn't figure out how to make cuts to the middle of a video last night (hopefully there's a tutorial or something I can look up for future reference). I could cut from the end okay and chopped out a bit on social media I want to redo for it's own video later.

My camera split the recoding into a separate video (skipping a few seconds) at 16 minutes and screwed up the ending so I had to rerecord that (which is why there's a skip at the end).

The video quality isn't as nice I'd like, but I'll check around my apartment to see if there's a place well lit enough to get better video.

 So what do you guys think? Would you rather see videos like this, or ones I've been doing with  the slideshows using voiceover?

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.

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 Pencils done

Pencils for the back cover of issue two are done.

Cover Colored

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

 

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.

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.

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...