You’ve probably noticed that I’ve modified my posting schedule to every other day. This means my Star Trek themed Inktober will continue sometime into November.
With day 23’s prompt, ‘rip,’ we have the return of the Gorn, previously seen having McCoy work on his teeth on day 8.
process
By the time I’ve drawn the finished strip, I’ve drawn it a few times already.
Here’s the initial idea I drew in my September sketchbook. (You can also see the early sketches for day 22, chef, right above the day 23 sketches.)
You can see it’s really just gestures and a couple of facial expressions. You might be able to make out a gorn-like creature making some slash marks in the first image, and see his arm lashing out in the second image. The third image is Kirk reacting and the fourth image is the Gorn sewing up the uniform. But these drawings really only make sense if you know what it is already. They’re very childlike in that way. You might not know what a toddler has drawn, but as soon as they explain it to you, you can see it. Same with these early gestures.
Than a few days ago I further refined the idea in my October sketchbook. You can see I’m still working out the timing of everything.
Finally I’m drawing the pencils on the bristol board.
I inked directly over these but wasn’t happy with the results, so I grabbed another sheet of bristol board and traced the final copy which is what you at the top of the post.
If any of you have read this far, thank you.
You can also visit past Inktobers I’ve done.
There’s my Zelda themed Inktober 2019, where I did some strong work but ran out of steam and time halfway during the month.
Prompt: bulk. That leads me to bulkhead. I looked at a lot of pictures of bulkheads on memory alpha. I looked at a lot of pictures of bulkheads for boats on the internet. I’m still not sure what a bulkhead is.
I’ve talked about this before, but at the start of every month I start a new sketchbook.
This month’s sketchbook happened to be one of those mead composition books that comix artist Lynda Barry loves. So in honor of that, I’ve been filling it up with comix.
I divide the page up in to 4 panels, than sprinkle in text as I move through my day.
I don’t always have an idea for an accompanying image in the panel, so I leave them blank.
Then, a few days later I revisit the panels. Re-reading them helps spark an idea, and I’ll make a drawing.
Honestly, that’s a woefully misleading title. Grabby, though, ain’t it?
In January, comics writer Kieron Gillen teamed up with Project Art Cred to write a script, release it to any artist that wanted it, and bask in the wide variation in storytelling that resulted. You can check out the results that resulted here.
Amongst all the brilliant entries, you’ll find one that does not look like the others. Mine.
I did not adapt Kieron Gillen’s full script because I didn’t realize he had written more than one page. When I downloaded it from his newsletter I didn’t realize it was a multi-page document.
I adapted Kieron’s letter to the artist.
When Gillen mentioned in the letter that he was keeping this loose and minimal, I thought to myself, “No kidding.”
Here’s my final inked artwork. There’s another pass at the pencils below, as well.
i didn’t really use any one image in particular, but it helped me refine my early sketches
for the dragon’s pose i just did an image search for sleeping dogs.
all of that reference helped me refine the drawing and make it more convincing…
i think the sketch, done digitally, has a lot more energy than the final inks.
the biggest change to my work came in the next step.
i haven’t been happy with my inking at all, this inktober, so i decided to draw bigger. i’ve been watching a lot of cartoonist kayfabe lately and somewhere in there ed piskor said ‘pencil small and ink big.’
i’ve been drawing each panel at 4 x 4 inches all inktober. last night i decided to go bigger.
i resized the panels to be 5 x 5 inch and worked on 11 x 14 inch bristol instead of 9 x 12 inch bristol
inking at the larger size made all the difference for me.
i was able to vary the line weight more than in every previous inktober. it took way longer to work, but it was worth it.
but if the original is too pricey, you can check out the cleaned up, digitally colored version where i remembered to color link’s hair pink (WHY IS LINK’S HAIR PINK IN ‘LINK TO THE PAST’?)
and i’m pretty excited because i’m adding a few wrinkles to make the challenge of doing an inked drawing every day even more challenging for me
here’s the deal, coming at you in 4 parts:
inktober 2019 part 1: the theme
if you’ve been following the blog the past few days, you’ll have noted that i’ve been playing the super nintendo game, ‘link to the past’ for a few minutes before bed
i decided that this year my inktober theme would be zelda, so that i could count playing video games as research:)
once again, i’m using jake parker’s official prompt list as my jumping off point. this time in the world of zelda. Day 1 is ‘ring.’
part 2: 4 panels
to further raise the stakes in 2019, i’ve decided to do a 4 panel inked comic every day
part 3: color
and to raise the stakes even further i’ve decided to clean the comics up digitally, add a little color, and post them so you can read them straight through.
i’m calling this year’s legend of zelda themed inktober: Linktober
inktober 2019 part 4: shop
I’ll be selling the original strips in the store. They’re done on 9 inch x 12 inch bristol board.
The Origin of the Amazing Spider-Foo. A parody comic. Script by Crhymes. Art by Tone.
Here’s a one-page comic I recently illustrated called the ‘The Origin of The Amazing Spider-Foo’. It’s a Spider-Man parody written by Crhymes; a writer, comedian, and musician based out of San Diego.
From Script to Rough Layout
Originally conceived of as a one-page 12 inch by 12 inch record insert, Crhyme’s script was a brillliant parody of Stan Lee’s verbose Marvel Comics stories.
Here’s the script:
My first task was to break the text up in to individual panels. I was originally thinking a 9 panel grid, but couldn’t squeeze all of the text in, so I added a tenth introduction panel on top. I even started thinking about color at this stage. Here’s an early rough that was meant just for me.
I refined my roughs and sent them over to Crhymes. (I sent them without color, since I wasn’t sure yet what my color plan was.)
At this point, Crhymes had some much-needed suggestions to help make my drawings more convincing, including the addition of palm trees, making Spidey-Foo’s sandals more accurate, and adding tattoos to Pedro Parker’s arms and neck. Crhymes also wanted Spider-Foo to break the panel borders in the last panel.
Changes are welcome at this rough stage because they’re easy to make before inks and color are added.
Pushing and Refining the Poses
At this time I also decided to push the poses in the piece, especially in panels 1 and 2. (The poses of those two panels in the roughs just looked too similar to me.) Pedro Parker also looked too relaxed in panel 3, so I changed up that pose as well.
Here’s a few rough drawings I made while working on the piece.
Digitally Inking the Comics Page
Inking went slowly for me, though you wouldn’t know it from the timelapse below.
If only I could work that fast.
I originally estimated the page would take me about 6 – 8 hours, but each panel took about 3 hours including rough drawing, inks, lettering, and colors.
A lot of that time was spent trying things that didn’t work out, like those early rough colors, or some of the unused poses, for instance. And a lot of undos. Undo. Undo. Undo. Making comics is hard.
Here’s the final inks.
Coloring the Comics Page
I finished the colors, (done on a separate layer from the inks and pencils, as you can see above), choosing not to show Spider-Foo in full-color until the final couple of panels.
I sent the final artwork to Crhymes. He had a few edits to the text, which was no problem since the lettering was a well-crafted font I purchased from PixelSagas.