inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 15: legend.
as you probably noticed i’m behind. and skipping around.
inspiration for the giant book that link consults is the lindsfarne bible, which i’d never heard of before doing the research for this strip.
this is the first day this year that i used a wash.
i got lazy and tired this strip. it shows in the final two panels
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 12: dragon
made some changes to the way i worked on today’s inktober and it really helped.
the final piece looks more like i imagined.
here’s how it went down. (if you find this sort of thing just mindnumbingly boring, here’s the color version, colored digitally, of today’s piece
here is the initial sketch
then i hunted down a bunch of reference of alex honnold climbing el capitan
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.
it felt like a breakthrough.
now i just have to do it again tonight…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 11: snow
i’m pulling a swerve and giving day 10 a miss because i have an idea for pattern that i need a little more time on.
so here’s today’s:
it works a lot better in color
the way i drew these snowflakes makes them look like potato chips, don’t you think? maybe i’m just hungry
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 9: swing
(i know it’s the 10th. i’m behind.)
i also did a digital color version
lately i’ve been doing the sketch digitally, and inking over that
here’s the sketch
my sketches are better than my inks, but i guess that’s the whole point of inktober, right?
i did splash some watercolors on the page
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 8: frail
view the color version, where color reveals a little more information about one of our characters…
forgot to ink in her boots, and squandered link’s pose in panel 2, but this effort felt much stronger than day 7’s
the main thing i need to remember when working is just to slow down. all of the pressure is imagined…
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 7: enchanted
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 6: husky
as i continue to struggle with the drawing of day 5: build, i’m moving on to day 6. only a day late.
for all of you inktober purists out there, here’s today’s strip in glorious black and white
if you’d like to see the comic in majestic color, please click here
i think the gag is solid, but man, panel 3 was a lost oppotunity
i should have pushed the pose more
(hangs head in shame)
(shuffles solemnly back to the drawing table)
inktober and linktober 2019 continue with day 4: freeze
can you spot what link is missing in panel 3? seems like i forget to draw something every day.
i didn’t have any ideas going in to fit the the prompt, but i read about the freezors, and once i started getting the pencil moving the gag came to me
i’m a little more satisfied with the gestures today
i also realized i’ve been casting my little guy as link this whole time
linktober continues
jake parker’s inktober 2019 official prompt: mindless
penciled this piece 2 days ago
felt less than confident about it
inked it late last night after my soccer game
hated it. told myself i’m going to throw it out in the morning
in the morning i looked at it again and accepted it. (after adding a lot of correction fluid)
added watercolors. felt better about 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’?)
jake parker’s inktober 2019 is here!
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:
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.’
to further raise the stakes in 2019, i’ve decided to do a 4 panel inked comic every day
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
I’ll be selling the original strips in the store. They’re done on 9 inch x 12 inch bristol board.
Free inkstains with every drawing.
And if that’s not enough inktobering for you, feel free to visitinktobers of years past.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Leading up to San Diego ComicCon, Crhymes started posting a panel a day to his Instagram. Crhymes is wild, ambitious, and smart. It’s my guess that he has a lot of stories in him, and not just Spider-Man parodies.
I’m grateful he took a chance on this fairly untested comics-maker.
Go buy a shirt from him, or a print of the comic, while he works on his next project.
been busy doing freelance – a one page spider-man parody called spiderfoo
here’s a timelapse video of the final panel coming together
and the shop is back up!
(thank you wordpress for fixing the bug)
to celebrate, how about a new ‘steps’ strip?
this rough is pretty rough
but its the building blocks of a new steps strip
the nice thing about printing these up myself is that i can make changes late in the game
when i printed up a few copies of steps volume 2, for instance, i was unsatisfied with the size of the images in the book (in a way that i wasn’t with volume 1)
the comics felt too small. they had no oomph. no impact at that size
so i decided to go with a 2 x 2 frame instead of fully vertical
with this change in the layout the images are quite a bit bigger. i didnt realize how important having those panels be as large as possible is – especially since the panel don’t change much
you can still preorder volume 2 in the store. or save some money with a steps 2 pack if you haven’t yet picked up volume 1
my plan is to start printing these no later than april 16
this dream’s not mine, it was a friend of mine, but it was a good one to turn in to comics
i wrote down as many dreams as i could remember in march, so i’ll be making more of these
and today i picked up a ream of cardstock, so i’ll start printing copies of steps volume 2 soon. preorder now!
and if you didn’t pick up volume 1 yet, pick up the 2 pack. they look and feel really good
this might be the worst looking telescope ever drawn
for some reason i can’t make a new comics collection for these, but if you’d like to catch up, here’s a link
i dont know what these are yet but now theres three of them
i’m starting to dig these guys
i think it was a 4 minute challenge
via the comics genius and guru lynda barry
drawn while watching thor: dark world tuesday night at my dad’s
which i suppose is how that spaceship hanging in the sky seeped in there
inked yesterday
i had a lot more #30dayscomics deadline gags
but then this happened while i was drawing
and now i’m excited to see where it goes
gaaaaahhh! i’m still behind!
UPDATE: Replaced this comic. Fixed the timing. Reads much better now. Check out the previous version below. I think you’ll agree:
here’s the sketch for yesterday’s journal strip ‘backwards’
and here’ s the timelapse
you’re getting about an hour of creation time in a scooch over a minute
making comics is hard work any way, and right now making comics seems very hard for me
just have to find ways to keep the pencil moving
