it’s been awhile, but a new steps strip is up
go now! read it! it’s great! (to be fair, though, i am pretty biased)
it’s been since november of last year that I posted a steps strip, which just seems crazy to me…
spidey and doc ock’s tentacles
doc ock is my favorite spidey villain
dialogue dilemmas and color quandries
I’ve struggled with the idea of using dialogue in ‘steps’ for awhile. I’ve used it a couple of times in one panel strips like this one and this one, but it has never felt right for the four panel strip.
So using it the other day was a personal milestone. I hope that it opens up more storytelling opportunities, and it still may, but the strip feels more powerful to me without the dialogue.
And with the added element of the dialogue, it became more difficult to juggle all of the other elements of the strip, especially color.
I published and replaced three versions of the airport strip before finally settling on the final.
Here’s a little of my thoughts behind each version.
The first problem was version one of the strip just felt too crowded. The dad, especially, is too tall, giving the strip a rigidity that feels wrong.
So I went through and reduced the size of all the figures and backgrounds in the panels, giving a little more white space around everything.
It also felt like the big blob of blue on the plane in the final panel diminished the impact of little guy’s ‘I DON’T WANT TO GET ON AN AIRPLANE!’ by being too visually distracting.
Now there’s a little more white space around all the figures, which makes me feel better.
I also decided to remove the color from the chair that the Woman Reading sits on in Panel 3 to better emphasize her.
But even after removing the blue of the airplane in the final panel it still feels too crowded. Now what?
I removed the lines in the background suggesting the doorway to the jetway out to the plane.
I also removed the color from the podium that the ticket handler stands behind, giving more emphasis to her, the dad, and the son.
The final change I made was to panel 1.
Though I really liked the blue and green on the backpack and shoes of Random Traveler #1, I decided to eliminate those colors when I couldn’t find another use for them in any of the remaining panels.
The last minor change was to the Reading Woman’s sweater to brown since that purple wasn’t being used elsewhere either.
(I remember my high school art teacher telling us that if you use a color, always use it twice so that it looks like we did it on purpose.)
See the final result here.
timelapse of yesterday’s airport strip
here’s the timelapse of the making of yesterday’s strip, the airport
about an hour of creation-time goes by in just over 30 seconds
drawing yesterday’s downhill strip
here’s a quick look at drawing the latest ‘steps’ strip, downhill
you get about 40 minutes of drawing, hemming, and hawing in about 30 seconds
i first posted the sketch for the strip back in march
the scrape timelapse
finally a new strip up, the scrape
and here’s the sped up screengrab if you’d like to see how it all came together. or didn’t come together? i’m never sure if these comics work or not.
scarecrow timelapse
here’s a timelapse of the making of yesterday’s scarecrow strip
i’ve also added the webcomics plugin so that you can easily read all of the past ‘steps’ strips. (i don’t know why i call the strips featuring little guy ‘steps’ but i think it works.
this plug in lets me keep the latest strip at the top of the blog and gives you an easy way to navigate them. the double arrow takes you back to the first ‘steps’ strip, the single arrow lets you increment back to the previous strip, and the little infinity symbol takes you to a random strip.
take it for a spin and let me know what you think.
2:30 am comic strip timelapse
i just realized how wonky the perspective was in the drawing of the doorway
and of course you can see how lazy i am when i just copy and paste the doorway from panel to panel
the couch cushion timelapse
here’s the timelapse of the couch cushion strip from a few days ago
the process usually goes like this:
i see a moment in real life that i think will work for the strip: in this case it was watching little guy move the cushion so he could sit down on the couch
(and right now i’m focusing on those moments that dont require any dialogue, right now i’m more interested in telling these little stories without dialogue, so i’ve passed on some great moments that have dialogue. maybe that will change in the future)
then i’ll need to puzzle out how this moment will break down in to 4 frames – i have to select my 4 moments which usually takes some trial and error with some really bad drawings, just diagrams really, in the sketchbook that help me quickly find those 4 moments
then i take a photo of the sketches and cut and paste those moments into the frames of the page
since i had already done a couch strip, i decided to recycle the background from that previous strip not only for continuity, but also because i am very lazy
from there i need to do the actual drawings (which in this case were pretty dismal, though they hopefully worked)
select my colors
go back in and fix little guy’s smile on the last panel (it looked a little creepy the first go-round)
and that was about it
when i write it all out like this it makes the process feel a little mechanical, but for me the magic lies in recognizing the moment when it occurs, and enjoying the finished strip when i’m done
timelapse of the easter strip
color was really important in this strip (i mean, color is always important for me, and i kind of sweat it when coloring the strip, but color was especially important to the storytelling of this particular strip)
i don’t think this strip could have worked in black and white (and some of my past strips absolutely could have, but i like color…and now i’m not even sure of what my original point was.
anyway, hope you enjoy seeing the strip come together at high speeds, it always seems a minor miracle to me when a strip is finished
coloring easter eggs
paper towel roll timelapse
here’s about 45 minutes of drawing compressed into about 45 seconds
if you watch closely you can see how lazy i am
once i get a good drawing i recycle it in all the panels and just adjust what i need to
search timelapse
here’s the screen capture of me working on the ‘search’ strip from a few days ago
i also reorganized the ‘comics’ menu item so it is just finished strips now. no process videos or sketches making it easier to scroll through past strips without all that junk in the way
so if the sketches, videos, and various other asides that appear between strips aren’t in your wheelhouse, you can just bookmark the comics page and see the most recent strips
paper towels
hey kids! comics!
a new strip for today
it’s been 11 days since the last strip
way too long
but now the wait is over
well, kind of
now you have to wait for the next one
zipper comic timelapse
it is hard to wear a zipper sweater and carry him because he likes to zip up the zipper and catch my neck skin in it
i don’t know if that came across in the strip or not
not only were the drawings difficult for me on this one, but so was the ‘timing’ of the strip – trying to figure out which moments to show so that the reader understands whats going on and the punchline is effective
timelapse of recent visiting the grandparents comic
some days you just dont feel like you can draw
i think the outstretched arm of grandpa gets lost amongst the squiggles here
you’re seeing about an hour and a half go by in about a minute
popcorn timelapse
lot of struggle in this one
replacing panels
figuring out the timing
figuring out the color
popcorn
visiting grandpa and grandma
search
putting together the pepper strip timelapse
what’s great about this timelapse is it shows how nothing came easy on this one
and when i saw little guy trying to grind pepper with the pepper shaker at the restaurant i thought i had it made
but then i realized i needed to show all of the other times he saw me using a pepper grinder
and none of the drawings came easy
the staging of that last panel was especially difficult. and the drawing was pretty bad. I’m not even sure it is clear what is going on.
even the colors of the strip were dificult. i worried that there would be too many colors in the last panel so i decided to go monotone throughout.
i decided on yellow just because i thought it would be funny to color in the yolks in panel 3.
my first attempt at yellow looked like pee. so i made it bolder.
i’m not sure i agree with that decision.
ultimately i still think the idea was good, but the execution lacked on almost every level.
i think ive mentioned before i have no idea what im doing
the zipper
snowball time lapse
here’s the timelapse of me drawing the snowball comic strip
this is an interesting one to look at because the strip went through so many changes after i stopped recording
i decided to run it vertically
having no expression on the little guy in the last panel felt most right for the ‘punchline’
but even more interesting (to me i guess) was the decision to change the first panel
the close up of little guy packing a snowball seemed to ruin the ‘rhythm’ of the piece
that panel seemed too ‘big’ – too ‘loud’ for the next three panels
for some reason, it seems like the strip works better the smaller the changes between the panels
smaller the changes between panel the more power the final panel seems to have for me
i wonder why that is…
the squirrel
robin timelapse
timelapse of the robin strip from a couple of days ago
i didnt know i was going to erase the pencil lines of the tree until i saw how it looked
so much of the final look of these strips comes out of the doing of them
the final is always different from the idea of them