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
i’m behind a couple of days so working digital to try and catch up
here’s a new journal comic
here’s the first panel of day 8 in the 30dayscomics challenge
little guy’s got a rubber band
p.s. a note on the ‘(happened in july 18)’ note. when artist john porcellino (whose king-cat comics you should really subscribe to) makes his comics, he (often? always?) notes the date when the incident that inspired the comic occurs, and then also notes the dates when he draws and inks it, which i think is a lovely touch. i meant to do it for yesterday’s strip, since the date when the peas incident happened and i actually published the strip were so far apart, but in the rush to get it posted before midnight for yesterday’s 30 days of comics deadline, i completely forgot. so the date is my john p homage.
havent had a timelapse in awhile since i havent been working digitally
went digital for this steps strip so i could hit the deadline
i need to find a way to get ahead and digital might be it
and now i can give you a look at the timelapse making of tomorrow, as a bonus
another steps strip for day 4 of 30 days of comics
i’ll keep going with these until i run out of my stockpile of ideas
Here’s the final five 2015 strips of the Casablanca/TMNT mashup webcomic, ‘Everybody Comes To Raph’s by Mcwhitseen and I.
It’s been fun to go back through them again since first posting them on the tumbles back in 2015. It’s still staggering to me how well the world’s align
You’ve probably noticed the shift in styles over the course of the work, as I tried to find a way to work faster, and smarter. At one point in 2015 I was posting new strips every day and sketches on the weekend, but mostly it was long gaps between posts.
Of the visual styles I used I think the ‘painted’ look was the most evocative – the most appealing. It’s the look I would use if I were doing the project from beginning to end.
Wouldn’t that would be fun, to do the entire Casablanca movie populated with the Turtles universe? Maybe one day.
Here’s lookin at you, kid.
sad that i never got april as ilsa to look as good in the strip as she did in the sketchbook
posted a few more raph’s in the once ongoing, now nongoing mashup of Casablanca and The Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles, co-written with fellow scribe mcwhitsteen, and originally posted on the tumbles
you can start from the ‘beginning‘ here, but i’d like to warn you… it’s not the beginning
and thank you to Michael Barrett for the kind words on his micro.blog
I’m pretty excited about the new Comics page I set up.
It will give a home to all of the webcomics I’ve made over last few years.
Here’s a quick intro to the new (to you) strips:
Everybody Comes to Raph’s is the Casablanca/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle mashup that no one asked for. ( I do think the two universes line up astonishingly well, though biased as I may be.) I originally wrote these with Mcwhitsteen and posted these on Tumblr back in 2015 but as the social media landscape continues to get shaken up, it seemed a good time to bring them home. I don’t have all the strips and sketches up, so you’ll have to keep checking back for new (old) material.
Ernie and Fitz is a fictionalized look at the friendship between Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ernie is a boozy he-man, spewing toxic masculinity and Fitz is a boozy,wimp, lovestruck by Zelda, and oozing insecurity. I think I may have posted these on screentone in the past, but now they’re all together and easily browsable. And it’s another collaboration with Mcwhitsteen (credited as Code in the strips).
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
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.
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.
it has been three weeks since my last post, so i hope you enjoy today’s comic as i get back in the swing of things.
the first screennotes newsletter ever went out today. you can subscribe here if you like.
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
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
i guess this is now the second in a series of couch cushion strips🙂
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
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
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
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
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
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
