Semi-finished cover and back cover

Yeow! I uploaded this to my DeviantArt as well, so you can see it without the hideous JPEG artifacts: click here!

By the way, it's not QUITE finished, but it should be soon. :p

And now here's a thing that I threw together for the back cover. I was kind of disappointed I didn't get to do much of this type of expressionist scribbly stuff for chapter 1, but chapter 2 should have a bit more of it.

Oh, and while I'm posting all this stuff, here's an endpaper.

New cover

A proper cover, at last - it's partially coloured but I clicked off everything except the lineart layer coz I'll post the coloured one later. I have nothing else to say except I'm really glad I figured out layer sets and the "liquify" filter in Photoshop. :p

Now what to draw for a back cover...?? :O

Last Shop Standing

Another old thumbnail. Still trying to think of a way to show Jeremy's gradual descent into madness. I've been told I should stick to personal experiences - but as I mentioned earlier, I went batshit insane very suddenly and that just wouldn't make sense in a proper narrative - it's gotta be gradual. I think part of the problem is that I feel like I need to show him interacting with other characters because it's just not interesting to focus solely on him...or is it?

Anyway, I'll get to the point and tell you why I posted this particular thumbnail. When I try to think of meaningful personal experiences from my high school days, what I actually remember most is the music I listened to and the countless hours spent in stale-smelling record shops poring over shelves searching for hidden treasures. And I always felt such joy upon discovering a CD I'd been seeking out for months or even years. When I think of this now it seems so absurd...was my life so empty that I was more attached to music than people? Would this feel mundane if I included it in the story or would it feel honest?

(I'd be remiss if I didn't at least mention the digital age and the sad demise of hunting for records in shops - I do still buy CDs and I still have an attachment to music in a physical form, but most of my shopping is done online because the stores simply never have what I'm looking for - in fact, most of the time they never did.)

Now that I think of it, a search for an elusive CD could be accompanied by Jeremy's search for the truth, for the missing puzzle piece, the secret to living that he believes everyone else already knows...

Pages 16, 17 & 18

(Next - pages 19, 20 & 21)

(Previous - pages 14 & 15)

YES! Everything's better IN SPAAAACE!! Even Christopher Walken! And every word is better with "space" written in front of it - try it! Space toast...space kilts...space golf...

OK I'll stop... :p

Today I started inking page 26, which will be the last page of chapter 1 and the conclusion of my EMP. Wahey! ONWARDS!! Actually I'm a little scared about finishing chapter 1 since I still haven't figured out what comes next. :X Let's hope I do soon.

Pages 14 & 15

(Next - pages 16, 17 & 18)

(Previous - pages 11, 12 & 13)

These are old, some of the first pages I drew. See, when I get an idea for a random scene I kinda have to draw it right away while it's fresh in my mind. In that case there are many MANY other scenes I should be working on, but, uh...I'm gonna wait till after the project deadline.

I PROMISE to do some actual work tomorrow :p

Also a word about printing. I've never scanned anything higher than 300dpi, but all the material I've read about printing comics suggests that you must scan your pages at 600dpi grayscale, Threshold them to black & white, then convert to 1200dpi grayscale and Threshold again. I'm REEEEALLY curious to find out if this works, because I'm sceptical. I hope it's not necessary - I really don't think my computer can handle 1200dpi files...to say nothing of an InDesign document full of a couple dozen 1200dpi files... D:

Sketches and scribbles

Some hilarious thumbnail sketches - now you see why I don't post more of these. XD Even _I_ don't know what half the stuff in the top image means. Oh, and there's also a pair of legs for some reason. I'm really not very good at drawing legs and so lately when I sit down to do practice studies, they're usually of legs.

This is usually what my roughs look like right before I trace them onto decent paper and make them all slick and pretty. But what's this?

I was having a lot of trouble with that set of panels at the bottom left, so I redrew them on a clean sheet of paper. Seriously, you don't even know how frustrating it was - I was stuck on this page for about three weeks. D: When I get stuck I typically go and flip through some other comics for inspiration, but unfortunately most of my comics are back at home. I should watch films instead, I guess - I seem to recall a scene in Matinee getting me out of a jam and inspiring the Fun Tak Man page.

Pages 11, 12 and 13

BAM!!! There we go!




(Next - pages 14 & 15)

(Previous - pages 8, 9, & 10)

Pages 8, 9, and 10

Moving right along...pages 8, 9 and 10. Lots more coming very soon, I just need to sort out some issues with pages 11 & 13.




(Next - pages 11, 12 & 13)

(Previous - pages 6 & 7)

Shading & Lettering

A couple of days ago I tried shading one of the finished pages. Not sure if I like it or not - I think it would work well for certain pages but not for others.

I'm tempted to do it in blue or some other colour, rather than grey, but...I've seen my share of comics shaded that way and I think it's way overdone. Not only that, but I'm going to be doing a couple of scenes later on in full colour, which I don't think would have as large an impact if the shading on every other page was blue, green, or what-have-you.

OR I could just NOT shade anything...wow what a concept! XD

Anyway, here's something else I tried.
I created my own comic lettering font quite some time ago - it's called Printheads, after the comic I was drawing at the time. However, my lettering's improved significantly since then (largely because I managed to track down one of these) and I don't know if it's really necessary to use a font this time. I mean, damn...that font looks pretty cold next to the hand lettering, doesn't it? :p It just doesn't fit.

Let me know what you think, though....someone...anyone? :p

(Nag me to get back to work, too, since I'm only doing this as a way of avoiding real work! XD)

Page 6 and 7

Hey all right!

(Next - pages 8, 9, & 10)

(Previous - pages 4 & 5)

Page 7 is partially based on an earlier test page that I won't be using. The "melting" page goes directly after this, but I'll have to re-draw and re-caption it. That shouldn't take too long - after all, for me the two hardest parts of all this are storyboarding/staging and page design. And since that's already done for page 8...all I gotta do is trace it onto a new page, move stuff around and ink it again. And you already know how much I LOOOOOVE inking. :D

I generally try to avoid putting four rows of panels on a page, since it tends to look cluttered...but I seem to be doing it a lot in this comic. Maybe I'm getting the hang of doing it right. I've noticed that European comics use four rows way more often than American comics, although I cannot find good examples online to back this up...I also recall Peter David saying that you should never use more than six panels per page, although he didn't mention rows & columns when he said that...so who knows.