Trying something new

Had a nice Easter off with the lady. She's gone now, initiate sad mode.

So I've been looking for ways to speed up the time between initial idea and final comic. I can draw much faster (and technically better) in Photoshop, but as of yet that hasn't outweighed the advantages of vector in Illustrator. I did a few tests for Wednesday's comic in Photoshop. They looked something like this.

Now there are still imported vectors here but this was mostly an inking test. I like the texture that I can get on surfaces relatively quickly, but I'm not convinced it actually benefits the comic. I'll do some more experiments as I go, but it's looking like a better bet to just get more comfortable with Illustrator.

I need to start doing more detailed plans of the comics as a whole before I get too far into the art. Many of the final comics aren't composed nearly as well as they should be because I get too far along and don't feel up to changing things. At the moment I tend to just do small planing sketches like these:

Lots of artist complain that this is the real issue with digital art. It's so fast, editable, and disposable that we no longer value the formal basics like thumbnail plans and color tests.

Sir Rotherham is named after my new favorite pizza. It has a large amount of ham on it. It's awkward. I feel I need to get more characters with solid roles to diversify the comic, but the pig can't talk so... it may not help at all.

I'm trying to find time to get the D&D codex up to date but, it's pretty time consuming. Hopefully by next week.

Work to do.

Phew, all that traveling is over. It's good to be home. Though this is a new house, so I still trip over shit in the dark.

First off here's a comic that never was!

This was more a proof of concept than a final layout but I got bored of it. Also it felt too similar to this Penny Arcade, which is already unspeakably hilarious. I couldn't help screaming in my mind through all of Hugo, "It's a fucking industrial complex kid! No that's not a slide! Don't put your hand in there!"

Things on the horizon:

- I'm going to start a new D&D campaign soon, one I hopefully will manage to take places. I intend to use it as a world building exercise too, so it will have its own page home to any art and writing I do for it, expanding as the world does.

- I'm going to start proper work on either After or ADRIFT now that I'm getting settled in. Not sure which yet.


- Starting work with my friend's awesome two man band on art/photography/music videos. Will hopefully result in some pretty cool stuff. (That's called cross promotion, bitches.)


- With luck, I will be getting going on an iPhone/iPad game with a friend. That should be interesting and challenging. Mostly for him I would imagine since he will be doing the all the coding.