Page Twelve has been posted.
Page Eleven and Reflections on Color
No, page eleven isn’t from a different comic. With the scene change, I thought I’d try something a little different with the color pallet.Continue reading Page Eleven and Reflections on Color
Page Ten
Page ten is up now, and that means we’re past the halfway point for Issue 3.
New R.A. Lafferty Website
Whether you read classic genre fiction, or you’re tired of reading the same old tropes in the more modern stuff, check out this new website at ralafferty.com. There you will find a bio on a wonderfully strange, and strangely obscure author unlike any other. In the news section there is a report from the second annual Lafferty convention held this past weekend in Lawrenceville, New Jersey which, I can attest, was extremely interesting. The site also has a few short stories you can read for free. They’re good. Better than good, they are diverse and weird, starting with well tried concepts like time travel or alien visitations and taking them places you will not—cannot expect. Like I said, they’re good. Plus, I helped make the website along with Locus Magazine. Locus is also good. Read that too.
Page Nine and Some Perspective on Perspective
Page nine was probably the most difficult page of this issue. From the beginning, it was an experiment in so-called “five point perspective”, but the way the drawing was framed required me to step outside the limitations of traditional five point perspective and develop a technique that is, as far as I can tell, completely new.
Continue reading Page Nine and Some Perspective on Perspective
Page Eight
Page Eight is up.
Page Seven and Some Thoughts on Scene Layout
You can see page seven here, but I thought I’d take some time to explain a bit of the learning process I used to draw this page.
A problem I’ve had in the past is trying to maintain proper scaling when working with large areas.Continue reading Page Seven and Some Thoughts on Scene Layout
Noctis – Page 5 & 6
That’s right, two pages for the price of one this week. Lucky you.
Noctis – Page 4 is Up
Page Four is up now.
Next week will be pages five and six, a two-page spread.
Page Three and Some Words About Fonts
You may notice that the font looks a little different in this issue. That’s because it’s not a font, I’ve started lettering the comic by hand. Part of the reason is that the old font, which was designed with a solid ink brush in mind, didn’t really blend well with the new, penciled, art style. The main reason, though, has to do with how restrictive it is to work with a prepared font.
Beyond just the normal italic and bold settings, there really isn’t much more you can do to make a font expressive, especially if you’re going with subtle expression. You can micromanage the size and spacing, but it still always has that crisp, manufactured look to it. It may seem like such a trivial detail, but it’s the type of thing that sticks out to me and separates comics that look “produced” from the ones that have a more personalized voice to them. Hand-lettered comics like Yale Stewart’s JL8, make the dialogue seem like a part of the artwork instead of highly standardized text sitting on top of artwork.
Initially though, James was skeptical my ability to write legibly — true friend and fountain pen snob enthusiast that he is — but after I’d done the first few pages, we were both surprised at how well it all turned out.