Jasper’s bite finally appears!  This was a super simple comic to segue into next week’s story, which’ll be another 3 pager.  I’m definitely going to try and get it done by next Friday, but it’s going to be a push.

So this was supposed to be a real quick one panel transition into the next story, but things got away from me.  First off, I drew a considerable amount only to have photoshop freeze on me and I lost everything.  So, I started over, and maybe it was a good thing, because I had a better grasp on what I was doing and was able to make improvements.

That background was the part that took far longer than I wanted, simply because I just kept going with it.  I would think, “hmmm, needs something else,” and then add some textures or gradients, or add more layers of color in the sky.  My only regret is not adding lots of lens flare filters.

The sun is almost up again, and they are conveniently out of the woods.  And so the journey continues onwards.

I’m really proud of how the big momma elemental turned out in that last panel.  I really dug drawing her, and I got to say, I’m sad to see her shrunk down.

Big story stuff coming up soonish, so that’s exciting.  I totally know that it all drags so slowly when there’s only one comic a week, but it’s coming nonetheless.

Yay new character.  You’ll be seeing more of this guy as the comic goes on, and I’m pretty excited about that.

I think this might be the last black and white one I’m going to do for a while, thought I got to say, they’ve been fun.  And a lot faster of a workflow.  I finished this comic in two hours, which is easily the fastest I’ve ever been able to.  Yay improvements.

I had a lot of fun doing black and white again, even to the point where I may go a third comic doing so… I found a watercolor texture that I used and manipulated to do some grey area stuff and I’m pretty happy with the results.

In other news, I’ve been working more on my graphic novel, doing a lot of tests and prep.  That’s exciting, right?

You’re probably noticing the lack of color, and the overall black-and-whiteyness of this week’s comic.  Do not fret, this was completely intentional.  As I’ve said, time and time again, this comic is a place for me to experiment and try new things.  Learn from mistakes and the like.

I learned quite a bit doing things this way, and it presented several new challenges, while eliminating others.  I’m probably going to do another week or two like this to get the hang of it before going back to color.  This is great practice for another comic that I’m working on, that will be entirely black and white.

Woah.  This was a beast.

This is by far the longest comic I’ve done and definitely the most complicated.  I put a few restrictions on myself this time to challenge what I could do.  First I wanted to do no dialogue, which I think worked out pretty ok.  The other thing I wanted was for it to be done as it would be printed in an actual comic book, complete with separate pages and such.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try and print a copy and see how that whole process is.

Anyone know a small time printing company who would be interesting in collaborating?

This is easily my favorite comic so far, not because of the writing (which is entirely too straightforward and predictable), but because of the art.

I’m super proud of how this all turned out.  First off I want to mention how inspired I’ve been by Adventure Time and how they do their backgrounds with a deceptive simplicity, elegance, and color.  Here are the two backgrounds I pulled for inspiration and reference (from the Adventure Time Flickr account, which is amazing):

I’m really proud of how the 4th panel (him trying not to blink) turned out, especially considering it was all drawn up in Illustrator.  Normally I like to do those sort of details in Photoshop, but I’m definitely seeing the benefits of vectors.