For those of you wondering, the Eye of Vecna is a real thing (in an imaginary game).  I like the idea of this evil artifact constantly making stupid puns.  In all reality it’s really only mildly evil; instead of seeking destruction, it seeks attention.  But that’s just me.

Really proud of how this turned out.  I feel like I’m constantly learning new things, and hopefully becoming a better artist as a result.

It was fun doing a throwback background to the original background that I used for like the first several comics.  Fun fact: that first background was drawn on paper, inked with a sharpie and some lousy pen before being colored in photoshop.  This newer one looks a lot cleaner, which I like.

Fun story:

After doing the writing and layout in Illustrator, I imported the comic into Photoshop for inking, coloring, and finishing.  I got all of the backgrounds and blobs done, I was just about to finish colors when Photoshop crashed and I lost about 3 hours of work.

I wanted to spend more time on colors, but that time ended up being spent REDRAWING EVERYTHING.

That’s all.

This week’s comic is a throwback to a few week’s ago.  I’d always planned on revisiting their dungeon in a more war torn and desolate milieu, and I got to say it was a lot of fun.

I reused a lot of the other week’s inks so I wouldn’t have to redraw everything, but in the end it didn’t save me as much time as I’d hoped. I ended up redoing so much, that the majority of it is all spankin’ new.  To show just how much ended up changing, here’s an animated GIF of the difference between the two:

 

The grown up/evolved lightning elemental was a lot of fun to draw.  A lot of the reason I’ve kept up this comic is that I get to draw monsters all the time.

I also got to say that I’m really happy with how the panels turned out this time, giving an open more dynamic look to it all.  Allowing the bottom panel to lie underneath it all without borders, bleeding out unto the edges really gives it a larger sense of scale.  I’m going to try and play around with that some more in the future.

Comic number 50!  Wow.  I am super proud to have made it this far, and want to give a huge thank you all for reading through the thick and thin of it.

If you don’t get this comic, read this.

I drew this comic entirely in Illustrator to give it a more storybook cut out look, and I wasn’t too keen on it until after I threw on some texture, which helped hold the piece together.  I also wanted you guys to see a larger version of the master sword because I spent too much time for it to be so small on the page.

 

 

I think is this the first comic I’ve done where it actually look like action is happening!  The wolf turned out pretty good, but I had to use tons of references to get it just right (thank goodness for google images).  I  marked the color patterns after a well known video game character, and if you know who, it’ll give some foreshadowing as to what happens next.  Here’s some close ups on the lower panels to give you a  better look:

Pretty happy with how this page turned out visually.  I drew the trees and mountains originally thinking it’d all be very green and lush, but I realized how awesome it would be to make it more autumn.  I’m particularly proud of the top panel and it is currently my desktop.

Click it to big it.

And yes, this is the end of baby Jasper.  For now.

If you haven’t seen My Neighbor Totoro, shame on you.  In case you haven’t, this is the scene I am referencing:

Miyazaki is one of my favorite directors ever, so today pays a little tribute to him and his work.  I would’ve liked to spend a bit more time on the backgrounds, but time is fleeting it seems.  Here’s the bottom panel in all it’s gigantic glory if you want to use as a wallpaper.

Click it to Big it.

First off, sorry.  This comic (on top of trying to create a new website) nearly killed me.  So much time was sunk into this bad boy, it went past the one week mark.  But it’s three pages, so that totally makes up for it.  Plus look at how detailed it is!  I almost like it more in it’s black and white state:

I know I spent a good ten hours on those inks trying to do as much detail as possible, channeling a sort of sloppier Geof Darrow type style.  I wish I had given myself more time to spend on color, because I could have added just as much detail at that stage — alas, I knew I had to cut it off at some point.

Once again I spent way too much time on the art, and not enough on the writing.

The gag here was supposed to be him going through dangerous jungle ruins, with tons of dangerous thingies, all of which would lead the reader to think, is this the dangerous thingy that will give Jasper his bite.  Fighting those expectations, he would emerge untouched, only for the whole thing to be undercut by some lightweight archer lad doing the deed.  It doesn’t work.  But hey, it’s pretty right?