pencils, 4 and 5

The next two pages have reached the pencil stage and I have reached the dinner and bad movie stage. Must attempt to finish battleship. G4, you sunk my self respect.

SOUND FX of a big KEEE-RASH missing top of page 5.

ANYWAY.. things are just kinda visually dull at this point, sorry, But the story unfolds...

page 3 pencils

The title page emerges on page 3, and the title was the last thing to come into place. It came to me in a flash 15 minutes ago; they often do just appear after days of fruitless thought. Still confused? The story WILL connect by page 8, at least in terms of how these elements relate and what is happening. Sort of. This is a good example of how things evolve, almost none of the dialogue on this page is as it appeared in the script. The only surviving line is "put down that meat cleaver!" Much of it was altered to express that they were looking into kitchen by splash panel. I thought I'd be able to express it visually, but it got too busy. Figured a way to do it through dialogue. This is how i have always done it, and why it is difficult to work with a writer. I edit on the fly, constantly, to fill in details or set a stage or even just alter dialogue to fit in the space. Damned near impossible for me to be comfortable with a writing partner, unless they surrender total control over finished product.
I will be adding some hand lettered screaming to lead into "run for your lives"

Calling it a day

With no spaceship interiors and some backgrounds to think about.. hmmm.. less is more? Oh I hate putting in backgrounds. I never was good at environments, prefer my actors on a blank stage, 'cause drawing backgrounds is HARD.

inks, blacks, tones

Time to get backgrounds and hand lettering effects drawn and in place. This is the last stage of digital inks on this page i think. Process still developing.

live from the studio

Hot off the keyboards, the pencils in place for page 2 - inks in a few hours. Here's your first look at how i am scripting this to try to bring facts in sideways; hopefully the final panel connects this dining experience to the middle of page 1. the other two elements will tie in before end of chapter one. There's a flashback to a talk show coming on pages four and five that will really fill in the blanks. Exposition is a challenge to keep interesting, luckily all my main characters crack wise.

new font in place.

MISSING SOUND EFFECTS and AIIEEE that will tie it all to the first page

next stage

At this point, the page is nearly inked and about halfway toned. I am going to try doing the rest of the drawing - backgrounds, characters in distance, wally wood spaceship interiors, by hand in ink then scan and fit in. It's been difficult doing things with thin, simple lines. Must hand letter some aiiieeeee and maybe all of it, scan and place. But pretty happy with where I am at. Page 2 is also underway and sketching to finish the page 2 pencils begins shortly.

the thumb

Since this interests a few of you, the thumbnail sketch that precedes the pencils shown below. This is created after the dialogue is nearly set in stone - or at least the timing of the dialogue. I have to plan each panel to lead eye into correct balloons and images, and to have enough information in the panel to get certain things across, like being in a kitchen. It usually changes on the way to pencils and this is no different. A funny drawing of Feast was too good not to use in the final panel; it changed the layout of the panel only slightly and for the better. His expression introduced a new plot element that the "play some soliatire" in-joke refers forward to. (anyone else know what movie this bit is referencing?) Also, the lower left panel needed to be flipped to get the second word ballon to work the way I wanted with the face.
Lookit me, Im making a making of.

first page preview

I am posting the first concrete proof of a new story, but really more to document my first steps into this new terrain of computer assisted assembly. In the past I did it all on paper - thumbnail page layouts led to ruled and bordered bristol board pages, then hand lettered. Then pencilled upon, then inked. I had experimented with pencilling on layout paper, then backlighting it and inking that. Bad idea. In the digital age I sketch and then scan and then finish on computer. But I've never quite assembled a comic page in this way:

Sketches both impromptu and required by my story outline are scanned; then from the same hand drawn page layout thumbs I make an illustrator file of the borders. Then set the lettering in illustrator text boxes.. which is a huge boon and a huge curse. What is miraculous is the ability to resize text boxes and tweak line breaks infinitely; not set in stone like the ink days. What we lose is the spontaneity and personality of hand lettering - HUGE LOSS of one my distinguishing features, expressive text and word ballons. More on that in a bit.

Next the sketches are placed, masked, scaled, and overlaid until I get the balance of text and art and feel I am drawing the viewers eyes properly through the story. 

I am doing this so that when I ink, all the images have the same "scale". In the past I have inked loose images then assembled them into a page, but found that scaling caused the inks to look inconsistent. As if I was using a variety of different brushes and pens.

Now, that text. ugh. It's cold, but so was EC comics and nobody whines. I think I may resort to an odd solution -- set it up like this, but print it out and redo it all hand lettering and scan back in. That wouldn't take long and would allow me to keep my distinctive lettering.

Anyway.. I shouldn't share incomplete, but I am not gonna complete this tonight (need aliens, word balloon tails, etc). The script is also not quite final.. especially the reverse text. Don't worry it makes more sense on the next page, but I am trying some new narrative tricks. Had to grab on first page, opening of story is kind of small. This is pretty WTF, yes? Old readers will see familiar characters; new readers will have it explained easily.

post feedback version

Playing with hue shifts and lightening for print

COLOR without mercy

While the new Lionheart story comes together, I am also spending some time on coloring the first-ever Lionheart tale, Zany But Deadly. I started this two years ago before my life did a quick implosion, and now that I am back on track the work resumes.
I fully accept that this is overdone; I fall prey to the same things that ruin so much of today's PSD coloring. I don't know if this color version will make it into the new Lionheart book or not. More likely will just be a PDF to be distributed digitally with the book. This is a dry run. the story i really want to color, the one most related to the new story, is the "Mad Cosmos" two parter that ran in Usagi Yojimbo.

So here's the latest page to be completed, page 4.. more as things unfold.

The Cat Came Back

I've been sketching Lionheart in free moments trying to access all those old brain cells that knew exactly how he looked. My "style" has moved dramatically since then, to my eyes. But slowly he is coming back into focus. Here's some pencils. The plan is, a new Lionheart story and maybe even a kickstarted collection with new and old stories.