In 80 dates

Quick post for tonight as well as the last post of 2012 for me!

A friend of mine has been drawing up some 1 panel comics dealing with the 'adventures' of dating. It's light hearted fun that takes from her and her friends' dates, but when you read through them, you'll find more than a few that I'm sure you've been on before (the female version of Date 11, for me sticks, out in my mind the most). Head over Approaching the issue in 80 dates to check it out and I also have it in my links section.

Anyhow, to show my support as well to thank her for the great blanket she made for my daughter for Christmas, this post is dedicated to her! Complete with fan-art! (And of course, it will be complete with the neverending battle process-post.)

So first off I do a quick sketch. I went through her website and picked which character I wanted to draw. At the same time that I was composing the image I was also trying to figure out how to draw her characters. Truth be told, I just went right into the final inking phase without really figuring out 'my style' for them, but it worked out in the end.

working fast and furious on the sketch phase. I kept it loose to get my idea down quick. A little too loose maybe...

In the inking phase, I started filling in blacks, which among other things I did strays from the style of the comic, since there are no heavy black areas. I figure I can solve it later in the coloring stage. It was kinda tough since I had to go through the website again on the inking phase, because my sketch phase wasn't very tight. I was very loose, so certain details like what characters were wearing aren't in the sketch.

something very cool occurred to me as I was drawing these characters: essentially they have the same face, but there's a lot of attention on their hair that really sets each person apart from one another. 

Next up, I add colors. Here's where I REALLY break the art direction that's been set (and hopefully she won't hate me for going completely off-model!). I still kept in mind how she worked the colors in the original strip. My natural Bomb Squad coloring tendency is to add shadows to help pop out characters from each other. However, the original strip's style is simple, but specifically chosen shades of gray for the colors. It was very tough not to rely on my old coloring tricks, since every character was on top of everyone else in my comp.

I have a version where I don't use a color fill for the black inks and it looks pretty cool too, but I think the purple fill on the line work helps connect it better to the original strip.

Approaching the Issue in 80 dates gets superhero-ey!

And that's it for me! Go check out my friend's website and read through it already!