My Comic Book: Issue 4 Page 2: Thumbnails, sketch and final Inks

 The second page of issue #4 has been inked! I wrestled with the set up of this page and it was a little complicated before, but fortunately I was able to simplify it and actually tell a lot more story but with less panels. If you want to see more behind the scenes stuff, check out the youtube episode for the process video and me giving some love to Jack “The King” Kirby. Just in time for his birthday too! Happy Birthday to the king!

My Comic Book: Coloring Issue #4, Page 1

    Here are the final colors for the first page of issue 4. And just like that, I feel like the fourth issue is already well under way. As long as I play mind games on myself to keep moving one 'foot' in front of the other, I am hoping to keep up a steady output of pages until I'm done.

     The page is all in monochrome; so the main thing I do is make the focus have the lightest shade. Sometimes, the lightest shade is all around the panels, but for the most part it seems to be working. So panels 1 and 2 is on the dollar sign. 3 and 4 go to some of the dollar sign, but also the face and the hands holding the bag and gun. Panel 5 is mostly on the gunshots. And lastly, panel 6 is mainly on the 'radio signal' coming from the walkie-talkie.

    I like blocking out large amounts of blacks in my work to direct the eye and to make my compositions, especially in the inking stage. I don't think I primarily think in color when I'm making my art (at least not nowadays). So I make sure that everything looks good and is working at the black and white stage. By the time I'm coloring, it can still kinda work without too much color or rendering going on.

    For the Bomb Squad comics, the colors are very simple, but I to use it to direct the reader's eye to what I want them to focus on. Because it's simpler, I'm also able to move a little faster in finishing off pages. Sometimes I have to remind myself not to noodle the page too much. Because adding more colors might actually work against the simple style that's already been set.

    If you want to see more details on a part of the process, here's the Comix Rant YouTube episode:

    That's it for this post. Page 1 is in the bag!   

My Comic Book: Inking Issue #4, Page 1

I finished up the inking on the first page of The Bomb Squad #4! Feels nice to get this done, now I just have to ride the momentum until it's all finished! Check out the episode here for a bit more of my thoughts on the process.

Here's a better look at the stages that I usually take from thumbnails to tighter sketch then finally to finished inks.

Thumbnails

Rough sketch

Final inks

It’s strange because when I started my comic, it was somewhat a gut reaction to September 11th. And now as I post this, it seems it’s looking rather relevant to issues we face today in the United States. 

And it’s totally a coincidence! This has been brewing in my head for years, but it’s only now I got to sit down and do it. My comic is just a simple adventure of a bomb squad doing their best to thwart evil terrorists from destroying the city. I’m not even trying to make a social statement, but with the climate of the US nowadays even my simple bank robbing heist page seems to take on some deeper, serious meaning!

Don’t worry, it’s not, it’s just your usual comic book bank robbery! BUT... if I can pull this story off right, it might take on a more hopeful tone!

Onto the colors!

My Comic: Issue 3 Page 6 Final Colors

I've found as I'm coloring in these pages that I've been slowly adding a lot of detail to my drawings with each successive issue. Some of it, I feel is a necessity and it's not necessarily a bad thing... but it sure takes me a lot more time to color these panels!

There's still a few fixes that need to be done, from editing down some
of the dialogue, the lettering bubbles and the font sizes. But for the most part
this page is as good as done!

That's another page (almost) in the can! 18 more pages to go! 

My Comic: Issue 3 Pages 2 and 3 Final colors

Just a quick post for this super early morning. I need to get to sleep! Finished up the colors for the opening splash page of issue #3 of The Bomb Squad. The "color artist me" is so angry at the "penciler me" for drawing so many stupid trees and buildings on this page...

The first pass of colors was just me blocking in the basic colors. I didn't
have the .PSDs of the previous issue, so I just eyeballed the colors.

A few more tweaks on colors and I started to add shadows.
I matched the colors of the trees to what I had them colored in issue #2,
but I wasn't too sure about it being such a blue hue...

...so I switched it to a yellower-green color to brighten it up a bit.
I colored in the second panel a bit as well as the Megaphone shadows.
Slow and steady!

Final colors! Whew. Added a bluer shadow
for the trees to try to bring it back it it's original hue.

This thing took a looong time for me to do. Longer than what I wanted at least! Considering how fast I can usually color my comic book pages, this took forever. All the detail on this splash page really made it tedious applying the colors. But I like how it's ended up so far... 

That's it for this morning. Time to sleep!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 1 Final

...and the first page is colored! I colored  page 4 and 5 of the book already, but having the first page colors finished feels more like a true start to me finally finishing this issue.

Here... we... go!

You can have a gander at the black and white inks here.

I see a lot of artwork from various artists through social media and they're all fantastic stuff. Sometimes so fantastic, I get a little depressed, thinking that I never will get up to snuff. I'm not fast enough, I'm not good enough, I don't know enough, I'l never learn enough... blah blah blah. But not to worry, that usually just lasts for a moment. I've actually learned a long time ago something really important:

I will never be up to snuff.

What I mean about that, is I can never possibly reach whatever lofty idea I have in my head what 'up to snuff" is. In simple terms: I could not possibly be as good as other people because I am NOT other people. I can only be as good as I can be. My growth as an artist can only be taken one footstep at a time.

And the Bomb Squad is my foot forward. Slow, true, but still going forward. Still fighting the neverending battle. That's it for now, God Bless you all and up, up and away!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 - Lettering

No Inktober drawings from me this year. As much as I really enjoyed letting my DC comic fan out last year with those ink drawings, I opted out of it this year. Instead, I finished up the lettering pass of the third issue of my comic book!

It's always nice to see my page with lettering.
It's good to see if the page is working, like I intended
it to, once the balloons are placed.

This was the first time I used Manga Studio to handle the lettering (along with Blambot's fonts), and it was definitely a good change from how I used to do it on Photoshop. Arranging balloon placement was a breeze and I made some custom balloons as well to make my life easier. I used to have to custom make my balloons in Photoshop for every page, and they were rasterized layers not vector... so I couldn't readily futz around with placement and size without having to scrap the entire balloon every time.

Seeing how pages work next to each other is do-able in the computer,
but there's nothing like testing the 'page-flip' on physical pages.

Once the lettering is in, I print out the pages and place them into one of those plastic folders with the clear sleeve pages in them. This way I can visualize the placement of my pages sequentially in a physical format. I usually find myself constantly flipping through the mock-up. This is sort of my editing phase. I'll read the physical copy multiple times. I 'll find typos, or phrases I keep repeating in the dialogue, spelling mistakes or inconsistencies in page flow.

I don't think my brain actually slips into this mode until after I see all the pages together like this, and I've found it's a very important and encouraging step for me. Anyway, next up: colors!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 21 and 22 Final inks

2 more pages inked! 2 more to go! Woohoo! I'm getting real close to the coloring phase now!

My Comic Book: Page 20 final inks

I've got a few posts to catch up on. It's been awhile since I updated this blog as well, I've sort of got an excuse, but I'm back on the book again! I jumped on the Inktober bandwagon last year so that took up most of October month. I'll post that work up here soon, but for now, page 20 is done!

As for November and December? Uh, I have no excuse. I kinda slowed down for the holidays... and a lot of life got in the way! The good life though! I caught up on some gaming and got a few great Graphic novels with my birthday money.

4 more pages to go! I'm really excited to finish this issue!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 19 Final Inks

Page 19 is done! 5 more pages to go! I think I may have gone a little overboard with the inking style for this one compared to the rest of the book. I might simplify the blacks on it... or my usual M.O.: fix it in the coloring stage...

My Comic Book: Issue 3 page 18 inks

Page 18 is done!

A little legibility issue on the bottom 3 panels.

There's a lot of detail and reverse color fills of the black lines going on in the last set of 3 panels, that some readability is being compromised. I think I can solve it by lightening up the black in the background, some simple color work and maybe even coloring the fill of the blacks in the background. In any case, I'm moving on from this page and onto the next one.

There's a few bits throughout this issue that I need to address with another pass, but I want to maintain my output, so I'm sacrificing the finishes for now. When I go back for the color and the lettering pass that's when I start going back into the problem areas.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Pages 16 and 17

I got the double page spread inked up finally. I have quite a few things going on in these pages (as usual), so I'm probably going to rely on coloring to help me bring focus back to this page (yet again). I'm hoping the middle of the spread doesn't get too smooshed together when it appears in printed form. It was a little tricky trying to space out the words so they don't get gobbled up by the binding. I'm still not sure if it'll work.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 15, final-ish inks.

I think I'm ready to move onto the next page finally! It's sad that my finished inks for page 14 was on April! I really need to get back up to speed, but at least I'm kinda back in the saddle.

There's still a few things I want to do to the page to increase readability, but I think I can let it go for now. The second tier of panels will get a little stronger once I put some colors down, I think. And the silhouettes of the robots on panel one will also get better with a color pass.

It's late and I need to catch some Zzzzs! Good night, God Bless and let the neverending battle continue. And hopefully a bit faster and more regular than my usual pace!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 15 WIP inks

Chugging along. Only two more panels left to finish off the 'inking' of this page.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 15 WIP inks

Started inks on the first panel... finally!

Do whatever you can...

I've been out of creative steam this week. Even though I've finished the rest of the book's thumbnails, I've been lacking any drive to start drawing them.

I've been playing video games, watching TV, reading comics... anything else except actually drawing. So here I am, in my study's floor, flipping through the hardcover edition of "The Amazing Screw On Head" and the "Swamp Thing: love and death" trade paperback, while printing some pages.

What am I printing? I've found when I got stuck when I was drawing the first and second issues of my book, I could "jazz" myself up by flipping through printed versions of the pages I had already done.

It kinda helps me realize how far I am to the end, and I get more clarity on seeing how the book flows together. Thought I suspect it's really more because I have it physically in my hands. It's like a little carrot dangling in front of me going, "c'mon! It'll look better once its a REAL comic! Just a few more pages to draw

Kinda sad I have to play mental mind games with myself (its not satisfying enough for me to flip through my book digitally), but you have to do anything you

Can I keep that drive going!

It worked for the first and second issues; let's see if it works for the third! Good night and God Bless!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 pages 15-23 thumbnail sketches

I've been out of the posting loop for awhile, but I did manage to do thumbnails for the rest of the book! Now  that everything is laid out, it's just a matter of execution.

It's quite messy but it's all (somewhat) there! It's kind of a nice relief to know I know what to draw on all the pages to finish this book off! Still a lot of work to be done but I can see the light at the end of the tower.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 15, 16 & 17 thumbnails

I got a few more pages thumbnailed out.

My brain usually works out of order when I'm doing thumbnails. Sometimes some sequences come out clearer than others when I'm first "piecing" pages together.

For page 15, I knew exactly what those last two panels should be. And from there, I worked backwards; connecting it back to page 14. 

And along the way, I started a rough script. Strangely, I'm writing it in the correct chronological order. And as that's being written I start getting a clearer idea of how much can fit into a panel, what things need to be dropped and what HAS to stay.

After that, I'm a little more confident on what I want to show and around how many panels I can use. The way the scene is staged also becomes much clearer, and gets dictated by the script and the page space.

At first, I had a different layout planned for page 16 and 17. But soon I began to realize that I had much more information I wanted to depict than I had space in those two pages. 

Eventually, 16 and 17's layouts merged together so it became a double page spread. A panel from 16 got moved over to 15 and I dropped a sequence (for now) involving a shot with all the other Bomb Squads.

It would've been fun to show all the other teams in the Bomb Squad, but I really wanted to devote more pages to some action at the end of this issue. The sequence with the other squads, didn't seem that necessary to keep the story moving.

I actually got to start designing some of the squad members before scrapping the sequence.

By the time I got to the new thumbnails for page 16 & 17, I had already generated sketches for what the panels in it would be. So, all I have for the thumbs end up looking like a bunch of blank squares! 

Well, that and I'm done sketching thumbnails! Time to hit the pages! The never-ending battle continues!

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 14 Final inks

Not sure why, but I'm kinda beat tonight. Still, I managed to push it a bit and get the "inks" on this page finished up.

Remind me to go easy on the R's in the next page!

I had a little help from some of my favorite game soundtracks to spur me on tonight... Thank you Jet Set Radio Future, Rez and my all-time favorite Sonic Rush, for getting me through outlining all those "R"s!

I don't have any more pages for issue three thumb-nailed. So I'll have to spend a few days doing thumbnails for the rest of the book next. It's going to all action packed in the next half of the book so it should be pretty fun. Okay, time to craaaaash.

My Comic Book: Issue 3 Page 14 WIP

Tired today, but I still managed to clock in some drawing time. Some very lazy drawing time, but hey you take what you can!

I usually try to give my wife a break and take care of my daughter for most of the weekend, so weekend drawing time is almost non-existent... and are hardly restful. Not that I don't like taking care of my daughter mind you, but I do get tired out on the weekends. My 'rest' time is during the weekdays... and apparently so is my comic book drawing time.

I'm going to rely on color heavily to make this scene clearer.
All the robot silhouettes at the bottom might make it hard to read what's
going on. Hopefully the "Rrrr" text helps a little bit.

It wasn't easy to push tonight. My body was screaming for me to take a break or relax (I even indulged in some comic book reading). Still I was able to slog a couple panels out and get closer to getting this page done. Okay, time to crash! Maybe I can finish this off sometime mid-week...