Re: VanderHuge Studios

Just missed Tuesday, but not by much. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

This was a bit of a weird panel. That text needed to fit into that panel. I think it's successful, despite knowing that everyone who thinks themself a letterer would fervently disagree. The defiant, confrontational gesture gets through, and that's the important thing--the details are meaningless. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

I thought that was a nice effect--interrupting himself to blow smoke.  I've been getting behind on posting things regularly. I'll try better. I really tried to emphasize gestures when I could in this project. Almost any panel on this particular page is pretty good, I think. Also, I just noticed, I've long since stopped taking the blueline out of stuff like this. Not on purpose, I guess I've just gotten really good at not seeing it. I didn't notice that until I was typing this. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

These compacted pages are about to kill me. Also, the text looks intendedly blurry, but it was just a bad photo. (I checked to see if you could make out the text and you totally can't. By accident.) About Drawing Table Tuesday .

The size of that text should indicate how small this is. This page (and the rest that go with it) are packed with panels. Lots of stuff stuffed onto them (the last one has seventeen panels!) . Note the Texas belt buckle. Not sure if it shows up more clearly later or not, that might be the only time it's somewhat decipherable. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

We had to leave for dinner the other night, I was almost finished with this page but I needed to go. I quickly wrote a note in the margins to remember where I was when I quit, because at that point, I could've totally forgot it wasn't finished yet. After scribbling it, I realized that specific note works on, like, three levels. Also, I've been meaning to update my gallery. Well, reorganize it. I think all the sections need to be a little more specific, with more labels and divisions. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

That guy's totally into it. And unintentionally looks like the Joker. Like most of my images like this, that section's about the size of a post-it in real life. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

This is from a current project. I'm gonna try to bust through as much of it as I can this week. Seventeen panels on this page. That's about the average panel count per page on this project. I don't even know how that's going to work, but I'm gonna try. Also, way more text than I'm used to. All this fits in my  line of thinking up to now with drawing, anyway. Also worth mentioning, I almost never use that paper. I bought a giant stack of it because I found some on clearance, but haven't really used it yet. I'll probably only use it for short projects like this.

I've dubbed these scanner tremors . My scanner intermittently does this. They're never in the same places, which leads me to think that it's a physical problem, probably the mechanics of the scanning bar and the little mechanism that pulls the bar. I don't know if the little motor's crapping out or if it's just a crappy scanner and it's just smoother sometimes than others. Opening it and spraying a little wd-40 may fix it, but it also may not. I'll address the problem if it gets worse. Right now I'm fine with just having to re-scan something once every twenty scans or so. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

Meh, don't have much to show at the moment today. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

Small drawing on a small card. The card's about 2.5" x 3.5" , but that gets much smaller when you have to account holding it down with giant sausage fingers. That is definitely the new system for drawing those; comic book backing board. I'm going to start doing these more frequently. Something that small is easy and quick, and with a backing board, it's even easy to completely finish (tone). And finished, they make a nice little doodle. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

Just scanned this. The border isn't final, it's just something I throw on real quick after I scan them (because the borders at this point are still blue) . The real page is bordered with a pen. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

This panel reminds me that I intend to go into a rant post about the rules people demand balloons follow. And how they tend to forget what "rules" the balloons in their favorite   legendary comics completely ignored. Akira and Dragonball are pretty good balloon examples. Half the time in Akira , none of the balloons even had tails, they were spoken off panel and were just a round balloon floating in the center. And Toriyama barely had tails at all, just the tiniest point in the direction of the mouth of whoever's speaking. I guess what I'm saying is I think it's funny that people seem to feel obligated to treat their audience like idiots. This panel reminded me, because my first thought, according to everyone else, was that that tail isn't indicative enough to be able to tell who's saying what. I disagree. I mean, it's a panel with two people. Do they think that people are going to think the tree's talking? About Drawing Table Tu...

I've been experimenting over the last few days trying to come up with a different way to tone pages. I've noticed there was... an  inconsistent look I've seen in older comics (old reprints of things, like Akira) . The tones were uneven... sort of  scratchy.  I've been thinking about how to incorporate that, as opposed to the even, uniform tones I've had till now. And using software just takes too long. At least for a single person, and trying to keep everything analog. I just needed to switch what I was doing. I've been thinking about it forever and I finally got to it. And there was a lot of trial and error. There was a lot I considered, and a lot of ideas, but I didn't know what would actually work well. The most important thing to me as that it was a real life process; I wanted to use software as little as possible.  I'm not anti-digital, I just prefer working in real life; I like the feel of the pen and pencil dragging across the paper. ...

Toning pages at the moment. This is what the tones look like right after scanning, before they're really tones. I'll maybe post the same panel when I finish with this batch. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

I can't even tell if this stuff's good anymore. (I'm not even sure good's the goal anymore, maybe idiosyncratic is a more manageable ambition.) About Drawing Table Tuesday .

I drew this panel, but didn't like it. It's way too static and undynamic (I.e., blah). I took a picture, erased it all, and redrew it. Definitely turned out better the second time. This is a pretty good example of why I try not to draw when I'm sleepy or unfocused (or at least, why I don't like to) . If I just try to power through a page, chances are it'll turn out crappy and I'll just have to redraw it later (sort of a double waste of time) . Sometimes you need some sleep, sometimes you just need a fifteen minute break, a deep breath, and a big eraser. This is also a good example of why I use the paper I do. It's expensive, but it'll take a serious, merciless beating with an eraser without falling apart, so much so that I've never had trouble inking over a spot that's had some pretty massive erasure. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

Underdrawing. About Drawing Table Tuesday .

I took this picture a few days ago, I guess to sort of acknowledge what appears to be obsessive lunacy. For a very long time now, I've been masking off finished areas as I draw them so I don't smudge the pencil lines. I used to use tracing paper, but then I realized transparencies would be perfect (because you can see what's underneath and they're indestructible) , so I cut up a few sheets into different shapes and sizes, and now I use those. I always draw from top to bottom, left to right so I don't smudge them with my right hand, but when I'm drawing, I spin the page around a lot and hold the page down with my left  (I've considered buying or making an animator's disc, but that wouldn't help with this specific problem) . So much pencil was lifted and rubbed off by my left hand that sometimes lines and marks were completely gone. But no longer. I also use transparencies in my toning process to protect the page from sharpie bleed-through. I ...

How do I explain this?... When I was drawing this, I thought that those feet looked weird  was afraid that those feet were going to look weird  (only the tops are showing, the bottom halves are obscured by that rail) , so I drew the rest of them to be sure they were okay. I drew that much of them and I thought they were okay, but I was going to have to erase them again (because a rail went there) . So, I thought I'd document the fact that I drew all of them, and that they were, in fact, drawn correctly. About Drawing Table Tuesday .