A chilling view of things to come

Look! I am sharing about the creative process! *Adds appropriate post label*

I have two strips drawn out and ready for inking. I hope to have another done by the end of the day - it's a monologue, which is easy on the drawing! Inking is going to wait until I sketch out a few more, but I may be able to update the Precocious website soon. I MAKE NO PROMISES!

As I'm still fumbling over myself to compose these things, my approach is somewhat backwards. Step one should always be to block out where the text goes. Yeah. No. I still sketch the figures first for most strips to make sure everyone fits! If I run out of room for text, lines will be cut! Autumn's panel 2 line used to be twice the size... and make more sense. Heck, Dionne's line was streamlined and cut down too. Oh well, I wanted to draw Suzette walking away in the background and I stand by my decision!

When I grow up, I'm sure I'll figure out how to balance elements on a comic page. Putting aside my atrocious penmanship, I seem to be drawing my characters too large. Any panel with three or more involved is killer! You see in this example how I cropped Dionne out of panel 2. In the other one I sketched out (the one that has haunted me for weeks) I had to alter panel size in one and crop all but Autumn's hand out of the other. Basically, I'm taking the easy way out. How do real cartoonists draw that small? Yeah, make the panels bigger is the obvious solution - but I am using industry standard templates! THIS MAKES ME FEEL INADEQUATE!

Edit: Monologue strip was easy as advertised and is now ready for inking. Yay! The next strip will likely feature a first for me: ONLY THREE PANELS! I make no definitive statement as I discovered tonight I never finished scripting it. Instead of riding momentum, sitting down, scripting it and getting another done tonight I chose to lose myself in pro football. So many of my benched/recently dropped fantasy players are rocking the house tonight. :-( Anyway, this next strip will feature ALL SEVEN INTRODUCED KIDS! It shall be epic! (I'm scared!)