The Sky goes on forever

Doing another run of Sky sketches. She shall be art carded during Thursday night's stream!

Sketches.. on the sketch blog?

Amazing! Yes, Kickstartery sketch times are here!

Today was nothing but unexpected delays, so it took a while to get these sketches down, but here are some! I went a bit overboard with the volume of sketches, but that's a good thing!

Tiffany and Sky sketches! Tiff is going to be sketched in the book, and Sky is the first of what will be many art cards for the stream session. The mission here: Cute.  I can do that!

Sketches are, of course, sketches. They are rough and not super detailed - just showing enough to give you a sense of what's to come.

Joseph and Sydney time! Classy looks for a classy couple. Had to put Sydney in a turtleneck, because the lord commanded me. Couldn't figure out what to do with classy Joseph's right arm. Thumbs up?

I still have some Principal Blessure sketches to make, and one more idea-to-be-named-later.

The last family portrait.

Here's a drawing for the final family portrait: The chaotic Et horde.  While the first three family photos were all cordial, I doubt that would be possible for the Ets. Thus, chaos and stressed parents.

Some touchups are needed, mostly on the arms.  Gene, be lucky you have a left arm at all. I was almost done before I realized all I'd drawn was an empty shirt sleeve for him.  Actually, speaking of Gene missing body parts, I forgot to ink his tail. It's in the original sketch, so no worries. But, anyway, this is the foundation for the next step.

Color inside the lines!

It's time for the fun stuff with this Mothers Day card: The coloring! Here is attempt #1. (Click the images for larger versions.) Tomorrow I get to do this again and again. I'm sure the novelty will wear off, but colored pencil is my old unruly friend. (It's a harsh, unforgiving medium - but I love it anyway!)

Oh, right, the blog!

Whoops! Sorry for disappearing unannounced. I'm doing another week in DC, and that means I'm mostly too busy with family things to do all the bonus stuff. I probably should have said something about that, but it totally slipped my mind. Sorry again!

Anyway, let me contribute something to this world: The *other* part of the Mothers Day card! Once approved, it will be copied and colored, making the world a better place. Enjoy!

If I was on the ball, I totally would be offering prints of this card as a donation incentive... but I'm not. :-( Oh well, I'll just have to kick the *next* holiday's ass instead!

Card me!

Work continues on the Mother's Day card. Here is the card front, sans caption, with the (hopefully) final line art. All the shading and details will be done in colored pencil. For my next trip, I will be finishing up the designs for the interior!

After the line work is done, I have to figure out how to make copies of everything for coloring. This has been made more complicated by the potential death of my printer. I'm hoping it can be revived, but otherwise I might have to take a trip to Staples or something.

Actually, wait. Before I copy I really do need to get that caption settled. Uh... any ideas?

Curse you, scanner!

So, hey, I have this awesome scanner designed for print stuff. So, hey, this awesome scanner is automatically set to filter out light-colored pencil, leaving only beautiful black lines. So, hey, this causes a problem when I try to scan colored pencil drawings. So, hey, I went with the inefficient webcam instead!

Work continues on the Mothers Day card. Today I did some tracing and worked on the interior image. It let me refine things a bit and gave me a chance to play with coloring. I traced in no-copy blue, inked with a tech pen, erased the no-copy blue the best I could and then cursed a bit as the blue wouldn't always erase nicely! While it's barely noticeable up close, it's enough to make me not want to do it for the final. I may anyway, just because it's far easier to ink with guides, but I'll give ink tracing a shot first.

I only did half of the interior because that was close to looking like I wanted it to right away. The complex family shot will need some reworking to get all the proportions right. With five figures at four or five different heights, a bit of prayer is needed. Good thing I have a nice new sketchbook.

There's a lot of development stuff still to come. I've got to play tracemaster again and again on the front images to make sure they look perfect, and *then* I have to start throwing it all together. Things are progressing nicely, though.

Note to self: Make plans, then art.

I couldn't figure out what to do for the blog today, so broke out the colored pencils again and drew a picture that... looks like I couldn't figure out what to do. *shrug*

Colored pencil can't be rushed, and you can't go into it not knowing where you'll going. If you press slightly too hard, things are ruined. If you make one errant mark, things are ruined. If you are improvising, you play it safe and... things are boring. Woo!

It's been a sleepy day in general, but at least minimal comic work was done. My continued existence has been justified! (Even if this post is just barely passable.)

The joy of cooking

I'm continuing to work on the card idea, refining the top panel featuring Sky cooking. I like the idea of her juggling two dishes at once, although the pose does annoy in that it hides her hair. Gotta press on and refine refine refine! (I admit I rushed because midnight came earlier than I expected.)

A mother's work is never done

Here's some more sketch work on the Mothers Day card. The goal was to see how many mommy things I could cram into the relatively small space of a card. So far, splitting it into thirds has been the best option. Any more, and the details become hard to draw by hand. I will give the quadrants approach a shot, though.

I'm not very happy with this sketch, but this is how we discover and work out problems! One error I made was drawing Sky too large. The card would be much more effective if the shots were pulled back to show more of the scene, like I did in the bottom panel. The top needs to be pulled back to show a full stove as she cooks for a family of seven. If I do that, hungry Gene probably won't be necessary. The middle panel can work if pulled back slightly to show there's a washing machine there. The scribbly thing is my attempt to hash out where the caption would go. (Without Gene at the top, the caption could take his place.) I think the bottom panel looks the best at the moment. (That's supposed to be a fire extinguisher she's holding, by the way.) Overall, Sky has to look far more stressed out to make the punchline work.

Eh, it's a start. I'll keep sketching until things start to click!

What a mother needs

In a family of seven, you can keep your flowers, cards and candy - mommy needs some sleep!

This is a spec sketch related to the mother's day card project. Let me tell you, it's a pain in the rear to draw SEVEN characters together (this is why illustrators charge by the figure!) and get the proportions even somewhat right. What I have here isn't great, but that's what roughs are for - figuring out the basics and going from there. If all goes well, I might have something to sell down the road!

The Skyfecta!

Three days back, three posts with Sky Et!

This time it's me playing around with pen and ink, trying to find a good "what horrible thing did my children do?" pose. Not pictured: Children. Why? Because I couldn't decide what that horrible thing was! Let's leave it to your imagination?

Time to be creative again!

Alright, folks. I'm back in Winchester and starting to settle back into the groove. Let's see if I can resume my awesome creativity on a daily basis!

Today is scheduled to be a comic-making day, but I must contribute more to the world! Enter the colored pencils! Yay! Exit my pencil sharpener. Boo! Oh well, I'll make due with whatever's sharp. (I did eventually find the sharpener, but long after the project was over.)

I chose to play with Sky Et today because I needed some practice with her. She makes an appearance in tomorrow's Sunday strip and I struggled a bit to make her look right. Sky will also be featured in a potential commission, so all signs pointed to her!

I went with colored pencils today in part because I'm testing stuff out for commissions. If I move away from the painting stuff, I have to figure out the best means to produce art on paper. This is harder than it sounds. How fast do I work with each medium? How much investment do I have to make in art supplies to work with different methods? (I'm running low on EVERYTHING.) Can I erase my sketch lines on paper after I ink? How many hours would a product take me? I want to be certain I can DO what is asked of me, and make sure the rates match the effort. I gotta be a pro with this stuff, and that means confidence and reliability! That stuff doesn't come out of nowhere. You gotta earn your cred.

Since I'm tangenting onto business planning, what does excite me is pulling out my print gocco machine and creating some small Precocious prints I can sell off to raise some comic supplies funds. As much as I appreciate donations, I do like to give something back. (Assuming the daily comics don't count.) If I was a good boy, I'd devote the next week of bloggery to developing those cards.... but am I?

Another comic that never was

It's been another slow day workwise, but I'm keeping at it. To keep you interested, here's a sample from last Sunday's comic that didn't run. I've deleted the dialog, as I wish to remake this strip down the road.

If I'm lazy, I can turn this into TWO strips! One will be the original gag with a new drawing, and the second can be this drawing with new dialog! Now if only I could think of some dialog...

Look a gift horse in the mouth!

A momentous thing has happened: I may have a colorist! Matthew of Sometime Alone has offered his time to color my Sunday strips until I drive him batty with my corrections and nonsensical swatches. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to not abuse this generous offer. (It's not like I can *pay* the poor lad, as I have no income myself.)

Naturally, the second Sunday strip that pops up on the list is one that can be *very* elaborate, with lots of characters. (These sketches are me fleshing out ideas.) Hmm... what to do? Will this be the strip that drives him mad? LET'S FIND OUT!

The Babyface Pub Crawl

A babyface discussion on Twitter let to this idea by Kez led to maximkovalenko suggesting using our characters...

So I went with it! Had to go with Sky, as she's both the youngest parent, youngest-looking parent and, um, the heaviest drinker of the parents.

Let's make a wallpaper!

My Precocious fans are so awesome, they have earned a new wallpaper from me. As the theme this week was on the Precocious families, that's the plan for this wallpaper. I am very open to feedback, though, so you squeaky wheels out there may get some grease.

Here are some early sketches, focusing on individual families. I went with the Ets and Ovens as they are the most colorful, but I'll try to mock something up for the tamer Pingos and wholesome Linkletters. I'm also not opposed to a group shot - in fact the Et sketch from below was taken from such a group sketch that may turn into the wallpaper.




This is your time to be heard, people! Any suggestions?

Et too, Michelangelo?

Enough about my damn paintings. This blog needs to get back to CARTOON ANIMALS! Family friendly and adorable cartoon animals happily working together. It's like a candy-coated Brad Bird movie!

This was the backup sketch for the Family Webcomics splash art, rejected because it was entirely unclear that they were viewing webcomics on a computer monitor. Hey, they could be a really warped family viewing hard-core pornography - it's just not clear!

I did feel bad about the cutting of two children from the FAMILY art, so I went ahead and inked it. I feel the worst about little Mikey, who was meant to be the primary Et young'un. The only line he's had so far was when he was off-panel, locked away. (And I can't even be certain he's the one speaking.) Most of the time, he's the innocent one who gawks at chaos created by other children. Granted, that's *kinda* his role anyway, but he'll eventually interact more. It's just not fair that Frida, the kid supposed to just be part of the crowd, got her own panel to shine - readers even learned her name! Frida is the one you *expect* to be cut, but she's fun to color and that keeps letting her sneak into strips. Oh well, Mikey still gets his time to shine in this summer's big storyline.

Anyway, I'm trying to get the most of this image. It's now a lame wallpaper on the Precocious site and available for order as a print and magnet and whatever on the DeviantArt page.

Fun for the whole family!

I was raised on newspaper comics, and I strive to make a newspaper-worthy comic. I'm talking figurative newspaper here, as currently most newspapers are in sad decline and no longer worth the trouble. Whatever, it's the TONE I want to capture, and the delivery method can change. Oh, and it has.

I've signed on with two groups, both in the family-friendly comic vein, and I am greatly enjoying this current goody goody mentality.

First, as mentioned in the last post, is Kidjutsu, a site created to being comics to kids. When I was a kid, I spent my library time hunting down old Peanuts collections instead of blindly sticking with Judy Blume. I'll always claim I learned most of my vocabulary from reading Calvin and Hobbes. Comics are vital in getting kids to love reading, and Kidjutsu aims at providing kids a one-stop resource with tons of comic volumes to choose from.

Precocious will eventually join that line-up once I do some redrawing and reformatting. Finally, my tendency to create long story arcs pays off! I have issues - and they're not all mental!

The second site I'm pimping out is Family Webcomics, which does exactly what you think it does. It's very thorough in classifying and listing family-friendly comics, making it an excellent resource for parents. Precocious joined the list and I hope to be an active contributor there as well. It is my hope that when I am up against the wall, judged while a gun is held to my temple, I can point out I was a FAMILY-FRIENDLY guy. That could save my life! I'll admit that my family love might work more for a liberal family, but that's due to intelligence and being, you know, interesting. If a conservative mother is going to faint the second she reads the word "sucks" in her kid's comics, I can't really do anything about that. It's not like I could do or say anything to do more damage to her children than her anyway.

On the Family Webcomics forums, the creator, Mirz, put out a request for homepage splash art. This is something I can do! Here is my contribution to the cause:



Of course I had to feature my strip's giant Et family - with so many kids I can't fit them all in a square composition. I sorta felt bad about leaving Frida and Michelangelo out, so I started work in a second sketch:



This sketch hit a wall when I realized what a pain it would be to make it clear the object the family is viewing in the foreground is a monitor. But I did include all the children! Minor victory!

Hetero-Normative Behavior!

I'm am such a wholesome idealist. Well, in one subject at least. Since the foundation of Precocious is my idyllic childhood, that means the environment around my kids is extremely awesome! Gemstone Estates has just about everything a kid could ever want! Outside the houses we have lots of stimulation. Inside the houses... LOVING FAMILIES!

The Precocious parents are a fun bunch. They have happy, healthy marriages, do their best to motivate and encourage their children and they are delightfully insane!

I'm almost done drawing the Max's birthday storyline, so now the question is what to do next? I have a silly little brawl over dessert, or I can go back and do that much-hyped parents storyline. Ideally, I'll do both! If I built up a large enough comic buffer, then I have time to create the parents arc and just insert it into the archives. That's the dedication I have to you people! (I make no promises that will happen.)

Either way, it's time to practice my parent-drawing skills. I want to get the parents introduction into the archives soon, as they do tend to pop up in the strip. While I do my best to get their personalities across in their appearances, I want the chance to expand upon them. Once they are established, their lines in earlier strips take on new interpretations!

The only worry I have is that I naturally write more adult jokes for the adults. One couple met due to judgment impaired by alcohol and fatigue. Another punchline involves nudity, paint and the dining room. (I'll let you contemplate that one.) I love it, but such risky gags could hurt any syndication chances.

The humor is appropriate contextually, though. Insane geniuses don't just pop up out of the blue. I believe in nature over nurture. The environment may do some finishing in shaping personalities, but lots of my kids nuttiness is inherited. Each kid is the natural consequence of their parents spawning.

That is... if I don't blow the strips with a bad script. Before I draw anything, I've got to tighten up the story and connect the dots.