A pen and ink lifestyle

Instead of sketching today I watched Deep Space Nine DVDs. Ok, I also worked on actual factual comics, but that doesn't sound as pathetic. Or maybe it does, depending on how you value such things. So the bad news is today's post is rather boring. The good news is that you care way more about the comics than this blog, so the sacrifice is worth it! Work on this week's Precocious is moving nicely, and the next Copper Road is ready to go!

I had planned to finish up the St. Tiffany painting today, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. (I hope.) Truth is, I was too lazy to set things up today for painting. It requires me rearranging the room a bit, and some days that's more energy than I can muster. Tomorrow I'll redecorate, I swear! Crap, tomorrow I also have to get the Sunday strip ready to ship off to the colorist too! I swear! Damn, tomorrow I'm gonna have to work for real! I swear!

I also wasted a perfectly good blog title on a perfectly bad blog post. I swear...

Every nib has a story

Be warned: There is artgeekery coming. Even better: AMATEUR art geekery! Oh noes!

I use only one type of nib with my inking pens: A Hunt globe tip 513EF. I have several copies of said nib. I should be set, right? Wrong. Every nib I have reacts differently to ink, and that means the act of switching nibs comes with an awkward transition period. Hey, guess what I did today!

I'd been using an old nib for a while, as recent attempts to swap in new nibs have been disastrous. As a self-taught art guy, I barely know how to keep/treat this things, so I flail around until one works. This old nib, though, was really slowing down. It was a stiff nib, meaning it let me stretch my ink significantly with linework - and making the inking of large black areas hell. Keep in mind, this is a Roddy and Dionne-heavy storyline. So. Many. Black. Ear.

I'm still getting used to this new nib. It's a lot looser with the ink, allowing me more flexibility in line width (even when I don't want it) at the cost of increased ink usage. To adapt myself to inkability, I chose to go back to my no-copy blue test drawing of Kaitlyn and play with inking methods. That's why the inking is not "finished" - gotta test lining ability.

Now comes the real test: Actual inking! I have three strips to ink before I head back home on Wednesday, and I'll need to get them done tonight/tomorrow. If Thursday's strip ends up looking a bit different, now you know why. Also, it really shouldn't, because that would mean I've lost all control!

Inner peace. Outer violence.

Today's sketch idea is courtesy of my brother, who suggested I draw a martial arts scene with Jacob bowing in respect and someone (had to be Suzette) giving him a boot to the head. The final result is... close!

I could use some inner peace right now. I'm slacking hard on inking next week's comics. It'll get done, just not as fast as I'd like. Tonight the goal is to get five pages inked, resulting in three strips total. Tomorrow I color the massive and complex Sunday and then it's smooth sailing for a while. Of course, as soon as one thinks that... BOOT TO THE HEAD!

More downsides to productivity

Today is an inking day! The goal is to finish two weeks' worth of dailies and keep going into July - ignoring Sundays all the way! (I'll get to them LATER!) Anyway, this is my task for the day and you'll have to deal with the artful arrangement of strips I've presented.

Another downside of productivity: I consume supplies at an alarming rate! I cracked open a fresh pack of 50 templates for this current session - and realized I already knew what was going on 46 of 'em! I'm moving too fast! I bought hundreds of these buggers when I stocked up, and it's getting close to ordering time again. For being what I feel is unproductive over the past few weeks, I sure am consuming all available supplies rapidly. I don't want to restock! I just splurged on other stuff! I HAVE NO INCOME!

Of course, if I move *that* fast, I can take a month off from drawing the strip and use that time to play hype machine!

Go to hell, April!

Get in the corner with Rhode Island, April!

I'm not two Sundays away from having this damn month finished - in strip form at least. Tonight I hope to get one of those Sundays done. The second Sunday will have to wait, as I have NO IDEA what it'll be. By the way - now that I'm out of Sunday templates, I'm going double-decker and stacking two regular-sized strips - IN COLOR! It's both lazy *and* gives me more space with which to work!

I wish I could say I was building up my buffer so I could work on the website, make Precocious promo art, get caught up on the boards with much-needed socializing or anything fun like that. No, instead I'm rushing so I'll be set strip-wise when cancer claims my grandmother and family funeral fun begins. So, yeah, fuck April.

What's black and white and Siamese all over?

Work has begun on the next Precocious storyline, which will be in vibrant black and white. Go to hell, color! Expect a regret post once I start the hand lettering again. Hey, I'll be better off for it! Right?



So here's the Hu family again, in the sketch made for the first panel. They are clearly bringing happiness and light to our world.



You know, going with Siamese kitties is great and all - but in pure black and white? I gotta work hard to make them expressive, since I have fewer options with their mouths.

I fear the inking, so I'll just keep sketching out strips! 5/18 done so far. Let's see how many I can finish before heading back to DC tomorrow. (For those not paying attention, DC means blog posts about painting!)

Every day is like Sunday

Goodness, I hope not. I'll take the football, but the whole large-strip-in-color thing will drive me mad.

Today I got ambitious and tried to make a Precocious Sunday strip. It was going well until everyone died. I used a Sunday template I had sitting around and that meant the panel sizes would be smaller than normal. Because of that, I inked with tech pen only. The precision probably took its toll on me, as I was soon making mistake after mistake. Enough! Sunday strips will come LATER. I did some token coloring on one part, during which I realized I really need to set standard colors of my characters *before* I start colorizing, but if this comic ever appears online it will be black and white like the rest. I just can't allow myself to overload myself with more challenges when I'm barely scraping by with competency now! Ah well, it was a learning experience at least.

Edit: Ok, maybe I will colorize this one after all. Just don't expect it *this* Sunday...

Work work work...

As I've said many times, the days I am working are the days I am not making sharable sketches. Today was an inking day, which will soon turn into a "completing new comics" days. Yay!

Fortunately for you, ink takes time to dry. For a while I would go and sketch out new comics while ink dried, and then I ran into a difficult comic that made me give up on that. New tactic: I had a sheet of Bristol board with sketches done for inking practice. (It's the source for my "sweet" pictures.) While waiting for ink to dry, I'll just INK SOME MORE!

The figures here aren't that interesting, but they were just for practice. You'll not the absence of Autumn here... that practice sketch did not go well. I have a nice Suzette, but all the others were close enough to scan in one sweep and she was across the page. Sorry, Suzette, you got left out again.

Discarding the race card

As I've referred to the Gender Wars arc as Precocious' pilot episode, let me continue that TV series analogy. Pilot episodes are generally raw, as the creators haven't yet discovered what works. Some premises change. Some details are altered. Some characters are cut. Other characters are re-cast.

The major visual Precocious change looks like our poor, unlucky black cat will be recast. I mentioned a few posts back that I was in the middle of inking a Roddy drawing when I turned to get more ink on my pen. When I turned back, I saw Roddy with only the top of his head inked. It looked... better. Could I change my black cat to a Sylvester-type cat? At the time, I decided to stay the course and debate the change later... but now it's later.

The day after the site was launched, I feel the pressure to make my moves now. Look, just because I officially launched the strip doesn't mean anyone showed up to see it. My traffic went from zero to, maybe, two. I still have time! While this post was originally going to be about weighing my options by comparing the two inking possibilities, I've gone ahead and made the change.

I like the *idea* of Roddy as a black cat, but in practice it was limiting. Only certain types of mouths look right when drawn on an all-black character with just India ink, which is a problem because Roddy is supposed to be rather expressive. By making him black and white, I now have the freedom of expression with Roddy that I need. I lose the concept and I lose the race card, but the long-term gains in storytelling will likely make it worth it.

At this point, I was going to continue with the pilot episode/regular season analogy. I want to talk about lessons learned, promotion and various other comic things that weigh on my mind. But not tonight. All today I've been in major postpartum depression, and the power I need to win friends and influence people just isn't there. Oh well, I'll be back in the rambling mood soon enough.

Stipples are the Devil's Dots

Obviously, this is not a stippled image. The stippled strip had no panel that would make a nice splash isolation. Also, I am mad at it for wasting most of my evening. (It came out looking nice, though.)

The image shown is more about me being in DC. It looks like I'll be here one more day. It means I'll have to start scanning/'shopping/uploading strips here, which is not my preference, but the whole "being with loving family" thing outweighed the "be a lonely and selfish jerk" mindset. They're still not getting me for New Years!

For my inking update: Four strips remain incomplete. Two of them involve a chessboard, which is something that will be annoying to draw with tech pens. One is the last strip, which is a relatively easy inking job. I just wanted to save it until last. The final is a strip I wrote about before. Strip #45 was the one that could be simple or easy, depending on my ambition. Well, I went for the most ambitious drawing as possible. The result: FAIL.

The most ambitious panel of the whole damn series is panel #3 in strip #45. In it we see a close-up of the water balloon in Jacob's hand, with Jacob's face showing through the balloon. I even filled a teapot with water and held it up to a poster so I could properly get the distortion. Well, guess what... in ink it just doesn't work. I can't properly draw his fingers to show them curling around the balloon. His face is distorted and upside down, so I have to make sure people know he is looking *through* the balloon and not looking at a reflection. Parts of Jacob's head should also be visible from behind the balloon. That's just too much for me to take at this point. I botched it horribly, and it was made worse due to me not having any white out to cover up the disaster. I might have to redo panel #3 and scan it in separately. That's frustrating.

Oh well, there's a good chance I'll be able to finish the inking tonight. That's supremely awesome! Once the strips are done, it's just a long grind to scan and prepare them. If only no-copy blue was also no-scan blue. Life would be so much easier.

Achy hand update

I'm taking a break from inking in an effort to prevent my hand from falling off. (Drawing = left hand. Photoshopping = right.) What you see above is one of the panels that needed lots of tech pen action. Each little dot adds up to a long time spent stippling - and this was the "easy" panel to stipple in this particular strip. How do cartoonists do all those backgrounds? Oh, right, they're PAID to do it full time.

Here's the production tally as of posting:
- 9 strips completed
- 4 strips still needing minor tech pen work
- 11 strips still in very early stages

It looks good for now, but I should note that, the above-pictured strip aside, I am saving all the complicated strips until the end. It's always nice when the last few miles of a marathon are uphill!

Edit: Going against common sense, I decided to start working again. Ow. Fucking ow. I finished the four that needed minor pen attention. Then I decided to work on the strip that required all tech pen work. That was a dumb thing to do. Even with my wrist growing a mouth so it could yell, "HEY, STOP DOING THAT!" I fought through the pain and finished the damn thing. If I touch one more pen tonight, I may have to start going by "Righty" from now on.

And the ink shall flow like wine

This is not a repeat sketch! It's an indication of progress! PROGRESS!

After getting home from another Paulsen Holiday™, I began the long and painful journey that is inking. When I finally ran out of gas, I had three strips completed, two that need minor tech pen work, two that need MAJOR tech pen work (which takes longer than regular inking) and five that are still in the early stage of inking. And, uh, a dozen untouched strips still in the pile.

The plan for the immediate future is this: For Friday, the main goal is get myself gathered and relax. Inking is priority #3. Saturday I am heading down to DC again. I'll probably be back Tuesday - hopefully with EVERYTHING inked. The goal is to spend the last few days of the year scanning, 'shopping and updating the web page. I hope I can go a week without sleeping...

It's like those Star Wars DVDs...

It's the same old material but NEWLY RESTORED for HIGHER QUALITY! I took my webcam-shot sketches and gave them the proper scanner treatment. Just be glad I'm not Photoshopping Hayden freakin' Christensen as a ghost in the background.



Recycled material can be very enriching if done right. A good director's commentary or extra production notes can make a rehash a great thing! What I'm saying here is... I got nothin' new to say about this particular sketch.



I did the best I could to shorten Tiffany's legs with Photoshop. It's still not enough, but a moral victory.



I really should salvage this sketch and turn it into a t-shirt design in the future. The caption will be the "Unrestrained Creativity" title I used for the post. Photoshop was handy for making the paint look better. That's something that will be much easier to do with India ink. And a brush. Fuck, I need to learn how to ink with a brush!



This is also a potential t-shirt design. Heck, if I actually succeed with this damn comic strip, it would make a great first book title!



This sketch is still crap. Ahh well, I tried.

Oh, and I'm not scanning the bear sketch. Fuck that bear!

The black cat is always a good sign

A note about fate: Fuck it!

I am not one who believes in fate. When a person makes a decision, it inevitably whittles down the possible outcomes. This choose-your-own-adventure path is not fate. I am also not one who believes in self-determination or making one's own luck. One only controls so much destiny, as each person's whittled outcomes tend to smash into the whittled outcomes of others. And, thus, chaos flows from logic and order. Welcome to the universe!

Let's recap: I vowed to work through the pain, only to receive my comeuppance with the death of my beloved cat. (While I use the word "comeuppance" and curse the universe, I know it's not fate - it's rather a horrible coincidence that supremely sucks. It's just far more to fun to rant against the universe than to coldly shrug things off.) Now I am a mess and I do try to keep my promise and work through the pain. The universe again chooses to reward my attempts at success by kicking me in the balls.

It's football time! I adore the sport, and losing myself in the games and fantasy football provides a nice distraction. Of course, the teams I love are blown out. The teams I admire are brutalized. The teams I hate all thrive. The obnoxious fans online make all sports sites I visit disgusting with their spiteful gloating. So much for *that* bit of escapism.

Back in reality, I am the typical wretch - the one shown in the movie when the sad violin music is playing. Peri always clawed at the basement door when she wanted to come back inside. She trained me well, and I jump to attention whenever I hear that sound. I did hear the sound, and I did jump to attention. Like a true wretch, I even went to the door despite knowing no cat would be there.

Turns out that sound I heard was a bird hitting the glass and dying. Now I ask you...ISN'T THIS GETTING A BIT OVER THE TOP? Can't I get some good karma thrown my way?

So today I took my mom to the hospital. She was diagnosed with ulcers, brought on by the stress that comes from the Paulsen life. I can whine all I want, but my troubles are nothing compared to the ruthless savagery dealt out to her from the universe. This speaks to her strength over mine. My upcoming root canal (part 2: revenge of pain!) is nothing in comparison.

A note about ambition: Fuck it!

As previously mentioned, I am ready to resort to talking head syndrome. Until I learn to letter with more discretion, draw my characters smaller in the panels or learn to use nibs of different sizes in my drawing, I am not going to bother with backgrounds in the comic. Right now the focus needs to be on getting the stuff done, and cutting corners is fine by me.

The scene I am working on originally had Dionne offering Bud and Jacob milk and cookies as they sat to chat. This is far too difficult to draw, so they will now be just standing around. Besides, most of the snack scene ended up being cut from the final script anyway. My vow is now to make drawing the strip as easy as possible. FUCK MY AMBITION! NO ONE HAS TO KNOW!

A note about productivity: Fuck it!

I'm trying. Man, I'm trying. I've tried drawing out strips, but I'm not up to the task of trying to ink what I have right now. I tried scripting more strips for Precocious, but the little I've written has been WAY TOO BITTER for what is to be the second strip once the first arc is done and strip begins regular updating. I've already nixed my original holiday storyline due to massive blasphemy. It's just not marketable to drive consumers into a blind rage right away.

I turned to my sketchbook next, with horrible results. Man, I wish art was like a real profession - that training would allow me to turn it on and off and work during set hours. The only good sketch I did was of Sydney Oven sitting on a couch looking annoyed. Everything else: utter crap!

A note about logic: Fuck it!

And, finally, I decided on a whim to try and draw Roddy in ink. While it is something I need to work out in time, as the first regular update arc is all about Roddy, there are far more pressing needs. Also curious about the decision: I am frighteningly low on India ink. By wasting it on the black cat, I am now forced to leave my house to purchase art supplies! SCANDALOUS! At least the ink Roddy turned out OK.

A note about brevity: Fuck it!

The problem with minorities...

Hey, let's talk racism! Oh, yes, let's do!

By introducing kitties that are black and Siamese, I open myself up to dangerous racial undertones. It can be, dare I say it, a tar baby of a situation!

OK, have I used enough language to make this post show up on some inappropriate Google searches yet?

When I first began designing characters, I was advised by a classmate (who is a better cartoonist than I'll ever be - and thankfully on hiatus so I have less competition) to work with blacks in making my characters stand out. With that enabling, I set about designing my characters to really stand apart from each other. Bud's vest went black and his ears went darker, Autumn's extremities went black, cream-colored Jacob's shirt gained stripes and Tiffany...uh...Tiffany got one shaded ear and a ring around her eye. Thankfully, Tiffany is one to accessorize, so she gets her shot at tonal variance in other ways.

But did I stop there? Oh no! For my other classmates, I really went wild! Suzette, Max and Vincent have lots of shading. Dionne and Yvette have spots and stripes, respectively. Xander's design is still not finalized - as he might never get a line in the strip - but most of his coloring will come via clothing.

Then I went really nuts: CHARACTERS IN BLACK FACE! Sure, it makes sense for those kitties to appear, but cartooning is a black and white thing. When the most expressive parts of a character would appear as a flat black blob, that might not be the best planning. Hey, I'm all for an artistic challenge and I'm up to figuring it out! It just absolutely terrifies me to know I'm just two story arcs away from needing a solution.

That I'd create these characters was inevitable. On that same magical night when EVERY Gemstone Estates support characters emerged fully formed, along with the bulk of the initial Precocious storyline, the rest of the class was named.

Kaitlyn Hu was easy. With my love of giving my characters silly names, the temptation of the "Hu's on first" baseball gag was too great to resist. Also, how I could I *not* include a Siamese kitty after spending so many years around Dana's Siamese brigade?

Of course, by creating Kaitlyn I opened the race box. She is obviously of Asian heritage in a world of cute animals. Does that apply to all critters? Is Dionne African because she's a cheetah? Is Quincy proud of his European heritage as a German Shepherd? (Quincy's also a black faced character, but the secondary racial implications don't exist in his situation. Who doesn't love the Germans?) How global am I going?

This is not an issue with which I want to deal. All I wanted was the Hu name so I can make puns! Kaitlyn Hu ("'K, who?"), her brother Wen Hu ("Who? When?") and mother Shii Ann Hu ("Who is she?" "Shii Hu?" "That one over there!" "Shii Ann." "No, just her.") are just too fun to drop in now and then. All I can say is that I'm going to keep Kaitlyn away from chopsticks until I figure it out.

This also brings up the racial purity issue. In order to invoke specific species, the parents must naturally be the same. The Pingo family is pure red fox. The Hus are pure Siamese. (Siamese kitties are easily mixed in with regular kitties, but Dana's kitties were racially pure and I followed suit! Way to make me a furry racist, Dana!) All the other families are mixed. Even Dionne - clearly a cheetah - has markings that don't match the normal cheetah look, which is meant to show she's *not* a purebred. I slightly tackle this in the second story arc, but I still fear the Aryan race implications. It's the role of the creator to fret over every little detail - even though almost all readers will never think of such things - right?

Roddy is my way of countering the Kaitlyn problem. His name is so...so...white! Finnegan! He's Irish! Like the Et and Oven families, Roddy is just a normal house cat when "race" comes into play. In real life, it seems there's *always* one black cat in a litter. That's all Roddy is. (Although the idea of "litter" isn't valid in my strip as my characters are merely humans disguised as adorably cute critters.) Neither of Roddy's parents are pure black. One might be a boots kitty, but that's as far as I'll go.

The reason Roddy is black is because of the bad luck connotations. Roddy's life kinda sucks. He's on the outside and always ends up in second place. Overall, being second-best in everything makes Roddy a very talented person, but he never gets any respect. Scrappy losers don't make it into record books. Is there any wonder he's bitter and belligerent?

Yes, I am aware this means I am keeping the black man down. And creating an angry black man. I can't win, can I?

All I can do is ask for you, the reader, the know my strip is about CLASS WARFARE and not RACIAL DIVIDES! I'm all about getting into issues about money and intellectual differences, and I do know in real life these issues do have some overlap - but my world is one of critters! This is supposed to give me a "get out of race issue free" card.

But then I went and made Kaitlyn Hu. I wanted to have cake and eat it too.

AND I have no idea how to draw these animals with India ink yet. Way to go, Chrispy!