Continuing charm designs

I'll do an official Kickstarter update when I have more ready, but here's some work on the charms offered in the artist editions for the Precocious book two preorder campaign.

These will end up in a circular template, so parts of the bodies will be cropped. I'll likely redo the Kaitlyn one to simplify it. Charms are small, so I must be careful with details. But that's why we do these intermediate stages. Learning! Also, I'm having fun with poofing tails. I recently drew a comic panel with Bud's tail swishing up into frame and I thought it was adorable, so let's do it more! (You'll see that comic in a few weeks.)

Mastering the eye roll

It's weird - The eye roll is supposed to be Kaitlyn's signature move, yet it's so rare that I actually pull it off. Maybe it's a consequence of drawing such simple faces - maybe it's the lack of eyebrows to frame stuff, or the eye shape in general. Oh well, that's her thing I have to do better.

If I hit on something, I'll be drawing a Kaitlyn card tomorrow. The premise is Quincy is being Quincy off panel, and Kaitlyn's being Kaitlyn on the card.  1, 2 and 4 were inspired by Kaitlyn poses in Copper Road comics. 3 is me working on my crossed arms. It's something else I really struggle with, due to the shorter arms of cartoony characters, but so expressive I must keep trying! I think I did ok in this sketch.

There is another older page of Kaitlyn eye roll sketches out there, but I don't think they're as good. I'll flash 'em on tomorrow's stream when the card time comes, though.

Hey, my 1000th blog post!

I'm not counting the 10 unposted drafts - so this is a legit 1000! Woo!  To celebrate this milestone, we have... a regular post-stream art-sharing post!

The card piece in the post below was pushed back to next week, because the client was sick and couldn't attend, so we filled up the night with the badge (will post it later - 1001!), card requests and an increasingly loopy Chrispy. I fought through the pain for you people, because I love you and want to entertain!

The Ursula saxophone card was the night's warm-up. (She has so much in common with Bill Clinton.) Knowledge Huntress Tiff was drawn during a commission break. She must have been playing with the time machine again, as she seems older.  The Kaitlyn and Quincy one is the result of me not paying enough attention - I thought I was playing with portfolio requests, so I messed around with the idea, but it was supposed to be a commission. (It's easy for me to miss stuff when my eyes are focused on drawing, so I encourage you all to yell at me until I notice.)

These are all up for grabs. $10 each!

Commission sketches: The final frontier!

Ok, yeah, I've been watching way to much Star Trek recently. (Just wait an hour for the new Copper Road!) Anyway, sketch work has begun on the final batch of the May commissions!

I was give free reign on this one for Phil, and that is always so scary. I decided to take a proper crack at his fursona. (His look was previously used as a cameo in the strip, but not in-character.) Since he's been having technical difficulties with just about everything he's touched recently, I drew something with him being taunted by a tech demon.  (Blue screen of death demon?) As is, the demon is singling him out as his choice for torment, but an alternate idea could zoom in a bit and keep the demon to a face on the monitor. Yes, he's wearing the SCIENCE! shirt. He said geeky shirts were good, and I chose mine!

Karl wanted a sequel to his Derpy and Bud watercolor piece, with Derpy hunting down the jerk who took the last muffin. Unwitting subject of an impending lightning strike? Had to be Jacob. Instead of making multiple sketches, I just drew alternate Derpy poses in the empty space.  I love the idea of her riding the storm cloud behind Jacob.  This piece could benefit of a shift to a horizontal layout.  It could also be flipped, with Jacob walking the other way. That way the eye would start on him and then move to angry Derpy.  I don't like that angle on Jacob as much, so it may not happen, even if it helps the narrative.

This one started out as Autumn being territorial about her library, but drawing a full library background in the time allotted is impossible. It's a shame, because it was a good idea. (I may have to turn a variation of that into a strip down the line!)  A smaller-scale version of Autumn protecting her books that was suggested was her sacrificing herself to keep a book dry in the rain.  Sounds cute!  If I went with this, I could do regular color or something more experimental.  I think a rain scene would look neat in all blues.  I may have to redraw her to show her a bit more hunched over, but the idea is there.

Here's an alternate take, showing the set-up.

I was given two options for this one:  Kaitlyn and Autumn having fun together, or Kaitlyn making Autumn all poofy paranoid. Since I couldn't think of a good activity for the friendly stuff, I turned to the dark side.  I'm torn over trying to make this a vertical or horizontal piece.

Hey! Wen got a commission! That's right, Roddy, even Wen got chosen before you. The question about Wen was what he does when not tormenting Kaitlyn.  He's a sporty jerk, so I decided to have him playing catch.  Maybe it wasn't the smartest move to make him play American football, since this for a European reader, but you must admit football is a suitably jerky sport for him. Bonus insult:  I swiped this pose from another drawing I'd done... a drawing of Roddy!

Finally, I was asked to bring back Tiffany dressed as fruit, from an old sketch of mine. It proved harder than I thought to find an alternative to the original pear look.  I through inverting the shape and going strawberry would be good... but the pear shape still beats it. I suppose it'd be cheating to make her an eggplant.

There are two more commissions that need sketching, but I ran out of sketchbook pages. (That means I'm down to just two empty sketchbooks! Ack!)  They'll have to be sketched tomorrow.

The commission sketches begin!

Let's get this commissionathon started! For my May con commission promotion, I have requests so far. Since I can't go forward until I get approval, and the effort begins tomorrow, I'd best get these out there so the clients can review them!

First up is Jonathan's. He asked for Ms. Monster on vacation. I decided to have her playing with a beach ball. Above is the second sketch I made for her. The first was action, but the action had her arm coming across her body and obscuring... stuff. This time I drew her on the beach holding the ball, but felt it was a bit too static.

This is the one I like. It's an overhead angle of her playing with the ball. Maybe more challenging, but a good composition.  Through the joint miracles of iPhone and Twitter, I already got approval on this one. I know I said I wasn't doing this first come, first serve, but for the first of May, I think I'll slot in the only confirmed piece I have and let the rest work themselves out.

Jonas asked me to draw a commission with Dionne acting nice (for her).  I took this as her pretending to be nice while still being horrible.  Somehow that scene from Kill Bill popped into my head, where the nurse was actually assassin Elle Driver. It might not totally be appropriate for the idea, but I *had* to draw it.

This might be more in line with the theme.  Dionne selling cookies outside a weight loss center. I don't know how much is visible on the small sketch, but the sign has her continuously increasing her prices - while she happily counts her money.  I originally labeled them as girl scout cookies, but Jonas is from France and I dunno if the term has the same cultural impact there.

Ed actually sent me a drawing he had been working on, asking me to adapt it. It's his character painting Kaitlyn in her princess outfit.  The first attempt was copying his layout, with the main change being Kaitlyn looking annoyed. (While the painting could show her being happy and princessy!)

Since the first version didn't show up much of Ed's character, I moved the figures around a bit for the second try. I also scrunched them up to make this a vertical composition.  I should also note that I did this sketch without Ed's character sketch in front of me, so the markings aren't right.  No one freak out over it!

And that's the first wave. I'm going to post now because Blogger is throwing error messages at me and I'm scared it'll go down at any moment.

Some construction sketches

(click for the full-sized image)

I was asked to post some sketches showing how I roughed out the structure of my characters, so here we go!

Before I get into any details, I must first apologize for being a horrible spokesman for art. The thing is... I do everything wrong. I learned wrong. I practiced wrong. I shortcut instead of doing it properly. I can only get away with what I do because I've done it long enough that I can fudge most of it and that I stick with simple designs. I can pull off a comic most of the times, but anything that requires me to move beyond my comfort zone reminds me of how badly I screwed up my art education. I write this paragraph not to disparage myself, but to be a cautionary tale. Yeah, I guess you can follow my path and make it work as well as I make my stuff work, but there are some consequences.

I've always wanted to draw in a cartoony style. When I first began practicing, I grabbed cartoony stuff I liked and tried to imitate it. That's good. Tracing and copying work you like helps muscle memory and provides the building blocks of what will eventually become your style. Don't feel bad about doing it. Just don't ONLY do that. That is where I went horribly wrong. The reason the cartoonists I admire were so great is because they didn't go directly to cartooning. They learned the rules of construction, anatomy and composition - then they learned to tweak them until the look was expressively cartoony. If you learn to draw cartoony directly, you can only draw cartoony. If you learn the basic, you can draw anything with a little practice. Plus, you'll have a much understanding of WHY certain cartoony drawing works.

It's very daunting to look at anatomy books or drawing manuals - especially if those figures aren't what you want to end up with - but it's work the time investment. You can practice both cartoony and regular anatomy at the same time - and eventually they'll merge into something neat! On of my biggest regrets in life is skipping this step. Even a minor focus on construction and anatomy would have saved me so much humiliation in the long run.

But enough regret! It's time for the useful stuff! Construction sketches are all about roughing out where everything in a final drawing will go. Cartoony or not, creatures still have anatomy and that must be respected no matter how distorted it all is!

The first step in making a drawing is thumbnailing. You make small, quick sketches to figure out the pose and composition. I'm going ahead as if we're only drawing a figure, but I should probably mention you always sketch the backgrounds FIRST when composing so the figures can fit into the setting more naturally. If I'm doing a composition, I work on the pose with a basic wire structure (a glorified stick figure) and add in more shapes to fill out the figure once I have something that might work. When you have a thumbnail that works, it's time to move on.

The thumbnail gives you a basic pose, so now it's time to replicate it in the final size. There are many many schools on how to handle this stage, and I never learned any of them, so I'm gonna wing it! You start by roughing out the FULL BODY loosely. This can be either with a wire frame, or with loose shapes that approximate the body. (I tend to construct a body as a series of ovals, as seen in the large Kaitlyn sketch.) The next step is refining it. Begin treating the rough structure as if it was 3d. If you drew a circle for a head, turn it into a sphere or egg (depending on cartooniness). A rectangle for the torso? Turn it into a box atop an egg.

For the head sphere thingy, you'll be drawing three loops. One to show the shape of the head, one to serve as an equator and one meridian to give you a point to align everything. This gives you a little map of where to place the facial features. Where the equator and meridian cross, the nose goes! If you're doing a cartoon animal, you'll want to build a muzzle. Do that by adding a small cylinder to the area.

Now that you've got the head oriented, you can place your facial features. Align them however they look in your cartoony style. (Consult REAL artists for proper placement locations.) If you're mimicking Precocious, you'll be warping your sphere to add some cheek fluff and sketching in some half-cones for ears.

Is the face coming together? Good! STOP! It's so easy to get caught up in focusing on the face, but we're drawing a full body here! You've got to give the whole figure equal attention, or you risk a nice face being wasted on an awkward, distracting body. Use your body structure's 3d lines to help you map out how clothing will fit and drape. (Yes, a properly-drawn character is always naked until the final stages. No giggling. And, no, I don't properly draw my characters.) Take your sketching to whatever level of detail is needed for your to feel comfortable before you start inking. (I do a full detailed sketch here, since my work is simple anyway. Some artists leave the finer details to the inking.)

Keep going back and adding more details, using all your guide lines for help. This is why most artists work in light blue to start. All those construction lines can add up and get in the way if you sketch too dark. The benefits of blue lines is that scanning software is usually programmed to filter them out. Alternately, you just let your ink dry and erase the guide lines.

So that's my attempt to help, even if I'm one of the worst when it comes to not doing things right. (Seriously, if you get lazy and use shortcuts in construction, it'll catch up to you!) To make up for my failings, here are some more helpful links. Tracy of Lackadaisy Cats shows you her construction method here. Warning: She is so good at art that you might want to quit forever after seeing what she does. My favorite resource for work-in-action is the great Nattosoup blog by Becca Hillburn. She is very well-read on anatomy and construction, which makes her "art dump" sharing of sketches a marvelous resource for those looking to see how it all works.

My Little Copper Road

The prep work is done for the next Copper Road comic, which I'm aiming to get out tomorrow! As you can see by this sketches, we're trick or treating... AS PONIES!

Hey, I can indulge a bit if I want to!



Here, the Great and Powerful Quincy returns. I have to decide when I put him in the strip whether I want the ears in or out of the hat. Trixie is ears-in, but that looks kinda weird here.



Good old Kaitlyn gets to be Applejack. That hat drove me nuts, and it drives me nuts still.



Yvettershy and Derpy Vincent may not make the comic, but I wanted to draw them anyway!

Ask the characters!

For the vote incentives for the last week of October, I am going to do an "ask the characters" series of comics - and I'd like your help! Send me your questions for any or all of the characters and I'll do my best to turn them into comics like the one above!

For the heck of it: Grown-up Kaitlyn?

What can I say? This is the only sketch I've done in the last few days. Busy. Busy. Busy. Don't count this as canon. It's more of an experiment - but it's SOMETHING TO SHARE!

So what have I been working on? A little on the commission (which I really should finish soon), a little on the new website, a little on book one prep and a LOT on buffer building so I can focus on the previous three items in the list without spending my days in a panic! Now that I've started us on what is looking like a loooong arc, I won't be getting any break weeks any time soon.

Oh, right. I have a blog.

So I'm sitting here, putting together the donation packets for mailing tomorrow when I realize I HAVEN'T SHARED ANYTHING I'VE BEEN WORKING ON IN DAYS!

What can I say, I've been immensely self-absorbed. (Also, much of my work wasn't blog-worthy.) My solution to the recent funk was to lock myself away and ignore everything else in the world. Not the brightest thing to do, but it's working!

So here's the final version of the Skull Mountain commission. (At least, I hope so.) That's my first offering. To make up for my slacking off, I think I'll have to blog nonstop for the next few weeks. (Yeah, we'll see if I can pull that off...)

The artist's eternal war against unconsciousness

Blame Wimbledon and the cruelty of time zones for pushing me over the edge. I'd been tempting the sleep demon for weeks, choosing to eliminate an hour or two of slumber a night in favor of more work time - and suddenly trying to wake up at 7am every day without a shift in bedtime was bound to get me.

The past few days have been washed out by built-up fatigue, and I've only made it worse by trying to appease those damn sleep demons with inconsistent napping. Yeah, I am NOT someone who can nap. Naps leave me more scrambled and tired than before - yet my body keeps fighting for them anyway.

At this point, I've cost myself about two days' worth of work time with my sleep shenanigans. Thank goodness I chose to pull this stunt when I was two weeks ahead in everything! Things are still well in control, just not as super-awesome as before.

Yesterday was SUPPOSED to be my commissionathon, but that fell through because I was doing make-up work for my failed comicathon. This morning was supposed to be my make-up commissionathon, but, uh, I was in a daze well into the afternoon.

SO LET'S CATCH UP, STARTING NOW! I have two commissions that need to be sketched out by the end of the night, and a third that demands attention today or tomorrow as well. (But tomorrow is supposed to be the paintathon...)

So here's part one of my make up work, a concept sketch for a commission involving the kids riding the Skull Mountain ride at Six Flags: America. The scene I chose to depict was the part of the ride where the boatacoaster goes down a hill and splashes into the water. I was supposed to fit eight kids into the scene, but my current composition ended up cutting out Max's seat. Oopsie.

As I wait for approval/suggestions on that sketch, I now move on to the next project. Can I have a second post about it up by midnight? Knowing me? Probably not. BUT I'LL TRY!

Edit: I failed. Not done with the sketch and too tired to finish tonight. Sleep now. See you in 12 hours!

Progress? Any will do!

It's been a sluggish week, what can I say? I've been wracking my brain over this painting background, trying to find the perspective the unites everything and it's blown a few fuses. But, hey, I *can* still color this design!

Now I get to throw it into the crappy CafePress store in hopes of making a sale or two from it. SO EFFICIENT! Unless I can get, like, 25 preorders (and find a printer that does full color on the cheap) that's my only option. Eh, getting a $4 commission is better than getting nothing at all!

Quietly judging you

I've been looking for shirt ideas, and the folks over at the Precocious forums delivered. This scene was a favorite, so I reproduced it in larger, t-shirtable form. Next stop: Coloring!

Stop playing games!

Where's the damn Copper Road strip, Chrispy?

The answer... I dunno? This is a problem I run into whenever I integrate the Copper Road kids into the main Precocious strip... they're too occupied to have adventures on their own. Yes, I suppose I could simply focus on the Copper Road-only characters, but I'm lacking on ideas there too. I'm sorta all in with this group projects storyline. Sorry!

The other side of Copper Road is that it can serve as a running commentary on current events or my life... a life which has been nothing flashy of late. Woo! Hey, at least there's always current events... which I'm barely keeping up on. This is self-sabotage!

I'll have something up for Copper Road soon enough. At worst, I'll use the "in case of emergency, break glass" idea I've been sitting on. (It's only meh, so I've been procrastinating on it.)

Maybe I'll lift up my head and start noticing things around me soon. But, hey, while my head is down I AM MAKING AWESOME PRECOCIOUS STRIPS! Starting Monday, all the set-up is over and the long story begins to draw to its epic end! (We still have around two months to go. As I said. EPIC!)

Another day, another sketchbook page

I think the title says it all. Nothing snazzy to show from today, but that's not a bad thing. I need to do more of this daily sketching thing - this is sketch blog after all - but all that productivity stuff can get in the way! Eh, look at it this way: No matter what, I'm doing something awesome! THESE SKETCHES ARE AWESOME!

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!

The perils of traveling

I am back in DC for an undetermined amount of time. That means it's time to move the studio from one basement to another!

The whole drive down I had that eerie feeling I forgot something. Mentally, I went over it all. Got the templates. Got the scanner. Got the laptop. Got the ink. Got the pen. That's all! Or... not. Having read over my process post below, can you see what I forgot to bring?

MY PRECIOUS NO-COPY BLUE PENCIL WAS LEFT BEHIND! Crisis!

Ok... minor crisis. I fortunately had a spare refill of the blue lead with me, so all that I needed was the mechanical pencil to hold it. I pulled out every pencil I could find. All .07 lead size. My lead is .05! Crisis!

I had to dive deeper into the bowels of the house... the DARKROOM! *thunderclap*

Much to my benefit, the room has art supplies scattered about it - including a .05 mechanical pencil! The day is saved!

Now if only I had an idea for something comicy to draw...

The *other* Halloween project

Hey, guess who forgot he was also doing a Halloween Copper Road? If I was on the ball, it would have been up today. I am not on the ball, so expect it on the 1st.

I'll start work on the wallpaper tomorrow - hopefully. It looks like the giant TIFFWITCH is the winner., but there's still time for the other options to rally!

Not a people person

I'll try not to get too "emotions and stuff" here, but I have a blog and I have some frustration - IT IS THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS!

Today I posted my 300th strip. That's kinda a big deal, even though it fell in just about the worst place. I'm on the second-to-last page of the current story, meaning any curious new reader is not likely to stick around and give a crap. Readers are profoundly lazy beings, and there's no way to change that. The burden falls to me to MAKE THEM CARE. Today's 300th strip was a wasted opportunity.

I'm absurdly lucky to have the fan base I have now, because I thoroughly suck at cultivating it. Precocious lacks a solid HOOK to get the easy readers. (Unless you count the artwork as furry - and I don't know how effective that would be as I don't cover an furry topics in the strip.) I don't pander to a target group. I don't do T&A or more adult humor. That's an issue, since that stuff is what the internet is all about! We go online to find groups of like-minded people, so we WANT to find comics that fit our interests. The average internet user is more sharp-tongued and edgy with their humor, so comics with that voice naturally attract a large readership. All I have to offer is funny. That's a LOT OF PRESSURE!

It falls to me to make people care enough to stick around - and once they stick around, I have to make them want to help Precocious thrive! That's hard to do with my personality. Unfortunately, I'm far more the artist than the advertiser. Doing the social things, like tweeting around, hanging out on message boards and being proactive in audience interaction are hard for me. All I want to do is work on my comic! I've got all my eggs in the quality basket!

I'm frustrated with myself right now. Precocious may be ahead of the curve in the readership to comic age ratio, but it's not where it COULD be - and that's all on me. Not only have I not actively cultivated a readership, but I've done a lot to distance those who put forth the effort to reach out to me. I do my best, but I'm an awful communicator. (I'm two weeks behind in my email, and feeling reeaaaallly guilty about it.) Of course, I knew this going in. That's why I went daily. That's why I do all my extras. I need quality to make up for my poor social skills. But quality will only take me so far.

I'm sorta lacking direction here, so I apologize. I'm having a hard time communicating about having a hard time communicating!

See, the problem is my ego is at work here. I have a WONDERFUL group of dedicated readers, and I want MORE. This post is not a knock on them, as I mentioned they stuck around despite me doing NOTHING to win them over. They are amazing, and reading their feedback is what keeps me putting in the massive amount of hours that are needed to produce a daily. And do I tell them how awesome they are? No, I whine about how I'm not satisfied.

I look at the numbers by Precocious for ranking sites and I cringe. I produce a new comic every week as a vote incentive, yet a really small fraction of my readers bother to vote. IT'S A NEW COMIC! I can't do any more to get them to care! Problem is, they don't even care enough to READ MY NEWS POSTS about it, so they don't know! I'll keep trying to get their attention, but you can understand how that frustrates me. I put a lot of work into Copper Road, dammit! On the ad side, my revenue has been dropping recently. I am making no profit at all, which bugs me to no end. The numbers say highly visible ads on a site with as much traffic as mine should be making far more than they do. I look at sites with half the readers and they're making twice as much per day, if not more. My ego is not pleased to see stuff like that! I'm worthy of more people caring, dammit!

Anyway, forgive this little outburst. A lot of crazy when in to messing up my day, and I'm taking it out on the few people who do read this blog. I'll try to bring the awesome back tomorrow. Actually, scratch that. Tomorrow I'll be in full panic mode to get Sunday's comic done. I'll just have to be awesome in the strip, and hope that balance out my utter lack of entertainment over here!

I'm attacking the darkness!

This is it, the final sketch of the latest sketchbook to be conquered by my mighty pencil! It took forever to finish this bugger, since all my drawing time was spent on the comic, but that's a good thing.

As my life is so comic-centered, what you see here is prep work for next Sunday's Copper Road. It's clear to anyone who knows the signs what it's about. Gotta say, Vincent would be a terrible dungeon master, but sacrifices must be made if Quincy is going to play along to give Kaitlyn an introduction. Besides, RULE OF FUNNY! No questioning it!

Anyway, today is going to be a production day. (Assuming all goes as planned.) I have to finish this week's Precocious strips and start on the next batch. I'm out of Sunday scripts, so that may skipped over. Even when I'm ahead in the dailies (which hasn't been for weeks now) Sundays always get done last minute, so this is nothing new. This is why I have to work in batches. Creativity is not a constant stream, and even if it was it would not be homogeneous. A constant flow of creativity is sometimes mostly paintings, sometimes all about sketching, sometimes writing, etc. Time of low creativity can bring a flow of high grinding productivity, such as lining templates, lettering or a good focused inking session. I have to play it the best I can and go with the flow. I've wanted to ink for days, but creativity has been telling me to paint. I have one last day to be whimsical before cruel deadlines rear their ugly heads, but let's hope it doesn't get that far.