Half a Victory!

Precocious is now up to strip #30 - the halfway point. I actually got everything done according to the OPTIMISTIC schedule, which means I'm starting to get the process down. The more I practice, the better I get. Go me!

To honor this, here are some Dionne sketches, as she's taken a feature role in the latest batch. All this minimal success is going to my head - I'm already planning next summer's epic storyline. (This was supposed to be last summer's epic storyline. La la la.) I had to write in a few more strips for that with Dionne at the center. I have to be careful, though - as much as she takes over when in the strip, she takes over in the writing as well. She's such a fun foil for my harmlessly mischievous main cast.

In medias res

Yes, I'm aware I'm using the term improperly. BUT DOESN'T IT SOUND DELIGHTFULLY POMPOUS AS A POST TITLE? Point is, I have no time for sketching when I'm doing real work; so I have to share real work! I'm about halfway through inking my strips, meaning they should be online by the end of the week! All that's left to do is complete the inking, employ white-out for corrections, scan and 'shop the buggers, toil away on the website and upload the whole thing. I'm tired just thinking about all that, but I press on!

Once more unto the breach...

Adventures in Caffeination

So it's letting day for the new scripts. Historically, my best inking/lettering has been done after a glass of wine. It cuts out a bit of the manic stressing. Yeah, so guess the path I went down today! (It's in the title of the post, so if you got it wrong, you should be ashamed.) While reviewing the latest remodeling splendor, my brother, Monkey See, saw an empty cup of coffee. "Maybe I want coffee!"

I am a person who is too hip to be a coffee shop idiot, yet not hip enough to actually be a coffee shop douchebag. This means coffee is rare in my life. I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. My preference: Intense dark roast! That won't get me wired at all!

Managed to letter three full strips before my shaking hand became unusable. What does one do when productivity becomes impossible? I'm useless? BLOGGING TIME!

I'm not a big fan of this Sky sketch, but it marks my latest sketchbook venture. My cartoon mommies are coming into the strip soon, so I'd best practice drawing them. It's hard to get the eyes to be the appropriate size. Too small is weaksauce drawing. Too large is too childlike. It's an issue! Other notable things about this version of Sky: It's probably the most modest outfit I've put her in so far. She's a bit of a free spirit (see: beads in the hair) and her outfits reflect that. Also, this is another experiment on how to treat her tail. I want the tip to be colored, but the stripes are iffy. She's a simplified tabby, but *how* simplified is the issue.

I'm hoping my hand will calm down soon. To keep myself productive, I may just have to consume some alcohol!

YAY!

My cartooning efforts until now summed up in two panels:

Doing time lines in my head, I am a solid four months (and counting) behind in production of Precocious. I am one panel away from having the strips up to the current arc's mid-point ready for inking. With any luck, there will be completed in the next two days. The whole thing was supposed to be up late July/early August. Sigh.

In spite of my spectacular failure up to this point, my heart is still in this and my eyes remain starry with visions of future success. Yes, many of my early strips are time-sensitive and it will make no sense to launch into a "back to school" storyline in DECEMBER - but I am going forward with it anyway! I'll just number them for now - as opposed to dating them - so those reading the archives will never know! Mwa ha ha!

Some sacrifices must be made, as the parents and class elections arcs will be cut for now. Elections can be moved post-holiday and the arc introducing the parents will have to be done as a "bonus" and inserted into the archives directly after the pilot episode.

Oh well. It's time to take the blow, suck it up, adapt and press onward towards success! (Maybe.)

Who is this handsome devil?

Would you believe it's me? The "handsome" part probably threw you off. I forgive you. Sarcasm on the internet requires italics.

Granted, it also doesn't look that much like me yet. It's step one, so you take what you can get. Click on the "painting" label for this post to see how other paintings evolved from odd sketches. I might look like me yet! Stranger things have happened!

Then again, this canvass is cursed. So far it's been the place of an aborted Marilee painting and a failed Millie painting. (My eyes are, appropriately, resting on Millie's breasts.) Maybe third time's a charm? Eh, at this point I'll take what I can get. Besides, the only person I offend with failure this time is myself.

This is going to be a challenge. Not only will failure offend me, but I'm trying to paint a dude in a series that features only chicks. (Yeah, I'm putting myself on the "On Beauty" category. Fuck you for rolling your eyes!) There's a reason I only paint chicks. Not only are their infinitely hotter than dudes, but their delicate features are far easier to handle in my style. Think about the sexy standards for men: Words like "rugged" and "stubble" pop up. How the fuck can I do that in my deliberately flat and simplified style? Fortunately, my long, luxurious hippie hair gives me something fun with which to work. I CAN BE BISHONEN! I'm not sure it's a good thing, but it fits the series, I guess.

More nightmare fuel: The sketch layered over the original photo, to show I'm not *that* far off in the details department. ENJOY YOUR SLEEP TONIGHT!



Edit: This picture makes me look like a total butterface. That is so not cool!

Dun Dun Duuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnn!

As I am decidedly a novice, I must do some sketchwork for visually complex comics. This next one is the much-hyped seven character bonanza. The lesser-hyped double panel features these three giving Bud a "we'll fuck you up!" look, Autumn and Bud, sitting at the ends of the table, were omitted because I ran out of space in my sketchbook. This does not bode well for cramming the scene into a teeny tiny comic panel, even if it's a doublewide!

On a self-esteem-destroying note, I am currently watching episode 1 of The Wire. It is entirely engrossing, even though the cast is nothing but a muddled blur of attitude and that dude from Lost to me at this point. See, that's how you do it! Write a good episode that features all the characters, but let the context do the introductions! While my "pilot" plot is fantastic in involving all the main characters, I still choked and did the monologue intro thing that makes pilot episodes all clunky. How clunky is it? In the next few strips, I will have a panel featuring a map of the Sapphire Lake neighborhood, just so readers know where all my kids live relative to each other. At least it's AMBITIOUS clunkiness!

He's on to me.

Today's Pearls Before Swine:



But it's even WORSE: I'm blogging to promote my venture into cartooning! What sort of fool would adopt *that* business model? My desire for a cardboard box will only ever be for shelter.

Anyway, today's focus has been on scripting the next batch of comic scripts. I have enough scripted now to take the comic to a GOOD stopping point on the website, as opposed to the poorly-drawn strip where Bud admits the majority of my cast is irredeemably evil. Of course, my first strip ended with the line, "all about the violence," and the stopping point strip ends with "war is awesome!" Man, I am going to be SO popular one day! Anywho, three more strips to draw out, six to ink and then it's scanning and updating time!

After those, I have zero intention to stop there. The following strip is easily the most complex one yet, so it scares me to death - but getting by it means THE ACTION IS IMMINENT! (The kids have to argue semantics first, dammit!) The "war is awesome" strip marks the approximate halfway point of the arc, so I'm happy with keeping it up as the current strip for a while. It allows me to build up a chunk of strips to upload at once, rather than having a few trickle in pathetically here and there.

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!)

Did you get my best side?

So I've actually started working on my comic again. Shocker, I know. What thwarted me this time was trying to draw Dionne (and, to a lesser extent, Tiffany) in profile facing left. For some reason I just couldn't get her to look right!

Flipping through my sketchbook, the vast majority of my left-looking drawings all feature a three-quarter pose at most. True profiles are few and far between. And all but one were doggy characters. (It's not surprising Bud is the exception, as he is the most drawn character and thus gets to try more poses.) Weird.

Edit: My own blog defies me, as the sketchbook page I posed a while back contains a left-looking Tiffany I missed - drawn only because she was looking left in the comic I was working out, which is the same comic I mentioned struggling with today. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy or something! Um. SO TWO KITTIES! That's it!

I guess it has to do being left handed. I naturally draw my characters looking right since the flow of drawing fits the hand position. I know back when I did the very first Precocious promo pic I drew a great Bud looking right, but Autumn was a disaster. I finally had to draw her looking right and reverse the image in Photoshop.

Reversing characters doesn't always work, either. What looks so natural can become bizarre when flipped. How irritatingly quirky.

With sketching, my tendency to draw characters facing one direction is all well and good - but the actual comic features characters, y'know, talking to each other. That means lots of folk looking left. Uh oh. Some of them are even kitties! THAT'S BAD NEWS! (My guess is that kitties have more subtle features with the curves of their heads while doggie muzzles and fluffy cheeks tend to point strait out.)

So I went through my sketchbook counting figures facing left. Most were Jacob and Suzette. Jacob, being who he is, tends to be the character reacting to the more aggressive characters, so he appears more on the right side of panels. Suzette is easy to draw. The sketchbook is littered with aborted Autumn sketches, all given up when it came to drawing her hair.

What's pictured in this post is the one left-looking Bud in the book along with the better of the two fully-drawn Autumns. To show the crazy mirror effect works both ways, I flipped the image. Autumn especially looks distorted when facing right.

Oh well. It's just another hidden obstacle that keeps me from being a real cartoonist. Now that I recognize the problem, I've got to spend time trying to correct it in my sketchbook. This will not be fun.

Schoolgirl Chic

After tossing Autumn into so many various Fall/Winter/Inspirational/Anachronistic outfits, I must keep reminding myself that SINCE I SUCK AT LIVING my comic is still taking place in July. Skirts are in! (The boys still wear pants because I CAN GET AWAY WITH IT! To hell with you if you criticize!) Down the road I seriously need to do some collar/shoulder clinics, but for now it's all about capturing that classic Autumn style! Am I so incompetent that I keep forgetting to draw the second set of lines to make her dress plaid-ish now? *looks at picture* Oh fuck me...