Art Blog

New & Old

I finally finished reinking my first comic. To make sure I'm on the right track I took the time to letter and color first page. Here is the side by side of the new page (left) and old page (right). Most of the changes have been getting faces closer to on model but there are a few redrawn panels.

The first time I used an entirely custom page template that couldn't produce a print quality image if I needed. This time I'm using a better designed template opens up the possibility of doing a print version.

I also made sure the panels could be broken up in a way that should make this comic easier to convert into a vertical scroll or "webtoons" format. My heart is in page format so that is what I prioritized the first go around on this story but on following stories I got better at laying out pages that could be reformatted better in responsive web layouts. That technically lacks many of the established story telling conventions that comics on Naver Webtoons and Tapas use but once I'm on the other side of this project I'll consider how far I rework the art for the vertical scroll.

Reinking Lantern King

How does the quote go? "A Work of Art Is Never Finished, Merely Abandoned"

I see a lot of people attributed to that quote include da Vinci.

But I'm not claiming to a creator of art. More that the quote hits home as I go back and rework my first Saturday Tales comic from 2020. I've learned a lot more about my tools and my characters since then and wanted to make their first impression a stronger one. If I was making a gag comic strip I would have taken the often repeated advice of just moving on. But Saturday Tales is a series of shorts that inherently invites readers to start at the beginning. And It had a rough begging.

Food Inks

Most of my Food Faces drawings were drawn and inked on Post-It Note. I got a bunch coming up that were done entirely digitally but there is a quality to the errors introduce with physical media that we are compelled to fix because digital affords us the possibility.

Skate Jump Inks

It is no secret that my Saturday Tales comics are inspired by Maple Town, Sid and Marty Kroff, and Rankin/Bass but I swear I have the intro to Palm Town running on repeat in my head sometimes. This drawing is a small tribute to that show.

Lantern King Redraw

I've been working on a redo of my first Saturday Tale comic now that I have the character design figured out a bit better. Some panels are also getting a full redraw like this one.