Halloween

Me and ol' Jesus on Halloween night. He makes a great date.

To be continued

I'm still working on this comic. I'm finishing up part two right now. I know it's confusing but the comic I'm working on now is number 12 and is actually BEFORE the the most current strip that is up right now. I apologize for getting ahead of myself.

Like a Girl

New Strip. This is one of two.

Oh Wow, Color!

My apologies to all the creationists out there. I also apologize to all the geocentrists and anyone who still believes the world is flat. I'd love to take credit for the color design but I in fact just copied the color pallette from one of Kazu's strips at www.BoltCity.com . His work is a great inspiration.

New Strips, Now with Dotted Patterns!

I'm still trying to loosen up my linework. Although here it looks like I just put less effort into the cleanup work. mmm... Hard to say honestly. I like the patterns and dot shading.

The Digital Quill Pen

I added a couple new comics, enjoy.

I'm a big fan of the old school quill pen and the loose look of inking with a brush. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just look at any of the traditional comics like those by Charles Schultz (Peanuts - Snoopy) or Bill Waterson (Calivin & Hobbes). But I don't work traditionally, I work strictly on my tablet pc.

For all the artists out there I highly reccomend the tablet pc if you can get one. If not then at least get a wacom tablet. In case you didn't get the memo, you should know that inking and even drawing your roughs on paper has recently become obselete. We all love the feel of drawing on paper, but it's just not time effective. To keep the look of the old style of drawing I use special brushes in photoshop and check the setting, "Shape Dynamics."

So to get my digital ink style I use the following method in photoshop

THE DIGITAL QUILL PEN

1. Make a black rectangle

2. Select it

3. Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset

4. Check "Shape Dynamics"

5. Find 3 or 4 different sizes you like and save them into your brush presets.

Perfectly and Completely

If you have seen the video I produced when I drew this comic the first time then you may have noticed that I completely redid this comic strip. I'm really proud of this strip for many reasons.

First of all, I feel like it was really good writing. I feel like God really inspired me and I realized something very profound. That realization is in the first panel of the strip.

Secondly, I learned from my teacher and pastor Joshua Jung that we should do things perfectly and completely even if we have to do it 100 times or 1,000 times. I liked the writing but I felt that the quality of layout and drawing in the first version did not do it justice. It took a long time to draw it the first time, but as you can tell from the video I was drawing at a very quick pace. In the end I still wasn't happy with it. You can see the first version below.



I kept the original version as a rough draft but I completly changed the spacing of the strip. I edited out the last panel. I completely redrew several of the characters and redid all the linework as well as all the text balloons. I'm still getting used to the comic strip layout which is much different than your wider animation layouts.

Since I was already investing so many hours to make it perfect I figured I might as well go the final step and add color. Painting with color is one of the funnest stages anyways and I've been learning some great techniques including masking and adjustment layers (photoshop). Unfortunately the color came out terrible so I desaturated (turned to black and white) all the layers. I may redo the color yet again later on, but I need to learn color theory first.

Do things perfectly and completely. It's very rewarding. ~Shaun