Renovation Sort of 6

Hello people, another Sunday has snuck up on me.  As you can tell the comic isn't 100% done; for that I am really sorry. I am in the process of moving this week and so I haven't had the time to hunker down and get shit done.  That said the Renovation page and a gag strip will be done for next week so you can look forward to that.  In the mean time I thought I could still do a blog post for the first time mid process.  So, here we go.

The first thing I should say is that my plan for this week was to do the strip black and white.  this decision was made for two reasons.  Firstly, as I have talked about before I have never really liked colour.  It always makes me uncomfortable and I don't know why.  Secondly, I knew I was moving this week so I decided ahead of time that I could speed things up and get the comic done if I didn't colour it.  And look how that turned out!  In any case I feel like not colouring was a good idea because I didn't want to approach this like I usually do.  Let me explain.

When it comes to process I have been really traditional with Renovation.  I started with rough "pencils" then I "inked" the stuff, then I coloured it all in and added the words last.  When it comes to the drawn elements of a comic that whole pencil, ink, colour thing is like the holy trinity.  In my opinion it is a pretty archaic way of going about things.  But that is the way I have done this because that is the way comics are traditionally made.  As Liza would say balls to you that.  I got to thinking that this three layered methodology sucks because it was made in a physical media mind set (instead of digital) and furthermore it was designed in the traditional comic industry, where you had different people to do each of those steps.  All this brings me to the biggest change I made this week, other than a really rough sketch to sort out layout I am just drawing this weeks comic.  That's it.  It is being drawn in photoshop; as in that is the one and only step.  As much as I hate to harken back to my artschoolspeak I am treating it like a painting.  It is just a bunch of stuff on a flat page.

Now, that said I am still not using the fact that I do this digitally to it's full potential.  As much as I rail against tradition in the previous paragraph I am still not using this new medium to it's full potential. I am fully aware of that, but baby steps.  In two weeks ill come up with something else to disturb, but for now this is it and I hope it has made things a bit more interesting.

Other than that I would say that I like how the page is turning out.  I finally get to draw someone other than Jeremy, so that is a treat.  I particularly like Tod's expression and pose in panel 7.  I didn't think it would be that interesting but I am liking it more and more.  

I think that is it for now.  Have a good week.

-K