Well hot damn people it's a comic. On Friday, just like I said it would be.
So this is where I talk about making this thing. In the interest of full disclosure the soundtrack to making for this was was roughly equal parts Slayer, Girl Talk and the Spice Girls.
I said I was wanting to make it much cartoonier and so that is what I did. I have to say that I had a hard time not crosshatching the hell out of this thing, but I managed to resist so that is good I think. I may have mentioned before that I have a weird relationship with colour. I am not too sure why, but I have never been too comfortable with it. Maybe it has to do with having more of an Apollonian personality, though that might just be a bunch of bullshit projection. In any case when I use colour it tends to be more washed out. However, in my recent watercolour paintings I have been using bolder and bolder colour, so maybe I am getting use to it.
When it comes to style I am not so sure who I am riffing on. The handling of mouths is defiantly influenced by Penny Arcade. I have always liked Mike's handling of mouths as just one swift movement and depending on all of the angles it gives off different expressions. One other thing I have always had trouble with is eyebrows. I tend to think about them too much I think. In cartoons they give a ton of emotion and they don't have to make sense always, but I don't handle things not making sense too well and I think that is the root of the problem. There is this way of doing eyebrows that ya see in anime a bit where you see them through the bangs, but only the line-work. I've always liked that idea, but I never really used it too much before this because I felt that when I did it it was too much of a clutter of lines up in the hair that didn't make any sense.
When it comes to layout I knew what this page would look like before I was done page one. I knew I wanted to have the full phone call in one page and quite suddenly I came up with the idea of having just four or five vertical panels that were defined by the windshield. I was worried that the page might be boring because it is quite simple and nothing really changes, but in the end I think it turned out ok. Really this page for me was about nailing down Jeremy's design and playing with facial expressions. I am not sure how happy I am with the speech bubbles. I had an earlier draft that didn't have black outlines on them and it made them look a bit cuter, but I thought they were harder to look at. Also, I am in love with the idea of each person having a really distinct looking speech bubble. The first time I saw this was in Gaiman's Sandman series and it struck me as such a good idea.
So that is it for this week. You can expect the dramatic conclusion to the Godzilla comic next Friday and page three of Renovation the Friday after that. Hope you all have a great week.
Love and Peace,
Jeff K
PS: I do not condone driving while talking on the phone. Personally the idea always freaks me out and so whenever I get a phone call I either ignore it or pull over. Remember people, safety first. :P
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