Last week I wrote a bit about how I handled writing dialogue and how it relates to my artwork, so this week I’d like to follow up on that topic and share a bit about my process for writing stories. It’s an area where I have less technical training than I do in the drawing aspect of comics ...
2014-07-11 08:49:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Comics aren’t unlike written stories. We substitute a lot of the descriptive text- the words outside the quotation marks- with our art, which illustrates the world and the things that happen in it. But we’re humans, we’re social creatures. We communicate a great deal...
2014-07-04 08:32:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's my old palette file I used when I laid out different flat tones for different areas. I'd put two on my Photoshop paintbrush at a time- one foreground and one background- and hit X to cycle back and forth. I'd go through my whole page putting each pair of colors were they needed to go, do the ...
2014-06-27 08:38:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Characters are the beating heart of my stories. They’re the people whose lives we follow, whose pasts we see passing impressions of and whose futures are ultimately tied up in one anothers’ hands. In addition to being the narrative focus they also serve as a visual anchor, guiding...
2014-06-27 08:28:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Inking isn’t really what my art is known for but it’s nonetheless an integral part of my comic-making process. I’m a painter at heart and over the years I’ve experimented with different ways of inking my comics so the subjects pop and the process is that little bit quicker to ...
2014-06-20 08:41:45 +0000 UTC View Post
This week’s journal is going to explore the ways I like to design characters for upcoming or current arcs in the comic, which means there might be some minor plot spoilers here. I won’t spoil anything major, and if I do (since I can’t spoiler tag a Patreon post) I’ll convert t...
2014-06-13 07:01:47 +0000 UTC View Post
This week’s journal post is going to be a bit more visual-oriented than the others. I’ve been choosing what to talk about based on what state my comic happens to be in every Thursday- assuming I haven’t been working on other non-NDA projects that week too- and this Thursday I ha...
2014-06-06 07:51:20 +0000 UTC View Post
One of my favorite parts of planning a comic, and one of the most meticulous and time-consuming for me to actually do, is work the camera. All of my comics start out as a visual narrative in my head, like a private cinema that only I can see, and it plays over and over again, changing...
2014-05-30 08:21:59 +0000 UTC View PostIn the last update we talked about the foundation of how the games will build missions for players to challenge, so this week we're going to talk about how the player will actually be able to challenge those missions. Player controls are absolutely vital to a game being successful- anyone growing up...
2014-05-23 03:50:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Animation is a very powerful artistic tool, being able to create the illusion of life from shifting shapes opens a door to a universe of possibility: you're not bound by actors, props, location, time, weight, space or anything; you're creating it all and you can create anything your imagina...
2014-05-23 03:49:27 +0000 UTC View PostI've been thinking about making a video game for probably as long as I've been making my comic. When I first started Dead Winter I always thought of the characters in terms of what stats or abilities they might have in a tabletop RPG setting. I never had a comic shop near me growing up so I never go...
2014-05-16 06:34:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's a quick look at my thumbnail process both for this page and a couple previous pages. Thumbnails are very basic, just block in my frames and where the figures are positioned visually with maybe a blurb about what the speech in that panel should be about. The sketch phase doesn't always adhere ...
2014-05-16 05:34:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Over the years I've developed an evolving multi-step process to making comics that has proven very useful in organizing and producing my pages. In order the phases are 1) Thumbnails, 2) Sketches, 3) Inks, 4) Flats, 5) Tone Foregrounds, 6) Lettering & Word Balloons, 7) Paint Backgrounds. This wee...
2014-05-16 05:27:01 +0000 UTC View Post