So we’re finally back from our “mini hiatus,” did you miss us? Well you must have since email delivery subscribers have tripled (it went from 10 people to 30 people, heh).
The new comics (1, 2) are a two part series titled Beer Math! We’re not trying to tread on xkcd with the math jokes or anything but we can bust out the nerdy stuff once in a while too y’know If math jokes aren’t your thing, don’t worry we’ll be returning to our “regular” humor in the next strip. Seriously though, what’s “regular” for us?
Next time I move I’m just taking a week off up front. Too many things went goddamn sideways these past few weeks. Moving was simple enough, but we had the mishap with the moving van and car, Brando went on vacation, Jeff went on a mini vacation and The Rob has been swamped with WorkCraft.
I also decided to just throw down and get new gear during this two week mayhem. I got a faster scanner that actually works with my main computer (transferring files adds up when you do make comics weekly) and finally made the jump and bought a Wacom Tablet. The scanner was able to be purchased with the money we’ve made from the Production Drawings (huge thanks to the people who buy those!) but I had to shell out for the tablet with my own money because it’s just too much to float for TrueNuff Comic right now.
After watching Kurtz ink on YouTube I had to get a tablet. I traditionally inked with marker pens that had a straight tip and no line variation. It’s not horrible, but it’s nice when lines have some life to them. I fiddled around with nib/ink pens in university but goddamn are they hard to use. Tablets are also hard to use (I now have a whole new level of respect for Kurtz) but they let me erase and re-draw if I make a mistake and they give me different kinds of lines because tablets are pressure sensitive.
Before I got the tablet I’d draw on paper, ink on paper, scan into the computer, clean up the inks in Photoshop/Illustrator so the lines are clean and then color the comic in Photoshop. A time consuming process! Now I draw roughly on paper, scan the raw pencils as is (no clean up) and then draw/ink over the pencils in Photoshop. This saves a bit of time per comic and gives nice multi-width lines. Maybe it’s the artist-in-me but I’m pretty stoked over that.
Tablets are also letting me draft up super quick super rough versions of the comic (you’ll be seeing them soon in our Behind the Panels forum) for the team to look over. There have been many times that I’ve shown a finished comic to J.Rai only to have him tell me I drew it backwards. Hopefully these test strips will help us curb such problems!
Finally, since I and no longer inking ‘analog’ each comic will only produce half the Production Drawings and the drawings will be pencil only. The ink drawings are now limited edition!
Ah well, at least digital inking is good for the environment 😂
