deadlines make my head hurt!

Well, one of my day job projects is reaching a way-point. The HIV science comic written by Martin Powell, and 'the committee', is almost finished. With a meeting tomorrow I am sure there will be more changes, but for the most part it is finished. At least the print version. It will need some tweeking for the Ipad version I am sure.

And I am glad, and sad. Glad because it has been a long drawn out process. And sad because I have been able to work on it from home. It has been so great to not have to drive into work, which if I haven't mentioned is 52 miles one way. With rising gas prices and no raise in over two years it is getting tough. Also the dog has loved having me around all day.

Another good thing is I have another one to do starting next month so maybe I will get to work from home some more. Which is great since we got nine inches of snow the other day.

Also I am going to a new doctor, a specialist, on the 25th. Hope some good comes from it. My arm, wrist and hands have been getting worse by the week.

Work has slowed on all side projects because of this, which I hate!!!!! This has got to stop for sure.

Anyway thought I should update all the loyal Legionnaires out there.

With this big project out from under my belt, maybe now I can get back to the old schedule and be able to turn out more night work.

Also point to notice in the above piece is that except for some pencils this piece is all digital. Digital inks, some digital pencils, and of course color. I am a horrible colorist for sure so please forgive that part of it. I try to do my best on coloring but it is my weakest process. Hopefully I can do better when the Captain Spectre title is ready to be colored. Wish I could afford a colorist, but with medical bills lately and stuff there is no way.

I apologize for the lack of updates lately.....sorry.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Things are just nuts right now. With so many things going on. Then the holiday season is always a trying time for me. How to spread what little money I have between my two sons and their families. It is more of a depression with me. Hell, my two sons are way better heads of families than I ever was. They are more successful with it all. I am very proud of them. Of course I consider myself the prime example of what NOT to be or do.

Also with the cold weather the arthritis is worse. I am going to move up the food chain of doctors, mine is sending me off to a specialist.....oh boy is that probably going to turn out bad. Well I guess my doctor is right, I shouldn't rely on just pain meds for it all. I just don't think they understand tho.....I will not let them cut on my hand....hell, took 57 years just to draw as bad as I do.....I don't want to relearn it all over again.

Anyway enough of my depression......above is the cover for the HIV comic I am working on. This thing has a tight deadline and is keeping my very busy. I am finding a bit of time to continue work on the KiGor short story. And of course time to work on the story for the Captain Spectre first issue.

I really want the first issue of Captain Spectre to make a hit. So I am working extra hard on the story. I hope everyone will be happy with it.

Again sorry for the lack of updates, I will try harder to keep everyone in the loop. Thanks for tuning in all you Loyal Legionnaires!

Legionnaire Alert! an actual update.

Well Loyal Legionnaires, here it is. I do again apologize for three weeks between updates. But life just can't be helped. With KiGor, the day job, this damned winter, and all I just can't seem to get enough hours in the day.

Anyway, here is an almost totally digital strip. It still has some bugs in it. Line thickness is one of the other things I didn't mention in the previous post. With all that zooming in and out, it is so easy to lose your vision of line thickness. Even with a second viewing window open, you photoshop users will know what I mean, it is tough.

Also if you notice there is another experiment going on in this long panel. Instead of breaking it all up into three panels to show the passing of time, I took extra care to lay the panel out in a progression of people and time. This is another advantage to using photoshop to composite the piece. I get to play around with placing the actors where they will do the most good.

So I hope the experiment worked. The dialog progress's from left to right with the actions of the people and the time of the panel's duration.

Anyway enough explaining, just enjoy yet another cliffhanger leading to the last cliffhanger of the chapter. Which is coming soon.....I hope.

Exploring new frontiers....

As I mentioned before, I have been toying with the idea of digitally inking drawings after doing the compositing in photoshop. Well the latest Captain Spectre update, which I will post a bit later today, was done that way. I think one of the main things I have to grapple with in the process is that there isn't a very good tool in photoshop to simulate a real brush. Sure there is the brush tool with pressure sensitive controls from my Wacom tablet. But they just don't seem the same as fighting a real brush with liquid ink and the texture of the paper. They will never be able to build that feeling into a computer. The one good thing about it is zooming in and out. With the old eyesight going, the zoom tool is a blessing.

Also this process allows a bit more freedom in my drawings. What I mean by that is that I can draw each person separately and composite them together in photoshop. This allows for what I feel is sometimes a weakness in some artists layouts. A lot of times I see a lot of 'close ups' in comics that are just pieces or parts of people, and sometimes they just don't seem right. With this method I am more like a camera man on a movie set. Zooming in and out until I get the right composition to tell the story. Of course that process satisfies some of my 'want to be a director' fad.

The drawings I have posted show a bit of the close up file, which is pretty small in the finished strip.

It is a process that could save time in the long run. But again a fall back. Traditionally artists make money off of the original art pages they take to conventions and such. This way leaves no original....all I have from this weeks strip is a bunch of sketches, and a photoshop digital file of the composite and the inks. So nothing to sell. It is a problem a lot of artists are dealing with now. How to make some extra money without actually having art to sell.

Of course I have never had to worry about that problem, since no one really buys anything from me that I have for sale. ha. So what am I worried about.