Drunk

I had a spare morning, so I went the extra mile on this one and coloured the inked lines in nice complimentary colours to the ones they surround -- I thought of a new way to do it yesterday, and wanted to try it out. It worked pretty well. No faster than the way I was doing it on 'The Magnificent Five,' but looks slightly better. (I'm not sure if there's any noticeable difference at finished size -- I'm more used to seeing it at pixel level when colouring it.)

The idea of colouring inked lines is something I'd been kicking around for a while -- usually reawakened whenever I accidentally autofilled the wrong part of the image -- but I couldn't think of a way to make it look good until I read Scary-Go-Round by John Allison. John Allison is notable for being a consistently great writer and artist, managing to put out five strips a week with consistently amazing artwork, a great ear for dialogue, and more original punchlines than anyone else in webcomics (and much of print media, come to mention it.) One day I shall form a Coalition Of Webcomic Artists Who Are Not John Allison and we'll kick the shit out of him so that the rest of us have a chance.

(The only way I can make myself feel better about it is by reading his earliest strips on 'Bobbins,' his first webcomic project. The early ones are, quite frankly, crap, as are the first few strips by every single other creator out there. Since John relaunched the cast of 'Bobbins' in 'Scary-Go-Round' he's been on top form all the way, the bastard.)

Incidentally, the design of Emma the barmaid is pretty obviously touched in a few places by Scary-Go-Round, namely the facial features.

More stock backgrounds today, as per fucking usual. The bottles behind Emma are cropped from an earlier strip and recoloured to fit better, and the smoky background is from a few days ago. Those horrible red pub seats were all-new today, though. I didn't use my stock ones at all, for once.

For my character designs I use the incredibly original method of remembering people from the pub and redrawing them. I haven't been in for a while, though, and consequently Emma and Old Tommy both look a lot different than the people they're meant to be.

One thing I'm happy with what I've been doing recently is the body language - even without the text, it's pretty obvious Holly's pissed as a fart. Since I switched from drawing each strip on a single page to drawing each panel separately and then putting them together in PotatoShop, I've had the scope to be a lot more expressive and try out more than just talking heads, since I can move things around and crop out parts now, so I don't have to be as paranoid about not leaving enough room for the text to go on. It's surprising how much of a picture you can crop and still retain what you were trying to draw -- I had the full bodies drawn out on the panel where Holly is stumbling around and talking to Old Tommy, but I cut it right down and still managed to preserve the original drunken stupidity and senile discomfort in that panel. Similarly, the last panel extends all the way down to Emma's knees on the original, but it was all unnecessary in the end, so it got cut. I'm sure I'll end up posting a rant sometime when I end up having to cut out part of a panel I was really happy with, but for now I like this new method of working that I've started on 'The Magnificent Five' and 'Year Two' much more than the old method I used for the vast majority of last year's strips. The only downside right now is that it's taking maybe twelve hours to do a strip -- an insane amount of time, though I'm sure that will come down a bit once I'm more used to working like this.

Best bits: Emma the barmaid, Holly's drunken body language.
Worst bits: Those damned backgrounds (again), Old Tommy looking *much* more like Isaac Asimov than intended.