October 2010

2010-10-29

Fear & Loathing in the “Holiday Section”

Last night a department store’s holiday section disturbed me so much that I had to photograph it:

The holiday section at Target

I know it looks pretty tame, but look closer. To the far right we have Halloween supplies. Far to the left we have more Halloween supplies (it’s hard to tell here, but those letters hanging from the ceiling say, “COSTUMES”). In between, we have Christmas supplies. Three days before Halloween.

I am not only an expert on time from having drawn comics about it, I am also an ordained minister, so I know what I’m talking about when I say THIS IS WRONG.

2010-10-27

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.14

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 14

I drew this page at 4:25 PM when I started feeling stuck. I knew I wanted this scene in the story and that it would be fun to draw, so I skipped ahead to here. When I got stuck advancing this part of the story, I went back to the other part, and vice versa.

2010-10-15

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.8

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 8

Finished this one at 1:34 AM, exactly an hour after the previous page.

My roommates at SPX this year liked to have the TV on, and at some point they turned to wrestling, which I hadn’t seen in years. It, uh…made quite an impression.

2010-10-13

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.7

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 7

Finished this one at 12:34 pm, after working on the other section for a while, walking around the library, and going out for some food. After that I set up shop on the main floor instead of the basement, where I’d started.

I’d originally wanted to show the characters going after these items as a group, but realized I didn’t have enough space and condensed it down to what you see here (not that I had it planned out in any detail).

2010-10-12

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.6

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 6

I completed this page at 8:30 PM. Most pages probably took me around 45 minutes to actually draw, but then there was planning, deciding, eating, taking breaks, and just plain goofing off, which is where some of the longer spans between page completions came from.

2010-10-11

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.5

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 5

I completed this page at 6:54 PM, which sounds like I was falling way behind, but that’s because I started drawing pages out of sequence. Thanks to that bit of planning I did up front, when I started feeling bogged down I could skip around. This also helped me make sure the most important parts of the story made it in, since I didn’t have the best sense of how much space things would take up. I basically ended up bouncing between two moving points in the story until they met up, then drew the end pages.

Anyway, after the last page, I finished the next one I drew at 4:25 PM, which means I was actually closing the gap between where I was and where I needed to be.

2010-10-06

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.3

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 3

Page 3, finished at 2:51 PM. I wanted the main character to look a little like Harry Potter, but unfortunately he looks like Young Cartoon Me. The glasses and haircut are different from mine, but I guess people with glasses all look alike – especially when you draw them in a simple cartooning style.

2010-10-04

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus p.1

Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus page 1

Here’s the first page of my third 24-hour comic, successfully completed in 23 hours. This was drawn as part of the Trees & Hills 24 Hour Comics Day event in Montpelier, VT. The library interior & exterior on this page are based on the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, where the event was held. The event started at 11:00 AM, but I took an hour to do a little story planning, so I started drawing at 12:18 and finished this page at 12:57. I figured the time spent planning would save me time later, which I think was  true.

I didn’t finish the next Headville page in time for today, but that will appear Thursday, and Headville will continue to update on Mondays & Thursdays. I’ll post pages from “Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus” on the remaining weekdays until “Spring in Headville” finishes, then post “Sam and the Prophecy…” every weekday until it’s done. After that I’ll go back to Monday & Thursday updates of whatever’s next.

2010-10-02

24-Hour Comics BLARGH@#$*

Greetings, world – I am writing to you from Hour Ten of the Trees & Hills 24-Hour Comics Day event at the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier, VT.  I just finished page 10 of my story “Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus,” so I’m only a little behind schedule, but I’m already too tired to bother including hyperlinks in this post.

I got my schedule a little mixed up and won’t have the next page of “Spring in Headville” ready for Monday, so here’s the plan: Monday I will post the first page of “Sam and the Allrus”, then I’ll continue with my “normal” Monday-Thursday updates. BUT! On every other weekday, I’ll continue updating “Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus”. There will be so many comics! I won’t promise that they’ll be good comics, though.

Okay, I’m going for a short walk, and then back to the grind…

2010-10-01

End of month productivity report

Well, my first month trying to draw a half-page of finished comics every weekday has passed. How did it go?

Drawing a half-page every weekday would have yielded me 11 pages in September; I actually drew 15.25. Not bad! Except I hit 11 pages before the month was half-over because of a procrastination-induced marathon and some fun drawing at SPX, so it wasn’t steady production. In the second half of the month I fell a bit short of the target rate, skipping some days and drawing a little extra on others.

Still, though it didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped, I drew more often than I had been before. I published the last issue of Square Dance at the end of May, and from the beginning of June through the end of August, I drew 8 finished pages of comics – so I’ve definitely improved. October will have a spike in page count because tomorrow is 24 Hour Comics Day, but beyond that I hope to just keep drawing steadily.