Darth Vader and son and son

Oscar has started reading on his own, and I finally remembered to give him a copy of my new book. You can also see some of Oscar's drawings, and some of my own childhood Star Wars drawings, over on the Chronicle Books Blog. And if you're in Chicago this weekend, make sure to come check out CAKE, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo. I'll be there both days, with a minicomic making talk on Sunday at noon.

I'm Really Good At Playing

I was going to write an essay over at GraphicNYC, but realized what I was trying to say worked much better as a comic, and they just posted I'm Really Good At Playing today. Here's a step by step look at the process once I'd scrapped the idea of writing it as a prose essay. First I made a small outline, and expanded that out into a full script. I was basin the dimensions on he biggest size my scanner bed can handle.


I streamlined the script and wrote it out on the back of the illustration board I was drawing the piece on, so that if I was working out at the coffee shop I didn't have to carry the extra piece of paper with me. Because an extra piece of paper can be very heavy.


I was planning on making the comic full color, so I pencilled the piece out a bit more completely than I might normally.


I started to ink and immediately screwed up the first panel - the title - and decided to start over. I tested inks and sizes a little bit on the illustration board first.


So then I re-pencilled the story in non-photo blue, intending to draw it only as black and white line art. I also made the panels smaller and split things up, nearly doubling the number of panels.


Head over to GraphicNYC to see the whole, complete comic.

Teamwork

Sue

Here's the full drawing I did for the Top Shelf website banner, as line art and colored versions. Sue is the Tyrannosaurs Rex skeleton at the Field Museum in Chicago.