CLENCH & CHEESE BLOG

Methodology

One of the things that I always wanted to do was create a fairly realistic world populated with cartoon-y characters. One of my idols growing up was Herge, the creator of Tintin. His settings, cars, guns, props, etc. were all extremely realistic. This was due to a huge library of files he kept and drew from. Many of the drawings are flat-out copies of the photos, and no wonder. To draw a Citroen in 3/4 view racing down a Belgian street with other cars and people would be a drawing nightmare if you tried to do it from memory. He would often piece the various elements together to create balanced, superbly executed illustrations. As he became more famous, his comics improved amazingly, growing in depth and detail. He had a fine staff and a supportive publisher in addition to a huge network of fans.
I have none of this, but I do, fortunately, have Flickr and Photoshop.

I almost always substantially rework the photos using Photoshop filters, coloring and so forth. I also will add and subtract elements either in Photoshop or Mirage. The basic process is usually thus:

1. Conceive of the idea and rough out the pacing (in my head)
2. Surf around looking for the proper images
3. Bring 'em into to Photoshop and play with them.
4. Bring all the backgrounds into mirage and work them a bit
5. Draw the characters in a foreground layer
6. Export it to Flash
7. Draw the dialog balloons
8. Create the dialog. (This is really backward from the way I have ever worked before... the dialog is the LAST thing I do! Weird, eh?)
9. Bring it into Fireworks and reduce the file size.

More on specific drawing and story techniques at a later date. Thanks for readinig!

Frequent Updates

There's a post on the Drunk Duck Forums about why artists should update. Here's my two cents (totally blowhard pompous):

I think frequent updates show a level of commitment to your comic, this site and your readers. Readers are busy and you often have one chance to get their attention, so the more you post the better your chances. Comic readers have always been fanatically loyal (look at your newspaper) and that can have a couple of different results which I show using examples:
1. Calvin & Hobbes was written and drawn by one person who had such respect for his medium that he fought his syndicate for five years to prevent the characters from being marketed. He had tremendous talent and dedication and was rewarded by people who religiously read his strip. He felt a duty to the readers to produce the very best he could do every time (which was, barring two sabbaticals, every day for almost eleven years).
2. Garfield. This strip was created by one person but is now produced by a team of writers and artists. It was never very funny (IMHO) but has slid into positive crap-ola. The writers steal gags from Charles Schulz, Watterson, Walt Kelly and a host of others (and it's still not funny). They reuse tired old gags and market the character in every conceivable way. They obviously figure that, because people read it anyway, they don't need to be better.

Most fall in between. In webcomics, almost all of us are unpaid. The only way we can show our respect is to produce whenever we can. I hold down a full time job, am raising a family and play in two bands ...and I'm holding myself to a rigorous (insane) schedule of full-color weekday updates. Haven't missed one yet in over 70 strips. I figure it's the least I can do.