April 22nd, 2009
Cannonball Comin’
…One of my favorite Bill Murray lines in the title.
I apologize for the short delay in today’s comic… a bit of an emergency came up earlier. I’ll be posting some goodies later on this week to make up for the delay, along with some small news updates, since the blog section needs some lovin’. Right now, I need some bed!
April 23rd, 2009 at 4:43 am
And everything becomes clear ! [I'm thinking about the canon and the boat we saw in Swoop previous dream]. That’s great, Mike !
Ho and it’s fun too ! At Panel five, I love the expression of the crowd, fighting for swoop’s cape. What a rock star.
I like the direction you take here, Mike.
[He wait, I say that everyweek ! :P]
Julien
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:32 am
He`s totally away with his thoughts. I wonder how he escaped and what Topo`s idea is.
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Everybody seems to like to use that fish for SOMETHING don’t they?
…then again, I would too…it’s a very shiny fish!
Wait…is Max treating Swoop NICELY or is that sarcasm. I can’t tell. I hope it’s the former =D That’d be an interesting twist.
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Julien - Yes. There’s definitely a connection between the boat and cannon fish. And Alex loves the same panel. She even has a favorite bird in the crowd (and in last week’s crowd scene as well). hehe.
HenrikeD - Me too!
Shane - It’s intentionally obscure - we’ll leave it at that.
April 24th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Very nice!
Strange, though, the size of the panel is quite different from last week’s. Is this a half-strip, or 2/3rds, or…?
The strips seem to be in all sorts of different resolutions:
1000×453
1000×814
1000×833
1000×1635
April 25th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Hey Esn,
Anything in the 1000×815/830 range is a full page, which is what this week’s is. I don’t keep track of height so it’s bound to be 10-20 pixels off. Since I produce and scan all original artwork on the same size paper, the dimensions are usually pretty consistent.
The 1000×1600 update last week was two pages, since it was a new chapter and I wanted to do something kind of epic and fun. There have been a few double pages now. In a book format, you’d probably have to flip pages from the bottom up rather than right to left. That way these double pages can be strung together.
The 1000×453 was a half-page. There were two half page updates around a month ago. I was contemplating splitting up the format into a twice a week format, but mainly I was also going through a little burnout. Luckily, I snapped out of it pretty quick!
I think some of the confusion may come from my regular full pages sometimes having two rows, and sometimes three. It depends on how much dialog or story I wanna squeeze into one page. If there isn’t a lot of physical stuff going on, or no real need for elaborate backgrounds, I make it three rows. Otherwise, I try to stick with two.
April 25th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Thanks for the answer.
But all of your work looks like it was painted digitally. Do you mean that you first sketch things out in pencil on an actual sheet of paper?
April 26th, 2009 at 2:42 am
No way, I’m terribly sloppy at drawing in photoshop, and manga studio would feel like cheating as far as achieving the line quality I want. All the line drawing is done traditionally with ink, including background line drawings (which is then digitally colored to a mid-tone). The rest of the coloring is digital aside from some scanned in hand-painted textures here and there.
April 26th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Wow! I’ve just started reading this comic this week, and it’s really great so far. You do an amazing job at drawing backgrounds. And your characters are adorable! I’m an art student, by the way, so I know good art when I see it. XD Loving the story, too. =) Keep up the great work!
April 27th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Do you mean that you don’t do any rough pencil work first, but draw everything in ink straight away?
April 27th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
pure magic, as usual.
April 28th, 2009 at 11:00 am
What happends next? :O
I want to know! I love that story !