A page from the in-progress (and very behind schedule) comic, "FUME."
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Mostly sketches. Occasionally a painting. Nothing political other than caricatures reinforcing the truism "Politics is Show Business for Ugly People".
10 comments:
Again I get to be first to say, "Incredible work!". I love the first panel of Fr'Goom in his ship. The Kirby solidity of the form you've achieved is just delicious. I'd love to be able to hold a plastic Fr'Goom toy in my hands.
Just a note regarding the use of "yr" in the dialogue for all your characters: I tend to read it as "yer", which, in my head, makes the characters sound like they are all from Brooklyn.
Is this your pre-made font? I looked very closely at it and some of the letter occurrences seem exactly the same, as though from a personalized computer font, while others are quite different from each other. Anyway, for some reason, I find the dialogue in this strip much easier to read than in previous ones. Could just be I'm getting used to your hand lettering.
Wish we could see more. Do you have other pages in this series that you are holding back?
These are great panels. Drawing the best things for each shot. Great choices for every shot. Low angle for the saucer take off. Great establishing shot of the prairie fly over. Great interior shot showing the people in the car. That's always tough and gets way too mundane with a lot of shot choices. You're moving walls away , floating sets where you want them. And the acting going on is also great. Want to see how this all gets wound together. I hope it gets a great reception when you're done. If it goes big enough, you'll be a guy working for a comic book company with project budgets. Like an author with a commission.
Dudes, thank you for the detailed comments--they really give me a lift. So glad you guys like it!
Tom, great to learn the fonts are getting more readable--I've taken that complaint seriously, and probably 50% of my time/effort (at least) goes into that aspect.
The page is a combo of hand-drawn lettering and two custom fonts (each with a CAPS + lower case letter set that effectively gives me two versions of each letter to choose from when I'm typing the text (so looking at the keystrokes, a line might read: "fR"GoOm, whY ArE yOU...?" but on the page they're all caps)).
I thought making the two font sets would be enuff--but it looked too stiff! So I rasterized almost every text block as I did them and futzed with spacings and shapes and scale to fine-tune the look...you can see a less edited look in the final panel, where everything's pretty untouched. Looks a little too mechanical to me, but part of that is the vectorization process used in the font generator....
Tom, I agree on the "yr" problem. I do it mainly as a matter of space-savings, and in the hope that if I use it universally, it might become invisible to the reader after a while...(I hope??). (side note--I love the dialogue in those old Flloyd Gottfriedson "Mickey Mouse" comics, "Wot'sa matter? H'ain't cha' got none??" (my bad, fake example)).
I DON'T have more finished pages right now (other than the ones shared here over the last 2+ years), but I have a bunch penciled and am trying to ink 'em as fast as I can....It's all going way too slow. Have to speed up!
I am not sure I like my "coloring" job on this page--the page of pure b&w lines looks stronger. I might make another pass (too many shades of gray, too many fussy effects like gradients and soft edges...).
This last week has been a killer--we are preparing to move out for a day (or two!) while exterminators come and clean out the house (our recent bee/ant invasion has proven too much). So won't get much done on this for the next few days...very frustrating.
But the fact you guys are digging the stuff will help keep me going!
Digging it is putting it lightly! I love this... and it ties into the Chubby Cheekers story! So fun! Is this going to be a sort of 'concept album' comic, where all of the stories are somehow connected?
Rick! Yes, it's winding up as a kind of concept-y thing. But hopefully not too precious!
Best panel is the next to the last. The Bug being zapped.
Not precious at all. :)
Did you see that we have a table assignment at Rose City?
I was thinking about the same things that Tom and Ellis wrote. Really entertaining. There might be too much back and forth between the aliens. Move the thought balloon from panel 1 to replace the excuse given in panel 2. And then panel 2's boss response to panel 3 without the ululating remark, with maybe just a sigh in response from Fr'Goom. That way the emptiness and road sign are emphasized. (I got red pen all over my monitor.) However, in this case, the cardinal sin of having a giant word balloon between characters works in the last panel. It makes the boss alien's excitement palatable and no scene-sapping table full of alien faux technology between them. I dig the ship's underside. Just how lanky is the driving guy?
Just noticed you misspelled "sentient" as "sentiet" in the first panel's first word balloon, and "ululating" as "ulalating" in the third panel.
Ben, excellent suggestions--thank you mucho! I like yr ideas. Interesting about the rule "never put a word balloon between characters." I break that all the time!
Tommy--you are so right! I messed up--AGAIN! I'll fix it--all of it.
I swear I will...*sob*
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