Printing Woes

So things aren't exactly going as smoothly as planned. I'm having trouble with Hardcoreasaurus and Self-Aware.

Hardcoreasaurus:
So first off, I need a site to host the 50+ MB files. Even if I still had access to my own website, I'm only allowed 100 MB on it. So basically, unless I send them a CD which make the process even longer, I'm screwed. Jenni might be able to help me out with this part though. She has a comcast website thing she never uses.
The other problem is that they only let you pay with PayPal. And my paypal acount is linked to a non existant bank acount as I no longer have ANY bank acount. Besides, it takes 3-4 days to transfer funds and I'm down to like... 19 dollars. Which is actually more than I thought I had. My brother and Jenni both have paypal acounts ready to go but it still takes time to transfer the funds. So WTF. I'm gonna go see how much Kinkos would cost and if they even have the means.

Self-Aware:
So I was going to print this one on the laser (and then make photocopies) along with my creature feature and Jesus Hates Zombies and make like a minis book to give out at stumptown. I was also going to make some Self-Aware books individually. The problem is that I deleted the freaking high res files. So now the only person who has anything even printable is PNCA. And thank god for that. I e-mailed the person who I last gave the files to. Hopefully she can help me. But it still means, since they are just tiffs and not psd files, that I won't be making any edits. oi. Maybe I oughta just redo the whole thing anyways. It was kind of a peice of crap except for like the first page. I dunnoh.

Needless to say, I'm not having the best of luck lately. Don't even get me started on my horrible Monday. You don't want to know.

Preparing for Stumptown

Now that I'm done with the comic, I need to get ready for Stumptown Comics Fest in a month. I always have trouble with written checklists so made myself this:


I know nobody is going to understand all of that but it's what I need for the con. or uh fest. I wonder why they don't call this a convention.

Anyways, I have hardcoreasaurus buttons made already. I'm going to sell them for 2 dollars a peice. Here are those:






Also, here are the buttons for Robopocalypse, the comics colelctive I've recently joined.






I still have a lot to do but I think I can do it all in time.

Toning is like an onion.

Here's an example of some of the steps I have to take when I make these things. I'm going start with a completed panel (actually 2 thirds of a panel) and go down from there.


This is the completed panel.


First I take away the lettering above the art.


Now the lettering that's integrated with the art is gone. Things like shirt logos, poster text, etc.


This one's subtle on this panel, but I've taken away the glow on the Zombies' eyes. On other pages the glow effect is used a lot more.


Next the highlights and shines are taken away.


Now the shadow layer.


Now the shade. Notice how flat it all looks now.


Now the blood is gone.


Sometimes there are complex patterns that will screw up the rest of the base tone if I don't do on a different layer such as the first zombies plaid shirt.


Here is the lineart. No tones, no lettering, no shadows. This is what I start with.


Here's what it looks like when I'm working on the shadow, shade and highlight layers. It's easier to do them on green instead of the base tones or even grey.

There's a lot more that goes into it but I thought I'd give everyone (the two people who read this thing) an idea of what I do when I tone these crazy things.

Finished!

After over four months I've finally finished my 6 grueling pages of Jesus Hates Zombies. If Stephen is fine with it, I'll be posting the pages soon. Otherwise it'll just be a tiny preview. It's been a stressfull four months but I'm just as sad to see this one go as I was when I wrapped on Hardcoreasaurus. Which, by the way I still have to fix typos on and make the fanart page for. And I'll be addressing that pretty soon since I'd like to get it printed for Stumptown. I'm also printing Self-Aware and the Manual for Robots. I still have so much to do to get ready for the con but I still have a bit of time. Next up on my agenda for comics is my creature feature, then either Hardcoreasaurus 2 or Punk is UnDead.

INKS

So for the past couple of days I've made like a squid and inked. I finally today finished the last of the inks. Now I just have to tone the pages and Letter them. I'm hoping to have it all done by the 25th. I'd keep my fingers crossed but I kind of need them uncrossed to finish up the comic.

Defeat

So it's taken me way too long to get these 6 pages done. I know that. Infact I'm considering getting a "normal" job and quitting school at this point. That's mostly because I need to move out. And ironically one of the reasons I need to move out is because I never get any time to work on my comics while I'm here. It's hard for me to work with other people in the room and since this is also my mom's craft room and the family computer room, I hardly get any time in here by myself. Top that off with the fact that nearly every day my brother needs rides which take up a good chunk of my day and the fact that I have other responsibilities by living here makes it really hard to get anything done on comics. Sooner or later I'm going to have to get a normal job anyways and if I'm still going to school than I really don't know what I'm gonna do.

The Learning Continues

First, a progress report:

Page 1 - Done
Page 2 - Inked (save for one panel)
Page 3 - Done
Page 4 - Nearly done. Needs letters and cleaned up tones.
Page 5 - Um... still panels.
Page 6 - Yeah, same deal here.

So, yesterday I went to a meeting for a comics collective that some of my PNCA buddies have started. It was actually pretty cool. We made a Jam comic and I worked on Page 4 inks while we shot the shit about nothing in particular. It was nice to hang out with people I could talk comics to. Really nice.

Stumptown is coming up. I'm a little freaked out. I was hoping by stumptown 2007 I'd have Frogra issues 1-3 finished and I'd have enough money to get a table and tons of cool stuff for the table. Maybe it'll have to wait for the next spokane comics show. Here's a list of what I want to have for this years Stumptown:

Portfolio
-JHZ pages
-Hardcoreasaurus Pages
-Various Illustrations

About 10 copies of Hardcoreasaurus

About 20 copies of Self-Aware

About 10 copies of the whole JHZ anthology or 20 copies of my 6 pages

50 bussiness cards

10 copies of the manual for robots

30 buttons

Some Stickers

A sweet handmade bag to carry it all in.


Maybe I'll get a table if I can come up with around $150-$200 dollars by the middle of August. We'll see. First thing's first, though. I need to get my pages done for Jesus Hates Zombies.

Nevermind

I'm not as worried now.

Just to give anyone reading this an update:
Page 1 - Done
Page 2 - Half Pencils
Page 3 - Pencils
Pages 4-6 - Panels

On a somewhat unrelated note: I had a layout that needed three equal panels horizontal. I was trying to figure out what 9.5 inches devided by 3 was in fractions, when I realized that blue line already marks thirds for you. That makes things easier on a couple of these pages.

Frustration

I wish I had the time to treat comics like a full-time job. Unfortunately I still have four years of school left and I don't get paid for comics.

I've been way too slow with this Jesus comic and I'm afraid that I'm gonna be replaced. Stephen hasn't come right out and said that, but I know I'm the slowest artist of all of them and he posted something about needing a new artist to pull the comic through the finish line. Unless someone actually bailed, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who's slowing the project down.

This really sucks... Maybe he took that last little comic too seriously.

EYE JAY!

Well maybe it's not exactly finished... But the inks are done and that's what's important... for now. Here's a rough idea of what the tones will look like: