Hi gang. I'm sure we've all had nights (or weeks) like this.

I'm trying to get my body clock to adjust to a new time zone. I'm tired early and then I wake up in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep again. Oh curse this modern age that allows us to move about the earth with such ease.

I think I'm getting used to it. How are things with you folks?

BTW, the title of this post is also the name of a song from a well-known movie. Bonus points if you can name it.

Labels: Insomnia

This week's comic references that classic animated series, Spiderman and his Amazing Friends. You may not have realized it, but back in the 80's Peter Parker had it a lot easier than he does now. Nope, he didn't have to juggle school, career and a secret identity as a superhero and still have to make ends meet. Nope, this was the 80's - all Spiderman had to do was lay about in a huge apartment (in New York City, no less) and wait until his services were needed. This clip should give you an idea:



As far as I know, his friends only fought evil. Never once did they help him move across town. Humph. Some friends.

Labels: Spiderman

For the past four years, I've had the pleasure of working with John Zakour to create the daily comic feature Working Daze for United Media. But as many of you may have noticed, a new artist has taken over. What happened?

I decided that doing the drawing duties for Working Daze was just not the best use of my time. It was a lot of work for very little money - a situation that I did not see changing any time soon. Additionally, working more than 100 hours a month didn't give me a lot of personal time. And now that I've started a new job, I want a little more time for things beside drawing lots of cartoons for low pay.

Don't get me wrong - I truly enjoyed working with John these past few years. I also enjoyed hearing from folks who enjoyed Working Daze. I guess what they say is true - you don't know what you've got til it's gone. Don't worry - I'll continue to draw Gamecreature cartoons on a weekly basis.

Don't be a stranger!

Labels: Gamecreature, Working Daze

Sorry folks, I've been having problems connecting to the internet in order to update my blog. Things seem to be working now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Sometimes you don't miss something until it's gone.

Needless to say, I couldn't make the weekly Gamecreature comic without the use of scanners and computers. However, it may surprise you to learn that each comic starts out with pencil on paper, in much the same way that I created comics decades ago. Here's an example from a recent comic:



I've darkened it a bit so you can see what's going on - I prefer keeping it light so I can tell the difference between the pencils and inks. The pencils are scanned into the computer and then I apply the "inks" in Adobe Illustrator. (Back in the old days, we used real pens and bottles of ink to add dark lines to the pencils. I suspect there'll be a time in the future when all comics are done digitally - and we'll still call it inking. You heard it here, first!) Here's how the comic looks after I'm done with the inks:



As you can see, it's awfully white! Time to add some color. I use Photoshop to color the comics. The inks are kept on one layer while the color is added to a lower layer. This is so the color can overlap the ink lines and avoid any little white gaps in the coloring. Here's the finished result.

And that's the short version of how I make my comics. What do you think?

Labels: Comics, digital