I like how Big D’s expression turned out in the last panel. It perfectly captures his mood.

Phew, guess it was just Browny that they heard outside.

Or was it…?

Wow.

I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m still sitting here awestruck that I just drew the above. I totally wasn’t planning to go crazy with the art; I wasn’t even looking particularly forward to churning this one out today (hence it was late), but as soon as I sat down, it just sort of…came out.

I started with Sarah in panel one, and right from the start she turned out exactly like I imagined, darting across the sidewalk with a sort of playful innocence and wonder. Women are pretty difficult to draw right, especially in a minimalistic style, so that was a big motivation booster right there.
Then I did all the backgrounds. I looked at two photographs for reference, but I made a case of it not to trace anything, or even copy it, I wanted to do this all by myself. So I looked at them once, taking in the general layout, and went to work. And it’s…I just can’t believe I really drew that. Everything just felt right.

This is what making comics is all about.

If you want to take a closer look at the art, you can click here to see it in it’s original size, or here for just the background art.

I enjoy getting a little philosophical sometimes, and it’s something that I want (harhar) to convey in my work more too. I’m a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes & Cat and Girl who both employ similar writing techniques. It’s hard work, but very satisfying.

Back to traditionallly drawn. Didn’t have a lot of time this week so this method is much quicker, and I’ve gotten to a point where you can’t really tell whether it’s regular or tablet-drawn.

True story.

It’s another fully digital strip! It was nice to have two days off this week so I could spend a few hours straight putting these together. I can imagine how much fun it must be to be able to do this every day when you’re a pro.

The update schedule has been a little wonky lately. I’m thinking of moving the Wednesday back to the Thursday, so it’s a little more spread-out across the week. And I’ll start inking again soon.

I noticed wrapping up this strip that I had forgotten to make gutters for like the last four strips. Oops.

My hobo caricature catalog is a little limited.

I’m liking these sketch editions. They may not be that flashy, but I can cheat a little bit on details by just scribbling a bit, and it still looks good.

Get your minds out of the gutter people!

Another sketch edition. For some reason I thought I’d be funny to give Big D a baseball cap. He seems like the sort of person who would wear that on his spare time.

Whenever I want to get real simple with the colors, I always end up trying something new or just spending way too much time on it. I wasn’t going to color this strip at all at first, but it didn’t sit well. It’s not really drawn for black and white, it needs color. I didn’t want to go grayscale so I tried out SinTitulo’s coloring style which I really liked. The panels aren’t set up very well for it, so there are some blending issues, but overall I like this palette. I gave the balloon outlines a brown color aswell so they wouldn’t demand too much attention over the art itself.

Concerning the storyline, I have no idea where it came from. I was going for something else before (and struggling with it) when this popped in my head. It was probably a combination of good weather, lingering story ideas from Ted’s Caving Page and The Mothman Prophecies, and listening to too much A Fine Frenzy.

Tom likes nature, and comes to the park to reflect sometimes. Not sure if Gavin enjoys it as much.

I was inspired by a drawing I saw a while ago, and so I decided to draw in the entire park background with my tablet, instead of simplifying it with inking or using a photo background like I did way back when. It took a good while, but it turned just like I wanted. I’m proud of this one.

Can Kat get back to the diner in time to warn Big D before it’s too late?

Sometimes you have to sit and write a strip, crossing out possible panels and looking for that perfect punchline. And sometimes you blink your eyes and there’s a complete strip idea in your head. This one was the latter.

It has been a while since Tom was involved in ‘ladies business’, so he’s a little rusty. And on a night like this, I don’t think you can blame him. Lucky for him it seems this girl can appreciate his quirks…

I don’t often draw realistic these days, so it’s nice to do an occasional panel like this. Coloring becomes increasingly important the more realistic you draw.

Tom has one of his Noir daydreams again as the gang arrives at the rival diner. Is his gut feeling right? Who is really behind all this?

This is the prelude to the big storyline that will start in January. I didn’t work on DD for a while because I had to come up with a good start for it, and the other day this came to me, so I was pretty motivated, which is why it’s also in color. Thinking about it now, I kind of set myself up by placing it in the evening. If I don’t color the rest, I’ll atleast have to add some greytones to keep the illusion of darkness. Damn virtualphotgrapher and it’s fancy color filters!

Part of the Midsummernightmare storyline. I had trouble focussing and getting things done because of the weather, so I decided to mold that into a story. This series of comics is probably the silliest yet.

Part of the Midsummernightmare storyline. I had trouble focussing and getting things done because of the weather, so I decided to mold that into a story. This series of comics is probably the silliest yet.

Part of the Midsummernightmare storyline. I had trouble focussing and getting things done because of the weather, so I decided to mold that into a story. This series of comics is probably the silliest yet.

Part of the Midsummernightmare storyline. I had trouble focussing and getting things done because of the weather, so I decided to mold that into a story. This series of comics is probably the silliest yet.

The start of the Midsummernightmare storyline. I had trouble focussing and getting things done because of the weather, so I decided to mold that into a story. This series of comics is probably the silliest yet.

Tom enjoying some good music.

Trying out some new character design. It is revealed that Gavin does not enjoy being belittled.