3 posts from December 2008

I'm supposed to be practicing for the audition, or cleaning. Bleh. Here's a sneak peek at something I hope to be working on early next year.

Inro-rough

Zombiesplode! My guest comic for Hijinks Ensue is now live. I thought I'd post a bit about what went into making this, warts and all:

Pencil-char

I had a flash of inspiration immediately after Joel asked me to do a guest comic, one that involved a three-page story about the whole HE gang (Denise included, to make a team of four) fighting off a horde of L4D zombies to a full-length zombified parody of "The Night Before Christmas" and almost escaping by helicopter as dawn breaks... then Joel wakes up and realizes it was all a dream... except that Josh has respawned in the closet and no one lets him out. I'm kind of glad that idea got rejected, because I'm pretty sure I would have gone insane trying to draw it. (Overenthusiastic fangirl, much?)

Pencil-zombie

My usual modus operandi is to pencil by hand, ink by hand, scan the inks and then color in Photoshop (which is what I did for the JoCo T-shirt). I decided to try inking in Photoshop this time, using the basic pressure-sensitive brush (I have a Graphire 3). It's probably a lot faster with a Cintiq--I like the results but I feel like it took me way longer to ink on the computer than it would have by hand. But then again, scanning hand-drawn inks also involves cleaning up artifacts. Jury's still out on that one.

Ink-char

Below you can see I moved the Infected mob to accomodate the panel size. I did something stupid here: rather than drawing this whole thing in one go on a big piece of paper, after I did thumbnails I drew all of the panels separately and assembled them during the coloring process. Don't do that. Bad things happen. Psychologically, it makes you feel like you have six comics to finish rather than one. I think it was at this point in the week when my Twitter updates started to get kind of incoherent. I totally had large-ass paper I could have drawn on but for some reason I didn't use it. I got around the issue of limits on what would fit in my flatbed scanner when I did the T-shirt by cutting up the drawing and then scanning pieces of it.

Ink-zombie

For the panel with the guys sleeping, I did the characters as a separate layer from the background. For all the other panels, I flatted and colored characters and background on the same layer. Flatting was done with the polygonal lasso tool and the paint bucket, and shading and highlights were done with the basic brush tool. I seem to gravitate towards a more hand-drawn, hand-colored look even as I make my (somewhat ungainly) transition into digital cartooning.

Color-char

I actually was just going to draw Boomer Santa about to upchuck on Josh's head, but in looking for reference shots of caribou I found one reindeer that had the exact same expression on his face as the reference image for the Smoker...

Color-zombie

Sesame candy

As something of an apology to some of the people who have had to put up with my deadline crazies this month, I've been making sesame candy. And to make amends to you few dear readers for having fallen off the blogging horse again, I'll also tell you how to make it. If you have a candy thermometer (and if you do not, why in Christendom not?!*), this is a cinch to make, attractive, and delicious. Happy Holidays!

Ingredients

1 c black sesame seed
1 c white sesame seed (I replaced this partly with some pumpkin seed I had)
1 tbs anise seed (optional)

1/2 c honey
1/2 c brown sugar
3 drops vanilla flavoring

butter for pan

Equipment

large skillet
small saucepan
9x9" baking pan
cutting board
candy thermometer

Directions

Grease the baking pan with butter, and set aside. In the skillet, roast all seeds on medium for 5 minutes, or just until aromatic. Set aside.

In saucepan, combine honey, sugar, and vanilla. Either keep the candy thermometer in a cup of warm water, or put it in your saucepan now. While stirring, slowly bring to a boil. Check temperature with candy thermometer. When syrup hits 275 degrees, remove pan from heat and add the sesame seeds, stirring constantly. Turn mixture into the pan. Spread evenly. Let it cool 5 min, then flatten the surface with a spatula.

Let cool an additional 10 min, or until the mix is warm but firm, then use spatula to pop it out of the pan onto the cutting board. With a greased knife, cut into squares (or rectangles, or whatever). Let cool to room temperature.
Place into wax paper or candy cups to serve.

PROTIP: if you misjudge the cooling time for the candy and it gets too hard for you to cut (as I did D:), heat up some water in the skillet and place the baking pan in it to soften the sugar again.

*Earl Grey ftw.