I’ve updated the parking lot with objects from the Google Sketchup Warehouse, and replaced the old models of the modular classrooms with a new design that I made yesterday:

click to visit larger image Southport High School student parking lot, for comic Nothing Harmless From Grass Dog Studio

Pretty happy with this progress!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

I’m putting in more detail, so that I have better reference to draw from. Clearly, I won’t be tracing the people:

click to visit larger image Classroom Design for Nothing Harmless, Outside View, Looking In From Grass Dog Studio

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

I’ve got the complete script for the sequel to The Dragon & the Radical and it has been sitting in a sketchbook for the past year. One of the only reasons I haven’t tackled it is that I want to set it in a fictional high school and while I had a strong image in my head what the campus would look like, I didn’t have a good model to work off of.

I finally found Google Sketchup. This seems to have solved my problem:

click to visit larger image Sketchup of Southport Highschool Campus for comic Nothing Harmless From Grass Dog Studio

This isn’t finished. But it is close enough I could probably get started sketching out the pages of the comic if I wanted to.

Here are some other views of the campus:

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

There is already a FenCon! Blast!

I'll have to come up with a different name for my comic's 10 year anniversary party. That is, if I have one.

Edit: on the other hand, now I feel morally obliged to attend the real FenCon.

For those interested in taking a gander at my line art alone (or anyone who wants to try their hand at coloring it!) here’s a 600 dpi jpg of the scan:

http://www.grassdogstudio.com/contest/HFR_page1.jpg

Be warned, though. It’s about 3.7 megs in size!

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

This is what I’ve been working on over the weekend on my camping trip:

click to visit larger image Harmless Free Radicals. From Grass Dog Studio

It’s very close to the style of artwork I’ve been trying to emulate all these years. And yet so many steps behind. I expect it to slowly evolve to the proper look with each page.

I also hope to be able to put at least this level of attention to detail into my plein air sketches.

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

click to visit larger image Possible character designs for new comic From Grass Dog Studio

Edit: Ack! I really like this style of inking, but I’m not good enough to use it for a whole graphic novel yet! Also, it’s not really right for Harmless Free Radicals. I need to keep practicing it for something else, though. Oh, yes.

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

Because I just have to share something and because a couple people have asked for a hint, here’s a tiny snippit of dialog from the Revived Harmless Free Radicals:

Brenna: AT THE TIME, MY FATHER WAS WORKING FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR OPTICAL ENGINEERING, SO WE HAD RECENTLY MOVED HERE FROM FRANCE AND GOT OUR VISAS. WE WERE ONLY GOING TO BE HERE FOR MOST OF THE YEAR. WHICH MEANT THAT I WAS EFFECTIVELY AN EXCHANGE STUDENT…

[cut to a scene of the crowded middle school hallway, a young Brenna is clutching her books to her chest looking confused but stoic. a classmate is scowling at her.]

Classmate: WHO’RE YOU?

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

New Harmless Free Radicals is up:

http://harmlessfreeradicals.com/?comic_id=2&pindex=293

This entry has been crossposted from Drawing Contraption. You may comment here or there, it\'s all the same!

But is it Harmless Free Radicals material?

click to visit larger image Ian Robertson: drawn while looking at cartoons by Osamu Tezuka, inked in my own style, colored like Nobody Scores From Grass Dog Studio

New Harmless Free Radicals page is up:

http://harmlessfreeradicals.com/?comic_id=2&pindex=291

This encounter is going to be another doozey.

All of my comics have been taking a hit on their schedules lately. I kind of feel like taking another week off to get back on track. But if I buckle down, I should be able to produce this week's comics and get next week's going in time. Expect HFR later today.

It's a difficult page I'm working on and took more planning than I had expected. In a way, partly because my comics don't have a huge readership at the moment, I feel like I should be focusing more on quality than schedule right now. When a comic comes out once a week, it seems to have more leeway on just when it updates, anyway. I've seen some wildly popular comics with extremely erratic update schedules.

But it makes me feel like I'm starting at square one. And when I go through my morning list of comics to read, and I see them all updating like clockwork, it makes me feel unprofessional. And that's not very encouraging.

It can be hard to put discouragement aside and kick some ass, but if I don't I'll fall further behind. So it's bootstrap time!

Let's see how many drawings I can get done today!

That's it, I quit drawing comics.*

With my luck, the next character to walk into reality will be the faux Fenmere, and that cannot be allowed.

* Note: It's locked, probably to protect the people who own the names and my friend who handles their accounts.

Suffice it to say, a couple of my characters coincidentally share names (and in one case, age) of real people in Bellingham. I should probably not name names here, so as to protect my friends' career. I apologize for the mysterious link!

As my morning warm-up, I inked this traditionally. Then, so as to make it more interesting for everyone and to stretch myself a bit further, I applied some simple shading using the pencil tool and my tablet in Photoshop:



I think that next time I shall plan out the shading in pencil first, so that I have a guide to use one the computer. I can filter out the light pencil so it won't show up in the scan, and I'm betting at thinking in pencil right now.

To save time and practice my tablet, I inked this one digitally (though not so carefully). I've got a non-repro blue version printed out for taking the brush to it. I expect my second version to be much better:

click to visit larger image Breaking down the Worm: finished pose, digitally inked and colored From Grass Dog Studio

I'm caught up enough with my comics to dink around a bit (though I've also been writing today as well). I've also been recovering from my mass beer drinking last night, so I'm not in top form with my art. A good time to break it down:

click to visit larger image Breaking down the Worm: finished pose, brush & ink with digital coloring From Grass Dog Studio

click to visit larger image Breaking down the Worm: Pencil sketch w/ Illustrator non-repro guide From Grass Dog Studio

I broke open a new package of paper today. It's OfficeMax 67 lb. White Bristol. My god. I need to get that stuff in larger sizes! Of all the paper I've worked on so far, it lets the brush keep its reservoir of ink the longest. And it's deceptive about that, too. It has the same apparent surface texture as the other bristol board I've been using, and it's rougher than the Cougar natural that I have in 16" x 20" sheets. But, apparently, it's got very low absorbency. So, the result is that the texture draws just enough ink to make a solid line and leaves the rest for more work!

Also, it's some of the cheapest paper of its kind I can find in town.

Since I feel the strong need to insert him back into my comic, and yet to finally be able to draw him consistently in such a way that he's easy to color, I've finally worked out the proportions to Fenmere, the Worm:


click to enlarge

Turns out that this looks a hell of a lot like a page from a How to Draw... book.

I'm going to pencil and ink these two poses now, so you'll get to see the results.

In the mean time, I'm thinking about making an armature for him. But I don't have everything handy that I'd need to do it. I've got the Super Sculpy and the toaster oven, but not the rest. I'll need to do a little research and then fill out an acquisition request form...