First up, there's a BRAND NEW Earthward-Ho strip today! I'm super proud of this one and it's the first of many that are in a brand new format. CHECK IT OUT NOW!
Secondly, I did a interview for Fulle Circle Productions that you can read here: http://www.fullecirclestuff.blogspot.com/
I'm spillin' the beans so you can see what it's REALLY like to work for cartoon big shots like John K., Dave Wasson, Jorge Gutierrez, Gabe Swarr, and Dave Thomas!
Third, Discover the Secrets of Making a Dumm Comic in 5 or so Dumm steps...
For this step by step I'm using the very first panel of this weeks Earthward-Ho! You will notice there is no dialog, don't worry, I didn't forget it, just go to Dumm Comics to look at the words (and complete strip)
The first pass is the thumbnail stage and it's super rough. I'm just trying to figure out where all the characters are going to be as well as where to put the word balloons and how large they need to be to fit the dialog. The main reason these are drawn so rough is because I may go through 3 or 4 version until I'm happy with the basic layout and don't want to get bogged down in details.
The second pass is basically just a tied down version of the thumbnail step. At this point I'm thinking more about the poses and especially (this is my favorite part) the expressions.
The third step is probably the most labor intensive. I take the roughs and scan 'em into the computer. From there I import them into Flash and ink them using the brush tool all the while making tiny corrections to the placement and size of the character, word balloons and backgrounds.
Once it's all inked I type in the font (jivetalk) and color the strip (still in Flash)
Finally, when I'm happy with everything I save it out of Flash as a jpeg and import it into Photoshop to add textures and shading.
All done. See how easy it is??? Be sure to check out Dumm Comics to view the strip in it's entirety!
And Finally, be sure to check out the brand new weekend guest spots starting tomorrow at www.dummcomics.com
