Here’s a short comic about the future. I’ve been using this technique of subtle digital color over colored pencil for several recent strips – it masks some of the weird color variations in the color pencil scans, and shifting the colors can affect tone within the strip in interesting ways. It also allows me to use white panel borders.
–
TCJ 250
TCJ 259
TCJ 269
Nemo, ed. Rick Marschall (various issues, didn’t keep good track)
Portrait, Simon Hanselmann
Nowhere #1-5, Debbie Dreschler
Never Comes Tomorrow, Frank Santoro
Ganges #1-6/Wild Kingdom/Gloriana/Comix School #1-5/Curses, Kevin Huizenga (reread)
Bento’s Sketchbook, John Berger
Mixed Reviews, Aaron Cometbus
When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
–
I’m posting this later than usual because I wrote a longer piece about how I spent a portion of July. It was important for me to get a fair amount done in July because I knew it’d be entering a busy few months – I’m in them now, writing this in late August – and I wanted to have some more ‘mechanical’ work prepared for myself for that period. Digital production, drawing strips that were already planned, etc.
Cartoonists often have a weird (bad) relationship with productivity, but it is undeniably a nice feeling when you’re making good work. Not killing yourself to meet a deadline, just smoothly moving forward at a good pace and being happy with the work you’re making. I got a lot done in July.
I also continued to work on Kickstarter fulfillment for Warmer. I spent a lot of time procrastinating on the two custom comics that were one of the higher reward levels. These are short comics about predicted climate effects in the backer’s city or region. In both cases, I asked the backers what they wanted and they had some fairly specific ideas. In part, they wanted comics that they could share widely and that would be somewhat educational. I spend a lot of time hesitating because I haven’t made much (any?) work that could be described as educational. I didn’t know how to make a comic that fulfilled the reward, which is after all the point, and still felt like one of my comics.