AR Comics, Drawing Board by Cej
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Drawing Board
My original plan was to use word balloons, with the characters saying
1: “Are you sure there are fireworks tonight?”
2: “Yes, Yes. Any minute now.”
But then I decided that this looked a little like a typical New Yorker cartoon. And, since I intended this as a thank you card to Mark’s parents for hosting me in the Hamptons over July 4th/birthday weekend, I figured they might appreciate the New York flavor. So word balloons become a caption (in Times New Roman italic, naturally).
I was a little concerned that the joke might be harder to understand without the extra exposition, but JoAnn got it immediately, so that helped confirm that it was a good choice.
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AR Comics, Drawing Board by Cej
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I like Curt Conners. I think he’d be a good supporting character in the Spidey comics. But that’s not how he’s used. Nope, if you see Conners, you can bet you’ll see the Lizard in an issue or two. A fight ensues, and then Conners disappears again for a few years.
Not that the characters in my comic have anything to do with Spidey. No, my comic is about completely different people.
I was originally planning to have a big title on this one. But it seemed less and less necessary, especially as the end of the month deadline loomed. But because I left room for it on the original page, I actually made my panels too small. I had to heighten them a bit in photoshop to get all the text to fit. That’s why the word balloons are a bit funky.
I wasn’t sure whether to color this one or not, but I figured I’ll never get better at it unless I keep practicing.
Thanks for the assist from the AR gang.
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AR Comics by Cej
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FaceBook is okay in small doses. But mostly, the signal to noise ratio is so low that it’s really a waste of time for me. I have no idea how people spend hours on it. To me it’s just so boring. When the comments aren’t inane they are infuriating. And why do all these people who used to hate me now want to be my friend?
Still thinking of tweaking this one some. But essentially this is what I intended. I’d still like to think of a pun-title; and I’d appreciate feedback on whether the 2nd panel is clear. I’m not sure whether the comments are inane
enough. Does it need more/less? Should panel 1 contain “deep” thoughts, or would that be overkill?
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AR Comics, Drawing Board by Cej
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Drawing Board
I suspect that no one will appreciate this comic (especially people born before 1965 or after 1975), but I had been giggling about it for a couple of days, so I had to slap it together. This is a mix of pen & ink and Photoshop. It came out pretty much as I envisioned, although I would have liked to have figured out a better layout for the text.
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AR Comics, Drawing Board by Cej
Click to enlarge.
Drawing Board
I have this crazy idea of doing a mini comic of “How Things Work” that spoofs and/or critiques any number of social phenomena. However, given that I’ve managed to do 2 comics on the idea in the last 8 years, don’t hold your breath. This is the other one.
As to this comic in particular, I’ve always been a little troubled about the whole fate vs. free will issue, and throwing in God and prayer only muddies the waters further. Let’s face it, the internal logic of most belief systems is fuzzy at best. I have no doubt that prayer can offer meditative and palliative help for some individuals, but that’s not exactly the same as bringing the magic.
With this comic I wanted to try a new inking technique. You squirt the ink directly on the page and then spread it around with your brush rather than dip your brush in an ink well. The tecnique had mixed results for me, especially as the ink had a tendency to spray rather than drip nicely. I suspect with a better squirter and a comic with more black spaces I might have more luck. This particular comic doesn’t really require much black—I sorta made up the black backgrounds in order to try out the technique (although I kind of like the effect).
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AR Comics by Cej
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Background
So I’ve been trying to be good and work on ArmzRace stuff at least once a week (in addition to putting out at least one comic a month). But somedays I have no inspiration whatsoever. That’s when I turn to my sketchbook, which is full of stupid ideas like this one. I figured, “I can crank that out pretty quickly.” That may sound cheesy, but sometimes you need a quick “win” to get back in the game. This (admittedly weak) idea has been sitting in my sketchbook for most of a decade.
I just recently finished reading another book by Jeffery Brown. The guy has some great comics, some okay comics, and some pretty bad comics; but he has hundreds of comics. It seems that he makes a comic out of everything he thinks—good or bad. Somedays I think that’s a better model to follow than my usual stance of: if I can’t get it perfect, why bother?
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AR Comics by Cej
This was really more an experiment with my Wacom tablet (which is an electronic sketchboard that uses a pen instead of a mouse). This cartoon was drawn almost exclusively using the tablet. It’s still pretty rocky, but I think it’s a big leap from my last experiment. The tablet along with the pen is great for getting very precise strokes and positions, which are almost impossible—not to mention quite painfull—to do with a mouse.
Click image to enlarge.
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AR Comics by Cej
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This comic was completely created on a computer using my new Wacom tablet. No physical art exists (if you don’t count the original idea sketch). The tablet is basically like a mouse, but in the form of a pen and pad. It seems like it would be more natural than using a mouse, but I’ve trained my brain to match using a mouse with looking at the screen, while using a pen with the screen is still pretty awkward. Try writing without looking at what you’re writing and you’ll get the sensation. So that’s why I chose an easy drawing for the first time out. Plus, I’m still pretty awkward with Adobe Illustrator as well. So this “simple” cartoon took several hours. Remind me again how computers are making my life easier…
That said, in the long run, the tablet (with practice) should make many aspects of cartoon creation go more quickly. We’ll see…
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AR Comics by Cej
Because every comic has to make the “men do this, while women do that” joke, here’s mine.
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