0032 - "Failure"

FAKE! CHIP!

Here are some webcomics I can whole heartedly recommend.

Search For New Lifeforms is a great comic by John Kantz (a drinking buddy and fellow Seattle comicker).  Hilarious and drawn WAY better than any of my strips (I'm not kidding), if you haven't checked it out, you're missing out on some good stuff.

Stix & Bones by Darrel Toland (another drinking buddy/fellow Seattle-based comicker) is what happens when Peanuts and Pogo met up with Genetic Experiments.  Good stuff, with a pretty diverse cast.  

Like what you see? Help spread the fun of MALDEN by voting for MALDEN on Top Web Comics!

MALDEN Q&A time.

So this is for all the faithful fans out there.  Go ahead and give me a question.  I'll try to answer as truthfully as I can.  Just ask away in the comments of this post.

Like what you see? Help spread the fun of MALDEN by voting for MALDEN on Top Web Comics!

0028 - "Deus Ex Machina"

0027 - "Distraction"

Preview of page 0028

Preview of page 28 for those interested.

Three Page UPDATE! pages 0024-26 "Burritos and Peppers"

Three page update!  Not a regular occurence, since I only guarentee 1 page update a week.  If you get more than, then I had a pretty awesome week.  ENJOY!

0024 Thumbnails and Redhead in a Bikini

More stuff to wet your whistle.

0024 thumbnails

Redhead in a bikini

0022 - "Skaplak!" ...also some other stuff

Here's the latest page:

I've also added some edits to earlier strips and a Character List at the beginning.

MALDEN Animated - What could have been.

Posting some animations that were originally done for when MALDEN was a animated short.  You'll need Flash Plug-ins to view the first one (sorry iPhone/iPad folks).




This was the original opening, one I skipped when making MALDEN into a comic strip.  Once I finish the current arc, I'll insert a comic prologue to match and also do some editing on some of the other strips (mainly strip 3-5 I'm not happy with).




Part of the fight scene.  Originally, the bear was put out of comission way before the fight even starts, and was the reason for the fight starting.

ENJOY!

0021 - "Oh crap..."

On the Backburner - strips and ideas in the closet.

Posting some unfinished strips that I started on way before Malden.

Abandoned Proto-Malden

This was originally what Malden was going to look like, basically something to accompany the podcast/blog site that my friends and I post on.  Its sort of a James Bond/Rambo intro with our character finishing an adventure and getting a call to "bring in the team".  I couldn't figure out what I wanted to happen between our character shooting his M63 and calling in the team.  Back then, creators block tended to plague me (and still does), plus that second unfinished figure kind of discouraged me in my creative processes.

Realistic A-team Malden

Tribute to Old Fashioned Japanese Rubber Suit Heroes

This is a strip for what amounted to a tribute to Japanese style superheroes like Ultraman/Masked Rider/Power Rangers.  Pretty straight forward, and its similar enough to MALDEN now, just with color and a bit more rough "pencils" (just Photoshop really).  I can't remember why I didn't finish this.  I think it was another case of real life responsiblities pushing into my free time.

Action and punches through torsos.

Felt like sharing, but maybe now I'll finish these up for later.  Hmmm.

The Process - How I make a comic strip.

Feel like sharing a tutorial of sorts.  

Thumbnails

When working on a new strip each week, I do a thumbnail/rough using the chisel marker in Sketchbook Pro 2011.  I mainly use the chisel marker because it forces me to work with less details and focus more on the overall composition/layout.

The Thumbnails

Inks

If I'm happy with the thumbnails/roughs, I general go straight to inks.  Since the process is generally all digital in Sketchbook Pro, I tend to use new layers for each panel when inking.  I use a custom brush with settings set so the brush will taper like a real ink brush.  Most of the time, I won't get the line weights correct in the first go, so I'll go back in and double up/thicken ink lines to get a certain aspects of each panel to pop out more (like the spoon in panel 2 or the 2 figures in the last panel).

The Inks

Flat Grays


Back when I was doing 3 strips a week, I would basically call the Inks done and go into Photoshop to do lettering/Panel lines.  Since they've added Text Layers/shape tools to Sketchbook Pro 2011, I only really go into Photoshop for lettering or special effects such as the screen tone look of strip 0018.  Anyway, here we have the flat grays.  I general use this to bring out silhouettes and determine how I'm going to go about adding gray tones to the strip.  Sketchbook Pro 2011 has a new fill bucket that allows you to have a new layer use the layer above it as a mask.  So if I wanted to fill in the background of Panel 2 with a gray, the old paint bucket needed to fill it in the same layer as the inks (something I don't like to do).  With the new paint bucket tool, I can use a completely seperate layer and get the same result.

Flat grays

Shadows

Just creating a new layer and adding shadows/highlights where needed.

Detail grays/shadows

Additional Colors/Finish


Since they've added layer effects into the latest Sketchbook Pro, I just color pick the brown for the Burrito/Messy Platypus from a older strip and layer it on top of the shadows (usually a multiply layer).  Then I sign my signature and add the site url on seperate layers.

additional colors/finish

Closing

I hope this was informative.  I'm a bit new to writing tutorials/work in progresses, so feel free to comment.

0020 - "struggle"

0019 - ".....!"

Feeling sick the last couple days.  I actually had this inked and mostly finished last week.  Also, I'm thinking of going to weekly updates every Wednesday.

NEWS: Got a Job, so might have fewer strip updates.

Just letting my readers know that I won't be uploading a new strip over the weekend.  I just got a call for a freelance position that requires some heavy crunch time, so I may not have time to do a new strip for this week.

In my current position, I need all the cash I can get.  Monday updates are my main goal for the strip with a second update before the end of the week.  So that's at least 2 updates a week.  To be absolutely sure you get your MALDEN fix, come to the site on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Sorry for the inconvenience.  Need cash, gotta work.  The current story line should be wrapped up by strip 25-26.

If you are new to the site, please click on the thumbs to see the comic as originally intended. Thanks!

Number 14 on Comic Blog Elite's Creator Sites

Whoa.  Combination of aggressive advertisement using Project Wonderful and Facebook Ads may factor into this, but I'm REALLY surprised that the site has reached 14 out of the 150 listed at Comic Blog Elite.

I'd like to take the time to thank all the readers out there for making this happen.  Looking forward to reaching 1000 strips some day.  :)