0035 - "Whoa" .... also REMIND guest story.

So we're up to 35 pages.  Excellent.  Now I just need to finish this sucker up.

Starting this week, I and a literal pantheon of 8 other webcomickers contributed to a guest story, written by Chris Wrann, for Jason Brubaker's REMIND titled "BRAN-JAR'S STORY".  The story will be running for the next 2 months starting today.  Here are the big names:

Aviv Itzcovitz:

Daniel Lieske:

Jim Francis:

Joost Haakman:

Kim Ku:

Mathieu Moyen:

Christopher Wrann:

Sarah Ellerton:

Make sure to visit REMIND to read the story, and to add all of these good folks to your rss/bookmarks.  Also, I need the browny points.

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!

Lunch Comic: "PANDA PUNCH!"

Working with Paul Marshall, Chris Staunts, and Josh Anderson on a webcomic in my freetime (outside of MALDEN).  Did a quick strip for it, so here it is:

The title is a working title so don't read too much into it.  ENJOY!

 

0028 - "Deus Ex Machina"

0027 - "Distraction"

Preview of page 0028

Preview of page 28 for those interested.

Preview of page 0027

Here's a bone. I'm still making soup, so be patient Maldeneers! Or Maldenites!

We'll work over the details of what Malden fans should be called later.

+200 page views on Monday?!

I'd like to thank those kind folks at General Discussion Rotten Tomatoes for visiting and Weakgrip at reddit, who put a link on Reddit.

You guys are awesome.  Weakgrip, get in contact with me, you're getting a free drawing of a character of your choice.

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!

Old comic pages.

Posting some old comic pages for folks to look at to hold you over till the update on Tuesday.

These were done for a anthology with writer Percival Constantine.  Basically using the public domain character of Domino Lady (a old pulp heroine) in a crime/action story.

This was a 2 pager I did for writer Robert Davies.  I lost the psds for both sets of pages, so I can't fix the missing figures in the first panel.

I did both sets of pages around 2006-2007.  I wish I had finished the Domino Lady story, but at the time I just started work at Microsoft, and I was dead tired after work.  I'll be adding these in a COMICS page on the site.

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!

thumbnails for 0023

Done on my Droid incredible using sketchbook mobile. Comes in handy for making thumbnails, since I can just do a thumb real quick when I take my kid to the park.

Posted from my phone.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

0021 - "Oh crap..."

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.

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.

0012 - Bulging Eyes, Veiny Foreheads

Late night/early morning delivery.  Just trying to get back on schedule (aiming for a Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule).  A fun strip to work on, since it took me a while to figure out what kind of action was going to happen.  I must of redid the last bottom of the page 3 or 4 times before I got what you see here.

Enjoy!

MALDEN 0007

This is the best thing.  Ever.

MALDEN 0006

MALDEN 0004