Tuesday, December 05, 2006

24 hours of hot tinkering

I've started work on Scary Go Round book 5, since the foul weather insists I stay indoors at all costs. Preliminary stages of book-making involve deciding what I'm not going to put in the book, what needs re-drawing or re-purposing, and what I can let fly with a clear conscience.

The outcome of all this decision-making by the executive board was a day of redrawing faces that looked funny. For some reason, when I re-started drawing by hand, I was drawing huge bug eyes on everybody. That in and of itself might not have been a problem, but a lack of match fitness meant I seemingly couldn't draw a pair of eyes level with one another. It was pretty inexplicable why I drew that way, but it was a fight in front of the drawing board each day for that first month.

Another problem was the colours I was using. The vicious, bright shades that worked so well in Illustrator looked garish and inappropriate when applied to more traditional drawing routes. And to be honest, I wasn't exactly being careful slapping it on there.

Rather being than a shopping list of complaint, I found this quite a soothing task. I think I've improved a lot in the seven months since I went back to pens and ink.

OLD

NEW

9 comments:

Unknown said...

you just like making more work for yourself, admit it.. do not be afraid of the bright!

John A said...

There were only three where I had to "fix" the colours because they were so garish, I've not been on a destauration frenzy!

As you well know, nothing pleases me more than making work for myself.

Unknown said...

So much less painful for my eyes; I hope this trend continues.

Aaron Poppleton said...

Aw, I liked the garish colour.

Then again, the more muted look is certainly easier on the eyes.

Toby Haynes said...

At first I thought I was witnessing the birth of a new "white" period for ScaryGoRound as all I could see was:

OLD

NEW

A little delicate re-motivation of my computer (and a few dents) later, your latest oeuvre sprung into existence. The muted colours work much better for this particular strip. However, I would be sad if my scarygoround mornings lost all their brightness and gaiety, sitting as I am close the server box for warmth in Wintry Canada.

011010110 said...

I didn't know where to post this:

Thank you for the nod to "Close Encounters" in the form of a man making a mountain out of mashed potatoes. It is like a signal between us that you draw great comics AND enjoy the finest movies.

Peace out.

dphourigan said...

I guess it just depends if you want to give it a look for a time of day like dusk.

Unknown said...

Return of Gibbous Moon!!!

YES!

Virtualbri said...

Interesting color changes between the two panels. Much like your switch from vector to hand-drawn, there is much to like in each.

But what I really wanted to say is that you bring back characters in the most tickling and appropriate ways, when we least expect them. It's delightful.

Can't wait till we rejoin Erin and Esther!