Today, I spent a couple of hours in the late afternoon putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's ROADFROGS strip. I had no idea what was happening in Boston until my wife came home from work and told me about the bombings. We, of course, turned on the TV and watched the coverage on various networks.
I think most of us certainly reflected on 9-11, but I had another line of thought going through my head, too. Back in the late eighties, when Jeff Roberts and I were trying to develop G.I. Jeff: A Really Average Hero, I came up with a character I wanted to use as a baddie: Achmed Malahende Achmed was his name. The whole concept of this character was very politically incorrect, and is probably more so these days. That very political incorrectness was a large part of the character's appeal for me and Jeff. We never got around to building a storyline for Achmed, but the basic premise was that he was a devout (but not necessarily zealous) Arab Muslim, who - while no jihadist - wreaked terror in his wake ... totally without intent. He would be the "accidental terrorist". Jeff and I were really into playing with popular book, song and movie titles, thereby coming up with some (mostly lame) story ideas. There was a popular book out (I think it was by Anne Perry, but I could be wrong about that and I don't feel like doing my research right now) entitled "The Accidental Tourist". Jeff and I got a few chuckles out of the concept, but as our work on the G.I.Jeff comic fizzled out, Achmed kind of fell by the wayside too.
I didn't really think about Achmed again until, in the wake of 9-11, there was quite a bit of confusion and contention regarding Muslims in the US, as well as in other Western nations. Had I tried to resurrect the Achmed character in, say, 2003, I would have probably been lauded in some corners of society and lambasted in others.
Right now, as I write this, we don't know who is responsible for the reprehensible terrorist act that was perpetrated today in Boston. If it turns out to be an Islamic group, I imagine that many here in the US will call for a clamp-down on the freedoms of Arabs and other Muslims here in the states. There will be others who will say that we cannot limit the freedoms of the few without, by default, limiting the freedoms of all. And there will many who will offer some kind of compromise which will probably just be a waste of time.
I don't know the answers to the dilemnas we face in the wake of this attack. And, as shallow as it may sound, I just wish we could all get along. But, just as in fiction, conflict is what moves the story - in this case the story of America. In my lifetime, I've seen awesome and awful events, many with resounding and enduring effects on our nation and its people. Today would seem to mark the beginning of a new chapter in the "age of domestic terror" in which some would say we find ourselves. Maybe so, but I prefer to think that this event might just be a footnote in the larger story of the forging of this nation. A story of which I hope I don't live to see the end.
And I plan to be around for a long time.
Maybe, if I live long enough, there will come a time when I can write and draw a silly little G.I.Jeff story about Achmed Malahende Achmed, the accidental terrorist. Without recrimination.
In the mean time, my prayers are with the injured, the murdered, their families and the investigators who are trying to sort all this out. And I pray that this event might be something that draws us, as Americans, together rather than driving yet another wedge between us.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Making of ROADFROGS
PLEASE NOTE: Some of the pictures in this blog are very large, so they may take some time to load.
My usual process is to pencil and ink on Bristol board, then I scan the line drawings to my computer. I used to work on 11x14" or 11x17" Bristol, but I found the large size of the paper to be cumbersome to me. Recently, I cut all my 11x14" Bristol in half. Now I'm drawing on 7x11" board, which I find to be much more comfortable and manageable. I usually get one or two pictures on each piece. Since I'm publishing ROADFROGS in mostly one-or-two panel segments, that works out great!
When I scan the pictures, I adjust my scanner settings to 1200 dpi. I end up with HUGE pictures (and files) that way, but it makes it very easy to clean up smeared ink and other stray marks on the page. In fact the picture above was originally 13139x8147 pixels and 5.10MB as a JPEG (23.3MB as a PNG image). I had to reduce its size to 6451x4000 to get the file size small enough to upload to this blog. All the color shots below have been reduced even further, so that I could use them here.
In order to do this without making a mess of the original (and without having a bunch of distracting white pixels at the edges of each shape), I create a blank white layer, place it below the original and make the white in the original layer transparent (this is referred to as changing a color to alpha). With the original layer on top and the new layer to be colored selected as the active layer, I can color the picture and hide the edges of each color under the inked lines. Later, when I have the picture(s) completely colored I reduce them to 1500x???. The above picture is 1500x831. A little later in the process I decided to cut it down to 1500x800.
You may have noticed that some of the elements in these pictures have been moved slightly as we go from one version of the strip to the next (Froggie on the phone in the second panel slides down the page a little). Some of this movement is necessitated by the decisions I make in sizing the episode and some are dictated by the need to accommodate the dialog.
Part of how I decide what size to make a picture is based on my planned layout of the comic when it is converted to a standard comic book page format, which I eventually intend to do once I have finished "Froggie Went a-Courtin'". Dialog is the other factor there also. As I get closer to adding the word balloons, I am constantly checking and editing the dialog to make sure that (a) the flow of the dialog works well with the layout of the picture(s) and (b) there is enough room for the dialog as written. Today's strip was one of those where both of those factors proved challenging.
After I scale the finished episode down to fit the 1600pixel wide header I’ve created for the strip, I add the word balloons. This process is very similar to the process I use in the coloring, but there are many more layers involved. I have to create each word balloon from scratch (if anyone knows of any word balloon templates that I might try, please let me know. I have not yet found any that work well for me.), so that means - at the very least - a text layer, a layer holding the white balloon, another layer containing a slightly larger black balloon (the fastest way I've found so far to create a border for the white word balloon) and, of course, the original colored picture.
Finally, I add the header, the black border and the indicia along the bottom of the border.
I also ought to note that I have a Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet which makes a lot of the more tedious tasks on the computer much easier than if I try to do them with a mouse or the touchpad on my notebook. Before I got the Intuos, I did very little computer art, because it was so time-consuming and because I often was less than pleased with the results. I still do very little drawing with the graphics tablet, but for touch-up work, coloring, etc. it's great!
I hope everyone is enjoying ROADFROGS. As I've said before, here and elsewhere, I'm having a blast working with Froggie and all the other cast members. And learning a lot in the process. If you like ROADFROGS, please use the link to Top Web Comics on the ROADFROGS website to vote for the strip. And you can like us on Facebook. Also, I'd love to read your comments here, at the ROADFROGS site or on Facebook. And, most especially, PLEASE tell your friends about it!
My usual process is to pencil and ink on Bristol board, then I scan the line drawings to my computer. I used to work on 11x14" or 11x17" Bristol, but I found the large size of the paper to be cumbersome to me. Recently, I cut all my 11x14" Bristol in half. Now I'm drawing on 7x11" board, which I find to be much more comfortable and manageable. I usually get one or two pictures on each piece. Since I'm publishing ROADFROGS in mostly one-or-two panel segments, that works out great!
When I scan the pictures, I adjust my scanner settings to 1200 dpi. I end up with HUGE pictures (and files) that way, but it makes it very easy to clean up smeared ink and other stray marks on the page. In fact the picture above was originally 13139x8147 pixels and 5.10MB as a JPEG (23.3MB as a PNG image). I had to reduce its size to 6451x4000 to get the file size small enough to upload to this blog. All the color shots below have been reduced even further, so that I could use them here.
Next I clean up the pictures and color them
in GIMP (it’s a lot like Adobe Photoshop, but FREEEEEE).
In order to do this without making a mess of the original (and without having a bunch of distracting white pixels at the edges of each shape), I create a blank white layer, place it below the original and make the white in the original layer transparent (this is referred to as changing a color to alpha). With the original layer on top and the new layer to be colored selected as the active layer, I can color the picture and hide the edges of each color under the inked lines. Later, when I have the picture(s) completely colored I reduce them to 1500x???. The above picture is 1500x831. A little later in the process I decided to cut it down to 1500x800.
You may have noticed that some of the elements in these pictures have been moved slightly as we go from one version of the strip to the next (Froggie on the phone in the second panel slides down the page a little). Some of this movement is necessitated by the decisions I make in sizing the episode and some are dictated by the need to accommodate the dialog.
Part of how I decide what size to make a picture is based on my planned layout of the comic when it is converted to a standard comic book page format, which I eventually intend to do once I have finished "Froggie Went a-Courtin'". Dialog is the other factor there also. As I get closer to adding the word balloons, I am constantly checking and editing the dialog to make sure that (a) the flow of the dialog works well with the layout of the picture(s) and (b) there is enough room for the dialog as written. Today's strip was one of those where both of those factors proved challenging.
After I scale the finished episode down to fit the 1600pixel wide header I’ve created for the strip, I add the word balloons. This process is very similar to the process I use in the coloring, but there are many more layers involved. I have to create each word balloon from scratch (if anyone knows of any word balloon templates that I might try, please let me know. I have not yet found any that work well for me.), so that means - at the very least - a text layer, a layer holding the white balloon, another layer containing a slightly larger black balloon (the fastest way I've found so far to create a border for the white word balloon) and, of course, the original colored picture.
Finally, I add the header, the black border and the indicia along the bottom of the border.
I also ought to note that I have a Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet which makes a lot of the more tedious tasks on the computer much easier than if I try to do them with a mouse or the touchpad on my notebook. Before I got the Intuos, I did very little computer art, because it was so time-consuming and because I often was less than pleased with the results. I still do very little drawing with the graphics tablet, but for touch-up work, coloring, etc. it's great!
I hope everyone is enjoying ROADFROGS. As I've said before, here and elsewhere, I'm having a blast working with Froggie and all the other cast members. And learning a lot in the process. If you like ROADFROGS, please use the link to Top Web Comics on the ROADFROGS website to vote for the strip. And you can like us on Facebook. Also, I'd love to read your comments here, at the ROADFROGS site or on Facebook. And, most especially, PLEASE tell your friends about it!
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
"Roadfrogs" is Running Strong
The third and most recent episode of ROADFROGS is up at roadfrogs.WordPress.com. So far, the response I've received has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm having a blast drawing and writing it too.
In other news, I received a very nice rejection email from the folks at dailysciencefiction.com a few days ago. For the most part it was their form rejection, but then they interjected a personal note that referred back to the story. Nice to have it confirmed that they actually read it. Not that I really doubted that they were reading my submissions, but sometimes you can't help but wonder.
By the way, if you enjoy science fiction, you should be reading dailysciencefiction.com. New stories every Monday through Friday. And most of them are very good! Plus, it's free! (My favorite flavor)
No new artwork to post yet. I've been working on a few things, but some of those will likely be entries in the 2nd quarter of this year's Illustrators of the Future contest, so I'll just hold on to them for the moment.
Don't forget to mosey on over to roadfrogs.WordPress.com to read the comic there. While you're there, vote for ROADFROGS and leave a comment. I'd love to hear what readers think of the art and story so far.
In other news, I received a very nice rejection email from the folks at dailysciencefiction.com a few days ago. For the most part it was their form rejection, but then they interjected a personal note that referred back to the story. Nice to have it confirmed that they actually read it. Not that I really doubted that they were reading my submissions, but sometimes you can't help but wonder.
By the way, if you enjoy science fiction, you should be reading dailysciencefiction.com. New stories every Monday through Friday. And most of them are very good! Plus, it's free! (My favorite flavor)
No new artwork to post yet. I've been working on a few things, but some of those will likely be entries in the 2nd quarter of this year's Illustrators of the Future contest, so I'll just hold on to them for the moment.
Don't forget to mosey on over to roadfrogs.WordPress.com to read the comic there. While you're there, vote for ROADFROGS and leave a comment. I'd love to hear what readers think of the art and story so far.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
ROADFROGS is live!!!!!
Just a quick note here to let everyone know that my webcomic, ROADFROGS has "officially" launched. Check it out and please let me know what you think.
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