Eidolic Fringe
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    Joe - 5/2/04       Laura - 3/30/04  
   
 

*sigh* I'm tired.

The wedding was great, but it tired me out. I guess I'm just starting to show my age (either that, or I just had a little too much to drink) =P

Okay, for people that actually take the time to read this, hoping for news about EF, the character profiles have been updated... somewhat. There are still a few that need to be written, but the majority of character profiles actually have stuff in them now. Also, we have a new link button for those of you who want them in 88x31.

I think things are finally going to settle down... for a while, at least. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to dedicate some time to yard work soon. I've always been more of a fan of hot weather than cold weather, but one advantage to winter was that I didn't have to worry about the lawn.

**** WARNING: Rantage Ahead!
If you're not interested go check out: Indavo

So, I think I've done it again. I've let myself spend more time in hanging around online webcomic communities than actually working on the comic. I really don't know why I keep going back. There's usually so much noise on them that it's not really worth it. Well, it's probably due to a desire to actually want to help people get ahead in creating comics, but all the forums that I end up going to don't seem to be conducive to really helping people. Actually, they usually degenerate into being destructive. Okay, I'm not being entirely fair. It's really only a handful of people who end up setting threads aflame, but they're enough to really ruin it all (at least for me). It's really kinda sad in that it's the "nice guys finish last" syndrome. People who are rude and stir up trouble usually end up getting all the attention, regardless of the quality of their work, The people who are actually nice and deserving of attention get lost in the shuffle.

Well, the one way I can see to fix this is to recognize some of the overlooked. At the moment, one site that I think deserves more readers (cause it's actually entertaining) is Indavo. They got space pirates!

   

Eh, sorry about the later than usual page. I forgot that I was going to a friend's bridal shower this week. 0_o Oh well.

For some strange reason, in the past week or so, a lot of people have asked me about my art process on the comic. I don't know what caused all these questions to emerge at once, maybe some kind of cosmic alignment. But I thought I'd just sort of summarize it here for anyone else who's curious.

Now, up until the Christmas piece I did in 2002, I hand drew all the comics with a 2H pencil on bristol board. For like the first couple pages of the comic, I inked the pencils with a ball point pen, but later decided that it just took too much time, so I cut out that step. Instead, I just cleaned up the art in Photoshop when I scanned it in. Then I would color the comic in Photoshop, save the file and bring it into Illustrator where I would lay out all the type. Then I would bring the image back into Photoshop, tweak it or make any changes or fixes, and save it for the web.

Then, when I got my Wacom tablet and the Painter program a little over a year ago, I basically just started drawing the comic right on the computer. I find it saves some time and let's me create cleaner looking images. I've also started to do some of the coloring in Painter, mostly backgrounds, and then I bring the file into Photoshop and resume from there.

So, I hope that satisfies anyone else who might've been curious. I'm always open to questions about it, so feel free to e-mail me. But I can't give out any almighty art secrets. It's just the same with everyone, practice and hard work.

 
   
Hinoki
All content unless otherwise specified is Copyright © 2003 Joe Lee and Laura Galiffe of the Bonsai Mecha Factory. All rights reserved. If you violate our copyright or piss us off, we'll send Hinoki after you!