the sketchbook conspiracy

2007.10.07
I'm participating in an online comic jam run by my housemate Miller, The Sketchbook Conspiracy. (A comic jam is just a collaboration, a cycle of artists taking a page at a time.)

There are 3 groups going, I'm with "Less Filling"... you can see the comics (and a larger version of this one) on the conspiracy comics page.

So here's what I came up with yesterday for my first turn:

I'm more of a doodler than an artist, but I wanted to try and match the style of the previous pages. One surprise is how closely you have to read the previous panels, from names to characteristics to appearance, in order to get continuity.

I usually draw directly on a touchpad computer, but here I tried the more traditional pencil on paper, traced with some sharpies, scanned, then manipulated in Paint Shop Pro, where I also added the dialog. (Miller encouraged me to separate the background and foreground, and of course with the repetition I had in mine it made sense.) My "Layers" mojo was weak, so I ended up doing more with transparency and cut and paste than I wanted to.

So, yet another thing where it turns out that it's harder than it looks... clearly I ain't gonna set the world on fire with my mad art skills.