Advanced Placement

Author notes

Signs:Hansel and Gretel

apcomic

on Jan. 22, 2008

This week, we are going to have some random comics to hold us off until next week, which is when the new episode will start. For today, we have a new “Signs”, but that isn’t what I would like to talk about.

First, I am in love with the girl in the RGX Body Spray ads. No, I do not mean that I am a crazy stalker, but she has convinced me to go out and buy the stuff, which I think says a little (or a lot) about me, depending on how you look at it.

Second, I beat God of War II this weekend, and it really was a an incredible experience. It was while I was playing it, that I realized that games like this one, Kingdom Hearts II, and Resident Evil 4 are the future of gaming.

In all of these games, at anytime during game play, commands will appear on screen, telling you to press a certain button in order to either get over an obstacle (like getting out of the way of a falling boulder) or to produce cinematic moments in fights. In all of these games, game play turns from what everyone has always known to a true art form.

The third thing that I would like to talk about, is a question I get asked quite a bit by readers, and that is how I make my comics. So, I am going to explain to you all how it is done.

The first stage that I go through is the planning phase. There are two parts to this stage, the general and the specific. The general is the broad outline of the series of events. I have a problem when events that happen early in a story don’t mesh with events that happen later on, so to prevent this, I have outlined the story all the way through DJ’s senior year of high school, and even farther.

The second part of planning is scripting out the comic strip. In this part, I decide where the characters will stand and the positions they are going to be in. Also, I plot out the dialog in the strip. This part is the most important, because it is at this point that I can determine if a strip is going to be good or if it is going to suck and I need to think of a different one.

Next, I go to drawing out the comic. While there are some web-cartoonists that draw each strip in pencil first and then convert to the computer, I do not have the time to do this, so I do all of my drawings on the computer with my drawing tablet.

To do this, I use a Manga Program. I draw all of the comics in black and white, and then transfer them over to Photoshop for coloring. While I do have a stock of pictures for the characters, I try to only use the same heads in each comic (as in I only have to copy identical heads, not bodies), but if a comic only needs a basic position, like having the characters standing with arms at their sides, I’ll use the stock image. Like I said, however, I try and draw a new body in every strip, and I always draw new faces on the characters.

Well, that is the rough and dirty explanation on how the comics are made. If anyone has any questions about this process, email me, and I would be happy to answer them.
DJ

PS: This is what the alphabet would look like without Q and R.

PPS: I put a link to a website in this post, and I would like to see how this works for you, the reader. If I hear positive feedback, I will continue to use them to help explain my points.