Two days?

[Kellogg]

Hmm! They've been missing for two days now?

I'll wager that Yerzle and the crew are out looking for them
by now...

So: I bet Portia wishes she'd done better in her scrying
classes right about now.

If Yerzle is an ex-ranger, I wonder how good his tracking
skills are?

Scott

[ZOMBIE USER 12701]

Well, from what Matt told me once, Pigs on the Lam is a 20 week storyline. So I think it will be a while before the Yerzlenator finds his buddies, tracking skills or no. With Portia's feistiness, I'm seeing a shocking climax if she learns her friends have been harmed...

[Matt Trepal]

All I have to say about this is that I'm grateful for my copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, as all those books I bought on comic-strip drawing don't have much to say on the subject of fistfights.

[Kellogg]

Allow me to recommend:

How to Draw Manga: Illustrating Battles - Hikari Hayashi
ISBN 4-7661-1147-8

It was of tremendous help while drawing some of the "Tiffarella"
sequences with Tiffany fighting a bunch of Garfield - DEVO clones
with a lightsaber.

(Eep! Which seems to be missing from the SJ archives?)

Scott

[Matt Trepal]

Allow me to recommend:

How to Draw Manga: Illustrating Battles - Hikari Hayashi
ISBN 4-7661-1147-8

It was of tremendous help while drawing some of the "Tiffarella"
sequences with Tiffany fighting a bunch of Garfield - DEVO clones
with a lightsaber.

(Eep! Which seems to be missing from the SJ archives?)

Scott

Hey, that looks useful. Thanks, Scott! It and some of those other manga how-to books have just gone onto my wish list!

[Kellogg]

Yay! The Sashi found 'em!

I like Sashi's new friends.

(Though, I wonder how far behind the rest of the band must be?)

Scott (amazed that Keenspace is up while Keenspot is down) Kellogg

[Andrick]

Ig! Matt, you've come a long way in your drawing style and it clearly shows with the improvements you've made and the confidence you've shown in taking up greater changes in your art. But, damn, that second perspective shot on 16Dec was way off. The shadowing was a nice touch. Overall, you are getting better - even the mistakes are better. Kudos to you for doing something far and away better than what I could and striving for better.

[Matt Trepal]

I like Sashi's new friends.

There are many advantages to hanging out with the Amazon guild.

Some of them are actually military, too

[Matt Trepal]

Ig! Matt, you've come a long way in your drawing style and it clearly shows with the improvements you've made and the confidence you've shown in taking up greater changes in your art. But, damn, that second perspective shot on 16Dec was way off. The shadowing was a nice touch. Overall, you are getting better - even the mistakes are better. Kudos to you for doing something far and away better than what I could and striving for better.

Hey, Andrick! Good to hear from you.

I hated this strip (Monday, Dec 16) when I first drew it; it didn't look anything like what I had in my head when I wrote it. I hated the first panel, I hated the second panel, and I felt the third was a bit of a cop-out. Then I really buggered it up inking, and had a lot (read: a lot) of work to do in the GIMP to clean it up. But after I was done I felt that it wasn't nearly as bad as I had originally thought. It still wasn't what I'd wanted it to be, but it was better than I'd thought. I guess I needed a little temporal distance from it.

I assume you're referring to the the floor-line when you talk about the botched perspective? Because I agree. I find myself with a hard time figuring out how floor lines are supposed to show, especially when they are supposed to be receding into the background, and I muck it up consistently. I also have a bad habit of placing the "camera" at the characters' eye-level, and then drawing the whole picture as though everything were at eye-level; that is, with no perspective. It's very medieval, but it doesn't make things look right.

Gav has said that he makes a regular practice of drawing things in his strip that he can't draw, therefore making himself learn. I don't do this nearly as much as he does, but it's about the only way I'm learning. This is one of the reasons I said that I was relieved to go back to drawing talking head strips for a while. I know that I don't have any problems with THEM.

[Andrick]

Actually, I was referring to the wall perspective and the squirrel girl on it. If you took that same frame and drew a window around her torso, it would look like she is leaning out the window; not something which could be possible with characters drawn on a wall. The distance perspective worked fine. It's nice to see you playing with shadows a little more, that and more advanced shading will do a lot for grounded third-person-view scenes.

Is it just me or were there other people whom thought "Walk Like an Egyptian" upon seeing the wizard's symantic pose?

[CaptainSpam]

Yeah, to me, the floor doesn't look that bad. It's the fact that Lauren's left foot (hidden from perspective) seems like it should be poking through the wall in the second panel... :-)

I'd say you're doing a cool job on improving your arty skills and such. Stuff like the shadows, different perspectives, more complex poses and the like... 'tis a sign yer getting better, there.

[Matt Trepal]

Well, she's sort of supposed to be leaning away from the wall to shoot, but I think I see what you both mean. This strip was hard for me to draw, and I'm not surprised that there's stuff wrong with it; perspective doesn't like me, much.

But thanks for the kind words of encouragement!

Is it just me or were there other people whom thought "Walk Like an Egyptian" upon seeing the wizard's symantic pose?

I did. Unfortunately, I'd inked it before I realized what I'd done. That pose may haunt me for the rest of my cartooning career.