These Days …

I’ve finished coloring the Mighty Nizz story. I’m planning on posting the pages, one a week, hopefully starting next week, over at MightyNizz.com. I’m now working out the best way to present it. There are plug-ins that are designed for serializing comics on WordPress and I’m trying to figure out which one to use. I have one here at Skookworks (Comic Easel) that I’ve never gotten around to using. The developer hasn’t updated it in four years. That’s the Jurassic Age in internet time. WordPress just updated to version 6 point something and there’s no guarantee that the two programs/apps/code gardens will play well together. I could just put up the pages as individual posts but a webcomic plug in would make it easier for a reader to scroll between pages and stories.

I’ve also been watching videos about flatting for coloring comics. “Flatting” is the process of separating a comic page into the individual sections that you plan to color i.e. tree trunks/brown, pants/different brown, Mighty Nizz’s wolf cape/red and yellow, etc. I kept hoping I’d find some trick that would make the process faster. Based on what I’ve seen, the trick is to do it enough that you get faster at it. Or hire someone to flat the pages for me. And that’s not in the budget. It was somewhat reassuring to see that I’m already basically doing what the pros do, just more slowly.

Sarah has written the next story and I’m the process of breaking it up to fit a layout. It looks like this one will be a twelve pager. I have annual leave scheduled soon and plan to spend a good chunk of it working on illustration.

And, of course, I’ve been delivering mail. There’s a lot of construction currently happening on my route, five blocks of it interfering with my regular method of delivery. Four blocks of it is road work. The city is putting sidewalks on SW 24th between Barton and Thistle. Prior to the work, these blocks were mounted delivery, that is, I drove along the street and fed the mail into boxes while sitting in my mail truck. Currently, if I am lucky, I can drive down the street, stop near a mailbox, get out, walk across the ditch/rubble/new curb, and place the mail in the box that has been located out of harm’s way and out of arm’s reach from my vehicle. When I am not lucky, and the street is occupied by large trucks and vehicles with plows and shovels and things, I park my truck on another street, walk down the block delivering to each mailbox and then walk back up the block to where I have parked my truck. The fifth block, on SW 26th, is less difficult. It borders a condo development that’s being renovated. The street itself is being left alone but there’s a lot less parking than normal because of all the construction workers. All that activity means that my delivery time is longer than it used to be. It rarely means overtime but it does make it hard for me to estimate how long each day will be.

Mugshots

This week’s process GIF features one of my favorite subjects – bloodsucking atomic zombie fishmen! These critters are inspired by the classic b-movie The Horror of Party Beach. No, I’m not recommending that you watch the film. I saw it once when I was a kid, young enough for my imagination to compensate for the ridiculous costumes, script and low budget. I haven’t tried to watch it since. I don’t expect it would fare as well with my adult sensibilities.
This design is available on:
A mug in my Zazzle store.
A variety of schtuff in my Redbubble store.

Eldritch Horror in the Great War

A few years ago I did a series of illustrations for a Call of Cthulhu RPG manual featuring scenarios set during World War One. The book will likely never be published so I’ll be posting sets of the illustrations here for the next few weeks.

This set is from a scenario where biplane pilots run into a swarm of newly awakened (and very cranky) Byakhee over the Alps.

And that’s it for this week.

Be good to yourself and your friends and your pets and … whoever needs it.

See you in seven!