[ Small note: Most entries to this journal are now friends-locked. I know I said I wasn't going to lock it, but I changed my mind for several reasons. So if you want to read it, please add this journal as a friend and I'll add you back. :D ]

Because I've had a few people ask me about my page-making process, I thought I'd toss this together as I was working this morning. Uh, it's not really a tutorial so much as "here is how I do stuff", but if anyone has any questions about any of these steps I'll be happy to try to go into more detail.

Cut for obnoxious length and many pictures. :D

( Click for pictures~ )

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

God, this next page has been absolutely killing me for some reason. I've been working on it all day and I feel like I'm getting nowhere, lol. Although, I'm really happy with how this panel came out, so I thought I'd share it at (close to) full size, since it'll be shrunk down to less than 50% of this size when the final page gets posted.

It's worth noting that the greenery in the background does not look nearly as cool when you're zoomed way in like this, har har har.

Think of it as a little preview, I suppose, if you see it before the page goes up at some point tomorrow. :D

Total Time: GOD I DON'T EVEN KNOW. TOO LONG FOR ONE PANEL .
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Yes :|

Rambling
We sell this chair, at OfficeHell. You may have seen it. It's basically just a stiff, armless, curved block of fabric that they call a "gaming chair", mostly because it has speakers in the sides of it. Presumably you're supposed to plug your TV or whatever into the chair and have stereo music playing around your butt while you're gaming. I don't really get it, but that's beside the point.

The point is, that they currently have the floor model of this chair parked directly next to the copy center, which, as you may have gathered, is where I work. And of course, what good is a floor model, if it's not functioning so that people can see how it works? Anyway, normally they have it on the local pop radio station, which is not great, but tolerable. However, of course, in light of the season, they have been blasting Christmas carols from it. Non stop. For the last two weeks, and presumably, for the next four weeks as well.

We had no customers whatsoever tonight, so, in an attempt to entertain myself, I kept a checklist. Over the course of a six hour shift, various, horrible remixes of the following songs came up:

Frosty the Snowman: 9 times
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: 5 times
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree: 3 times
Jingle Bells: 10 times
We Wish You A Merry Christmas: 6 times
Do You Hear What I Hear: 13 times ( !!!! )
"New" Christmas Carols That Nobody Knows The Words To By Various Pop Singers: 8 times

...God, I hate Christmas music.

I saw this fun little survey in terioncalling's journal and had to snag it for myself. It's a series of survey questions, answered by five PT characters. You can find more info on the characters here, if you're confused.

Just as a warning, there are some very minor spoilers contained below.

1. Choose a few of your own characters. Five at the most.
2. Make them answer the following questions

( Cut for length! )

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving! Don't eat too much, or you might explode. Nobody wants that.

-click on the thumbnail to see the full image-

Art

This actually started out as a portrait of Winley (second down), but his mouth kept pissing me off, so I cropped it. Then, as you can see, I got carried away, as I tend to do. :D I actually had a lot of fun doing this, and I might do another one with the rest of the cast soon.

Erm, from top to bottom, Sort-of-Cai, Winley, Aisha, and Verya.

Total Time: ~1 hour
Tools: Tablet, Photoshop
Finished?: Maybe.

Rambling
PT is really the first full story that I've released to the public. I don't really have any experience whatsoever with writing comics, although I've been writing short (and, sometimes, painfully long) stories my whole life. Most of them I've never showed to anyone outside of high school teachers and a couple of friends. To that end, watching people's reactions to the characters in PT has really been interesting to me, and quite a learning experience. People like (and dislike) characters I didn't expect them to, and have been catching onto some plot elements a lot sooner than I expected (while completely missing others).

The reaction to Margensen, in particular, has been really fascinating to me. In the beginning of the comic, he's really kind of a background figure, and he doesn't really have that big of a role to play until a few chapters from now. Never in a million years did I expect as many people to latch onto him as they have. Without getting into spoilers (since I know most of the people reading this journal came from Drunk Duck), I'm curious to see what the reaction to him will be once his role becomes more apparent, and changes a bit.

To me, the real story is really just getting ready to start as chapter 3 ends. My favorite characters (Winley, Veyra, and M'aar) will finally have more than a background appearance once every twenty pages, and we'll finally start to get some background information on characters. :D

I'm looking forward to it, anyway. I really wish I could manage to update 2-3 times a week, because I kind of feel like things are dragging a little at one page a week. 3 updates a week is not going to happen anytime soon, but my plan is to try to get at least one panel finished (inked/colored) a day from here on out, which will either get me a buffer (finally) or allow me to update more often as I finish pages. We'll see how it pans out.

I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore, so I'll shut up now.