Day 132 - Page 130, 131, 132

Unfortunately I missed yesterday's page! Luckily  I'm back on track today. Late, but still, today.

On page 132, I messed up Big Fist's insignia. It's supposed to read "BF", but it reads "BG".

I've been so late I didn't bother to fix it!

-- Tsitra563

Day 106 - Page 106

Well, Part 3 has ended! Part 4 has begun!

In this Part, we saw the discovery of Zach's secret, the introduction of Green Giant, Mr. Negativity, Fisheyes, and others. We also saw more of Stranger in Black.

Part 4 will end on Page 142.

Part 4 is called... Time Travel.

Let the FUN begin!

-- Tsitra563.

Day 85 - Page 85

Lightning Bug makes another smart move. I worked pretty hard to get the shading to look good o this one, so let's have a Bare Bones so you can see it up close!

I love Zach's hair in that last panel! :D

-- Tsitra563

Day 79 - Page 79

Wow! Am I really almost at 80 pages? I guess so!

-- Tsitra563

Day 73 - Pages 72 and 73

I love these two pages! First of all, Lightning Bug looks pretty funny in his tench coat and hat, plus there is shading, Zach actually is not drawn poorly, (even though I forgot his glasses and had to draw them in later), and I like how Lightning Bug is talking to himself, pretending to be Sam Smith! :D

Anyway, I love a lot of things about these two pages. Oh yes, and, it's time for...

We have a pretty awesome plot! I hope I'll stay more on track with the plot, since last time some stuff was supposed to happen that didn't. I changed the plot a little to compensate, by the way, and I'll be putting it in the Slideshow soon. That is all for today!

-- Tsitra563

Day 71 - Page 71

The last page of Part 2!

YAAAAY!

The day after tomorrow you will get to see THREE PAGES, because there's a synopsis for Part 3!

-- Tsitra563

Day 63 - Page 63

Ha ha! I love this page. Mr. Thumbs Up Man is so dumb he can make any panel funny.

Anyway, so a group of people read the comic so far and liked it, which always gives me a sort of moral boost, and at the same time, inner self doubt. Why? Because even though they liked it, I still know there are major errors, mistakes, badly drawn panels, and the like. It doesn't matter that most people wouldn't do this kind of thing at my age. It doesn't matter that most people can't come up with a plot like this and stick to it without going crazy. All of these things don't matter to me.

I don't care that "most people" can't do this, who is "most people"? I don't know them.

Comparing me to "most people" doesn't give me any support whatsoever. So I don't. I compare it to a well thought out comic that I like, and each time it fails. My drawings are to simple, my color to bland, I skimp on shading. I try to do my best, but some days I can't.

I don't meet deadlines, etc. etc. etc. on and on and on.

I think about this every time I do a page.

I finally decided the best way to let it out was to write it out. So that's what i did.

Thanks for bothering to read to this sentence, have a nice day, oh, and Page 70 is only seven pages away!

-- Tsitra563.

Day 52 - Pages 51 and 52

WOOOOT! Gotta go, but I'll do a better post tomorrow.

Day 49 - Page 49

Page 50 is ONE PAGE AWAY! 

YAAAY!

-- Tsitra563

Day 45 - Page 44 and Page 45

Hoo hoo hoooo! :D

Two new pages. Hey-- Page 45! Cooooool. You must have realized by now that I have nothing to talk about. Except... To make the effect of flour falling off of them, I used an airbrush tool set to "Fine Spray," however if I had used "Pepper Spray" it would have been bigger and probably would have held the illusion of flour better since in Comic Life it appears that everything automatically softenes, which isn't so bad, except that when you are trying for a grainy, flour effect it ends up looking like fine shading which is NOT what I had in mind in the first place. Furthermore, it is Hypnotist's third and forth page so far that she appears in, so yay and all that. Also, due to Comic Life's silliness abut the flour, Lightning Bug in the last panel of the second page looks like a ghost. But don't get me wrong - It's flour. Oh, hey -- and Happy Valentine's Day. Hmm... Looks like I did have something to say after all.

-- Tsitra563.

Day 36 - Page 36

PAGE 36 !!! Normally I would end Part 1 here, but seeing as that would make a pretty lame ending, I'm going ONE MORE PAGE and taking out a page from PART 2, (like I said in the previous post).

Anyway, lots of panels, in fact, there are 10 PANELS! A new record.

Now for... 

Boy, we have not seen one of these in a while! Okay, for the shading, I have gone out of my way for. Really. It looks like two or three panels aren't shaded, (like for example the seventh panel), but actually they are. In Comic Life I cut it off, not intentionally of course.

So anyway the shading looks very very very impressive on this one.

Now for...

So, as I explained before I do coloring in Corel Painter. But there's more that I think is also important, that I should also probably tell you. When I scan in my drawings, to get them perfect for coloring, I use Brightness and Contrast a couple of times. 

I put the contrast up all of the way, and I put the Brightness down all of the way. Why?

Because it strengthens the black and pumps up the white, so that the scan looks perfect for coloring.

I also use the Adjust Color, and turn the saturation down.

I do that because usually there are some reds, blues, and even yellows lying around the drawing in random places after I use Brightness and Contrast, and Adjust Color gets rid of them.

After all of that, it's perfect for coloring and shading.

Notice Zach's eye in panel seven. Horribly slanted. I don't know why that looks bad, but it does. From now on, I'm going to make sure the upper half of his eye is completely straight.

That's it!
Have fun the day after tomorrow, because the fun has only begun.
-- Tsitra563.

Day 35 - Page 35

The 35th page. I had to draw it pretty quickly, so it isn't my best page, and I'm not too happy with the Zach drawing I did in the bottom right panel. But anyway, it's got the shading, and that helps it keep from being a totally horrible page.

Now, tomorrow is supposedly the day the first part of my comic ends. I'm sorry, but there was no way that I could find to fit the ending into one page. Two or three pages, will however give me enough time for my dramatic ending. So what I'm going to do is borrow from the next part, ( "The Bug" ), and so "The Bug" will only be 35 or 34 pages. So, sorry, but that's what I'm going to have to do. Anyway, tomorrow is SATURDAY! The next page have many many many panels and it's also the best page I have drawn yet. On Sunday I will draw THREE pages, the 37th ending page of this part, the little "cool cover art" thing for the next part, and also, the FIRST PAGE OF "THE BUG"! You can expect all of that to be right here on this blog on MONDAY!

Stay tuned.

-Tsitra563

Day 25 - Page 25

Okay, a little about this "Thumbs Up Man."

His thumb was doused in a vat of radioactive laughing gas when he was young and it gave him his "DuhFinger" powers. If he touches you anywhere, you will instantly lose control of your brain and start relaxing and saying dumb things. It snaps off in about two seconds, but it's still pretty powerful.

Okay, now a bit about Lightning Bug. Lightning Bug is still a kid, but he can glow in the dark, which is sort of useful, but he still can't really fight super-villains yet. Only thugs and some thieves.

Anyway, back to the page. It's basically a "filler page." You don't really need it, as the next page starts just the way this one does, so you could almost not have this page at all. We have some filler dialogue and some filler pictures, and there really isn't anything to say about them.

Looking forward to the rest of the comic? So am I! Happy reading!
-- Tsitra563

Day 22 - Page 21

Well, this minimizes my work! I now only have to do three pages on Sunday and put them up on Monday! So I'm not that behind. WHEW. Now if I could only get a little ahead. That would be great.

Okay, so for the first time ever I printed out the comic so far. Wow. 20 pages doesn't look like a lot on the computer, but I could hardly staple the thing when I had printed it out!

Anyway, that's all for today. I'll post again on Monday with three brand spanking new pages!

- Tsitra563

Day 20 - PAGE 20!

YAAAY! PAGE 20! Okay, so this page looks pretty good. It has the most panels of any page so far. Which is pretty cool. And, this page is a good place for... THE REVISIONS! Now, I noticed some grammatical and spelling errors, not to mention just plain rotten speech sometimes. So I changed a goodly number of things. All of these things shall be fixed in the slideshow. In fact, I'm revising the slideshow a little, so its completely up to date.

Also, around this blog I'm going to be putting up some minor revisions as well as in the comic. That aside, it's time for...

Unfortunately, in this page I do not have shading. So sorry about that, but I was really trying to pay attention to detail and I was too worn out by the end of it all that I didn't do the shading. Sorry, its my fault, and I should have done something wiser.

Nice and highly detailed! You will notice that in the second panel its sort of in a frame. That is because I did a sneaky trick which I will explain in...

Okay, here is my sneaky trick: In order to get out of redrawing the shop I only drew the open door and Lighting Bug in the second panel. Later, in Corel, I cut that part out roughly and used the Magic Wand tool to make the edges format to the shape I wanted. I then copied the colored shop from panel one, stuck it under Lightning Bug in panel two, and then colored Lightning Bug in. It was much simpler then me drawing and coloring the whole shop all over again just for the second panel. Everything else I draw again.

I have decided that BOOM!Kids is definitely the place for me to go when looking for possible publishers. Maybe it will end up in the slush pile, but maybe not. We will see.

And that is all for today! See you!

- Tsitra563

Day 14 - Page 14

Well, here's the fourteenth page.

Hope you like it!

-- Tsitra563.

Day 12 - Page 12

New page! Not much else to say, except that the printer wasn't working right and I had to restart the computer before it would work again. Anyway, we have some nice SHADING! Yes, I finally remembered! Check back soon for more! And remember, to read the whole comic, just go to The Comic So Far page.

-- Tsitra563

Day 11 - Page 11

Page 11. Whew. I don't have any "extra" pages to do, or anything. Now I am completely caught up.

Which is a very good thing. Now for...

How It Works

I said before that I wanted to tell you the steps of making a page. Well, I'm doing that now.

Step 1: I Draw The Page

I use a pen to do the page. I don't use pencil, and I fix mistakes I made on the page on the computer.

Step 2: I Scan The Page

My printer lets me scan things into my computer, so I can have the new page ready easily and fast.

Step 3: I Prepare for Color

I fill out breaks in the lines, and darken everything, to prepare for coloring.

Step 4: I Color

I color in the characters, backgrounds, and everything.

Step 5: I Shade

I shade in the characters and sometimes the background.

Step 6: I Put It In Comic Life

I stick it in Comic Life, I put in the speech balloons, etc.

And there you have it!

Now imagine doing all those steps everyday. Or, on Sundays, twice. Even without the penciling its hard work. Anyway, I set up a nice little slideshow so that you can see the whole comic Without scrolling down all these posts and just have a nice time.

Click the image below to go to the page where you can see the slideshow, and enjoy. Please note that you can also see the slideshow in fullscreen mode, which is much much better.

- Tsitra563

Day 10 - Pages 8, 9 and 10

Boy, have I been behind! I only just caught up after missing Saturday's and doing two more for Sunday and Monday. Anyway, so here we open up the first hint of the actual plot, right now. The final page shows the Happy Moving van. Note that this is the first mention of Hcaz in the whole comic so far. Unfortunately, there is no shading on the final page. I don't know what I was thinking, but anyway there is a rich, detailed environment to make up for my poor memory. Ugh.

Anyway, that van gave me more trouble then I like to admit. Coloring it was a nightmare, so I didn't even want to think about shading. The houses were also a nightmare, mostly because I had to keep the colors exactly the same from the first page. Anyway, thats all for today. Maybe tomorrow I will have enough energy to go over the process of making a page.

- Tsitra563.

Day 5 - Page 5

So here we have the new page for Day # 5!

Zach looks up and sees...

A big line of customers!

The first one is Lightning Bug. You will notice Lightning Bug has changed from a big hulking superhero to a wimpy, scaredy cat. That is because, later he becomes the bigger, hulking version of himself. But that is later, so I won't give anything away.

We also have some "THUMP"s.  These thumps are coming from outside, where, as Zach correctly guesses in the last panel of this page, a superhero battle is going on with a giant metal worm monster and Mr. Iam Awesume. Unfortunately, Mr. Iam Awesume is hurt and one of the superheros in the line at Zach's shop has to come out.

Mistakes happen all the time. For instance, notice Zach's shirt. For the first few pages he has a long sleeved shirt and a dark grey tie. In a few others, he has a weird collar and a tie. Here, he has neither, instead having a t-shirt!

Uuugh.

Anyway, thats pretty much it for today!

- Tsitra563