Well, this almost didn’t happen.

Like when goalies fight the puck in hockey, I’ve been fighting the pencil. But something went up, at least, and I did experiment with my art a bit. Or rather, tried a trick that I stopped using a few years back.

I don’t know if it has an official name, but I call it the “Pepperwood Style”, as it was the type of art I used when I was doing Pepperwood. Basically what I do is draw the strip as I normally would (I usually draw a very light base, often in a 8H or 5H pencil. If you know pencils, you know 8H is like drawing with a piece of glass). If I was doing the usual Aikida style, I would then ink, and scan. For Pepperwood, I would forgo the ink phase and instead go over the light pencil with something thicker, usually a 2H. Then I would crank up the gradients when scanning so it would produce very dark, yet soft edged lines. I’ve always really liked the effect, but never used it because I found masking (for the colouring/shading phase on the computer) to be difficult with no solid lines to follow.

I don’t know if I’m better at masking these days, but I had no issue on this piece. The added benefit is that I really am terrible with ink, just awful. It allows me to complete bypass that stage. (And saves me a good two hours).

I’m not entirely sure I want to stick with it, we’ll see what the reception is, but like I said… experimenting.

As for what the hell is actually going on, yes, this is kind of a story-like thing. Fear not, there will be no weird demons, or crazy, meandering, drama. Chapters are going to be more like bookends on a string of strips, with a loose theme. I am what I am, so I will pepper the comic with story and such, but I plan to be pretty simple to start out.

I also just love drawing the chapter titles, it’s like doing a cover for a comicbook. You kind of step it up a bit.

Yeah, Aikida is playing tennis. I wanted to have her focused on some sort of sport to give her some depth, something about her that drives her. I was considering horse riding because girls look cute in those outfits, but settled on tennis. You can only imagine Aikida has a killer two handed backhander. And no, no sappy romance to come just yet… love doesn’t mean love in tennis, baby!

If you like the title page, I’ve blown it up into a full sized wallpaper! Download, and such.

1024 x 768 (JPG)
1280 x 960 (JPG)
1600 x 1200 (JPG)

So, Dominek Hasek retired today. Mixed feelings there. While I absolutely loved old Hasek (Him charging Mario in the 92 Cup finals when Dom was playing for the Hawks is one of the greatest saves of all time, because no one had done anything like it before), and appreciate the Cup he helped Detroit win in 2002, his late career antics were a bit lame. Still, one of the best of our time.

The coolest thing about the Hasek stuff though, was that I found a link comparing the Dominator to other former greats, including Ron Hextall. This prompted me to look up some Hextall highlights, and I found a great reel on Youtube. You have to watch it, Hextall (off the top of my head) is probably the best NHL goalie never to win a Cup.  Rob Brown running from him, scared shitless, at 5:48 is fucking hilarious.

“You don’t have to be sweet… to be good.”

Word. See you Wednesday.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 4:53 pm and is filed under comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.