Remember when I said I’d add my latest comic into my shoppe? I also promised to post the original art for the cover, didn’t I? Yes, I think I did. Well, here it is! You may also recall that I promised to wax romantic about yellow ink. I’m not so sure I can go quite that far. Lately my roving eye has been ogling magenta. In fact, I can’t remember why I decided to use yellow in the first place. Ah, but aren’t I getting ahead of oneself. You probably want to know what the hell I’m doing putting yellow ink all over an otherwise perfectly fine drawing.

It all started with Farmy Acres, and it’s notorious black+one color scheme. Basically I wanted my still-cogent inker self to indicate to my future late night computer colorist self where to put the color. In the old days, comic book artists would draw thin outlines as “color holds” to indicate where the colorist (who was of course a different person) should drop a shadow, for instance. I’m one person and I have Photoshop, so I figured I could do better than that.

On Dan Clowes’ art for Ghost World, the secondary blue color is indicated by cyan ink right on the original drawing. I use cyan “no-photo blue” pencils to sketch things out, so I can’t use blue to also indicate a color separation. The pencils would get all mixed in and it’d all go to hell! It occurred to me that instead I could probably just draw with one of the other two process colors. I got ahead of myself again. Process colors. They’re the four colors with which most things in color are printed. But you knew that. The reason I figured I should stick with them is you can look at your Photoshop art broken down into its component color channels. This makes it really easy to find and select something that is 100% made up of just one of those colors.

Well, I know I’ve said how much I love using colored ink. A whole spectrum of ink bottles is arrayed by my drawing table every day. So, I just started dipping my pen, and eventually my brush, into the little glass bottle full of yellow. For some reason I didn’t use magenta. I really can’t remember why.

Anyhow, I’ve been doing it for a few months now, and did so for this cover design, as you can tell. I wanted the cover pages to look like title cards from an old cartoon. I pulled together elements from Looney Tunes, Disney (“A Walt Disney Donald Duck. Technicolor.”), and Tom & Jerry. Using a lightbox, I put my Bristol paper over a 1/10″ grid to make the letterforms consistant.

See the crayon stuff above the front cover? I used that for a spotlight behind the lettering. You know, like old title cards.

Did you make it all the way down here?? Gee, you must really need to kill some time! Wull…thanks.

Here’s that follow-up I promised. These are marked as copyright of Field Publications, but it looks like they belong to the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego. They’re from a collection my mom found at a used book store called Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. It’s by Richard H Minear and was published by The New Press, New York, 1999.

Apparently the good doctor drew political cartoons from 1941 to ‘42 for PM, a liberal New York rag, before he joined the service making instructional and propaganda films. Seeing this many of his drawings back to back to back pointed out how clearly Seuss used the silhouette to improve legibility. It’s a classic trick of cartooning and animation, that an action is clearer if it can be judged by the shape of the figure against the background (this is also a trope of character design). So, rather than sipping a drink held in front, cartoon characters turn their heads sideways and gulp it from an uplifted hand. Anyhow, the dude gets it.

I’ve also been reading Popeye and Krazy Kat and Little Nemo comics lately, and I feel like I could stand to incorporate some of the frontal, theatrical nature of old comic strips into my own work. I tend to compose cinematically, with camera angles and a sense of space, but I’m really drawn to the clarity and elasticity when the characters are at the front of the frame, and the scenes are behind them. This is something that’s worked for book illustration since the illuminated manuscripts. But what do I know? Maybe my overly-rendered backgrounds are my thing. Maybe I’m more a product of the movie theater than the stage.

Okay! That’s enough art school blah blah blah for today. Here are those drawings I’m ripping off:

This heat wave is serious business. The PATH train is catching fire, the G train is suspending service. The breeze feels like sticking your head in an oven to check on the pizza. Basically, I’ve been coping by sitting around in my underwear all morning. Somehow, around noon I feel the urge to work on something. Wellll, that something is quite often a little frog with a beautiful rainbow.

Yes, loyal bloggers, the famous frog is reaching a point of completion. I’m just not sure if I’m going to go with the gray fill that appeared previously or not. Probably yes.

Alright, alright, I know, I know. This week’s over, and I didn’t start the Portrait Project. I had a feeling I shouldn’t write about it until it actually started, but oh well. I did. As my mom has always said “Deal,” or “Tough nuggies,” or “Well, life isn’t fair.”

Still, there are some exciting things going down in the studio. Among them, I’m trying to figure out WordPress. This, and a promotional flipbook I’m working on, are also leading me to do a little “rebranding!!” No more picture frames and gold and velvet for my public image, cause now I’m all about frogs and rainbows!! Does this have more to do with me? Does it define me better? Who knows, not me!!!! Also, the right shift key on this keyboard is busted, so my left pinky’s getting a serious workout.

My blog sucks. I know it. For the infrequency of the posts, you’d think there would be awesomer content. And now my other, more favorite blog is taking forever to update (because certain collaborators got a job, not to point any fingers at Todd, who sucks even worse than I do).

Well, this time I thought I’d toss up the fruits of this week’s labor. A pencil test! It still needs a couple frames at the beginning and end to make it a rad animation, but it’s a start. Plus, who doesn’t love eternally looping animated GIFs!!!??!