Bleh. That freaked me out. As I started typing this post I noticed that WordPress/Comicpress was telling me that there was going to be a comic associated with it. I published real quick as a test and saw that it was lying. Phew. So yesterday before publishing the new comic, I finished up strip number 3, which is ready to go for next week. I started coloring number 4 today, and it’s in a new environment, which is nice. Having published a few I realized how sort of bland my backgrounds are, so it will be nice to see a different-colored bland background.
I’m learning a lot of lessons in this first episode. I still haven’t figured out a new coloring strategy, though I’m toying with the idea of doing it in Illustrator, as a way to avoid having to fix all my edges. I should show a picture but essentially the problem is that the bucket doesn’t penetrate the anti-aliased line art. Actually, as I typed that out, I considered using the bucket on my smart objects imported from Illustrator to Photoshop, and as I typed that, I remembered what my friend said about opening Illustrator files with Photoshop, and vice versa. I had tried that out before but it wouldn’t do a true open, it kind of opened a weird version of it, but I think it’s worth at least another shot.
I went back to coloring by hand today, because on the previous strip I felt like I was doing that anyway, re: edges. I haven’t made a lot of progress, but this one should go pretty quick, at least foreground-wise. There aren’t any real special effects needed, as there have been with 1-3. I also replaced the tip on my stylus, which may have been premature, but I wanted to compare them (there wasn’t much of a difference, it wasn’t as nubified as I thought it’d be (me, on the other hand…)).
As I’m trying to figure this all out, it helps to look at what other webcomics are doing, process-wise, though their processes are a little different than mine. I don’t want to just adopt their methods, I need to find my own, but it is nice to get a perspective for what my options are.
I’m still trucking along on Lost, I’m almost at the end of season 1, or I finished it already, I didn’t check on the last episode. It’s like the perfect show to watch while doing this. I’ve seen most of it before so I don’t have to pay too much attention, but when something interesting (or something I don’t remember) happens, I can stop to look.