One step closer to finished with Dylan's farewell pages

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Saying goodbye to a friend, children's picture book,Clip Studio Paint EX

Almost done with these pages… I have to work in the dialog balloons and that will be tricky — I didn’t lay them out in advance for any of the pages. I was winging it like a cocky rookie. I promise myself that I will lay out the dialog balloons for my next book before I do the paintings. Damn! I’m a slow learner.

Today will go down in history as the first time I’ve taken a picture with a film camera since 2015, seven years ago. Rather than use a fancy camera, I used an Ilford Sprite II, an all plastic point and shoot camera. It was fun. I’m going to carry a camera with me whenever I go out of the house.

Chore Day One

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Same chores: vacuuming and laundry.

I had a brainstorm while talking with my partner. I was talking about my chaotic time in college and she suggested a graphic novel about student life at a big college in the 60’s. It was mind-blowing as we emerged from the repressive Eisenhower 50’s to the student rebellion in the 60’s. I was not part of that rebellion, mired as I was in inner conflicts. As a student, who showed great promise — according to my SAT scores — I was a magnificent underachiever who spent an entire year floating paper airplanes out of the window of my 7th floor dorm window.

I figure my tale would require four volumes: freshman year, sophomore year, etc. It would be a huge undertaking on the order of a masterpiece such as Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, by Derf Backderf. FYI, that’s an affiliate link. Derf has been doing comics for 40 years. It would take me 40 years to learn the skills to describe my four chaotic years at the Great Big University.

Alas! So many books to write, so little time.

Page 65 now has the beginnings of a background

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Next week the second wave of applicants will be pounding down the doors where I work. My workload will balloon from a manageable 100% to a mind-boggling 400%. Because my 100% workload has been bearable, I’ve been able to work on my book in the evening. With the new workload, the book may have to go on hiatus for the next two months.

Fiddling with the scoreboard

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The big change to the scoreboard was to replace the shaky hand lettering with a digital typeface. Somethings need to look mechanical and geometric and objects that the brain knows to be rectilinear should be rectilinear, such as scoreboards.

Page 21, Second Version

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page_21_beast_of_flame2.blog.png, Easter Island,Volcano Godlet, Clip Studio Paint EX

I decided to go for a simpler design for the volcano god. Instead of semi-realistic flames, I came up with these simple graphic swirls to simulate flames. The self-critical angel sitting on my shoulder says that the sun god looks too old. What am I going to do about that tomorrow?

Well, the first thing I’ll do is make the eyes rounder and move them further apart. I’ll give the eyebrows and evil tilt, and I’ll make the nose wider, too — cats have a very wide bridge of the nose. After I fix those problems, I’ll work on the expression — right now he looks like he’s retired from the volcano god business.. I want my volcano god to have an impish and vindictive expression.

Hooray! A New Page...Page 20

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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

This is my first sketch of a young Moai boy yelling at the kids standing on top of his father. Little do the kids know that the fallen Moai are alive…and sleeping where the fell 600 years ago. What! The Moai are sleeping? Yes, that’s true. You’ll have to hang in there until I finish the book to find out how this unusual situation came about.

The NY Times reported today that 99.999% of the 2.6 million books published last year made from $0 to $1000.. Only 268 books of the 2.6 million sold more than 100,000 copies. These dismal numbers make sense to me. So far this year my second book has made $12, which I figure puts me way ahead of about 1,000,000 other authors. .

Page 19 with a Sleeping Moai, a Dolphin, a Burro, and a Blue Jay

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It’s page 19 again! Today I clocked out of work at 4 p.m. and had time to add the kids to the picture. The general idea is that they’re standings on a sleeping moai. You’ll have to read the book to know why all of the moai, except one, are actually living creatures who happen to be asleep. It’s marvelously complicated!

More Concept Drawings, with Magic Volcano Spirits Involved

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More brainstorming and sketching today… As you can see, Jimmy and Sally (a baby whale) have been turned into moai by the cranky volcano spirit. It looks pretty bad for them. The big moai have been asleep for 500 years. I’d hate to see Jimmy and Sally turn into stone over the centuries. I hope that one of their friends will come up with an ingenious plan to rescue them!

My Adobe Creative Cloud subscription expired today. I’ve renewed it through my work — Adobe CC is one of the perks we part-timers get. It will take three of four days to wrap up the red tape. Until then I’ll be using Clip Studio Paint EX for everything. CSP is really a competent tool, like a Swiss Army Knife for graphic art. Before I settled on Clip Studio Paint, I pulled up my copy Affinity Photo and gave it a try. It was a no go for me. CSP rocks the party, really.

Resources for this post:

The Lightbulb with Bddy Butterfly Under It

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I didn’t complete this painting today. I thought I would, but instead I spent most of the day figuring out why my digital brushes weren’t working. For a moment I thought I was losing my grip on reality. I’ve been learning how to create digital brushes and I’ve made some I like. Today they all stopped working. In the end I figured out that the table software update was the villain. I eventually realized that I had to revert to the previous drivers. After that the stylus started to work. Huion drivers are crap.