Stumptown Comics Fest ‘07
September 28, 2007, filed under: Studio, by Lex
This weekend I’ll be attending the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, Oregon. This is the 4th year of Stumptown and it’s quickly becoming the SPX of the west coast. Portland is another great comics town, and creators seem to come out of the woodwork for this convention. This is the second year I’ve attended
and I’m looking forward to it. If you’re in town stop on by!
Just For Fun Comic Strip
September 26, 2007, filed under: Studio, by LexFor the last year I’ve been doing comic strip ads for my old employer, a stationery and gift store in San Francisco (where I was shackled to a table, forced to design wedding invitations and tie bows for a living…a true test of one’s manhood). While there I also did their ads for the local paper, occasionally drawing cartoons to advertise the latest product. When I took on my new job, I was asked to continue the ads, but as full-fledged comic strip.
Getting the opportunity to do a strip again sounded fun, and to marry it with advertising seemed like a challenge, so I decided to take a crack at it. The store Just For Fun & Scribbledoodles is a staple in Noe Valley and the owners and their dogs are celebrities in the neighborhood, so it seemed only natural to use them as characters (it worked well since they have a natural “Abbott & Costello” relationship). Below are several strips that ran in the local paper. 
From what I’ve heard the strip is a popular feature in the paper. One of the mandates was that the dogs appear in all the strips, either as focal points or window dressing (I actually forgot to put them in a strip and then had to Photoshop them in later on). John Marshall, the artist of Blondie, told me that whenever he draws Dagwood at home he has to draw Daisy with him, otherwise the syndicate will get letters from readers worried where the dog has gone to.
Speak Up: Bard’s Tale Production Part IV
September 14, 2007, filed under: Sketchbook, by LexA few more pages of word balloons and sound FX and I’ll have the first part of A Bard’s Tale complete (1/3 of the way done). And it couldn’t come any sooner–this last month has been nothing but post-production work: from scanning to clean-up to halftones to the final stage: dialogue. Too much of this stuff gets me itchin’ to be back at the drawing board again. Word balloons are fun though and this is the part where it all starts to look like a real comic!
Every cartoonist does their lettering differently, for some it’s the first stage, for others (like me), it’s last. The big change this time around is I’m using my own hand lettering. I had a font made out of my handwriting and have been plugging it into the pages. At first I was resistant to it, but the more I looked at it on the page the more it seemed to fit.
I like the flow of the balloons and lettering in these three pages. This final page was a fun experiment in how fonts can create sounds. 
Shades of Gray: Production Pages Part III
September 5, 2007, filed under: Sketchbook, by LexThe last week and a half I’ve been hard at work cleaning up the pages from Part I and dropping in gray tones. I use three shades of gray (light, medium and dark) for spot color throughout the book. I’ll primarily use it for background items (woodwork, houses, props). I also use it for characters to help better define them from their environments. I try not to overdo it with the grays, and prefer to go the subtle route wherever I can. I’m particularly pleased with the filter I cooked up for the mere…
I’ve always been ambivalent about putting halftones in my work, I tend to prefer stark black and white in comics, but frankly, my work isn’t at the point where it can stand on its own with just black and white. I’m still trying to figure out the proper balance between the two, I hope to one day be as proficient with my contrasts as someone like Jeff Smith is. Until that day comes though, I’ll continue to drop in the grays. However long it takes, it actually does make the pages look better once they’re completed.
Now it’s on to the word balloons!