The Week Off Thus Far...

[kybearfuzz]

Yesterday was an optometrist appointment. While I like my optometrist, I hate her location. It's inside the local Wal-Mart. It's the closest to me and is covered by my insurance. Still, the constant din of register beeps, crying children, and shopping freaks makes the visit tedious. It's aggravated by the dilation of the eyes.

The overall good news was that my eyes hadn't really changed. One eye is the same, the other is actually a bit better, but not drastic enough to need new glasses.

So, today I needed to get out of the house and away from the internet. I drove to Borders to get some coffee and to work on the next installment of my comic. I've found that I tend to concentrate more when I put myself away from the house. It's not so unusual, consider how much drawing I usually do in meetings. I managed to do a lot considering the cute bears that seem to congregate at book stores.

I should do a post about the number of hours it takes to put an installment together. Here are a few tools of my trade, so to speak. The graph paper book is where I map everything out. Usually I write out an outline of the entire issue then break down the installments with actually pages layouts and dialogue. I use "Comic Life" to draw the panels and print them out. Then, I draw the actual images in the panels. I have an accordion folder full of printed photos that I use for reference, including photos of you guys that I have used to create your different superheroes (no nudes, I promise). The coffee isn't a necessity, but a pleasure.

The good news is that the next installment is all drawn out. I now get to ink all of it. Whew... I may go back to Borders tomorrow.

Comments

[philbutrin.livejournal.com]

happy inking! :-)

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

LOL.. thanks handsome. I tend to get a bit dizzy from the Sharpie fumes :)

[bruinwi.livejournal.com]

All this goes a long way in explaining the high quality of your artwork...and the considerably lower quality of mine.

[kybearfuzz.livejournal.com]

Your comic is not lower in quality than mine, it's just different in style. In fact, I know you recently garnered a new fan in one of my 411 chat buddies. He sent me an email telling me about this cool bear-comic strip he found called "Bear With Me" and asked me if I'd heard of it.

I told him that I not only had heard of it, I knew (albeit cyberly) the creator! (See that name dropping I just did) :)

And I will say, your strip is far better written than my comic.

[bruinwi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the referral! Should your Grizzly Tales find their way to a permanent web site, I'll surely return the favor.

If my strip is better written, it's because I crank it out on a regular basis, requiring me to give my characters a bit of depth, and the story lines to be more arcing. The focus of our strips is also different: yours dealing primarily with action and physicality, mine with character interaction.

Still, I am in awe of your drawing technique and attention to detail.