HardKnox

We get to meet Samantha, and the heart of the strip is starting to come into view: a family strip and work strip smooshed together. (Smooshed is a technical term) Sam is a good kid, but definitely resents having to go to school where her dad teaches.

Again, I will be redrawing. The Quirk character isn’t good enough, and there is no transition between the mailbox location of panel #1 and the door location of panel #2. And Knox’s head isn’t proportional between the two panels.

I do like the Sam character. Her hair needs to be better; it’s too top heavy.

One of my challenges is also backgrounds. I want to convey the environment of school without being too detailed. The limitations of comic strip size prevents too much information going into any given strip. Dammit. I want it to feel like a school without getting too literal. I want a cartoony style. Funky Winkerbean as abandoned it, and I’m going to pick up what it dropped on the floor and rolled under my chair.

I do like the joke. There should be a strip before this one to set up this situation.

So Knox gets to work and BOOM we have new character: Mr. Quirk. He’s the anti-Knox. He’s fun and excited and loves his work and subject, math. Actually, he probably has ADD. Which is great since he teaches math. Get it? ADD is short for addition. The jokes never stop comin’.

I will be redrawing this strip. His characterization is totally off. Which is okay. This is the first strip I’ve drawn and inked him. I haven’t practiced drawing him enough, and I’m not totally familiar with him yet. The inking is great…if I were a squirrel. A squirrel with a drinking problem and violent temper. (Okay, that’s a new strip idea.)

There’s not enough weight/solid. The ink lines are too sparse. Heck, I didn’t even bother to clean up some stray ink. But I do like the “ooooo” shape Quirk’s mouth makes in panel four.

The joke is okay. I’m trying to convey Quirk’s enthusiasm vs. Knox’s exasperation and pessimism. Quirk will be a foil to Knox. Quirk is more excited about Knox’s subject than Knox is. But it can…and will…be tweaked.

I’ve got one week done except for the sunday. My intended goal, besides picking up hot-hot chicas, was to trace the development of the strip and reflect on the creative process. I don’t think most people know what goes into the creation of a comic strip.

So, I’m going to post each one individually and discuss my thoughts, regrets, plans, etc. Okay…mostly regrets. Sigh…entirely regrets. You’ll see.

With fist punching, face-breaking action!

I been a-doodlin’ and a-drawin’. Let’ take a gander, shall we?

Here’s a list of links:

sinfest

cectic

the mows

bateman

There’s also several sites that collect bunches of comic strips.

gocomics

Seattle Times’ comics and games

SFGAte.com

And just for the fun of it, here’s my old strip Kahootz

At gocomics, definitely check out The Norm. I can not recommend it enough.

For anybody interested, Ted Dawson has posted a new Spooner strip at http://threemeninatub.blogspot.com/

It’s some pretty sweet stuff. The whole website swerves dangerously close to completely awesome.

I am a teacher. And like lots of teachers, I sponsor after school clubs and organizations. One of mine is Graphics Club. It’s about eight great kids who have some sort of interest in drawing or graphics. But mostly drawing.

Well, I took in my pens and let them ink the old fashioned way.  They had mixed feelings about nibs. But one thing is for sure–they doodled for an hour with these frustrating things.

But, at least one cool thing: one kid wants to go out and buy some.

Here’s the strip.

I would never consider this good enough. I wouldn’t include it in my portfolio. I was practicing inking with the dip pen.

My thoughts…decent joke and bad drawing.

What I’m looking to improve is the composition, the character design, and the ink lines. Also, Knox’s response should be “I heard that.” But I didn’t feel like fixing it because this is a test strip. The students don’t look like modern teenagers and they don’t feel natural enough. Knox’s head is too small. The chair should be black. The ink lines are inconsistent and messy. The ink is so fast and wet, I feel like I can’t control it. But I’ll keep trying. The interesting thing about the dip pen is how quick the inking went. I didn’t spend nearly as much time actually inking.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to use the technical pens just so I can get stuff done.

I do like the white space between Knox and the students. I’m debating on the need for a background.