Comics Are Great! 66 – The Difference Between Story and Backstory

World building! Backstory! Writing! With Dave Roman, Brandon Dayton, and Paul Storrie. What’s the difference between story and backsory? It’s a tricky question, so I was lucky to assemble a rather impressive roundtable of comics people to help sort this one out. Brandon Dayton, Dave Roman, and Paul Storrie all return to the show to [...]

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Comics Are Great! 58 – Writing for Kids

Whether or not one should make any special considerations when writing for kids is a topic that goes round and round on the twitters. Is it better to shield young people from the difficulties and terrors of adulthood, or should we be preparing kids for this? Are there advantages to both? It’s a philosophical episode [...]

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Comics Are Great! 50 – A Tale of Two Cities

For the sort-of anniversary show, I was lucky enough to be joined the old roundtable (plus one) for a follow-up discussion to CAG 48! So, to quote Kermit the Frog, it really makes me happy to introduce to you: From L to R: Dave Roman, Kasey Van Hise, Brandon Dayton, and Tony Cliff Together we [...]

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Petty Dreadful Progress: Comics Process, Soup to Nuts

Now that The Front: Petty Dreadful is underway with updates, I plan on blogging the process as I go. I talked about the whys in a recent Lean Into Art podcast. So how do I get from story idea to final comic page? It all starts with a combination of notebooks and Evernote. I jot [...]

Drawing for Myself – Painting the MNSA Building

Last time I showed how I used Google Sketchup to build a 3D model of a major setting in my upcoming Front comic, Petty Dreadful. Today I took on the next step, coloring the image in Photoshop: It’s not quite done yet, but it’s coming along. Trying out some of the painting techniques Brandon Dayton [...]

Drawing for Myself – Using Sketchup for My Settings

Working hard on the new Front comic, entitled Petty Dreadful, and one of the pre-production items I need to take on is the main setting for the story, the MNSA (Multi National Security Agency) headquarters. Like another comic I worked on a few years back, Switch Runners, I plan on making some digital paintings of [...]

Drawing for Myself – Cindarr

Today’s warm-up sketch got a little involved, but I was grateful for the chance to practice some new techniques. I started out with a simple drawing of Cindarr from the Visionaries toy/cartoon series. I meant to color it with crayons, but then thought about that episode of the Comics Are Great! podcast I did with [...]

Comics Are Great! 41 – Digital Painting

After a failed attempt at some digital painting, I enlisted the help of Brandon Dayton, celebrated cartoonist behind Green Monk and concept designer for EA Games, for a discussion and demonstration on how to paint with pixels. Lots of great material in the video this time as Brandon shares some terrific tips and tricks! We’re [...]

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