New Posting Schedule

by on February 18, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Posted In: Blog Entries

In order to stay ahead of schedule and transition seamlessly from RUNNERS: The Big Snow Job into the next arc, I have decided to reduce new page posts to once a week, starting with issue #3. Instead of the current Monday and Thursday schedule, new pages of story will post on Mondays.

This was a tough decision, but ultimately, I decided that for a webcomic, consistency in schedule would be crucial to keeping and building a strong readership. At the current 2 pages/week rate, there would have to be a long break online between the end of the current story arc and the beginning of the next one, and I didn’t want the readers to suffer that long a hiatus. So hopefully, the new schedule will result in no interruption between stories.

And the change isn’t necessarily bad news, as I will continue with Thursday posts every week. The second weekly post won’t be story content but will be behind-the-scenes posts. The content will range from character turnarounds, to prop and ship diagrams, to concept sketches, to process documents that show my method of working. This will all be in addition to the commentary I’m still providing with each posted story page. So I hope you’ll check out both posts each week!

Thanks to everyone who voiced their comments and votes on the “Feedback Needed” thread. Your feedback was a great help!

5 Comments

Model Ship Interest?

by on February 18, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Posted In: Blog Entries

Anyone have a couple hundred bucks and a hankerin’ for a model Brimia? A friend recently introduced me to Randy Cooper, an amazing model maker who occasionally does custom projects. He’s interested in making a limited model run of the Khoruysa Brimia, Roka’s smuggler ship in Runners. Naturally, I would LOVE for this to happen, because (a) it would be cool as hell to have a finished model of my ship design, and (b) I could actually use it for reference in drawing the ship from different angles.  🙂

But is anyone else interested? The process is labor-intensive for Randy, so he’d have to have significant interest before taking it on. He’d be scratch-building a master, from which he’d create molds to produce sets that buyers could then assemble and paint. According to him, a 12”-14″ model set would cost around $200-250 to buy, and he would need at least 20 people interested.

You can check out Randy’s work at his website: http://randycoopermodels.com/

If you think you might be interested in buying a limited $200-250 model of the Khoruysa Brimia, just let me know by posting your comment in this thread. Thanks!

6 Comments

Webcomic Spotlight: Sunset Grill

by on January 28, 2010 at 12:27 am
Posted In: Blog Entries

So I’m trying to check out more webcomic series whenever I get the free time (which isn’t very often). As I do, I’ll try to spotlight them here.

First up is a great sci-fi comic called Sunset Grill by Kat Feete, which revolves around the many, MANY characters who are patrons of the Sunset Grill, a “bar on the shady side of town in the run-down and corrupt city of Kieselburg.” In its 200+ pages (so far), the series has explored many different stories and featured a great number of recurring characters, from bar employees to police officers to gang members to aliens.

It’s done in a rendered CG art style, which I know may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But even if it’s not your visual thing, the stories themselves are well worth the read! It’s a great piece of very cool sci-fi world-building, with the author explaining background info in notes below some of the comics.

The comic itself is well written, with a hefty amount of comedic dialog and some vey funny moments throughout the series mixed in with a good amount of drama to boot. So there’s a bit of something for everyone. Plus gangsters, low lifes, and thugs. And given that’s pretty much what RUNNERS is about, how could I not like this series?

Check out Sunset Grill.

3 Comments

Inking “Snow Job” #4 today

by on January 14, 2010 at 9:53 am
Posted In: Blog Entries

I was falling behind there for a while, so it was time to start cranking out the pages.  I penciled all 24 pages of “The Big Snow Job” #4 in December, and I’m starting the inks today!

Over the next week or so, I’ll be trying something new: inking 18 pages simultaneously, which isn’t quite as impressive as it sounds. Sadly, it does not involve Dr Octopus arms. It just means inking the same character on all 18 pages, then the next character on all the pages, etc, instead of completely finishing 2 full pages each day.

Basically, there are some new characters that show up in issues #3 and 4, and since their designs are pretty complicated, I figured it might be easier to ink each character on all the pages at once. That way, the design details will be fresh in my mind and I won’t have to dig out the sketches and reference every time I need to ink that character on a new page.

So that’s the plan. We’ll see how it goes. Somehow I don’t think it will feel quite as satisfying as completely finishing 2 pages every day. But towards the end, where I finish 10 or so pages in the same day, that’ll probably be awesome.

1 Comment