Update 4/26/09: The comics are temporarily stalled because of a week-long virus and subsequent exhaustion. I’m working again, but it may be up to a week before I post the next page. I hope to build up a small reserve of pages for situations like this.
For those few people curious about the process behind these pages, I’ve posted something about just why the comics are taking so long to appear.
I’ve actually managed two full pages this week. The next is scheduled for Thursday.
I thought I’d try an experiment with this comic: I did the pencilling in blue pencil, and the “inking” in black pencil. The idea was both to save time and to preserve the quality and spontaneity of my original pencils, which I tend to ruin in the inking stage.
Unfortunately it didn’t work. Partly, I think, I used the wrong kind of paper–the pencil smeared. Once I had the thing scanned Photoshop gave me a choice between washed-out lines and heavy speckles. I’ll redraw this one at some point but decided putting the flawed version up now was better than letting the strip stall.
I managed to finish a strip ahead of the storm. I’m taking a week off, so the next one will appear on the 29th.
There may or may not be a cartoon on Friday. The weather people are predicting a major ice storm for Thursday, and I have no idea whether I’ll still have power by the end of the day, or what kind of nonsense I’ll have to put up with.
I realize going for another rerun already is a bit lame, but I didn’t get as much done as I thought I might over the long weekend… and, at any rate, this one never stops being relevant.
Someday I’ll dig out the files and fix the coloring error in the last panel.
In case anyone’s been checking… expect new comics soon. I’ve just been exhausted lately. In the meantime, I’m going with some reruns this week.
I actually had the experience Bob describes in 2004.
