A recent page for the latest story over at my webcomic “1977 the Comic” featured three wide panels with all four characters in each frame. The progression of the panels takes them from nighttime to daytime. I like to move the story along at times with only simple narration text instead of the characters themselves explaining everything to the reader.
But when I sized the comic page for the internet, sometimes little details are hard to see, or even at all sometimes. I thought I’d present the three frames here in this post so you may click on them to see them in a large format, thus showing off some of my hard work on the poses and backgrounds. This particular page took a long time to do. One, it required having all four characters interact in the same frame at the same time, which in of itself may be challenging. And two, I had a lot of interruptions as we recently (at the time of this post) adopted a puppy from the local animal shelter and she’s keeping us busy day and night. At age 66, I wasn’t ready to raise another child, but luckily dogs progress much quicker than their human counterparts.
The first frame has the gang trying to sleep on a hot, humid night in a dingy hotel room in New York city. New York, in the summer of 1977, was experiencing a rather brutal heatwave. My story takes place the week of the 1977 blackout and that is a background element of the main story.
The second frame is the comic relief of this page. I work in a small joke or sight-gag in every page I draw. This time I make fun of the ladies being snuck into a YMCA to use the shower facilities as the one at the sleazy hotel was disgusting.
Here I had to draw in the details of the men’s locker room at the YMCA. The tiles on the wall took up a lot of work as I had to get the perspective correct on the wall with the shower head as well as adding the highlights and shading to the tile.
The third frame shows the group finally enjoying something about New York, and that’s the food. Drawing in all the items on the diner’s countertop took a fair amount of time. I purchased an add-on brush that draws French fries for you, as well as I purchased some 3D models of the plates, coffee cup, and saucer. I used a new set of texture tools for the countertop design, which was also used on the mattress in the first frame.
I really like Lorraine’s expression (the one in the blue plaid blouse). As I try to expand as an artist, I work on using expressions to help the story along without necessarily having to use dialog. Robyn (in the purple top) is a good example as she’s generally the one who questions things and is easily angered, so I’ve gotten good at drawing frowns.
Click here to start reading from the beginning of the story.
Love the explanation of the details, makes us take a deeper look into all the work that goes into these drawings and appreciate it even more, love it, Keep up the great work !!!
Thank you! I know that a lot of the little details are often overlooked in comic pages as your eyes take in everything from dialog, what the characters are doing, etc., that it is easy to miss the minute details we artists put in, mainly to torture ourselves. 🙂
I’m impressed and may use it if I write West Harris being a plan 9 roadie for a cross America tour. They hire West because West can drive them, cook meals like Lorrain’s mom made pasta and mushrooms with puff balls for them. Offers Bud and Jeff another buddy though West lacks breasts or a pair and dresses more feminine than Lorraine or Robyn. But they can girls night out while West “babysits the boys” and does laundry and won’t steal the weed. West can even fix electronics and the van. West wants to be a roadie for the band and will do it free just for the adventure. The only downside is West likes disco music but won’t play it on the radio while driving highway got to pay attention. But West will protect Bud from wasps, spiders, snakes and mystic frogs giving up kissing them no prince.