grOw/cOmic#6, page 60

I just finished page 60 of issue 4. This page is the 5th in the 19-page chapter, so we are now just passed the 1/4 mark! Another page with lots of character interactions, overlap, and other time-consuming details, I was happy to finish it just under the wire in 2 days. Off to page 61 — enjoy the preview!

grOw/cOmic#6, page 59 completed!

Page 59 was another busy page, taking a full 3 days to work through all of the overlaps, wet clothes effects, background blurs, folds in tight clothes, dry and wet hair, and see-through clothing effects.  Add to all of that the fact that the page contains 12 character "instances" including faces, which are all intermingling or overlapping. Whew! You can get a small example of all this in this preview.  Enjoy!

(I'm now off for a walk! Having already broken my 1-week record of 12.16 miles (19.6 km) by walking 12.76 miles (20.5 km) in the first 3 days of this week alone [taking yesterday off for a bit of rest for obvious reasons], I am now going to add to that record with today's walk.)

grOw/cOmic#6, page 58 completed!

It took a little extra time, but I was finally able to finish page 58. It was a busy page, with overlapping characters and some depth of field effects as well as aligning characters to the 3D-rendered background. I had gotten very close to finishing it yesterday, but I lost a little time in the morning to other stuff (*see below) and wound up running out of time.

(*Sometimes, if I was so close to finishing a page by the end of the "work day", I would stay longer [sometimes 1 or 2 hours] to finish it up. But, over the last few weeks, I've been avoiding doing that on some days [but not all]. On the evenings that I would end "on time", I would then head out and walk. I don't mean slow strolling, but fast-paced power walking. In the last 8 weeks, I've walked 62.5 miles (100 km for the non-US reader)! Each day I walked, I traveled between 2.5 to 3.5 miles in the beginning, and 3.5 to 5.5 miles in the last few weeks per day. And, in those 2 months, I've lost 10 lbs. (4.5 kg for the non-US reader). And I'm feeling great! I'm looking to lose another 10-15 lbs over the next few months and I'm ready to achieve this goal! Plus, my sitting so long in front of the computer working on grOw and my other "RL" work had an adverse affect on my blood pressure [from lack of activity]. It had risen to an unhealthy peak of 140/90 about 6 months ago.  Since that time, I've gotten it back down to an awesome 124/68 !  "The morning stuff" I mentioned above was that I had decided to do my walk in the morning because the weather was promising to be very hot in the afternoon with high humidity... not great physical activity weather.)

But now that this is posted, I'm off for a walk! ...

grOw/cOmic#6, page 57 completed!

The second page of issue 4 — page 57 — has been completed! This, and the next few pages, contain a decent amount of detail. Namely, each page has many characters and panels, all of which are overlapping. It may take a little extra time for each to complete. Basically, there is a lot going on and most of the character are taking part in the exchange. So hang in there, the production of issue 4 is about to take off.

grOw/cOmic#6, page 56 completed!

The first page (page 56) of issue 4 of grOw/cOmic#6 has been completed! This newest issue will be titled "Conflict," and, true to its name, will have the story take a drastic turn. This chapter, like the last one, will have an extra page for a total of 19! So get ready for a new set of color previews leading up to the newest release in the "Milking the Plot" series!

grOw/cOmic#6, Issue 4 pencils nearly done!

It's been a pretty prolific week, with the completion of 12 more pages of drawings for issue 4 of grOw/cOmic#6!  With 17 pages drawn, that leaves only 2 more pages to sketch and it's off to the ink and paint stage. And this, of course, leads to the posting of full color previews!  I was hoping to have finished all 19 pages by the end of this week, but some "real life work" got in the way. The good news is that project (a redesigned website) is about 95% done. Once I complete it early next week, I will have all my time to devote to issue 4.

grOw/cOmic#6, issue 4 pencils begin!

The last few weeks have been filled with a lot of behind-the-scenes work on the next issue of "Milking the Plot" which will be entitled "Conflict."  After the release of issue 3, I took a week to catch up on some "real life" work so that I could concentrate on this newest issue.  

My work spanned the gamut from writing to design to drawing. I took a look at the script and refined it in many places.  I then proceeded to layout the entire issue, including setting the type to see how much space it would take up. Then, I thumbnailed each page's layout. During this process, I realized to do the script justice, this issue will also be a longer-than-usual issue with 19 pages like the last issue. And, once that was all done, I proceeded to put pencil to paper and draw!  I was able to complete 5 of the 19 pages this week on top of all the above mentioned work.

Another thing that I've done over the last few weeks is get back outside and back to my long walks. (The weather has been great.) These are not slow, meandering summer walks, but fast-paced exercise.  It's been too long, and my body has felt the effects of my sedentary habits since last fall.  I pounded out 12.5 miles the first week, 6.8 the next, and logged 8.86 mi in the last 2 days alone at about 15:07 minutes per mile. Feelin' great!   

But, during these walks, even with the music playing, my mind began to wander, exploring possibilities in the future issues of this grOw/cOmic series.  While I haven't typed up any ideas yet, I may be "expanding" this series from 6 issues to 7 or even 8 chapters!  I thought up of some great "enhancements" to the original storyline (which was already "fleshed out") to make it even better and to really "milk it" for all its worth. (OK, enough puns.)  

Issue 4's script is pretty much set in stone, so I won't announce for certain the changes to the series until after issue 4 is released. I will probably take time between issues 4 and 5 to solidify these ideas and write them out. I actually have to do this anyway, as the current script for issue 5 is only half-written and the other half are simplified bullet points. Stay tuned!