As some of you may already know, I prepared a short two page story with writer, Alexis Sottile, for inclusion in an anthology based on missed connection ads. The result was Nocturnal Transmission. The editor of the anthology, Julia Wertz, recently contacted me and asked that we rework the ending. She agreed to adding another page to the story and soon after Alexis and I were wracking our brains to come up with a knockout of an ending. If all goes well, this should be the version that makes it to the book, I Saw You…Missed Connection Comics, early 2009. Happy reading, Everyone!

Here’s a brief aside from the Process to bring you another the little project that has kept me busy the last few days. It’s my submission for Julia Wertz’s brilliant anthology based on Missed Connection ads! The two page story is penned by the wily wordsmith, Alexis Sottile and myself with all imagery provided by yours truly. We had a lot of fun putting this together and we hope you enjoy this little diversion while you wait for the next page in the Process.

It’s safe to say that I am a perfectionist. This post will make apparent the extent of my affliction. When I posted the final page 28, I promised to post these preliminary images and I described them as ’surprising’. What will be probably most surprising about them is how close they are to the final. Folks who have seen these and the final page together just shake their heads and often can’t pick out the differences. See if you can spot where I went ‘wrong’.

Since this second image is so near completion, I’m going to offer it up to the first person who makes a donation of over $35 using the link to the right. Normally any donation of over $25 gets a black and white drawing such as this but this one is bigger and therefore more expensive to ship. If more than one person donates, non winning donations will get a regular black and white sketch. Even at the higher rate, I promise these sketches pass my rigorous perfectionist criteria and are sure to please!

In other news, some new links have been posted to the links page. They include a link to ComicSpot, Sinus Camera, Pixel Rain, and a wonderful new webcomic, Desert Story, by Klos. These fine sites have already linked to me so when you’re done here, please visit them and show your support.Thanks, everyone!

So there it is! And now I have to get back to work and start on page 27!

I want to thank everybody who stopped by to read about this project. Your support is what keeps me going. A lot of you that came by probably were new to seeing this webcomic and for that I need to thank the following fine websites for their linking to this blog.

JK Parkin at Blog@Newsarama had this wonderful post:

Tom Spurgeon at Comicsreporter.com posted this notice:

And John Martz at Drawn.ca was kind enough to post this:

Now there’s only a couple more pieces of business left to attend to. First off, if there was something that you found interesting, insightful or irritating, please let me know. I doubled my overall traffic for this site in just this week and that means a lot of visitors stopped by and only one of you posted a comment. I get such a buzz out of hearing what people think that I am going to once again ask that visitors please drop me a line. It doesn’t have to be much. A little goes a long way with me.

Secondly, I would just like to solicit visitors to consider purchasing a T-shirt from Bountee. com or making a donation to me through paypal using the link on the sidebar. Two of my designs are currently the most wanted designs there are so get on over there and check ‘em out! Even here, a little goes a long way with me. I get a very small sum of money from each T-shirt sold but it’s always a thrill for me when I do. If you would be interested in a piece of original art, please consider making a donation of $25 or more for an ink sketch or $50 or more for a full color drawing! I promise you won’t be disappointed whether you purchase a T-shirt or make a donation and receive a piece of original art. Satisfaction guaranteed!

Enough of the hard sell! Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to having you visit again in the weeks to come as I bring Chapter 2 to a close and usher in an entirely new experience for Chapter 3! Thank you!
Joe

So here we are at last, the final step! By this time I’m psyched to have gotten to this phase. Throughout this process, I’ve scripted, thumbnailed, penciled, inked twice, colored and by now I am so relieved to be here adding the finishing touches on the computer. Before I dive right in, I’m going to warn you that I’ll probably get a little technical so hopefully you’ll have some familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator.

I scan the page for print in CMYK at 600dpi. In Photoshop, I’ll add a levels layer and a hue saturation layer and make the appropriate adjustments. The aim is to find a nice balance of tones as well as give the colors a small boost using the hue/sat adjustment layer. During the scanning process, the texture of the blank paper gets lost to white so to bring that back I take a previous scan of the paper texture and add that as a separate Photoshop layer. I use the layer properties to make the paper texture visible only where the image is white and that restores the look of the actual page. Unfortunately it also gives the page a bit of a yellow cast so I use some more hue/sat adjustment layer(s) to bring the greys closer to a neutral color. Speaking of hue/sat adjustments, the very first thought balloon’s color underwent a number of changes. At first I tweaked the color to be more like the teal color of some of the other balloons but after looking at it again I decided to change it to match the rust color of the balloons from Page 25. You may also notice that the thought balloon in the third image has also been darkened. I used a multiply layer to darken it so that the letters would have enough contrast to be legible.

Sometimes, I’ll adjust the drawing itself. Page 26 was one of those occasions where I added some new elements. For the ‘panel’ where I open the fridge door, I added some shaky lines around the arm and by my head to carry over the shakiness of the other images. Lastly, I added a few more ’stars’ around some of the thought balloon edges. This is what it looked like at this point.

Now that the image is done, it’s time I sorted out the letters. Originally, I don’t think I had any intentions of having any dialog for this page. I was just supposed to straggle over to the fridge with a buildup of tension until I finally opened it with the ‘CHUK!’ sfx. After looking at it some more, I decided to play with some internal dialog to slow down the reading of each image and to make more clear what was going on with me internally. The shaky lines around the character are one indication of some of the symptoms of a low blood sugar reaction but the casual viewer might not pick up on this so I added some redundancy by having the words, “feeling shaky” drawn out over most of the page. The idea was to have the words stretch out time so that it would elevate this mundane moment into something special. That inspired me to actually manipulate the text itself to visually give the cue that my ability to process language has slowed down as well. I did this by first laying out the text in Illustrator and then applying a flag warp to the type. When I was satisfied that they looked good, I copied them as smart objects into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop, layer masks allowed me to create the illusion of the words swirling behind some of the scrit legs and later to subtly vanish into the atmosphere in the second-last thought balloon. This is an important detail because it integrates these purely digital elements into the image. Whenever I see lettering in comic books where the sound effects and text all clearly float above the art, I get a little peeved and taken out of the story. Having no real script for a lot of these pages requires that I keep things open in the lettering phase. Adding the text digitally is therefore a must but it doesn’t have to be obvious! That’s why I take these measures to try and bring the analog art closer to the digital elements. Here are the finished letters.

And there you have it! Phew! It’s been quite a journey to get here and it always feels great to finish up by flattening the image, scaling it and prepping it for the web. Once it goes online, I feel a great sense of relief and accomplishment and then it starts all over again! But before that happens, come back tomorrow for my final post where I thank all the fine sites that have linked to this series of posts and those who have shown their support to this project along the way. See you then!