#i have a draft for the fallen one that i couldnt finish in time but maybe some day....

[basu-shokikita]

now that october is officially over i can proudly say that i managed to do 24 out of the 31 kloktober prompts!!

i actually wasn't planning on participating and then i saw everyone posting their entries on october 1st and i was like oh shit i actually want to do this maybe?? so i'm really proud of what i managed with essentially 0 prep.

i've participated in ship weeks before but never in monthly challenges so i struggled quite a bit to come up with (brief) stories for the prompts, often coming up with the plot as i went along but i think i did pretty fine. i'm more confident on some entries more than others but overall i treasure them all. i don't consider myself a fast writer so this definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone and for that i am glad!

and it was not just an exercise on writing but also posting because i tend to get cold feet about putting my fics out there so posting nearly everyday took quite the effort too.

and for those who liked, reblogged or commented on my drabbles: thank you! i appreciate you tons for taking the time to interact with my writing. <3 feel free to check out my other fics on ao3 as well! hopefully i'll be posting more from now on :)

shout out to shouri and doctor who were so sweet and encouraging with each of my entries! you guys rock and i don't know if i could've done all of this without your support, ily

that's all and bless you for reading all of this if you did xD

[basictelepathy]

10 Years of Drawing Cars on Prairie Roads

I’ve been doing this comic making thing for about ten years now, and as I just finished a new comic in which a car drives down a road in Kansas/Missouri, I thought it was a good time to examine that motif as it has appeared in my work.

The first comic here, drawn in January 2009, was the opening page of Emma and the Fairy Queen, an ~80-page story that was my very first serious exploration of making comics.  I  apparently like to open comics with a travel scene and have from the beginning.  I was using pencil, thumbnailing on sticky notes, doing the first draft in a notebook and a second, final draft on tracing paper.  I kind of liked the texture of the paper, and I didn’t really have the tools or know-how to get rid of it, so I embraced it.  All of the digital work was done using now-defunct web tools, and although I wouldn’t use comic sans now I don’t hate it with the venom the way many typographers do (it has a pretty cool history and is relatively dyslexia friendly!).  It was also clearly preferable to my messy graphite hand lettering.  The truck was modeled off of my Dad’s old pickup, and is not a terrible likeness.  It was one of the only things in the comic I used reference for.  The background is a little awkward, but this comic got me on the road and I am incredibly grateful to be here.

The second page is the opening of Ghost Room, a 16-page comic I started writing while living in Vermont, kept picking at during my year in Chicago, and finally finished after I moved to New York.  This page was drawn in January of 2016, in the sweet two day period after finishing the Wit’s End Kickstarter in which I finally felt free to dive into new things, before crashing back to earth with the realization of how much work was left to do.  By this point I had fallen in love with the brush pen, my one true inking tool.  Color was done digitally.  Some of the perspective is a little wonky in the first panel, but I’m still proud of this scene.  Car interiors are not easy.

The final page is from a comic I drew this past week for my Food Comics art show, the first page (shocking, I know) of a story about starting college and baking.  The background here was a bit of an afterthought (I had so many rooms full of people and furniture in this comic that my brain saw prairie and decided to take a break), and I have now remembered that Mom traded the minivan in for the Prius the year before I moved to Missouri, but... it’s a nice rendition of the minivan, and I like it.  Like Ghost Room I used a brush pen and digital color (although full flat color, instead of monotone cel shading).  Like Emma and the Fairy Queen I embraced paper texture, although this time with an intentionally created layer, manipulated in Photoshop like a pro.  I used more photo reference per page for this comic than anything I’ve drawn before.

Ten years can bring so much change and growth.  It’s important to look back, from time to time, to see that.  I have better tools now and know how to use them.  I no longer have to trek from my dorm to a computer lab to use a scanner.  I am no longer intimidated by ink.  I use more photo reference, and look things up instead of shrugging and winging it.  I draw, see and write comics in a way I couldn’t yet, ten years ago.  Here’s to another ten years making comics!