Gods & Undergrads Returns!

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For those of you who don't know, I started doing comics way back in 2000 with Gods & Undergrads, my first foray into webcomicking. (and for those of you interested in my process, I go into the details on my four part process for creating comics here!)

Gods & Undergrads is the story of Lelaina Pentheus, a college sophomore. At the beginning of the comic, she's applying for residency on campus. And over the course of 2 1/2 books, Lelaina meets friends, falls in and out of love, and discovers that her relatives are Greek gods.

When I first started G&U, I was pretty regular with updating the comic. But, over the years my updates grew more and more sporadic. Many people stopped reading, many people yelled at me, and most people suggested I stop doing this comic already. So while all that was happening, I worked on other comics and even created a NEW webcomic - Bonnie N. Collide, Nine to Five. Buuuuutttt ... well, I never wanted to stop doing good ol' G&U.

I'm just not finished with the story yet. What makes it awkward is how much the story and the art and the style have changed over the years. Even though I look back at the earlier pages (and the later, let's be honest) and I cringe, I'm going to keep plowing ahead until ... well, until the end.

Anyhoo. This is a LONG, drawn out way of saying that where we last left off in the story:

What crazy shenanigans are going to happen to the undergrads of Troy University next? Find out DECEMBER 12TH, when Gods & Undergrads continues!! Wooooo!

In the meantime, here are some links to help you catch up/start the story:

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My Comics Process: Pencilling

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Here we go on to Part 2 of my comics making process - pencilling! So now I move into my office, and set up shop at my drawing desk. Yes, it's a little old and filthy and apparently I work best when surrounded by clutter ... shh! Don't tell anyone!

I've got my coffee and my pig pencil case, so I'm ready. Here are a few of the supplies I use -- paper. Strathmore's smooth Bristol, 11x14, has been my preferred paper for years now.

I use blue pencil, and with a mechanical pencil housing blue lead, I'm able to get a much thinner, sketchier line than I would with a regular pencil. The only problem? I tend to press down really hard when I pencil, so I break the tips off when I draw like nobody's business.

My eraser's pretty standard. It does its job.

So I take my 11x14 sheet of Bristol and tape it down to my drawing table. That way, it doesn't slip out of the way when I'm aggressively sketching and breaking off lead and whatnot. Now here's the part where I do a little math: My paper is 11" wide x 14" long, and my final end product will be printed on paper that's 5.5" wide x 7.75" long - standard page size for a manga-sized book. I've figured out that this gives me about a 4.33" wide x 6.933" long space to fit all my art in, with no risk of bleeding out in to margin space. I'm definitely not the best at properly adjusting my pages in order to take advantage of bleed space in printed pages, but at least I have a rough guess for how much room I'll be allowed to work with for my comic page. So when I compare 11"x14" (paper size) with 4.33"x6.933" (drawing space), I discover that I have to slim down my paper width area a wee bit in order to match the ratio I want to end up with. So my drawing area becomes 8.74" wide x 14" long. So I simply measure 1.14" off of each side, draw a little line, and know that these are my boundaries to draw within.

Then I measure out the page into thirds, since my thumbnail sketch told me that I wanted 3 rows of panels on this page. Again, I do a little math to measure out the page into my panel areas, but you're free to do this as anally or as sketchily as you please.

Now that the page is divided up into spaces for the panels, I mark out the panel lines themselves, leaving a little bit of room between panels for the gutters.

Then, finally, I can begin sketching! I've got my boundaries, I've got my thumbnails, so this should be the easy part, right? Wellll ... it depends on how detailed your thumbnails are, and how skilled you are at things like perspective and environment drawing (and I am not). So this part can take me a little while as I slowly build panel ...

... by panel ...

... being careful to write out all of my dialogue, so I can have room for it when I put it in on the computer in the final stage (stay tuned for that exciting installment!).

Sometimes I'll tape up previous pages as reference (shown at the right is the inked version of this page, which I put up to remember certain details about how I drew the characters the last time).

Until - voila! I'm all done.

The page is now all pencilled and ready to be inked, which is Part 3 of my Comics Process ... stay tuned!

My Comics Process Part 1: Thumbnailing

My Comics Process Part 3: Inking

My Comics Process Part 4: Computerizing

[otw_is sidebar=otw-sidebar-4]

[otw_is sidebar=otw-sidebar-7]

My Comics Process: Pencilling

/

Here we go on to Part 2 of my comics making process - pencilling! So now I move into my office, and set up shop at my drawing desk. Yes, it's a little old and filthy and apparently I work best when surrounded by clutter ... shh! Don't tell anyone!

I've got my coffee and my pig pencil case, so I'm ready. Here are a few of the supplies I use -- paper. Strathmore's smooth Bristol, 11x14, has been my preferred paper for years now.

I use blue pencil, and with a mechanical pencil housing blue lead, I'm able to get a much thinner, sketchier line than I would with a regular pencil. The only problem? I tend to press down really hard when I pencil, so I break the tips off when I draw like nobody's business.

My eraser's pretty standard. It does its job.

So I take my 11x14 sheet of Bristol and tape it down to my drawing table. That way, it doesn't slip out of the way when I'm aggressively sketching and breaking off lead and whatnot. Now here's the part where I do a little math: My paper is 11" wide x 14" long, and my final end product will be printed on paper that's 5.5" wide x 7.75" long - standard page size for a manga-sized book. I've figured out that this gives me about a 4.33" wide x 6.933" long space to fit all my art in, with no risk of bleeding out in to margin space. I'm definitely not the best at properly adjusting my pages in order to take advantage of bleed space in printed pages, but at least I have a rough guess for how much room I'll be allowed to work with for my comic page. So when I compare 11"x14" (paper size) with 4.33"x6.933" (drawing space), I discover that I have to slim down my paper width area a wee bit in order to match the ratio I want to end up with. So my drawing area becomes 8.74" wide x 14" long. So I simply measure 1.14" off of each side, draw a little line, and know that these are my boundaries to draw within.

Then I measure out the page into thirds, since my thumbnail sketch told me that I wanted 3 rows of panels on this page. Again, I do a little math to measure out the page into my panel areas, but you're free to do this as anally or as sketchily as you please.

Now that the page is divided up into spaces for the panels, I mark out the panel lines themselves, leaving a little bit of room between panels for the gutters.

Then, finally, I can begin sketching! I've got my boundaries, I've got my thumbnails, so this should be the easy part, right? Wellll ... it depends on how detailed your thumbnails are, and how skilled you are at things like perspective and environment drawing (and I am not). So this part can take me a little while as I slowly build panel ...

... by panel ...

... being careful to write out all of my dialogue, so I can have room for it when I put it in on the computer in the final stage (stay tuned for that exciting installment!).

Sometimes I'll tape up previous pages as reference (shown at the right is the inked version of this page, which I put up to remember certain details about how I drew the characters the last time).

Until - voila! I'm all done.

The page is now all pencilled and ready to be inked, which is Part 3 of my Comics Process ... stay tuned!

My Comics Process Part 1: Thumbnailing

My Comics Process Part 3: Inking

My Comics Process Part 4: Computerizing

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