I want to create two comics, one is LIFE/interior and the other is so far called '3-panel comic'. The first one should receive weekly updates, while the second will be more random.

In order to have two comics I thought the site needed some changes, or else I would have to have two sites. I've never liked the navigation, but what I came up with is not that much better.

I uploaded the first set of changes, let's see how that works. The visible changes are:

• The homepage now shows two small thumbnail viewers, one per comic
• Comics are loaded on demand, which should speed up initial page loading
• Homepage no longer displays the latest comic, you have to click to see it

I still need to work on a better design. Well, at least I really need to change the arrows for left/right on the thumbnail viewers...

Anyway, feedback welcome as usual. I expect to be adding and testing stuff now that I have a nice setup for testing it.

When adding text that is narrated, I usually add a rectangular box and put it hanging around. It's not like a balloon but maybe I should do like everybody else and put the box on top of the panel when it's supposed to be read before whatever is happening in the panel.

Like in this example from the upcoming page:

Also, I might reduce the size of the drawings, I tend to do them too big. I'm hesitant though, because if you've got a nice big monitor they look much better. Maybe I should play with different resolutions.

Just a quick note to record how upgrading from Wordpress 2.x and Webcomic 2.x went for me. I waited quite a while until most people stopped complaining about upgrade problems before trying it.

First, I saved posts with the export tool (which doesn't give that much peace of mind because it doesn't include images). Then I did a full backup of the whole site and a dump of the mysql database. I do that regularly with a small script so that was easy.

After backing up everything I upgraded Wordpress. It had been asking for it for quite a while now, with a huge 'Upgrade to wordpress 3' button always visible in the Admin console. Instead of clicking that, I decided to go through Dreamhost's panel because there are some things that need to be setup at Apache level that I know people at Dreamhost had taken care of, so it seemed the safe bet. I also figured I could get some support if I went that way (which I didn't need btw).

The upgrade to Wordpress 3 went flawlessly. Well, flawlessly meaning in this case breaking most everything and rendering the site apparently ok but horribly broken inside. First, all comics had disappeared, which is a bit scary when your site is supposed to be mostly about that. But that was expected because neither Webcomic nor Inkblot (the theme) were upgraded yet. I upgraded Webcomic directly from the plugin directory and downloaded the latest Inkblot theme from their site. I extracted the inkblot theme into the themes directory and copied inkblot-child outside of it so that it sits directly under 'themes', I then made sure inkblot-child was selected as the current theme.

Then, I went to Webcomic/Tools and upgraded the posts. This essentially recovers all the comic posts by migrating them to the new format. It was a relief to see them reappear, as every comic post had been lost until this step. The process is easy and consists on a small wizard-like dialog with a few steps, and one of them implies you manually moving your comic files to another directory. After that, a few of the posts weren't correctly bound to their comic images so I just bound them again.

All the tweaking on my inkblot-child theme was lost, which was not a real problem as I prefer the new structure. I just uploaded a banner for the header, tweaked font size and type and played a bit with the list format.

I tested the design that I commented sometime ago, with a blueish/magenta background, but it seems to clash with white images. I'll try it again at some point.

So, in summary:

• Upgrading wordpress to 3.0 is easy
• Webcomic doesn't upgrade too easily (I moved from the latest 2.x to 3.04). I really think most people will end up with a broken site. Good news is that there's lots of support from the Webcomic guys, and a nice video illustrating the process.
• Inkblot may upgrade nicely but I really didn't even try, just started from scratch with the new version.

Well I have what could be considered a full page but since I'm trying to make the comic easier to follow and read, I think I'm going to finish the minisequence before publishing it.

In the meanwhile, how's that for little girl Ana:

It feels much better to draw happy things :).

Well the dreaded moment where I need to actually draw a recurring female character is finally here. Let's see if I'm learning anything. From the male protagonist I've learned that I need to have some very clear traits that I can easily reproduce otherwise drawing it in different angles becomes really cumbersome. Also, I like much more this style, a bit more like a cartoon.

So... how's this for a face? She should be kind of cute and very simply outlined...

Just some words, not even a drawing.

This LIFE/interior thing is far from dead, I know lack of updates seems to point strongly to a looming future --but that's not it! It's only the usual spiral of unwanted events that keep conspiring against it, diseases mix with happy moments and stress mixes with relief, and between all of that there seems to be no space for little things like a continuing story.

All is not lost! Many drafts took life from otherwise dead trees and graphite and script and new moments are already in the land of future. Their migration to the digital world is taking longer than I'd like, and sometimes I think that this lonely tear of sweat on the side of my face doesn't only come from the hot summer but also from the guilty feeling of lousy comic parenting. Also, the unborn pages keep asking me to get my **** together and do some drawing, now (unborn pages talk like that, they are a bit foul-mouthed).

There's weekend hopes! Some nasty pieces of life will have taken care of themselves by then, and drawing will resume.

Promise.

It's on the Internet. It must be true.

Well the title is intentionally a reference to Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", which I'm reading these days. The book is an essay (in comic form) about comics, but from a very uncommon point of view. He talks about sequence, about the cognitive process involved when reading a comic, the difference between painting, literature and comics and much more I haven't read yet. Everything there is wonderfully illustrated with examples as he explores the different approaches authors take and all the great opportunities that this kind of media has.

But today I discovered what a webcomic is really good for: feedback!

Let me explain. I have the rare opportunity of actually talking to real 'readers' and ask them about the comic and I was interested about the last two pages, because a very important characteristic of the older Mr Mann is supposedly revealed there, and some key elements are introduced. But.. a suprisingly high percentage did not get the message I was trying to convey on those two pages. At all. It's not only the message, which can arguably be missed as it's only a couple of pages, but the actual sequence of events was unclear for almost everybody. That is, they didn't understand what happened.

The comics are here and here.

My original intent was to stop that sequence there and go to a flashback introducing the character 'Ana', but I'll add another page to the therapy sequence, trying to further explain it because it's kind of important.

I believe there's two main issues there: the main character is at times difficult to recognize as I still need to improve drawing, and more importantly, when I tried to display the contradiction between what Mr Mann is telling the psychiatrist and what he was actually doing (and what he is remembering), well, essentially I failed.

I think I should have added something more obvious, like some kind of cloud separating thoughts or memories and inserting more shots of Mr Mann's face while explaining it. For your knowledge: the idea here is that Mr Mann lies to the psychiatrist, pretends the whole event was a very simple thing, and hides the fact that after that 'flip out' at the office he went and beat the crap out of that new character that appears (the junkie) in something which has to do with another character yet to appear (Ana).

So FAIL for me ;). I'll try to learn something from this. It's good to have this kind of feedback so early in this process, because I can react quickly.

And if by any chance you did understand it, do post. Maybe my user sample was biased :)

Creating a composition for a panel is a very nice exercise and lots of fun. I usually do some doodling then try it a few more times, then do something a bit more serious, then when it looks about ok I start all the rest.

There is another approach, which is basically ripping off from a friend that has a great sense of composition but works in another area, like, let's say, photography :). Today I decided to steal another photo from a friend, in this case the photo is not that great from a technical point of view, after all it was one of the very first ones he took as a learning exercise, but the composition was there and fits very nicely with the one I had in mind. What I did is very simple and not that difficult: 1) find a nice photo, 2) either sketch it maintaining the composition or as I did with this one, actually copy the main proportions, 3) forget about the photo, concentrate on the drawing itself.

I think it works. I like the lack of perfection on proportions and the slightly skewed perspective, although I might fix some of that too. This new thing I'm doing with colors and shadows is also quite entertaining. The drawing should still get some more shades somewhere but I'll do those later.

Here is the process, in all it's glory:

The original photo is from Haripako (shusssh don't tell him). This is the second time I rip one of his photos, more to go ;).

Today I decided to try and put a little more effort into coloring and shadows. Up to this point shadows are most of the time drawn on a separate layer on top of everything, with a filter of type 'darken'. That works great for some shadows, but it doesn't play well with other objects, as it needs to be on top of everything. It's essentially like drawing with a brush over the finished drawings.

I decided to combine that with a different approach: create shadows as just basic shapes with color and put them in the same layer as the rest of the picture, as regular 'citizens' in the drawing. That means I can draw the shadow of a table and then put a table on top of it, without having to spend too much time trying not to accidentally draw over the table while shading.

Mmmm. Maybe that doesn't really make sense, particularly if you've never tried to draw with a vector program like Inkscape.

Anyhow, you can find the result below. First is the draft by hand, then I outline it, then adjust it and make it more round, and finally I play with color and layers:

I created the color palette displayed below the pictures using http://kuler.adobe.com --I don't know much about color, but those just seem right. I've been using the same palette since the beginning, although I sometimes play with transparency and grays.

Hiya. Well time continues to fly but my little webcomic hasn't received an update for about two weeks. Thing is, I'm still working on it, it just takes time and it's hard to concentrate when there is this bright sun everywhere trying to drag you out to the streets.

I'll try to keep this a bit more interesting by posting again some drafts and then compare those to whatever they come out to be. Usually I redraw things so much they barely resemble the original sketch, so this makes for an interesting test.

As you can see my drawing of females isn't improving that much, but I keep trying.