I'm starting to think my story is a bit too ambitious given my current abilities :), but foolishness can get you quite far. Thing is, the story I'm trying to tell is supposed to go back and forth between three different ages of the main character. That means I need to be able to draw the character in three different stages of his life (as if it was not difficult enough to draw one character in more than one position!).

So currently I've drawn mostly the childhood years and some snapshots from the young years (although I should revisit them and slightly change the look of the character a bit). Now I need to draw the character quite a few years later. It turns out it's quite difficult to actually age characters (but fun too!). I'm starting to understand why most comic characters don't age at all. Take a look at this amazing guide at Cedarseed's site or if you prefer, at Deviantart. Of course, as my style of drawing is quite different, not all of that applies to my particular case but it serves as a very nice starting point.

This is what a first approach to The Three Ages looks like in my world (not exactly like these other Three Ages):

It was a very interesting effort. I chose the gray eye lids and the white hair as a guidelines for the three figures. The old age I'm trying to draw is not supposed to be really very old but it's more a case of premature old age (more on that as the comic advances).

Another fundamental point about 'old age' is that whenever I try to draw the character as a premature-old person I start drawing him with very unlikely clothes. I mean, old people in my mind always wear a slightly ragged, dark colored suit, maybe some kind of hat and of course a walking stick. Question is, how will old people look like 20 years from now? Will we see them in their 'vintage' G-STAR RAW jackets and think they need to renew the wardrobe? Oh the difficulties of life.

I knew from the very beginning that creating a webcomic imposes some restrictions. One is the immutability of content. Once it's published, it shall not be changed. Thus spoke the Lord.

Now, add in the fact that you need to release periodically. Even more, you must. That's actually the key point, if I ever learn to draw it will be thanks to being forced to do it :):

Thing is, I didn't have enough time to review and check the last page I published. Then the next day, it felt completely out of tone with the idea of the comic. So I committed a sin and changed it and it's very interesting to see that some people noticed, but of course most didn't until I pointed them to the change (Facebook power).

The actual changes I made are not so evident so the new version seemed better than the previous one although it was unclear why. Let me illustrate you with a Before and After comparison:

The most important bit is the text, previously it was too verbose, I must learn to leave some things for the reader to infer.

On a side note, Google Reader doesn't care about updated items --other feed readers will tell you there was an update, but someone at Google decided they didn't care, although updates are displayed correctly they are not marked as new content so it's easy to miss them.

BTW: I should change the stroke size for the characters at the bottom of the page, they look so horrible. Should I? Shouldn't? Where do I stop? HELP ME!

So I have this problem. Let's come clean. I can't draw women. I like to draw women in an androgynous way, I'm not too keen on drawing big voluptuous figures. Problem is, well, they are so androgynous that they are essentially indistinguishable from men.

So the solution is clear: add long hair, a ponytail or some earrings in order to provide clues, or combine it with a nice skirt. Women's Rights defenders will campaign against me soon. All that is good but limits my spectrum and sort of makes my drawings too stereotypical. Take this sketch as an example, that could easily come from a fairy tale. And I'm not sure why I used the manga eyes on it, btw. Ok, I was in a plane so the pressure changes may have affected my brain.

I have no trouble drawing really muscular guys, with impressive chests which easily border the homoerotic. I figure that's ok as long as I don't salivate while drawing them. Must be because I remember reading Savage Sword of Conan when I was growing. The fact that I seemed to focus on the muscular types and not the gorgeous women Conan was constantly saving may be worth a visit to the therapist.

In any case, what constitutes a girl's figure is very interesting, I have a few books on the subject, but I still need to practice quite a lot before I can introduce a female character. It's still going to be all boys for a few weeks. One of the books actually describes in detail how to draw women's breasts, with a whole chapter dedicated to 'women holding their breasts together by pressing them with their arms'. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

I've tried a few things that can replace a scanner. Let's share.

Since I only use the scanner for sketches and basic character traits, I don't really need that much precision but I do need it to be focused and not distorted.

1) iPhone photos. Crap. iPhone lacks a flash and is completely incapable of applying the right focus.

2) iSight camera from my rusty macbook. So-so, it has a pretend-flash and seems to be better at focusing, but it forces me to hold the paper at just the right distance.

3) Cheap Nikon Coolpix digital camera. Clear winner. Using the 'close-up' mode it seems to be able to focus perfectly on the drawings.

So 3 it is. All this effort is because it seems to be easier for me to outline a sketch using the ancient method of pencil and paper. See this example below, which had a threshold applied to make it black and white.

And I even used a movement line (the curved line that goes from top to bottom) to define the shape of the cat. I'm going pro.

So I had a hard time choosing the right proportions for the character when he's older. The child is supposed to be funnier and intentionally disproportionated but the adult, even if it should also look like a cartoon character, should be a bit more proportional. So I started googling and found various techniques, the one applied here is based on the size of the head, essentially using it as a ruler. See the progress from sketch to draft below. Essentially, the body is 7 'heads' long. Trick is that whenever there's a joint, these 'heads' may overlap as in the knees below. Well, that's what I think...

Not so bad. I kind of like the style, pending adding detail, probably changing the pencil width, etc.

This is what I did yesterday. I tried doodling directly with the tablet, bypassing the usual pencil drawing and then scanning, because I don't have a scanner here. I did some basic hand drawing for inspiration, but changed it a bit when drawing on screen. The conclusion: I do need the scanner or drawing with a bigger zoom or something, because the results are quite disappointing:

The thing is that unless you are a the correct zoom level, most of the traces you draw with the table are not actually represented in the drawing, so when I quickly did the traces for the head of a mouse (that's what the child is supposed to be holding), all the detail disappeared. I'm posting it nonetheless, so that the world can see how that evolves to something :).

And I did draw the small child looking to the left, had to play a bit with guides in Inkscape to make it proportional, but it looks fine enough. Not sure about the hands, maybe I can make the character wear prosthetic hands because that is what they look like...

I like the expression it has. It's missing some shadows (one under the eye), but it's still a bit of a draft.

Well the next pages that hopefully will be coming during the following weeks are actually scripted, yes, like in a real comic! They describe our narrator's recollections from his childhood. I wanted to use a slightly different style for the 'childhood' era. I included the actual drawing process this time. Since I don't have my scanner here I didn't use the pencil draft, although I did create one. So process goes: I outlined the figure with straight lines, then smoothed them using Inkscape, then tweaked them, then continued tweaking and defining detail (while trying not to put too much detail in).

So yep, this is what I do on a weekend:

Actual main character is supposed to be the last white haired one, the black haired one is just me playing to see how tweaking distances in the figure can completely change the look of a character. My initial thought was that the child version of the main character should have a different hairstyle, because usually when you are a child it's your mom that decides how you look, but I think using the same hairstyle makes him easier to identify. I did want it to have distinct, more comic-like, eyes.

Tricky bit is now doing the same character in various positions...

Well my friend Sergi was kind enough to draft a design for this site. His approach is usually quite different to mine so that's always welcome.

Here's what it looks like:

By the way, I enjoyed the UK Webcomix Thing 2010 today. Lots of talent there, I talked with quite a lot of people which were quite nice and I hope someday I myself will have something to show there too :). Lots of different styles, but I seem to prefer the somewhat cute ones, like Timothy Winchester, if only because of the business cards he was giving:

Well since I have some difficulties finding the right spot to draw, I'll update the site putting it closer to the webcomic layout. I'm using a wordpress plugin called webcomic and the inkblot theme, no customizations yet.

I've been doing quite a lot of traveling lately (Dublin, London, Barcelona) and that's seriously getting in the way, but I shall prevail!

Have defined the story and will start posting pages in an orderly manner, while also continuing with the blog. It's part of the magic of the webcomic plugin.

In this post, a bonus bulldog drawing :9. Inkscape instructions: create a circle, draw some straight lines, select, convert nodes to curves, then tweak a little the nodes. tada!

So I'm continuing with what could be thought of as the introduction. The narrator continues to present a bit of himself as a prelude to the story.

First panel is actually a rendition from a photograph from my friend Haripako (check it at his flickr page and take a look at the wonderful photographs he takes as part of his ongoing 365-day photo project, used here under permission :)). The rest are based on old photos I had around and some googling for inspiration.

Need to finish the remaining panels and apply some shades. The overall tone should be dictated by the first panel's color.

Update: defined faces a bit more.