The Enchanted Dagger

The comics are to the printers!  After a grueling 3 days in front of the computer, saving and re-saving files, I was able to get all three comics out.  It’s a lot of work to get one comic print ready… 3 was a real challenge.  These pages have branched out into numerous different files (there are separate folders for our web material here, for example).  Remembering where every thing is requires a lot of focus.  But it’s finally out the door.  I’ve also got the last of the Kalthar busy work under my belt, filling in blacks etc.  So these two albatrosses that have been hanging around my neck are finally free, thank goodness.  And to my surprise I was able to get it out before fall!  That is truly amazing.

My brain hasn’t registered that i don’t have to think about these two projects anymore, though touching up these issues has reminded me that I need to go back and give issues 1&2 (to a lesser degree 3) one more revision.  It took many pages of comics and trial and error with printing to realize that what you see on the screen doesn’t always hold up on the printed page.  At this point I can tell by looking at it if a line is going to hold up.  As I do 90% of the work in illustrator I’m mostly working in vectors, basically drawing shapes that take the form of the line work, some of which can be so small that they’re tinnier than a pixel, which means it won’t translate to print very well. As such some of the older work would benefit from the cleaning up.

I mentioned that my old computer and illustrator 10 have been decommissioned.   I used illustrator cs2 for my revisions and there are pluses and minuses.  On the plus side, this computer is a lot faster so there aren’t as many lags as I experienced with my old computer so the process should be less aggravating.  Unfortunately, there seems to be a glitch in the pen transparency setting which is going to make it hard to color future issues in illustrator… but honestly that is for the best.  My approach to making these pages is  the same approach I used to use to make analog comic art.  I would draw it, ink it with brushes and nibs, water color it, painstakingly building up layer by layer of color, and then going over everything with a micron pen to sharpen things up.  Replacing vector color with photoshop color is over due anyway….

Now we get back to work on #7.  We’ve got about 10 kalthar pages to post so #7 will debut sometime in November!  Still a lot to do… there is a big swath of 8 pages in the center that need a ton of work/re-done altogether.  Would love to draw up that PHM 20 pager soon…maybe that will be motivation to get thru the 7 busy work fast so I can draw it up this winter… and then Edag issue 8….