Another day or two and this one will be up. Some of you old timers may recognize those guest stars in that second row of panels…
Comic #4 colors
The pencils are about halfway done on this one. I down-shifted big time on the amount of detail work compared to the last comic, as I was a bit burned out on drawing billions and billions of stars.
Comic #4 pencils
All of that detailed background work was driving me nuts, so I finally broke down and drew a couple of panels just to break the monotony of it all:
Comic #3 colors
I’m not going to cram much artwork into the remaining panels, so it should be done and posted by Monday or Tuesday.
Did I mention I was planning on going completely nuts with respect to the background on this one?
Comic #3 Milky Way
Basically, I’ve spent all week just on this background. Obviously, I used actual photographs of the Milky Way as references, and this drawing (more of a painting) will end up being a relatively accurate likeness. The good news is I think it’s turning out pretty well. The bad news is, yeah, the finished comic won’t be posted until probably late next week. Oh well, that’s what happens when you work without deadlines… 
Like I said, this one will take me a while, but I’m hoping the final product will be worth it. Here is a peak at the background stars and the beginning of the stellar matter in the central Milky Way:
Comic #3 background
The round white spots are for the planets and sun (anyone who can correctly guess each planet and where it goes wins a no prize).
I’ve decided to bite off way more than I can chew on this one and I expect it’ll take me at least a couple of weeks to complete. I plan on drawing about a zillion stars in the background, so there’s a good chance I’ll go blind before it’s done. Someone let me know how it turns out.
Comic #3 layouts
The colors are pretty much done except for the huge panel which will take me forever:
Comic #2 colors
Here’s a sneak peek at the nearly complete inks for comic #2:
Comic #2 inks
I’ll just do some basic coloring on this one, but starting with comic #3 I’ll be shooting for some major improvements. I’ll be looking for some good coloring tutorials on the net, so if you know of any, please let me know.
I want to push myself as an artist (seeing as my arting skills are still so lacking) and make good use of this new large format, so in every strip I will have at least one big panel that is crammed full of stuff. For example, in comic #2 the big panel will contain a detailed background of the city streets of Reflection. Here are the inks of that nearly complete background:
Comic 2 city background inks
It’s taken me forever to cram in all of that detail, but I think it will be worth it once the final product is complete.
This is my first experience with a long-format web comic and I want to put all of that space to good use, so I’m not going to rush production. I’m going to take my time with every phase of the creation process: layouts, pencils, inks and colors. So the good news is you’ll be getting my absolute best effort, but the bad news is new comics will be posted… when they’re posted. Initially, I’m going to shoot for every week to a week and a half, but we’ll just have to see how it goes. I won’t post a finished comic until I’m 100% happy with the final product.
However, I do want to post new content more often than that, so you’ll get frequent progress reports from me containing miscellaneous images of the strip in various stages of production. I’ll post layouts, pencils and inks as they are created, enabling you to watch each new comic come to life. Hopefully that will keep you interested enough to keep coming around…
