I’ve finally realized the first of my hand-drawn comics.  Constant readers of this blog may recall seeing a couple of stick-figure drawings I’ve done in the past that I titled Not Quite Right.  Well, now Not Quite Right has its own digs.  I’m shooting for a daily update schedule at this point, targeting humor of the strange, bizarre, and twisted.  My wife thinks of it as a sort of Far Side style of humor; I’m thinking it may actually fall more in line with The Flowfield Unity in terms of humor style. 

I still intend to publish Starchips, but one thing at a time, right?

I spent some time yesterday clearing off my desk because I’ve added some supplies to my art cache.  I’m starting to experiment and play around with drawing some new art, inking it, and scanning it into Photoshop to play with colors.  Basically, I’m enjoying Reclaimer as a webcomic so much that I want to try my hand at actually drawing a comic and producing it on a semi-professional level.  Heck, if things work out, I might even be able to make some money at it someday.

Now, I don’t really have room in my office to make a full-fledged art studio, and frankly I don’t really have the money for that yet, either.  I’ve just got a handful of new items to let me try my hand at drawing, and if it turns out I’m good at it and continue to enjoy it, then I’ll think about setting aside a little cash to continue expanding my studio.

Prior to this, I’ve had a little sketchbook, a set of drawing pencils, an artgum eraser, and a book on cartooning that I’ve been using to practice and learn.  Now I also have a set of staff pens and a bottle of India ink, a larger drawing tablet, T-square and ruler, some additional 5B, HB, and non-photo blue pencils, and a couple of kneaded rubber erasers.  You can also see in the second photo a copy of How To Make Webcomics, written by some excellent webcomic artists that you’re probably familiar with. 

Yesterday afternoon and evening I toyed around with my first inking project and was pleasantly surprised by how quickly the India ink dries and by how permanent it is, even with an eraser going over it.  I’ve also learned a thing or three about coloring in Photoshop (thanks, Guigar, et al.!) and am looking forward to adding a few more tricks on that front to my toolkit.

Here at some point I may share a drawing or two I’ve been playing with, rough as they are.  And at some point down the road, it seems somewhat likely that I’ll be launching a new webcomic.  In the meantime, I’ll be practicing and refining my artwork and having fun with it.

Over at io9, there’s an editorial about why science fiction does better in movies than in TV.  Disregarding my own opinions on which is better and more enjoyable, this quote picked out of the list touches on my approach toward my Reclaimer comic:

Joss Whedon famously said that a television show is a question, but a movie is an answer. That’s why Firefly spun out tons of mysteries, like what happened to River in her special school, or what was the deal with the Reavers. And Serenity, the movie based on the TV show, had a self-contained plot and answered all your lingering questions in the course of two-ish hours. TV shows, especially in this era of arc storytelling, spin out endless plots that reward obsessive viewers—and scare away casual ones.

Comic books are a lot like TV shows in that they drag out plots and sub-plots over an extended period of time, usually raising more questions than they answer.  For those whose attention spans can handle that kind of lengthy story-telling, this is a lot of fun because you can mix intense action in with intricate storylines indefinitely.

This is pretty much the way I’m hoping to approach Reclaimer – a lengthy storyline that presents plenty of action while raising lots and lots of questions.  In the end, I expect to have something along the lines of a graphic novel with a story arc that’s been brought to a relatively firm conclusion.  Whether or not I’ll continue into another story arc with the protagonist remains to be seen.  Everyone who has been following the story so far seems to be enjoying it, so I suspect that a lot of that decision will be based on how much my readers want Reclaimer to continue.

On a day when everything is a bit on the rough side, a ray of sunshine appears.  There’s nothing a writer loves to hear more than a comment like this, and it certainly pushes the clouds aside a little bit. 

I love doing the Reclaimer comic.  At the moment I enjoy even more than writing a short story or a piece of flash fiction.  Reclaimer is letting me tap into several of my interests and hobbies at the same time – writing, graphical manipulation, Halo 3, web design, and more.  It’s kind of like the best of all worlds bundled up in this little nutshell of yummy goodness.

I was worried initially that I wouldn’t be able to produce a comic that would grab the interest of veteran comic book readers.  I’ve never really been into comics all that much, never had much access to them as a kid, other than the ones that appeared in the Sunday paper.  I’ve read a comic book here and there over the years, and I do subscribe to several online comics now, but relatively speaking, I’m pretty new to the comic book genre.  So you can probably imagine that it’s intensely gratifying to be producing a comic series that continues to generate positive comments.  I look forward to every writing session and to setting up the scenes in Halo 3, capturing the necessary screenshots, and then manipulating them in Photoshop to produce each page.  It’s a relaxing process for me, and one that I enjoy more and more every time I do it.

Have any of my readers here tuned in to the comic?  I’m curious to know if the comic has been able to break the barrier past the gaming community.

The crassness of the last frame aside, today’s Ctrl+Alt+Del actually makes me laugh because I can remember writing notes like that back when I was an insecure and outcast fifth grader.  I’d recently transferred from a private Christian school into the public school system, and I was very naive about the way people outside Christian circles worked.  Aside from one bully in the Christian school I’d previously attended, I’d really had no idea just how mean and cruel other children could be. 

By the fifth grade, kids already have well-established social groups and cliques – and they don’t always take to outsiders and strangers very easily, especially ones that are self-righteous, introverted nerds like I was.  I really didn’t have more than one or two real friends during the fifth and sixth grade years, but shortly after entering the fifth grade, I’d made what I realize now was a pretty lame attempt at getting some more friends. 

During our free time one class day, I’d written up a bunch of notes for everyone in my class that was something to the effect of, “Will you be my friend?  Yes or no.” I got a lot of yeses and just about as many nos, even though in the long-run, most of the yeses still didn’t really go out of their way to get to know me.  It wasn’t terribly funny to me then, but fortunately I can laugh about it now, which is why this Ctrl+Alt+Del strip makes me laugh.  It takes something I relate to intimately and pushes it to an extreme that I find highly amusing.

Oh, and circling the ‘or’ – yeah, that’s something I would do, just to be a smartass.