deadwinter

Game Journal #31 - He's Back!

I've had a very productive week since last post! After finishing up Monday, and having gone through the motions of adding new feature animations three times, I managed to get half of Lou's new sprites done in a week, which means I'm set to have him fully sprited and animated by this time next week, which puts us on a very good t...

Game Journal #30 - Three Down, One To Go

I've been busy this week. First thing's first though, I got some artwork for Glyphsong done so we can have two game demos at Emerald City Comicon. Glyphsong is a puzzle game where you use music to unlock magic spells. There are an initial eight stages, each representing a different basic spell, each corresponding to musical meas...

Comic Report #22 - The Long Haul

As mentioned before, we got the last minute opportunity to go to ECCC in Seattle March 2-5, we weren't planning on having the chance to go this year since we were waitlisted so we're in the mad scramble to get something to share, which means the comic page is going to have to drop into first gear for a bit.  I want to look ...

Emergency Update (good emergency)

Hey guys, I just wanted to make a quick post about something that just came up. We'd applied to ECCC in Seattle but were put on a waitlist, and I've sort of resigned us to not making it to ECCC this year, but I just got an email saying a table opened up and we can suddenly exhibit there, which is extremely exciting but also real...

Game Journal #29 - Show Off Your Moves

I was very pleased with how much work I got done this work stretch!  A bit of this is bleedover from last week but I wanted to present the sprites all at once. I'll go top to bottom and explain all my thoughts on what I'm building here, but I basically drew all of the new features for his ranged weapon mode.

As mentioned ...

Comic Report #21.1b - That Was Quick

In my last weekly report I said I'd have this page finished "sometime before the end of the weekend". Well, uhh, I just did it tonight. Here's the letterless version, I'll be lettering it and putting it up before I go to bed.

I'm happy with the lighting in the row-of-faces panels, I think I communicated the light moving from l...

Comic Report 21.1 - Almost There

Just as I promised last week I'm gonna push through and keep working on this page, and since I'm at that "almost done" home stretch point I'm gonna keep going all the way to the end, which I should probably get done by the end of this weekend.

The major challenge left in front of me is how I want to handle lighing in the strip...

Comic Report #21 - Expressions

Hello! I hope everyone either has had or is presently having a nice holiday! I've got some more stuff to share with you today so I hope you're ready.

I think it was earlier this year where I set up this page, with the kid being sent along with a note in her hand, and I finally get to draw the payoff.  For me this page is ...

Comic Report #20.2 - My Final Form

Just a quick post to share the textless version of the final page, I'm gonna put words on it and letter it and get it up ASAP, but you guys can see it first, as is the tradition around here.

Comic Report #20.1 - Interior, Crocodile, etc

Here's a progress shot of the next comic.  I'm going to keep working on this and I should have it finished by the end of the week, and then I'll switch back to a gameweek afterwards, but I'd like to just push this through to the end as seems to have become my system.

I alternate between preferring interior and exterior sc...

Comic Report #20- Post-Festive, Pre-Festive Edition

Last week was American Thanksgiving and I was tied up with family stuff, and then I spent the weekend focusing on working on my game-week work and I missed the update time to post my comic status report, so here's where it is now!  I have a lot of fun drawing just-woke-up facial expressions and this page is full of them!

...

Comic Report 19.2 - More Page

Here's the pre-lettered page before I finish it and upload it tonight.  I hadn't originally planned to use the window lighting to draw the eye to the subjects but it was something that came up while I was working and I liked it.  As I suspected the interior shots took a lot less time than the exteriors, so I could knoc...

Comic Report 19.1 - The Great Outdoors

I have an obsessive compulsion, I'm sure of it. When I walk I avoid stepping on cracks, when I drive I try not to turn the engine off until a song is finished, and when I draw outdoor shots I like to make sure every little detail is accounted for.  Way back when I started I would draw backgrounds as just jagged square silho...

Comic Report #19 - Shifting Scenes

After a blistering, uhh, handful of pages we get to meet these two again! This page is set to be a quiet page, not a lot of dialogue is spoken so I let the camera do most of the talking.  Not needing to budget a lot of space for word balloons means I can put a lot more panels on a page, and more panels means more moments to...

Comic Report #18.2 - Be Free!!!!

I wanted to push through to the end and just get this thing done and out before I switched to anything else, so without further ado here's the textless version of the page before I put words on it and upload it to the site.  

Two things to mention: the first is I'm pretty proud of the last panel. I don't really use perspe...

Comic Report 18.1 - Establishments

Here's my update on this art since last Thursday. I was tempted to skip the isometric establishing shots in panels 1 and 2 until later but I instead decided to just jump in and get them out of the way, so next comic week I can knock out the rest of the figures (which are comparatively easier) and be done with it.  

I left...

Comic Report #18 - Transitions

Here's my first comic page since coming back from medical leave. This one's a transitional page, wrapping up the confrontation in the alley and moving forward towards the next couple scenes I have planned. Like a gradient of colors, I feel it's important to have your intermediate between one scene and the next in order to keep t...

Comic Report #17.2 - Finally!!

Here it is, here's the textless final version of the next page!  I'll probably update the full thing tomorrow but this is essentially the pre-release preview for you guys.  I dragged my face through these crowd shots, and I found what I think is a good compromise in the last panel to sorta "you get the idea" the shot I...

Comic Report #17.1 - Pushing Through

Here's where I am after the past week. Normally if I kept the usual routine I'd spend the next week doing gamedev stuff and come back but I feel like since this is a new cycle process I can make the rules up a bit as I go, and I'm gonna say since I'm near the end of the page I'll spend the next week or weekend or however long to...

Comic Report #17 - Stress Management

As I predicted last week I didn't have as much time to push through this page as I'd have liked, but it is what it is. I have a fairly substantial medical thing upcoming in my life and that's both a source of stress and a drain on my time and resources, so I try to set goals and work through it. I'll make this post...

Comic Report #16: Organizing

I've been trying to find a good balance lately for posting more Patreon updates. The trouble I ran into posting game stuff and then comic stuff was that game stuff is a million little pieces I could share as they're made, which generates more Posts, but comics take me a long time to show the one big thing so I end up having a lo...

Comic Report #15.1 - Finally!!!

Here's the text-free version of the page before I finish it up and put it online! Sorry for the big delays, it's been a pretty rough, uhh, two months?  Holy moley.

I wanted to do a lot with lighting on this page, since the sun is rising over the backdrop building and there's a crest of warm light cast over a dark ...

A Quick Note

Hey guys,

I wanted to have more Patreon stuff up by the end of April but it slipped through my fingers, so I thought I should make a post to let you know where I am right now.  The next comic page is about halfway done and I'm focusing on that, but April hit me with a lot of medical travel stuff which has absolutely w...

Comic Report #15 - Drawing a Crowd

This page took me longer than I'd like to hash out the sketch version, I've spent most of my time either working on last-minute gamedev stuff for ECCC, traveling around for medical stuff or catching the cold everyone's been getting. It figures all that would happen on a page with a specific crowd in so many panels, but it is wha...

Comic Report #14.1 - Wordless Art

Here's the textless art for the most recent page. I tried to find ways to simplify the crowd scene without going into too much detail (which is usually how I end up ruining myself) so I used the block-in-silhouettes-and-then-sculpt-them-out technique I outlined in an Art Journal post a while back- it's not as detailed but when t...

Comic Report #14 - Inks

Switching back from game dev to comic mode from now until probably April, so here's the start of the next page.  

The first panel is a shot of the full crowd scene, isometric and from above, and I kinda don't want to deal with the fine inking of all those little shapes so I'm gonna use my silhouette painting m...

Comic Report #13.5 - Textless

Here's the no-text-bubble version of the last page. I finished it really early in the morning and said to myself, "I'll upload this to Patreon after I sleep" but I got swept up in other stuff and forgot, sorry!  

For this page my primary goal was to convey the size of the mob of Gravekeepers surrounding Randy with...

Comic Report #13 - Pushing Forward

I've spent the weeks following Thanksgiving mostly just working on comics, outside of a couple real-life things, and I'm aiming to push through to the end of this one before I shift back to game dev stuff and make some new sprites. I'm trying to strike a balance between the two obligations- now that the four main characters are ...

Comic Report #12.5 - Whoops!

I forgot to upload the text-free version of the latest page!  Sorry about that. It's been a hectic month for me, moreso than usual. Here it is though!

Comic Report #12 - Momentum

Here's the sketches for the next page. I've basically set up everything I want to so now I can get into action, so I'm easing into that!  Also since I don't have a ludicrous time-consuming panel like last page I want to try to get this one done as soon as possible, so I'm gonna try to be quick about it.  Wish me luck!