Awful Lot has gone live as planned, and I've got a fairly safe window of 8 finished strips ahead of my weekly schedule.  I've scripted ahead a good twenty pages and plan to spend some more time building a little more of a safety window there.  The farther out I can script the easier it will be to tie together loose threads and keep everything tonally similar. 

I've done next to nothing on plotting next years project, I need to start collaborating more with Timothy on those plans.  He's finishing up work on issue 5 of Third World and soon I'll be starting the editting and printing process of that collection.  Also on the horizon for Third World is working through issue six's script and giving that one more ironing out before Tim gets into pencilling that issue.

So lots of work has been completed and there's always more to do, I'm starting to learn that's comics.

-Jon O

The video came at an opportune time, as I am close to behind on my summer schedule for Awful Lot and needed to get a page inked tonight.  I've been working on my inking in Awful a lot, and seeing a pro was a real kick in the pants to get even better with my work.

I also finally finished a character sketch of Shock Watson I did for another aspiring comic creator Neil Cambre.  You can check out his webcomic here.  I tried a few things with low levels of success, but I had a great time working with someone elses character and just trying a big pin up style picture. 

My biggest problem with inking the Watson picture was thinking of how the lightning from his hand would effect the shadows on his body.  I'm a complete noob at lighting, I think the legs work ok, the arms are super wonky, and the helmet works decently well.  The torso doesn't look too bad to me either but there I used the blacks more for definition than a true cast shadow.  Maybe that should be my focus when spotting blacks starting out.  Or maybe I should address the acknowledged lighting problem.

There's always a dozen new things to work on.  Until next time.

-Jon O

I enjoy the layout of the book and pages, 9x7 was definitely the right choice.  The book feels weighty and takes a good bit of time to read.  Each of the pages seems reproduced well, aside from one strip that I knew had some problems (water damage on the original).

I am going to be changing several things in the book though.  There are a few little things throughout the book that need to be fixed.  The dedication page came through a little digitized and I need to figure out how to fix that.  I'm going to do one more edit of the foreward and afterward.  The strip "Night Pickles" showed up on two different pages somehow and I need to switch that out for one of the other 3 panel pages that got kicked out.  A couple pages have a bit of the comic strip title off the page, and I need to lower and shrink those comics.

There are a couple other little things I'm going to change just because I think they'll bother me if I let them remain.  A word here or there that I think should be changed.  A few teaching tips that I've since rewritten and will hopefully be more enjoyable.  And a panel or two where I want to change a little thing.  For example in "Pinworms" the boys pupils are facing toward the mud puddle, I'm going to use a little white out and move those to face his butt.  I don't think the joke is clear until the Jonny is more clearly looking at his butt.  Just pointing to it is not enough.

It still feels great to be so close, I'll have this book done before we know it.  Thanks for reading!

-Jon O

During the work this week I began thinking about professional writers and artists.  They never have to worry about all this grunt work.  I don't know if I did things slowly or not, but I estimate I spent between 20 and 30 hours this summer just in the nuts and bolts of putting the book together, making sure pictures were clear, making sure everything was the right size, and in the right place.  If there is any freedom I don't mind giving up to be published, it'd be formatting my own books.  I could give it up in a second.

I do feel like I'm getting better at putting the books together though.  I know the steps that Lulu will ask me to take.  I'm more familiar with the process of putting books together now, and I'm developing little shortcuts all the time.  I made none of the mistakes that I made while printing Mera, and when I start the next book (probably the first collection of 3rd World) I'll know some obstacles to avoid.  It was a much more lengthy process than Mera.  Public Education is sitting at 115 pages instead of Mera's 52.  Another real time save was that each page of Mera was saved in one spot already.  I paired the 3 panel strips together on P.E. and that required an extra step in the process on over half the pages.

Thank you everyone for your support and well wishes on the project.  I'll be sure to share my experience next week on how the book has turned out and what steps I'm taking next.  Until then fellow comic fans!

- Jon O

I have the files for every page of the Public Education book ready to put onto Lulu to print my first test.  I'm unsure of my resolution size for the files.  If the pages turn out grainy or too digitized I'm going to have to redo all of that work, which would be unfortunate.  If I do have to redo them I'll know not to use 72 dpi again for a printing.  I had to redo every page of Mera, so I won't be surprised if I don't get this all right the first try.

I also have written the rough drafts of the foreward and afterward of the book.  I'm not very happy with either of them yet, but I guess that's a start.  Editting these is going to be getting the majority of my attention now.

I've also pencilled and inked four pages for Awful Lot.  I'm pretty happy with how everything looks so far.  Personally I think it's my strongest comic work yet.  I need to get the lettering done on all four of these pages this weekend.  I still want to go live next month, but I need to get some pages completed before that starts terrifying me.

I've also been watching documentaries on Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, so heres some poor sketches of Looney Tunes I've been fiddling with while watching tv.  Sketching is important when I'm wasting time because then I can feel like I'm getting a little better at something.

-Jon O

- Tim

One of the things people have praised about Mera was that I clearly portrayed people's emotions through my simple scribbles.  I'm trying to keep that and expand upon it.  I've been studying Chuck Jones to try and absorb as many tricks as I can.  Looney Tunes are the pinnacle of making anthropomorphic characters emote.  By focusing on eye shape, pupil location, and body posture I'm trying to make my characters feel animated because of their changing proportions, instead of in spite of them.

 As you can see my pencils aren't extrodinarily tight on the page.  I'm trying to be a lot more picky in my inking of this work (maybe this could be a future Comic Curve).  I am trying to make sure I pencil in structured guidelines, but the detail work and refinement hopefully comes in the inks.  The pencils mostly aid me in framing each panel and getting those poses and expressions correct.  I'm going to go back over this page because I'm still not happy with the bat in panel 3.  I have discovered that it's going to be tricky having someone act human with wings attatched to their underarms.  It should be a fun challenge.

Thanks for reading, and you can expect many more Comic Curves on Awful Lot in the coming months.  Starting a new project requires a whole lot of relearning, at least, that's what I'm running into right now.  I'm planning on going live with the project sometime in July, I hope you come back to visit the site then!

-Jon O

- Tim

I wanted to share my last strip of the year as well as my to do list for making this stack of comic strips into a book.

I've ended up with 195 usable strips and my plan for the book has always been to use 180 (the same as the number of school days in American education.  This gives me 15 strips to weed out of the 180 so that the best make it through.  There's one I know that's a little racier than I want P.E. to be, some of the earlier strips weren't draw or copied as well as I'd have liked, and a few strips I just feel don't work.  My storytelling wasn't clear enough.  My first job is to find those strips that I don't want in the book and clear them out of the way.  I'm still going to hold onto them, in case one day I want to collect the "lost strips" or something like that.

Another thing I do with P.E. is some strips are 3 panels and others are 4.  After I know exactly which strips are going into the book, I want to pace it out so that my 4 panel strips are spaced evenly throughout the book.  I still haven't decided exactly how many strips should go on each page, but my thought right now is that 3 panel strips will go two to a page, where the 4 panel strips will get a page to themselves.  This should be a relatively quick step once I know which ones I'm using.  It'll just be a  little math, divide and conquer so to speak.  The longer part will be indexing all the strips and trying to have a nice flow from strip to strip.  There's no continuity to speak of, so I need to order them in a way that makes the reader want to continue.

When I get all that done I'm going to write two prose pieces for the book.  I want the forward to address the teachers of the world, I think that's going to be my biggest audience and I want them to feel like the book is made for them right from the beginning.  The afterward will be directed to comic fans, and I plan to ruminate on the differences between comic strips and books, and why the general population and comic fans in general tend to think of these two things as very seperate entities.

Finally I get to the really dull part, compiling the book on Lulu.  Printing test copies.  Getting everything how I want it, and finally placing a big ole order to try and sell them as we come back to school after the summer break.

It's not too much stuff to do, but I wanted a plan.  I've got other big plans in the works for this summer's comic output as well, so I've got to be ready to bust out the grunt work.  That way I've got more time for the more creative jobs.

-Jon O

- Tim