Ink Blots

So!  After a delay, the late page of The Word Smith is on the scene.

I thought I'd take a few moments to explain some of the inking issues that arose with this page.  It's actually not terribly uncommon for me to muck up the inking a bit.  Usually these are things like inking a line I shouldn't (construction lines or other lines in the pencil drawing that are occluded by something in the final drawing an, thus, shouldn't be inked), or drawing a line in slightly the wrong place (because I'm still learning the tools or my hand is a bit shaky) or a line just ends up a bit more uneven than I'd like.  These are all fairly quick and easy to fix up digitally after scanning and thus not a big deal.

However, occassionally I make bigger mistakes.  Sometimes I just royally screw up some part of the inking, maybe because the pencil lines were left rougher than they should be.  Sometimes I look at something after I ink it and realize that it's just off or I just don't like it.  Sometimes I decide things would be clearer if I did things another way.  Obviously it's preferable to catch these things before inking but, well, I'm still learning (that's my excuse, anyway.)  These sorts of things are usually not things that I would want to fix digitally, since I don't have a drawing tablet.  My general approach to these is to draw a fix on tracing paper (so I can make sure things line up), ink that, scan it and merge it digitally with the main page.  Here's some examples from Episode 8:

(From Page 2):  This was a small fix.  I was unhappy with how the hand turned out (hands are hard) so I redrew it and pasted the new improved one into the panel.

(From Page 3):  Sometimes fixes are a bit bigger.  Here, I decided I needed to redo the pose of the character on the left so I redrew the body and replaced the old one.  The head didn't change.

(From Page 2 - again, boy I really messed up on that page a lot):  And every now and then I replace an entire panel.  Fortunately this was a small panel and I seem to have not gotten around to putting in any of the background details on the old panel before deciding to replace it.  The reason I redid this panel was because I felt showing the two character getting on the bus would clarify the flow of action since they appear on the bus after a one panel flashback.

The main issue with the latest page was from the middle panel of the middle row:

Basically, I decided the pose needed to be fixed.  As can be seen, I didn't bother finishing the inking of the first version.  And while the pose could probably still be improved, the second attempt was better than the first.  There was also another bit in the first panel that needed to be fixed, but I decided it was small enough to fix entirely digitally.

So, that is that.  Hopefully the next page will be on time two weeks from today.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Lack of Words

There will be no Word Smith this week, for the one or two of you out there that might actually care.  Partly I was slacking a bit on the comic these past couple of weeks and partly there's more that needs to be fixed up for the inking than usual so I've decided not to rush things and just postpone things. 

The next page should be up next week.

Until then,

Freak Out
-TFitC

Musty Olde Comic

And without much fanfare or further ado (or strange new hairdos) the latest episode of The Word Smith slinks onto the interweebs.

Until some point in the future...
Freak Out,
-TFitC