042: Zen in 42 seconds
May 31, 2023
These “interlude” comics are more difficult than I anticipated. When I first started, I knew I didn’t want the entire comic to just be story, but I definitely wanted continuity from one comic to the next. I’m just figuring out how to do plot arcs in this format, so around Comic #050 it’s going to start being more of a continuous story with less of these interlude one-offs. What I like about that is that I can hijack the comic any week I manage to actually write one of these good enough to make it to production.
My backgrounds are starting to sort of get better kinda? (*soooo much confidence). I’m figuring out how to translate a scene into my style, and I don’t hate it so much that it feels like work. If you were to compare this one to the last “medication” comic, I think the latest background matches much better with the style of the foreground characters.
I really struggle with “abstract”. I know some comic artists have the confidence and skill to swipe their pen four or five times and call it a background, but I’ve never allowed myself that kind of freedom. I think it’s the Graphic Designer in me: I must always communicate clearly. Despite my best efforts to follow my hero David Carson into the sea of deconstructivism, for me legibility is integral to communication. Maybe my next series will be loose. Right now when I do it I just see terrible bad awful scribbles.
