Stick Figure Sketchblog & Webcomic Creator @ Stewped.com

Let me first say that this is a new experience for me. This is the absolute first time that I’ve ever filled a sketchbook up on purpose.

I’ve been doodling in this sketchbook since 2010. Some people fill up a sketchbook a month and I find that super impressive. I’ve been terrible with my drawing habit, but finishing this one Moleskine was oddly easy. Doodles. Driving directions. Convention & inventory notes. All kinds of random sketches and notes. Anything and everything went into filling up Mitch’s Sushi and I will feel awkward not carrying it around with me. Perhaps that is only because Mitch’s successor has yet to be named.

It took over 3 years, but I’m pleased with the results. There are comic notes in there and a bunch of ridiculous stick figure comics that people(and I) have enjoyed. Following this is a brief gallery of some of my favorite pages. There’s sketches of Doctor Who, Misfits, random  garbage and many, many stick figures. I really like that skull-faced lady with the grocery bags, too. Not sure what to do with her yet, but she’s interesting to draw.

Investing in my future comic career, I ordered this enormous paper cutter. I had heard about this thing via Dustin Harbin’s blog. I looked and looked and looked all over eBay and eventually found what appeared to be the exact same thing that PERFECT was selling, just without their logo on it, for half the price. What a deal.

It works pretty darn nicely.

That makes one enormous chore of cutting comics into a very small and manageable task!

Rather than print my banner out, I am going to paint it on canvas. There’s the setup at right: canvas and PVC pipe. It will be a bit taller than that in the end. Right now, it’s about 6 feet.

So on to the ideas. I want some stick figures to feel larger than life! Plus, very strong lines of action are required. That’s what I enjoy and I want that to show through.

Looking at the pirate one now, it could be a lot stronger.

Which ones are your favorites? Pick 2!

In all the posts prior to this, I mentioned working on a Kickstarter project. Well, for unexplained reasons on Kickstarter’s part, I had to switch to Indiegogo.

We’re sitting at a cool $200 towards the goal of $1800 currently, so if you could pitch in or spread the word I would greatly appreciate it!

Here’s the other two images that I’ve fixed up. I think they work a lot better on this grey rather than the black I was messing with previously.
This kind of falls under the heading of preparing for Denver Comic Con. In case I haven’t mentioned it yet, I have a table there this year! Not sure where, yet. They haven’t notified anyone of table assignments so far.

I have more con prep stuff to share and I’ll be sure to update here with more con news.

Two new life is pain designs have finally been completed! I’ve been working super hard as I’d like to Kickstart these, plus some spruced up versions of the previous designs.

Also are the sketches I made the vectors out of.

I don’t know about you, but I like to have a dedicated Sketchbook Pen when messing around in my smaller, everyday sketchbooks. Long ago, there was a Uniball pen that made some really great doodles.

Now, I’ve been terrible at filling sketchbooks. On the right you can see Mitch’s Sushi, my current Moleskine. Yes, I named it. I show it there as it’s maybe three-fifths of the way full. It wasn’t until I came across Gary Panter’s drawing tips that I finally started carrying it with me everywhere. That article is probably 50% of how I got into a better sketchbook habit.

Before reading that, I had wanted to have a full sketchbook. After (more…)

Recently I started using PNGOUT, a command-line program that amazingly reduces the size of your PNG files without any loss of quality. It’s tantamount to sorcery, it works so well. As most of my comics are currently black & white, I export them as PNG files because, unlike GIFs, they can contain meta data for organization purposes. That is, if I remember to tag things as I create them.

In the screen caps below, this little tutorial shows you how I reduce my comics to almost HALF their original size. You can even download the original and the optimized one to compare on your own, if you like. This was on a greyscale image though. Don’t expect these kinds  (more…)

The only people that think drawing is easy are either crazy or don’t do any drawing themselves. I suppose there are some that may find it incredibly easy, but that has not been my experience.

Now, I’ve been attempting this Webcomic Career for quite a while and failing to produce steady comics every step of the way. It’s ok. It’s very obvious. Clearly it is not easy. If it were, I’d have accomplished a lot more by now. After years of drawing I only have about 100 comics done. 150 if you count the Adventures in Retail stuff. 150 comics over nine years is approximately 16 comics a year. Ouch. Not a good average.

Why is this year going to be different? I finally figured out how to draw. No, not well, but how to draw on a regular basis and enjoy it. Nothing will be perfect, but enjoying the process and making lots of sketches is more important and after enough time, art will just be better.

First, I have two very distinct goals this year, albeit very similar:
1) draw 52 comics for Chronic Malpractice
2) draw 52 comics  for Illustrated Thesaurus.

The only way I’ll be able to complete them is because two key ideas I’ve been reading about for years have finally been burned into my brain and made real. It happened this past weekend when I achieved something like never before in my comic drawing career: I drew two comics in one day.

I’ve read a TON of “how to be a better artst” and “how to get better at X” articles. It’s basically all I used to do when I should have been drawing. In every one, though, are these two ideas: 1) just do it and 2) don’t worry about it. The first part is basically an investment of time and effort, and it is hard. You just have to buckle the fuck down and do it.

(more…)

Here’s a work in progress I just unearthed. Not sure when it was begun, but it has been sitting in creation limbo for far too long.

Now, I am way out of practice, but it looks pretty cool so far. I like a lot of the action and follow-through. There’s one thing I want to tweak on the saw’s push(drop the handle down a bit), but I’d like to hear what any animators who read this think.

Feel free to download the GIF and do a draw-over if you have the urge.

*EDIT*

Here’s the animation after a bit of inbetweening and tweaking. I’m really enjoying how the saw bends when catching on the meat during the push-stroke.

Visit the life is pain shop to support me!