Search and Research #96

Well, this was an experiment in adding gray tones with a ballpoint pen. But...I think I wound up overshading it a bit. I'm trying to work out the best way to do this whole gray tones thing with ink. I've tried doing straight cross-hatching with my marker pens, but I don't like that for these strips for the most part. I've also tried ink wash but it wrinkles the paper on which I draw these strips. I could use markers, but they're pretty expensive, especially for a set of all the tones I'd need. Anway, I think I may be able to use a ballpoint pen to do background stuff but not pervasive darkness like this.

This is the introduction of Ayvee, the new Electronic Resources librarian. If you think about her name and her job, her name becomes funny and appropriate. Enjoy!

Search and Research #95

I want to thank everyone for bearing with me last week. It feels good to get this next one out. Enjoy!

Search and Research #94

So, it's just like the caption says. My buddy Jason and I have been working out ideas and details for the next several strips, but our busy lives have kept us from really having time to connect all the dots. In the meantime, I wanted to do just an art piece. This is exactly my favorite thing to do on a cold day where I don't have to work...curl up under a blanket on the couch and read, particularly the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This was an experiment in using lots of lines to try to render objects in gray scale. I think it works in some places here, and doesn't in others, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

I thought some of you might be interested in what drawing this was like, so I scanned in my penciled strip. I sort of shaded in areas to help me remember what I was going to darken in, and as you can see I've sort of indicated where things are going to go, but I haven't tried to make every pencil line perfect. I then inked over these pencil lines in pen and added in all the cross hatching and other detail. Enjoy!

Search and Research #93

And now the explanation for the big reveal last week. After we initially revealed that SCOM had guns, even though it was pretty funny to me, it sort of bothered me that he had them. I mean, nobody is going to let anybody, even a machine, into a library with a gun. It's true that reality is suspended in that we have a walking, talking, abbreviating office machine in our strip...but we do try to keep everything else somewhat grounded in reality. So, this was a perfect solution for the whole gun thing. Enjoy!

Search and Research #92

What! What's this? A salad shooter and a caulking gun? Where are the machine guns? Tune in next week to find out! Enjoy!

Search and Research # 91

I have to say, I'm glad I didn't commit myself to getting a strip up last week 'cause I came down with a pretty bad cold last week and couldn't draw anything. I'm better now though.

Ok, so this strip features Randall. You can see the old version of him in strip #89. In that strip we have him complaining about a hair appointment SCOM made for him. If you look at strip #90, in the first panel you'll see a little guy in a hawaiian shirt with spiky blond hair. I drew that as my conception of Randall after the hair appointment. I thought it was funny enough that I wanted to deal with his feelings about the whole thing, and give us a better look at the new 'Do'. I'm including my little prelim sketch I did of Randall's now look. Enjoy!

Search and Research #90

I honestly worked on this strip for 5 nights. I started on Tuesday of last week, and finished up tonight. I really thought I'd have it up last wednesday, but alas, this was a much longer project than I anticipated. First, this was a color one, so I drew it on watercolor paper, which has little bumps and ridges. This made the penciling stage a little harder. Also, I couldn't erase mistakes much because if I did, the paper would become weak and the ink would run when I inked it. So I had to be much more deliberate in the lines I put down. Also, my pencil lines smeared a lot more than the normal paper I used, so that didn't help when I started inking. Tonight and last night I worked on coloring the page. I have to confess that I'm not much of a colorist, so making color choices sort of stresses me out and I spend a lot of my time mixing the colors...probably more than I actually spend putting colors on the page.

On top of all that, Jason and I decided that this should be a double sized image to really tell the story we wanted to tell, and I really could have used about 2 more panels to get the timing down. When I realized I didn't really have enough room on the page for the panels I wanted, I had to figure out how to combine some elements and shift stuff around, so that took some planning. Anyway, this was a lot of work, which is why it wasn't up last week.

Depending on whether Jason and I can nail down the finer points of the next few stories, we may not have a strip next week to allow us time to write scripts for the next few strips. We have some ideas cooking, but need to work out some details, so thanks for understanding. Enjoy!

Search and Research #89

It always feels good to get one of these strips done, especially when I've been putting it off unnecessarily. I spent most of my weekend, and my evenings this week, playing video games with my wife and losing track of time. Here's a tip for you aspiring artists out there...it's hard to feel creative with a video game calling your name (especially if you have to sit on a very comfortable couch to play said video game, which happens to be my situation). But, I managed to overcome my propensity toward laziness and get this strip done. Next one is a color strip, so we'll just have to see how long that takes! Enjoy!

Search and Research #88

It feels good getting this strip up each week. I wanted to try to get this one done yesterday, but watching the Packers lose to the Giants (talking football here for those of you who may not know...) really sort of ruined the rest of my evening artwise; I just couldn't seem to find any creativity in me the whole rest of the night.

It was good to get to some of our other characters as well. I really like drawing all of our characters (except Randall, whose first appearance is the only time I've drawn him well) and the past few strips have mainly been SCOM and Marc. And Wai Fai too I guess.

Having scanned this in, my first thought was, "Look at all those Jelly Bellies. That must be at least $50 worth!" Stuff I don't really think about when I'm drawing the strip. Anyway...Enjoy!

Search and Research #87

Welcome to the first strip of the new year!!! The new year is a time to reflect on our lives, make changes to our habits, routines, and in some cases, personalities. :0)

I am starting to try some new things with my pen and ink technique. As these strips go along I'm going to try to drop in some backgrounds and things behind our characters that, while being unobtrusive, will hopefully work to fill in the blank spaces. For instance, I liked how #86 came out, but I can't help but look at it now and notice all the blank white space behind Marc and Wai Fai. I usually don't draw backgrounds because they tend to clutter up the main action (at least my backgrounds do) but I think I need to branch out. So get ready. See you next week. Enjoy!

Search and Research #86

Well, well...I did actually get this done tonight, so here it is. This will be the last strip of 2007. See you all in 2008! Peace!

eli

Search and Research #85

Last week was exam week for my wife, which meant that I spent a lot of time fetching water and chocolate, and not drawing. But, she's done now (yay!!) until spring so I'm back to getting this story line together. I added the cool little powering down flash effect on SCOM's screen in the last panel by filling in the screen black, and then making a flash with a white out pen. Once the white out dried, I came back in with a pen and made the ends of the flash pointy. It was pretty cool (at least to me.) Enjoy!

Search and Research #84

Wai Fai? Eli, what does that even mean? Well, it's pronounced Wi Fi...ahhh...now you get it. I don't know, I just thought it was funny. And, just to show you that I didn't totally go off my rocker, here is a gentleman listed on IMDB with this name. Why does she have a sword? Well, in my initial doodle, she had one. I don't know, it seemed funny. Totally implausible, but I like drawing samurai swords, and how else would I be able to draw one? I guess it helps her fix things. Where is it in this scene? Well, Marc couldn't very well allow here to just leave it on the desk while she fixed SCOM, so he is keeping it safe for her in his office. I think that's about it. Enjoy!

Search and Research #83

Introducing...a new character!!! All colleges have (or should have) a dedicated ITS person handling computer issues, and here is ours. We're going to try to keep working her in, as well as our other staff characters (who, it has come to my attention, are not showing up very frequently but will be soon). I've included the initial character sketches I did for her for your enjoyment. If you are celebrating the American Thanksgiving holiday, Happy Thanksgiving!!! If you are not, I hope and wish you a wonderful week! Enjoy!

Search and Research #82

It's good to be back to drawing the actual strip again instead of the whole "behind the strip" thing. We've got ideas for the next few strips which is good too. Based on a conversation I had with my buddy Jason, I decided that the hardest part of doing these strips is coming up with a workable idea. Ideas that are funny, and that will play visually, while staying in the context of the world we've established is pretty tough.

I'm also posting the character sketch I did for the guy checking out the book. I usually work out the visual quirks of new characters on a sheet of typing paper before going to the strip. It also allows me to work out any problems before I get to the nice sheet of paper I draw the strip on. I hate messing those up because of something that I could have worked out earlier on crappy paper but didn't. Enjoy!


*P.S.* - Some of you may have noticed that our little image viewer for the previous strips (in the list of links above) has been sort of out of whack for a little while. I've corrected the problem (it was my fault) so that is back up and running. And up to date.

Search and Research #81

This is the last one of these "behind the scenes" ones we'll do. Back to our nice, disorderly library next week!! Enjoy!

Sidelined

So, last Tuesday I'm about to start my shift at the service desk when my back starts to hurt. I take some advil and start my shift, but the next time I have to get out of my chair, there are shooting pains through my lower back. I go home early, and basically didn't get out of bed for the rest of the week 'cause it hurt too bad to sit or walk.

I discovered during that time that few things turn off those creative juices more than being in pain. It seems, at least for me, that artistic creativity is sustained by periods of time where I can concentrate and focus on work, uninterrupted. On a good day I will be able to work on a piece and forget about the passage of time, coming out of my 'zone' once the piece is complete. I'd never really taken the time to think about my creative process like this before, so there was some positive gain from this time out of the game. It does mean, however, that I'm not positive if I'll be able to post the next strip this week. I'm able to sit in a chair with less pain now, which is a big improvement, but I also have to go to work, which means that when I get home, I've been sitting for 9+ hours without a break and I usually need to go lie down to give my back a rest. So, we'll see.

I just wanted to give everyone an update, I hope you are all well. Later!

eli

Search and Research #80

Ok, so it turns out that every now and then a comic strip artist (and his friend who helps him write the strip) need to take a month and a half off. August and September are the busiest times of the year for me at work, and I've had various family in town, which has been nice. My buddy Jason welcomed his second daughter into the world, so he has been understandably distracted from writing.

Anyway, we're back! Tell your friends! I'm hoping to post a new strip at the beginning of each week; I think that will be a much more realistic schedule for me these days. This strip is sort of poking fun at me and Jason, and imagining what our characters are doing while waiting for us to come up with new strips. Just in case there is any confusion, this is Marc out of his costume, chillin' in his crocks and listening to his iPod. Enjoy!

Search and Research #79

Well, we had to do one more. We felt like the gnome was interesting enough to keep around, so we had to have a way to let everyone know that he wasn't going anywhere. Plus, now that Marc is off of his back, we felt that SCOM wouldn't really care if the gnome got up to hijinks at night, so we needed a way to show that they're on better terms. That is my attempt at the old TV batmobile there in panel 1. Enjoy!

Search and Research #78

And...we have conclusion of the library gnome saga. Or is it? We'll just have to see. I like this character and he seems a good foil for SCOM, although a different sort of foil than Marc. I apologize for the longish wait for this one, but as I said last time, I've had a brother moving into town, and a brother leaving for college for the first time, so it's been a busy week. Next strip will be sooner. Enjoy!